The kaleidoscope renaissance is more than a revival of interest in scopes and goes beyond a prolific array of intriguing optical instruments. Bringing together in one object cell a unity of light, color, form, and motion that seems to capture moments of eternity, the kaleidoscope "inspires the mind" and "calls the heart." It is one form of art that is continuously being created right before the viewer's eyes. The static has been removed and the imagery lives, equating itself to life's experiences.

Mandala

The kaleidoscope image takes on meaningful significance when it is associated with the age-old mandala. Mandala, quite simply, is a circular symbol of wholeness. It is a circle expanding from its individual center as it interrelates with other circles, radiating from their center, all being one with the creative universal source. It is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose bounds are nonexistent.

Jose and Miriam Arguelles have written in their book, "Mandala, " Shambala Publications:

"The Mandala is the symbol of the round of life and death, of the cosmic procession of beings, planets and stairs, of earthly seasons and galactic cycles."

"The integration of worship, knowledge, and beauty is a significant feature of the Mandala, enabling it to convey a teaching to the receptive. The Mandala expresses a knowledge of the laws of harmony. It is not concerned with the personal but with the transpersonal; not with the fugitive and the arbitrary but with the eternal."

There are three basic elements inherent in both the mandala and the kaleidoscope: a center, cardinal points, and symmetry. In a mandala, as in the patterns of a kaleidoscope, a succession of interlinkings are unified into one whole. Each piece is a vital part of that whole, no matter how small. Take one piece away and the image is not quite the same.

Beyond its inherent beauty and captivating magic, the kaleidoscope symbolizes life - a mandala in action. Man is the center. The awakening of intelligence is the first radiating circle, spiraling from the center and proceeding from there, each person's mandala is as individual and distinctively different as a fingerprint.

The unfolding drama of human events and emotions tumbles and spills from an inexhaustible source on no apparent course. But the universe is fashioned and governed according to a principle of divine order. We sense it, we know it's there, but the breadth and complexity of its patterns make it invisible to our mind's eye.

Only man's awareness and attunernent to the Creative Original Force determine whether the patterns in his mandala fall at random or seek a meaningful direction. The archetype referred to by Carl Jung represents a pattern of order in which each content falls into its proper place and the tumbling pieces are held together by a protective circle - the microcosmic enclosed within the macrocosmic.

Meditation

For some, the kaleidoscope is a "happening" - a joyous experience - a celebration of color. For others, it is a meditative device, a lens opening onto an inspirational stratum of rarefied light.

Even Webster, with his vast comprehension, did not fully fathom the myriad facets of the kaleidoscope. So, I have coined a new word - mediscope: to meditate as you look through a kaleidoscope, and breathe the colors, while listening to inspirational music.

Meditation is a natural process, and we discover it at some stage of the soul's development. It is for the purpose of realizing, attuning, and centering with the Supreme Life Force.

Color meditation is not new, but the mode of procedure has always entailed mentally recalling a color and then concentrating on it. How much easier and more efficient to visually observe color while looking into a kaleidoscope. The kaleidoscope's images represent possibilities, opportunities and now horizons created from random disorder, chaos and shattered dreams. The kaleidoscope is also a great emotion-stabilizer. It is virtually impossible to hold a grudge, harbor resentment or feel any negativity while enjoying the visual experience found within its perimeter.

To observe and breathe color takes neither physical effort nor mental gymnastics. Simply slow down the rush of thoughts and enter into stillness. Let the mind as well as the eye absorb the regenerating energy from each color that comes into view. Open the windows of your inner space, allowing the light to focus on every feeling, emotion, and creative idea. Breathing deeply, retreat into the center of your being, letting color engulf you. Continue to inhale the very essence of the colors that please you most or make you the happiest. Feeling rather than reasoning, wait until there is an intuitive knowing that all the pieces are falling into place, until you sense a oneness with the universe and a unity with mankind.

The following is a meditative affirmation by psychotherapist Jeanie Robertson of Atlanta, Georgia:

I am a source of light. I strive to radiate and reflect the beauty and wonder that is within and around me to others.

My body is the presentation of the light. I do those things which enable me to be consistent and in harmony with the light within. I eliminate that which builds conflict and discord, I am a mirror of the light - I determine the balance and symmetry of all dreams, ideas, people, and things with which I come in contact. I strive to provide clarity and quality within my being. I am a true reflection of the light.

I am a chamber for the light. I collect within my being those objects which provide the color, texture and variety of that which is really me. I examine my memories, relationships, plans and fantasies to insure the best and most honest representation of myself. I build on those qualities which create harmony with the light source. I break down into components that I can handle, all that blocks me from the light.

I am the eyepiece of the light. I provide the window through which the patterned beauty of the spirit can be seen. I am willing to take risks, to be vulnerable, to demonstrate that which I am continually constructing and reconstructing in the light. Being connected with the power, I am a light source.

