KUROBIS

Almanac: Important Revisions

1. “The Academy” will now be referred to as the University. It’s a much more comprehensive institution than academy implies. Mathematics and Natural Sciences are the greatest focus, but it doesn’t exclude social sciences and philosophy. This society is coming into its own renaissance, building off their scientific revolution. Innovation had previously been driven by the military’s needs (firearms, electricity, combustion engines, communications advances have been integrated into civilian life). Less economical and more abstract sciences are becoming more popular. It is now coming into fashion for wealthy people to educate themselves.
2. I’m not going to use the term Alchemy anymore. It doesn’t represent what they do anymore. I started planning this with the idea of “science as magic”, but the magic of it was less fun than the science so it’s been dropped. I’m not sure what I’ll be calling their work, but the idea behind Nico and Mel’s work (once they establish their ideas) is to unite the natural sciences and mathematics with one idea. The ideas and imagery for Almanac have been inspired by visual math and fractals from the start, the idea that there is an expression in math for all the patterns that recur in nature. Some philosophy is definitely involved in what they do, especially since what Nico sees is invisible to her peers, and most of what she observes appears to be abstract. Universal Mechanism offers a pretty decent overview of what these two are thinking. I’m sure there’s a better philosophy out there that applies the same idea to the universe on a smaller scale.

I need to re-read up on a lot of this stuff (or acquire a writing partner who knows better than me haaaaa). There have been a lot of changes since I started posting, a fair amount of information posted is now obsolete. But now it’s looking as if Nico and Mel will be more like philosopher-mathematicians than anything, and that works just fine for me. The technology of their time isn’t actually advanced enough to prove or disprove anything, hahaha. And the brain damage that caused Nico to perceive reality the way she does (I’m going with childhood illness and sticking with it) could very well be causing her to hallucinate meaningless patterns! When I started I wanted them to revolutionize their modern science, and have Nicola be an enlightened person who can see the universe moving around her. Not so much anymore, but I’m happy with the direction it’s going in.