Beans, Beans, Glorious Beans

ARCUMECTURAL lucy DES CH oot Beans, Beans, alorıous Beans 2 82 NLicsho (hood Ben Nicholson is a truly visionary architect. He is unaffected by fashion, political correctness and sophism. Over the last decade and a half he has sought to reveal, to an amnesiac architectural profession, the numerical structure of human and architectural knowledge. Here he discusses Pythagoras, beans and the geometry of the anus, demonstrating the resonant reflexivity of RUmbRRS as illustrated by a master.

Generations of men and women have been drilled with the schoolhouse mantra ‘The square greater candour; Diogenes Laertius goes on to record: ‘In his lost treatise On the Pythagoreans, Aristotle says of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares the Pythagorean’s reason for demanding abstention of the other two sides’, sung in a lilting chant from beans on the part of his disciples was that they that belies the fact that few have the foggiest resemble genitals, or because they are like the Gates CLPAR idea of what it means. The vision of a genial of Hell.“ Theophrastus is more concise, stating: handing out boiled sweets to a mist of eager that at the beginning and composition of all things eoMesbua:tCEAU children at his knee whilst they are busy drawing when the earth was still a whole, the bean arose. lines on slates, is wishful thinking. Mr And he says that the proof of this is that if one chews Pythagoras had things other than a career a bean to a pulp and exposes it to the sun for a Mr Pythagoras sitting on a stone in the agora, reg È ER: eary e a| er>e.. Zaratas forbade men to eat beans because he said clothed in tweed jackets and stumps of chalk certain time, it gives off the odor of human seed.’ on his mind. At the present time, stories surrounding beans are Pythagoras was a power and a mystic: he largely scatologicat: on the American dining table can headed up an esoteric sect which held on to a way of life, and a body of knowledge, that be found Beano, which is sprinkled on food to prevent threatened or allied the leaders of the time. So closely guarded was the inner core of this in dealing with the fact that beans are sacred, look like post-pork ‘n’ beans flatulence, but there is little interest genitals and smell like sperm when they are chewed knowledge that it could not be written down for up. These are issues beyond the reaches of capitalism, fear of revelation. lamblichus relates a story' of how a group of Pythagoreans were being hunted hovering at the edges of censorship. e down in the countryside, and chose to die rather Taking a Peek into a Bean than run into a field of beans. Just before the These remarks from classical authorities remain largely last survivor, Timycha, was to be tortured in out of bounds because they are scatological, order to pry out of her why beans were so pornographic and have overtones of religion, a deadly important to Pythagoras, she chose to bite out mixture for the latter-day scholar. But the opaque her tongue and spit it at the tyrant Dionysius remarks are so intriguing that it is worth taking each so that she would not divulge the secret of phrase at face value and closely examining a bean in its beans. Pythagoreans maintained a formidable light: if a bean is described as having genitalia, ox — nondisclosure agreement. then let's look for that. A close inspection of a bean is Inevitably, stories leaked and a series of magnification were known in antiquity: the simplest Aristotle, Theophrastus, Plutarch, lamblichus,? system can be set up by coaxing a tear to puddle upon and many others. Included in these writings are your iris whilst your head is bent down peering at quantities of proclamations about beans which something. The eye becomesa very effective magnifying have elicited commentary from every sort of lens with a focal length of about 1 inch, and is as good bona fide and hack scholar imaginable. Typing as a photographer's loupe. PYTHAGORAS+BEANS into the Google search bean is a startling sight, verging on the unprintable. and nonspecific sites.* But Timycha's tongue- The underside of Phaseolus multiflorus, aptly known biting seems to have done the trick, for the facts as the scarlet runner, has four dominant aspects. In are wobbly. Since then, historians have felt the * the middle is a wide opening [hilum] surrounded by a discomfort of unprovable hearsay on the subject rounded, glistening, ruddy pink rim. At its bottom are of Pythagoras, whose only anchor is the ethereal two tiny gonads [raphe] pressed tight against the quality of number, a matter well outside the. opening. Above the opening is a pinprick hole boundaries of verifiable historiography. (micropyle), and beyond that is a big bulge beneath the LIS to see into the bean’s jacket. Aristotle's remarks about the bean's curious. lamblichus remarks that Pythagoras likeness to genitals is confirmed: the bean comes with forbade his circle from eating beans, ‘due to many causes, physical, psychic and sacred’. its own penis, urethratic-pee hole, vulva and a pair of .Diogenes Laertius is more specific, declaring, on After reading the classics, looking at a magnified engine releases a flood of academically inclined Passages about beans in the classics are a “ei best done with a magnifying lens. Artificial forms of anecdotat tell-alls passed through the quills of ‘His disciples were forbidden to eat beans ‘testicles, perfectly crafted into a hermaphroditic whole. When the beanis stripped of its skin (testa), the genitalic form intensifies. A resemblance of a little because they are flatulent, they greatly partake penis (radicle) is found beneath the bulge of the shell, of animal properties, and besides, the stomach complete with a wimpley little tip. To the left and right is kept in much better order by avoiding them'.* of it are protrusions and, at its top, is a flap, attached Aristotte had weighed in on the subject with to one of the buttock-like cotyledons, which works its