Life unfolds from the center
New beginnings emerge from the breakup of past forms
All things turn and spin and change
Endlessly rearranging themselves
The world is truly a kaleidoscope

...My life is a kaleidoscope
Of changing thoughts and patterns
Evolving into a multifaceted perspective.
Then the colored glass
Becomes precious gems of joy, and truth,
Harmony and balance,
Rearranging themselves
So I can stretch and expand and reach for the Light.

Kaleidoscope artist Dean Kent sees the multifaceted mural of the world as a kaleidoscope. The following is an excerpt from his article, "A Synthesis of Science and Art":

"The kaleidoscope can best be understood as a metaphorfor a new world perspective. It is as if vou took the dizzying multiplicity of people, places, and things in the world and placed them in an object case. Where there was division, difference, and apparent chaos, there emerges integration, similarity, and an organic unfolding.

"The metaphor offers a realization of a connecting, purposeful spirit that envelops the whole earth, connecting all organisms in an endless chain of life. The simple pleasure of viewing a kaleidoscope reminds us of the interdependence and interrelatedness of life on earth. The earth as seen from space is a living mandala, an organic whole, and as an image, forms a foundation for a widening of the human perceptual horizon and a broadening of thought and understanding."

The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colors which it presents to you at every succeeding moment are the exquisitely adjusted images of your ever moving thoughts.

- James Allen

The following excerpts are from an article by Hospice Nurse Coordinator Joyce Lowder, RN, MSW:

From Lessons to Therapeutic Metaphor

Metaphors become therapeutic when they bring about perceptual and behavioral changes. There is something incredibly wonderful about how kaleidoscopes help revive a sense of wonder in terminally ill patients. All human beings have a sense of wonder, but sometimes it gets lost as one moves from perceptions about childhood to those of adulthood and as life becomes more difficult and painful.

When we look into a kaleidoscope, there is somehow a response of body, mind, and spirit. We see with our eyes the color and pattern, think with our brain about how we are seeing what we are seeing, and feel with our heart that there is more to the image (and experience) than meets the eye.

In discussing with the patients how life's experiences are like a kaleidoscope, we emphasize the variety of changes that occur, how they are altered by the color and the light as perceived by the viewer, and we point out that when life looks gray, you can bring color into the picture. Sometimes one picture must be turned loose so another one can appear, and often, the second one is more beautiful than the first.

Growth and beauty are also used as examples of the metaphor. We talk about how the human being is wonderfully made, how the physical, emotional, and spiritual components are synchronized, but in terminal illness, the physical body deteriorates. The emotions then have to work with trying to balance the decline in physical status and so the spiritual growth often takes on a greater importance. There are times when we talk about the dying person's view of his life and how God, as the ultimate kaleidoscope viewer, may perceive beauty in the way the patient and the hospice volunteers utilize their time, talents and energies.

Therapy

Healthy emotions are as important as a healthy body perhaps even more so. The kaleidoscope's ability to soothe and stimulate at the same time makes it a perfect balancer. Dr. Clifford Kuhn, a psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Kentucky, loves kaleidoscopes. He did not know when he started collecting them that they were an appropriate tool for his profession. He writes:

The essence of health is wholeness, an integration of body, mind, and spirit in equilibirium. Medical research has revealed that many of our current illnesses are the result of the effect of stress which seems ubiquitous in our modern society. Stress is destructive to our body, disorganizing to our mind, and disabling to our spirit. It has been demonstrated that a regular habit of quietly drawing aside from one's usual responsibilities for reflection and relaxation significantly repairs or prevents the potentially destructive effects of daily stress.

Kaleidoscope viewing is one such activity of repair. It is restorative to the body in that it requires physical stillness and stimulates pleasant visual sensations. At the same time it has a beneficial effect on the mind by presenting an endless variety of form and color combinations that stir the imagination and stimulate the intellect. Kaleidoscopes are, likewise, good medicine to the spirit as they reflect the constant emergence of order out of disorder and provide a sense of participation in the creative process. In this way, regular viewing of kaleidoscopes can be a significant contributor to a person's overall health.

A video tape of Barbara Mitchell's SpectraSphere, produced by Pat Kehs of Prime Lens Productions, has taken kaleidoscopic imagery to a new therapeutic level. Many doctors and health care professionals agree that this tape ("A Video of Kaleidoscopic Magic and Enlightenment") is an effective antidote to tension and stress.

It is being used in some hospital waiting rooms and closed-circuit television systems as well as in an increasing number of cancer clinics and hospices. One hospice nurse says, "It can help individuals who are experiencing physical, emotional or spiritual crisis to transcend pain, even if just for a little while."

Whole Brain Corporation

Ned Herrmann, artist, sculptor and founding president of the Whole Brain Corp., finds kaleidoscopes a wonderful tool in determining right or left brain dominance. The mission of the Whole Brain Corp. is to apply new understandings of the brain to the human development needs of individuals and corporations throughout the world.

"To us, the turning of a kaleidoscope symbolizes the rearranging of stored information to constantly create new patterns - new approaches to problem solving; different colors change patterns of feelings."

