An Introduction to Laws of Form

Laws of Form, an introduction with Andrew Crompton

Created by George-Spencer Brown, Laws of Form is a non-numerical arithmetic, a calculus that is based on a single mark called “the first distinction”.

In Spencer Brown’s own words, from Laws of Form:

“The theme of this book is that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in the plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to reconstruct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow inexorably from the original act of severance. The act is itself already remembered, even if unconsciously, as our first attempt to distinguish different things in a world where, in the first place, the boundaries can be drawn anywhere we please.”

Laws of Form belongs to the same tradition which has brought us Ramon Lull’s Ars Combinatoria, John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica, and Leibniz’ Monadology. In comparison to these however, it uses the minimal set of signs or symbols.

Andrew Crompton writes about the design of things that are easily overlooked or in other ways hard to describe or remember. He will be holding a conversation around Laws of Form at Bound & Infinity on Monday 26th February at 18:30.