- way across to the other cotyledon like trouser flies. With the testa stripped away, the vulvate to get enough purchase to push the plumule, a pair of opening is gone too, replaced with the sinuous they can get life-giving sustenance from the sun. The curve of an opening. Colour has been drawn out radicule and plumule gradually draw the nourishment of the bean; it has an ivory whiteness, marked needed out of the cotyledons until these are sucked by form and tight alone. dry of energy and eventually drop off the.stalk. Thus the perfectly formed embryonic When placedin a bowl of water and left to its leaves, into the light so that bean stalk moves in'two directions: to moist earth, via ‘own devices, the hard skin (testa) of the bean - the hypocotyl, and the warm begins to soften as a result of fluid passing bean has no-arms, legs, trunk or head, it is all genitals; tight, via the epicotyl. The inwards through thie tiny hole (micropylel, and the bean is creation, as Aristotle was supposed to have remarked, one end of it going to hell and. the other up : the membrum [radicle} within begins to stir. So powerful is the arousal to life that the skin . to heaven. tightens until it splits open with a powerful rip that makes a horizontal. gash, a self-made | episiotomy, generated by thecall to life. With - time, the little root begins to fill itself outand stir, getting bigger: and longer each day, until Left Bean physiognomy: a, hermaphrogenitalial monadic : {ump composed only of a vagina, an on/off penis, a urethra, aeneon na ir A of buttocks. The Big 0 The nature: of the orgasm, that pocket-sized metaphor os for the astronomer's big bang,still intrigues. humankind "as. much as it ever'did. At-the macro level, we constantly “it makes its wayout of the torn skin. The two hunt for the singular moment oftife’s beginning." | cotyledons of the bean cleave apart, unwieldy: |. Adjacent to the:entries on beans, farting, sex and buttocks beckoning inward, ‘yet this first’ 7 conception has happened without coition. The _ about the:quality of number. Thisis not a coincidental . “unruly. membrum' never entered the cavity; it. oil juxtaposition, for the essence of numberis at the - went off on its own route to the centre of the. - essence of-generation. The proofs of Euclid andthe earth, down: towards Tartarus, ‘through:the' Right - : gates of hell, no doubt. to:be met by Pneuma— the origins of life are visiblein _ Akathartos, thé evil spirit of foul winds. The . the dessicated root and: When looked at through atear embryonic leaves inside aà bean... ; Oppasite Pods of from one to seven _ beans spawned from a single monadic scarlet runner bean. el devilis in the- details. Returning to science for a.minute, the religionin. the writings on Pythagoras are passages . cryptic language: of ‘contemporary mathematics make. . it difficult to access the beauty.of number; however, | the bean offers up a very | accessible perspective when itis observed directly. | J | © [fa single beanis stuck into warm moist’ carte the ta membrumis of course no more than‘a radicule. "tiny desiccated root and leaves Spring into life, pushing attached at its hilt to the cotyledons of the bean. ‘apartiits two halves; from. one bean comes two parts, and with the passing -of the season {and all the tricky The root runs downwards into the earth in order .