Teaching people how to see things and change their patterns of thinking is part of the work accomplished at Ned's Applied Creative Thinking Workshops in Lake Lure, N.C., as well as those offered in public facilities around the world. During more than 100 of these workshops, Herrmann determined that creativity "is a definable and teachable process that can be learned and applied.

"For many of our participants, the kaleidoscope is an effective way of expanding their visual processing capability," Herrmann reasons, "stimulating their imagination, and in the process, helping to break down the walls that have accumulated since childhood. After working with tens of thousands of individuals over the past decade, I am convinced that for many people the acquisition and application of creativity is more the breaking down of walls than the building of skills. I have long held the view that creativity is natural and normal in children and begins to be less available as children mature and experience life's situations. The simple re-experiencing of some of our childlike wonders can reawaken those delightful childhood experiences that we had with our first kaleidoscope.

"I am particularly impressed with the Illusion kaleidoseopes by WildeWood Creative Products, based on Cozy Baker's idea of combining a space tube with a teleidoscope. I use the Illusion as an illustration of the difference between "creativity" and "innovation." In terms of new ideas, they represent two paths to success. I think of the act of creating the kaleidoscope originally as pure creativity in the applied sense. I think of the space tube in a similar way, as being creative in its own right. When we combine them as was done with the Illusion kaleidoscope, we are innovating around two existing original creative concepts. One of the reasons behind the success of the Illusion is that the combination of two creative ideas makes it extremely powerful as a visual experience.

"Since dominance is acquired more by nurture than by nature, it is quite possible to change a person's brain dominance profile through education, skill training and life experiences. If a left-brained person wants to stimulate the right side, he might develop an interest in kaleidoscopes."

The following description of the right brain explains why "kaleidopeople" have a right-hemisphere dominance.

"The right brain is our visual brain. It is where we recognize faces as contrasted to names, and it is where we do our nonverbal thinking. For most of us, it is the center of intuitive and insightful thinking, where we can process information simultaneously and where conceptual thinking can take place. It is the location of our ability to synthesize as opposed to analyze, and this is where we can deal with holistic concepts, that is, where we can see the forest as opposed to the trees. Other Parts of the right hemisphere are specialized in the areas of interpersonal processing, emotional thinking, and music appreciation."

This is the day-dreamer's corner, the area that allows the thinker to "see the big picture" - read signs of coming change, invent innovative solutions to problems and recognize new possibilities. Right brainers observe from a whole point of view, seeing the end at the beginning, and they need a lot of space.

Through the ages color has enthralled people. The keener their sensitivity and the higher their consciousness, the deeper their enthrallment with the varying hues of the rainbow.

Ancient man was in awe of the rainbow and was convinced that the secrets of the universe lay hidden within its colors. Modern man, through the invention of the Spectroscope, knows this to be true, for the nature of nearly all matter is revealed through color.

In 1666, Newton produced a rainbow by directing a beam of light through a prism. The prism led to the Spectroscope, which created a better image of the spectrum through the use of lenses. Invented in 1814 by Joseph von Fraunhofer, the Spectroscope is one of the least known instruments and yet, according to Harold Turner's Antique Scientific Instruments, "In its various forms, the Spectroscope has contributed more to modern science than perhaps any other instrument."

A study of color through the ages reveals that at any given period in history colors played a significant role with respect to superstitions, religions, philosophies, traditions, and even the daily activities of people. It is said that only in more recent times did the aesthetic and sensuous pleasures of color come into play, and it was then that color was relegated to a more or less taken-for-granted status. Fortunately there is a serious reappraisal of the significance and influence of color underway. Color is in! There are books on color harmony, color psychology, color therapy, color healing, and even books on how to color yourself beautiful.

The significance of the prismatic spectrum is found in everything in life - from angels to zoetrobes. All creation is a technicolor panorama projected on life's large space screen. And each element of the universe vibrates to its own corresponding color, as everything in the world works in harmony with the chromatic color scale.

The full spectrum of color has never been perceived as brilliantly as seen through the inner eye of a blind woman:

I understand how scarlet can differ from crimson because I know that the smell of an orange is not the smell of a grapefruit. I can also conceive that colors have shades and guess what shades are. in smell and taste there are varieties not broad enough to be fundamental; so I call them shades ... The force of association drives me to say that white is exalted and pure, green is exuberant, red suggests love or shame or strength. Without the color or its equivalent, life to me would be dark, barren, a vast blackness.

Thus through an inner law of completeness my thoughts are not permitted to remain colorless. It strains my mind to separate color and sound from objects. Since my education began I have always had things described to me with their colors and sounds, by one with keen senses and a fine feeling for the significant. Therefore, I habitually think of things as colored and resonant. Habit accounts for part. The soul sense accounts for another part. The brain with its five-sensed construction asserts its right and accounts for the rest, Inclusive of all, the unity of the world demands that color be kept in it whether I have cognizance of it or not. Rather than be shut out, I take part in it by discussing it, happy in the happiness of those near to me who gaze at the lovely hues of the sunset or the rainbow.

- Helen Keller

Music

Pablo Casais said, "All music is a rainbow." Many composers have revealed the potency of color through their music - from the jazz era blues to Arthur Bliss' "Color Symphony".

The seven colors of the spectrum are attuned to the seven tones of the musical scale. And as each color runs the gamut of shades, it has its own corresponding note on a higher or lower octave. (Notice that the three primary colors comprise the first major scale.)

Healing

The therapeutic and healing value of colors and how they affect our emotional, mental and spiritual body are well recognized. Color is energy. By concentrating on the colors in a kaleidoscope, the proper vibration alignment may be activated in mind and body. Red represents the material realm while violet, at the other end of the spectrum, is the spiritual sphere. Green is the balancing stabilizer between the three stimulating colors (red, orange, and yellow) and the three calming colors (blue, indigo, and violet).

Carol (Toba) Spilman, an artist and exercise teacher working with the healing properties of color, says, "The gift of vision would have little meaning without the gift of color." To increase one's ability to see colors more vividly, Carol suggests an exercise from the ancient Indian holistic healing tradition of Ayurveda (knowledge of life). This simple exercise stimulates the rods and cones of the retina:

Close both eyes and look toward the sun for 15 seconds. Keeping the eyes closed, gently massage the eyeballs for 15 seconds. With the eyes still closed, become aware of colors and slowly turn away from the sun. Still keeping your eyes Closed, turn back to the sun and away several times, holding each color you see as long as possible.

According to ancient Eastern tradition, the seven chakras are spiritual centers, vortices of life force. The word Chakra is of Hindu origin and means "wheel of fire." Edgar Cayce, the most documented psychic of the 20th century, relates the chakra colors to the endocrine system.

Meryl Ann Butler, an artist working in the field of color and healing, designed ChakraScopes (in collaboration with Carolyn Bennett) as a kaleidoscopic aid for meditation and color visualization. To the seven Chakra colors she added four higher octave colors: Fuchsia (the color of transformation), pink (love), gold (the masculine) and silver (the feminine). A set of seven or eleven small scopes, each wrapped with and containing its own individual color, provides a rainbow's spectrum to focus on or "see" with the inner eye.

But while the properties of color may be universal and relate to specific areas and characteristics, the true perception of color remains personal and individual. Each person pos- sesses his own spectral aura and perceives color according to his own experience and understanding.

Sir Winston Churchill, as a painter and student of color, hinted that there might be higher color cycles in the world beyond:

I cannot pretend to be impartial about color. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns. When I get to heaven, I mean to spend the first million years in painting and so get to the bottom of the subject. But I shall require a still gayer palette than I get here below. I expect orange and vermilion will be the darkest, dullest colors upon it and beyond them there will be a whole range of wonderful new colors which will delight the celestial eye.

Kaleidoscopes rely on the reflection of light rays from the mirrors. The simplest type of kaleidoscope has two mirrors that extend through a tube. When you look into one end of the tube, your eye intercepts light that entered the opposite end and is then reflected one or more times from the mirrors.

You see images at the far end of the tube. One of them is a direct view of whatever bits of colored plastic might lie at the far end. The others are reflections of the direct view. All the images lie in a cluster of pie-slice sectors.

Often the angle between the mirrors is 60 degrees, which gives cluster of six sectors, each with the same angular size and contents. Such an arrangement of images is said to have a six-fold symmetry. You can alter the number of sectors by changing the angle between the mirrors. Increasing the angle decreases the number of sectors. For example, when the angle is 90 degrees, you see the direct view and three reflections of it. All the sectors have an angle of 90 degrees and the cluster has a four-fold symmetry.

Many choices for the angle spoil the symmetry of the cluster because one or two of the sectors turn out to be incomplete reflections of the direct view. The best choices are when the angle between the mirrors divides into 360 degrees evenly. For example, 90 degrees, 60 degrees, 45 degrees and 30 degrees have been popular choices with kaleidoscope makers. They are each an even divider of 360 degrees, which guarantees that every sector you see will be a complete reflection of the direct view.

Angles that are odd dividers of 360 degrees also create sectors that are equal in size. However, such an arrangement has one spoiling feature. The back sector, the one farthest from the direct view, may not faithfully reproduce the direct scene. Its contents depend on which angle of view you take into the kaleidoscope. If the hole through which you peer is small, you probably will not notice this blemish to the symmetry. However, if the hole is large enough for you to change your angle of view into the tube, you will find that the contents of the back sector varies. I call such an arrangement of sectors ambiguous.

Two mirrors create one cluster of images. Three or more mirrors create hundreds of images. In principle, the number of images should be infinite but the quality of the mirrors limits the images you can see clearly. An inexpensive mirror is coated on its rear surface. Light reflects from such a mirror twice. Some of it reflects from the front of the glass while the rest of it reflects from the rear coating. The double reflection leaves the edges of the images fuzzy.

The problem may not be serious in a two-mirror kaleidoscope because there is only one cluster of images. However, in a three-mirror kaleidoscope, such mirrors severely limit the number of images you can see. To avoid the problem, modern kaleidoscope makers employ "front surface mirrors" that have a reflecting coating on their front surface. Light reflects only once from such a mirror, which leaves the images sharper. These mirrors are more expensive than the ones coated on the back surface, a fact that adds to the expense of quality kaleidoscopes.