circumstance of the plant's life] the vine surely it can become three! And, if a bean can become becomes covered in pods, each of which is filled three, it follows that three could be tripled to become with a fixed number of beans. A pod can hold nine and, in turn, nine could become 27. one bean, two, three, four, five, six or seven beans; in Chicago, the scarlet runner is reluctant two generative acts described above, there comes the if beans are laid out as two limbs, according to the to produce more than seven to a pod. That one bean can generate a fixed number of pods with desire to do to the pile of three beans what was done to one, two, three, four, five, six or seven beans in double that to make 12. It becomes apparent that six is each pod cannot fail to have been noticed by also the sum of two beans that have been tripled; the the single bean: to double it to make six beans, and to Pythagoras. The hermaphrodite bean, all qualities that emerged out of a single bean are now genitals and no head, has completed a measured confirming themselves, forming a new kind of whole. cycle; it has spawned from a single bean sequences of fixed numbers, lending credibility Geometry Jains the Arithmetic Fray to the act of creation through a quantifiable If the little piles of beans are joined with lines, a simple materiality. Number asserts creation. triangular grid forms which can be overlaid with lines A gardener and a philosopher look at beans which project further associations. New qualities quite differently. The gardener opts for a balance emerge: if the pile of two beans is added to the pile of of circumstance that will optimise the quality three beans they add up to five beans. If the adjacent and quantity of beans, whilst the philosopher numbers are added on the lines parallel to it below (6 + inquires into the nature of the bean and where 9 = 15 and 18 + 27 = 45] it will be seen that all adjacent it is situated in the larger scheme of things.’ numbers situated on lines parallel to the line formed by For the philosopher, if a bean begins as one and 2 +3 are factored by5(15=3x5, 45 =9 x 5). ends as many, it would seem logical that latent if these two piles of beans joined by a line are within the bean are other numbers. How then is associated with the number five, then other piles of it possible to get at them? beans may have similar qualities: on the next page, the figure on the left shows that every pair of adjacent A Philosopher Stalks the Beans numbers situated on a line composes a prime number After laying a pile of beans on a table and or is factored by a prime number. In a triangular inspecting them, one notices how very different structure, whose limbs are formed by 1, 2, 4, 8 and 1, 3, they are from each other: they can be big/small, 9, 27, the factors of adjacent numbers can compose fat/thin, lumpy/smooth, speckled/plain, the primes 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19 and 29. Only 23 is tapered/bulbous, ugly/beautiful; the more they absent, but will re-emerge if the grid is extended. are inspected the more differences they seem to Thus, within one bean, the monad, a universe of hold. If beans are laid out top to tail in a long numbers emerges, primes and all. line, the big and the small average themselves This triangular grid of numbers, generated from the out to suggest a mean length; despite their monad bean, has another quality which demonstrates differences they have achieved a standardised the measure of infinity. If the grid is generated outwards unit. The bean retains its individualistic and a line is drawn in space, that line will be parailel singularity and difference, yet when put together to one that passes through two points on the extended beans become a quantifiable and measurable grid; it will snag a prime or be factored by a prime. length. As a device for counting and measuring, Thus, any straight line drawn at any angle on a twoa bean is more animated than a pebble; beans dimensional grid is identified with a prime number; create numbers, pebbles confirm them. thus the concept of random direction is inextricably A single bean is now selected to discover its linked to the prime number. x quality. If it is stared at, poked at and wondered The dicot bean has spun a perfect yarn about itself, at, curiosity will inevitably lead to its being cut with qualities of coincidence that are as immaculate as open. The bean naturally cleaves into two halves; the concept of creation. Number is the match for the what was once one whole is now two. This action pair of desiccated leaves and root nestled between the shows that two is latent in one. To extend this flanks of the bean, but the majesty of number and logic from the physical to the conceptual, if one growth still remains outside human comprehension. became two, two could become four, and four could become eight. If the bean’s physique Beans, Bottoms, Measure and the Golden Mean naturally leads from one to two, is there any It is easy to be lulled by the narcotic logic of number The curious protective coat reason why the same principle of doubling when regarding the generative properties of beans, of a Phaeseolus multiflorus cannot be extended conceptually, and the bean but why was so much ink spilled by the ancients on the become three? If a bean could become two, then subject of flatulence? The Pythagoreans are reputed Opposite {scarlet runner bean] encloses a pair of cotyledons within.

an NUR ES KA AZ TR S PAPERA j QUA ZA ve Aep, D4 + ‘to have sworn their allegiance by the sign of the pentacle," no doubt because the pentagonal star is shot. ‘through with the golden mean. One of Leonardo da Vinci's. more curious drawings, currently held by Her - Majesty the Queen in Windsor Castle, is of the external anal sphincter, composed of a five part-muscle, which he draws with the point towards-the rear of the torso." Who would have guessed that the anus is:such a tricky > piece of geometry, and that when we do our morning ‘ablutions yesterday passes through a pentagonal die formed by the golden mean. Leonardo worked closely ‘with Fra Luca Pacioli to produce.a series of drawings of |< Platonic:and Archimedean solids, which included the _, .: 12pentagóns that composea dodecahedron. Pacioli © was the first to reveal'the construction of the pentagon © : in De Divina Proportione in:1509. Ina string of. .. associations, connections and translations into “continuous relationships composed of sex, creation, "+ farts, sphincter muscles, Leonardo and Fra Pacioli, * : Atotrakiys formed by thé * more sex, De DivinaProportione, number and earthy _ .. © c lambda demonstrates. ~ “Platoni elfective prime-number. -.. 2 measurement, the bean has become the instrument: - = that pulls it all together. 2 2 Has the-compound nature of.the sacred bean. ©’ ‘A single bean isdoubled and: se. + to form a lambda," Plato's Timaeus. ‘doscribedin “Opposite -. Nye oly + ©ganitalia and vagina’, drawing. 2°. 1... “revealed itself incorporeal. glory? ‘Does that which is - ' d gods automatically have body? Do' -. by the . create + architects. provide the firstmeasurement that connects” . the body to the cosmos; thereby tripping themselves at the first hurdle? What is measurement; is it the only - thing the gods forgot to manage, humankind snatching :