Most kaleidoscopes have three mirrors in a triangular arrangement. Commonly, the ends of the mirrors form a triangle with three 60 degree angles. The direct view of the far end of the kaleidoscope is such a triangle. The reflected images are each faithful reproductions of that view. Your entire field of view is filled with clusters of images that have six-fold symmetry. The images are unambiguous - their contents and size do not change when you change your angle of view into the kaleidoscope.

A few kaleidoscopes have mirrors in a triangle but with other angles. For example, one popular kaleidoscope has one angle of 22.5 degrees and two angles of 78.75 degrees. The smaller angle creates a dazzling 16-fold symmetry but the rest of what you see in the kaleidoscope is a clutter of images that are only partial reproductions of the direct view. When you change your angle of view into the kaleidoscope, those images change size and contents. The problem is the fact that none of the angles are even dividers of 360 degrees. In spite of the one dazzling part of the display, I find this ambiguous arrangement of images to be severely marred by the clutter.

I searched mathematically for other triangular arrangement of mirrors that would give interesting symmetries without clutter and ambiguity. I devised one with one angle of 90 degrees and two angles of 45 degrees. Notice that each angle is an even divider of 360 degrees, guaranteeing that all of the reflected images fully reproduce the direct view. To me, this type of kaleidoscope is prettier than one with only 60 degree angles because it has two types of symmetry. The 90 degree angle creates four-fold symmetry while the 45 degree angle creates eight-fold symmetry. This subtle, almost hidden feature of the images adds beauty to the images even if you do not consciously realize why the images are so appealing.

I found one more design that is even better. The mirrors are arranged in a triangle with angles of 90 degrees, 60 degrees and 30 degrees. I figured a kaleidoscope with this design would be marvelous. First, the images are full reproductions of the direct view and do not change when you change your angle of view into the kaleidoscope. Second, they have three types of symmetry: four-fold (from the 90 degree angle), six-fold (from the 60 degree angle) and 12-fold (from the 30 degree angle).

After I wrote an article about this design, two kaleidoscope makers, Ward Robison of Omaha, Nebraska, and Lesley Wadsworth of Palo Alto, California, built kaleidoseopes with the design. The images produced by the instruments are stunning, filled with the three types of subtle symmetries.

(For more about the physics of kaleidoscopes see Scientific American, December '85 and January '86.)

One of the delights of life is the discovery of patterns of order and beauty in nature. We inhabit a world of dymamic process and structure. There is a constant process of shaping and reshaping, an imcomparable metamorphic drama. Throughout the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, nature creates in rhythms, cycles and frequencies.

Einstein demonstrated that matter is a form of energy and that particles of matter can not be thought of as separate from the space that surrounds them. The seeming emptiness of space between particles actually consists of fields of energy which give a patterning to the matter they contain.

It follows that patterns and principles established on molecular and atomic levels are similar to patterns found in organic nature. Analogies can be drawn on these principles which carry over to many levels of investigation.... Throughout history, human beings have strived to create images of wholeness, giving a unified tangible form to the diversity of life's experiences. In the East these patterns are called mandalas and are considered as aids to meditation and worship.

The kaleidoscope is an instrument that freely generates infinite numbers of mandalic images and concentrates the mind upon these images in such a way that the eye passes into a new perceptual frontier. The greater the precision of the instrument, the more perfectly this reality projects itself into the viewers awareness. In this new frontier the mind encounters images of integration and wholeness. These images express the idea of a safe refuge, of inner reconciliation and wholeness. Thus, the kaleidoscope becomes significant as a source for healing, self-integrating ritual. The viewer is placed in the center of an experience which demonstrates the unity and interrelatedness of all form in an organic whole. To the extent that the viewer immerses himself and identifies with the images presented, he experiences his own inner states of being as rhythmic, colorful displays of color and light.

The kaleidoscopes we are making today are motivated by an inner necessity to create and reflect the unfolding growth in our own lives. The urge to express the transcendental elements of our inner beings speaks a universal language whose motifs and symbols are a part of unifying human heritage. This heritage expresses the relational identity shared with larger and sometimes unseen forces or realities. The growth of artistic expression in areas of perceptual extension may be seen as an attempt to contribute to broader and more expansive mental and spiritual experiences which will aid in the healing of the external divisions so apparent in our world.

Too often people focus on the differences and problems that exist between us rather than recognize that the resolution of conflict exists in an acknowledgement of the universality of human experience. We believe that the kaleidoscope can be best understood as metaphor for a new world perspective. It is as if you took the dizzying multiplicity of people, places, and things in the world and placed them in an object case. Where there was division difference and apparent chaos, there emerges integration, similarity and an organic unfolding.

The metaphor offers a realization of a connecting, purposeful sprit that envelopes the whole earth, connecting all organisms in an endless chain of life. The simple pleasure of viewing a kaleidoscope reminds us of the interdependence and interrelatedness of life on earth. The earth as seen from space is a living mandala, an organic whole, and as an image forms a foundation for a widening of the human perceptual horizon and a broadening of thought and understanding.

The ubiquity of the kaleidoscope as a metaphor for modern life requires little if any introduction. The idea of bizarre images in jumbled disarray as a sign for the fragmentation of modern life and/or the loss of reality is a familiar metaphoric conception to us all; as is the notion that modernity's constant and rapid change is captured and reflected in the ever-changing images generated by this appealing apparatus. From literature as diverse as James Joyce's Finnigans Wake, to that of Lewis Carrol's stories of Alice, we may readily witness the employment of the metaphoric energy of the kaleidoscope as a way to summon up a certain idea of change and disruption. This employment is also evident in the practices of science and philosophy along with the media and the plastic and performing arts. Indeed few scientific instruments, with possibly the exception of the microscope and the telescope, have made their presence so extensively felt or have demonstrated a capacity for metaphoric transportation across such a wide range of disciplines.

And yet notwithstanding this presence, or perhaps because of it, there is a marked paucity of theoretical comment about the kaleidoscope. The only substantive discussion on the instrument remains that of its inventor, David Brewster. His Treatise, although eloquent and precise in the formation of its explanations and descriptions, is not, as such, a discussion directed toward the theorisation of the kaleidoscope in relation to meaning and the image. Nor given Brewster's interests at that time would we necessarily expect it to be so.

However, within the frame of current concerns regarding the image and meaning, the theoretical poverty of something so familiar must now raise the question: "How is the kaleidoscope to be thought within the obviousness of its theoretical transparency"? How is it to be thought within its historical displacement into the world of the nursery; into that imagined other world of our childhood where reason (we perhaps now need to think), could be so easily shattered into ever-changing shards of the unfamiliar by nothing more than a simple shaking or rattling of a magical toy?

One way would be to simply view the kaleidoscope as an anomaly; as an amusing philosophical toy, albeit one that Brewster envisaged could be a valuable aid in educating any observer in the basics of optics - regrettably it appears to have never been employed in this commendable task. Furthermore, although the kaleidoscope employed sophisticated elements of geometric theory in its construction, as well as utilising certain optical theories prevalent in the early nineteenth century,1 it has never been argued since to have been significant in any profound theoretical way to the scientific or geometric discourses wherein it was initially situated. In fact the scant literature indicates that thinking the kaleidoscope as solely an amusing footnote to more important developments is the conspicuous method favoured by most historians, scientific or otherwise.2

Another way is that recently advanced by Jonathan Crary. In a number of publications, culminating in his book The Techniques of the Observer, Crary argues that the kaleidoscope, along with the stereoscope and other optical instruments of the early nineteenth century, represented a shift in the way the Subject was conceived or constructed. This shift resulted firstly from a demand for a certain degree of immobility on the part of the Subject whilst operating these instruments; and secondly, by an alteration or expansion to the corporeal integrity of the Subject by its co-extensive relationship with technology - i.e., the body of the instrument melded, as it were, with the body of the Subject. Crary further argues that this re-constituted Subjectivity effected, amongst other things, the way in which vision came to be understood at that time. As pointed out by Geoffrey Batchen in a thoughtful critique elsewhere in this journal, Crary's work is both provocative and valuable; it challenges the way in which theories of vision have been traditionally argued.

A further way, and one that will inform this present discussion, is to think this instrument as a problematic. This problematic is made possible because the production of meanings generated by an image will always exceed the tight restraint of the designer's intentionality whilst appearing to remain forever tied to the graphic forms of that intent. In other words, what we will be considering is how the ongoing production of meaning can generate a tremor in the stability of the initial theoretical frame of this instrument; a frame informed by geometry's long tradition of privileging the conceptual ground over and above its visual manifestation. And to consider also how the possibility of a seemingly unproblematic correspondence between the ground and its extrapolation, between geometric theory and its applied images, is intimately dependent upon the control of the truth status ascribed to the image by the generative theory. This status in traditional geometry has been consistently understood as that of the graphic ancilla - a maieutic force, in the Socratic sense of that term - an ancilla to lawful principles; principles that have, traditionally speaking, their primary expression in the purity of geometric idealities.3 It follows that the possibility of installing a tremor in this tradition by understanding the kaleidoscope's images as announcing more than the mere subordination to geometry's theory - yet an announcement that is still in a sense able to leave in place this self-same tradition - such a possibility must duly excite our attention and interest.

In short then, our discussion will seek some comprehension of the idea that an image may exceed the prescribed limits of meaning laid down by its own generative ground whilst still remaining tied, in a sense, to that ground for its initial and subsequent generation as an image. The "in a sense" I speak of here will be the sense in which the possibility for this generation of excess-meaning may be understood as enfolded already within traditional geometry's existing theoretical structure. In order to gain the necessary perspective on the character of this enfolded excess it will be necessary to firstly examine the general conception of the kaleidoscope's images; specifically the very possibility of imaging fragmentation and change; twin conceptions that, as alluded to earlier, have for so long been the metaphoric promise of the kaleidoscope.

As a model of specificity and conciseness Ricoeur's theory of the metaphor is exemplary, and as such will more than suffice for our purposes. In discussing the basic structure of the metaphor, he says:

that [the] metaphor is the rhetorical process by which discourse unleashes the power that certain fictions have to redescribe reality. By linking fiction and redescription in this way, we restore the full depth of meaning to Aristotle's discovery in the Poetics, which was that the poiesis of language arises out of the connection between muthos and mimesis.

From this conjunction of fiction and redescription I conclude that the `place' of metaphor, its most intimate and ultimate abode, is neither the name, not the sentence, not even discourse, but the copula of the verb to be. The metaphorical "is" at once signifies both "is not" and "is like." If this is really so, we are allowed to speak of metaphorical truth, but in an equally "tensive" sense of the word truth. (7)

Although Ricoeur's argument contains implicitly the conception of a non-metaphoric utterance - no doubt in its turn linked to a non-fictive reality which we might assume he sees as the ground from which his metaphoric process takes its leave toward redescribing reality; leaving this reader wondering as to how this grounding reality is to be understood outside of metaphoric utterances - this matter need not unduly delay us on this occasion. For what is of special interest and value about Ricoeur's definition is that it draws our attention to the two central elements typical of the notion of the metaphor in common parlance; namely, that the metaphor operates in two registers, that of is like and that of is not like.

To achieve this duality the metaphor needs to be understood as having its own specificity whilst at the same time referring specifically to a specific referent. In other words, to achieve the status of a Ricoeurian metaphor, an utterance or, as we are here interested in the modality of the visual, an image must in some sense position itself as, quintessentially, another form of whatever referent it is attempting to allude to or stand in for. It must also retain its own specificity in order to be positioned in the class of visual metaphors associated with the specific referent. It has to both call up the referent whilst at the same time evoking its own specificity in distinction to any other metaphor claiming to relate to the same referent. To retain coherency in this model, it is obvious that the image that is relied upon to act as signifier of the chosen concept, cannot, in any fundamental way, be at odds with the concept it alludes to. It follows, therefore, that what is at stake here is the coherency of the kaleidoscope's images being understood as images that validate the sense of a metaphoric transfer of the conception of fragmentation and change. Putting that another way, does the image fulfil the promise of the idea? Is fragmentation and/or change visualised?

In keeping with Brewster's initial etymological ground for the term "kaleidoscope" established early in his Treatise (1), it will be useful to quickly establish change and fragmentation's etymological debts. Change is from the Latin cambiro, to exchange or barter: in familiar usage; to cause to turn or pass from one state to another; to alter or make different; to vary in external form or in essence; as to change the shape of a thing; to change the countenance. And Fragment(ed) from the Latin frangero, to break: in familiar usage; a piece of a whole, an incomplete thing or existence.

With regard to "change", within Ricoeur's demand of is like and is not like, the imaging of change may be seen to be ably achieved by the kaleidoscope. The metaphoric promise of a distinct relatedness between the image and the concept is met in that the generated image is able to accommodate the two primary comprehensions of the term, change, i.e., alteration and process. For instance, with regard to the conception of change as alteration, the kaleidoscope's image clearly demonstrates a visual change of state from the initial scene or object. Through the act of combining a number of reflections of the initial scene, a composite image is generated that effectively alters the visual extension of the initial scene or object. Moreover, by definition of the very idea of reflection, the original scene is retained as it is multiplied. Thus the kaleidoscope's image fulfils the metaphoric requirement of, is like, in that it retains the visual appearance of the single generating object or scene in the composite folds of the new image. It fulfils the second theoretical requirement, is not like, in that it produces a new visual object, i.e., the composite image.

With regard to change as process; the easily observed characteristic of the kaleidoscope in generating a seemingly infinite number of patterns with no two ever exactly alike, more than fulfils the specific idea of the ever-changing nature of change. That is, it fulfils the requirement of is like by supplying to the viewer a constantly ever-changing pattern like that witnessed in ordinary perception. And it fulfils is not like, by presenting this ever-changing pattern within the confinement of an apparatus whose precise geometric boundaries are seemingly not like, to all intents and purposes, the world of everyday perception. The fact that the observer can easily invoke change in the apparatus would also, in a weak sense, constitute not like in relation to the observer's incapacity to effect-at-will any easy changes of a substantive character to nature itself. Therefore change, in both its registers of alteration and process, may be comprehended as being adequately imaged by the kaleidoscope within the rigours of Ricoeur's binary definition of the metaphor. That is to say that, the kaleidoscope images an alteration yet also retains what it has altered; and the kaleidoscope produces an ever-changing image yet this imaged process is forever confined. Thus, within the stricture of Ricoeur's paradoxical definition, the kaleidoscope's image can stand as a visual metaphor referring to the idea of change.

However, turning our attention to the metaphoric transference of the idea of fragmentation/fragmenting we encounter something of a problem; one directly associated with the everyday meaning of this term: namely, as being an act giving rise to `a fragment or a piece of a whole, an incomplete thing or existence'. This idea of `a piece of a whole or incompleteness' has traditionally and commonly speaking, fastened itself onto the comprehension of certain images and assists in ascribing them a particular value. In that a fragment is either valued less because it is not whole, and/or, is valued as "more than" because it is all that is left of some "original whole" and therefore must stand-in for this whole. This idea is predicated on the contradictory claim that an integrity is afforded the fragment that is denied the whole. The whole can be fragmented but not the fragment.

Alternatively, if the fragment could be fragmented then it would have to suddenly transform into a whole itself, in order for the very concept of fragmentation to make any sense. This would amount to a claim that a fragment is that which it is a fragment of. Thus the inherent logic of this general idea of the fragment, when transported into the visual terrain, demands that the fragment be an unframed image, an incompletely framed image yet also one that has a certain corporeal integrity to its borders not shared by a whole-image. Within the confines of this logic, we are asked to perceive that the fragment-image is somehow an "open closed-ness" in contrast to the "closed closed-ness" of the whole-image.

To unravel this conceptual tangle it need only be stipulated that whilst an image can certainly be broken-up, what results visually is simply another whole-image. As all images within the kaleidoscope enjoy a visually corporeal integrity it is absurd, therefore, to speak of a fragmented image, as that would constitute a claim that an image must have a visually corporeal integrity in order to be initially defined as such and such an image, yet also not enjoy a visually corporeal integrity in order to be defined as a fragment-image. In other words, whilst the composite image formed in the kaleidoscope is obviously made up of many images they are not incomplete pieces of some whole. Rather, they are multiplications of the initial scene open to the view of the kaleidoscope. What is produced by this multiplication is a visually whole-image, not an incomplete piece of some previously imaged-whole. Moreover, even when the image produced is a truncated version of the object towards which the apparatus is initially pointed, the visually truncated image would still be a whole image. As an aside, were it desirous to posit truncation as a metaphor of fragmentation it would clearly not require the exclusive services of the kaleidoscope - almost any other ocular apparatus would suffice.

This stipulation leads us to by-pass the everyday notion of a fragment as an "incomplete part of a whole" and to think the term instead at its deeper etymological level: i.e, breaking-up. That is, we must disassociate or sever the idea of an unframed image from the idea of the ability of an image to be broken-up into other images. Of course, this severing will lead us to ask: "what then has been fragmented"? Certainly not the image of the initial object or scene or their generated reflections, for as I have just indicated, an image cannot be a corporeal incomplete image, although an image can be broken asunder into a multitude of other whole-images. What then has been imaged if not incompleteness?

To comprehend the metaphoric appropriateness of the kaleidoscope's image in terms of a breaking-up, and not some corporeal incompleteness, is to understand immediately that what the kaleidoscope breaks-up is visual familiarity or visual expectation. That is to say that, an object or scene looked at unencumbered by the mediation of the kaleidoscope would have, to all intents and purposes, a certain look that we can assume would be familiar to the viewer. When viewed through the kaleidoscope the image of this self-same object or scene loses its immediate visual familiarity by being visually located in a terrain of its clones. We may thus conclude that it is not, visually speaking, the object or scene that has been broken-up but rather the breaking-up or the problematizing of the expectation that a perceptual engagement with a known familiar object will automatically generate a familiar image to perception. The break, therefore, has been inserted perceptually, so to speak, in the register of visual expectation and not by breaking-up the visual completeness of the initial generating object or scene. Thus the kaleidoscope's image is metaphorically appropriate by dint of the loss of visual familiarity and not because the generated image is some incomplete version of the original scene or object. The kaleidoscope simply breaks-up the familiar; or to put that another way, it images unfamiliarity.

Hence, the kaleidoscope's image is not like the concept fragmentation if the term "fragmentation" is understood to mean that an image can somehow be corporeally incomplete. Alternatively, the kaleidoscope's image is like the concept fragmentation if the term is understood in the sense of its Latin root to break. That is, with the breaking seen to be that of a breaking-up of visual familiarity - the generation of unfamiliarity through the process of multiplication or cloning qua reflection.

Thus, in comprehending the kaleidoscope as firstly, capable of imaging change in both its basic registers; and secondly, as capable, (within the prescribed etymological grounding of the term fragmentation), of generating a certain visual unfamiliarity, we are now in a position to examine the excess of meaning enfolded in the theoretical structure that grounds this instrument. To do so however we need but briefly recall the nature of traditional geometry.

The basic character of the discourse of traditional geometry is the conception of ideal reality and perceptual reality. This conception finally reaches its zenith in the expansion of nature into the ubiquitous lawful universe - that meta-ideality whose vast finitude is beyond all possible perception. Yet it is a universe whose laws we are able to bring down to earth, so to speak, in the form of ideal constructions. These ideal constructions reach forth for their concrete "reality" in the employment of graphic reductive forms that in their austerity have been thought to aptly overcome the vagaries and veils of appearances; forms with which to visualise the lawful principles that are deemed to govern the universe. The truth of space becomes pure forms that sit below the level of the visual; that sit inside the realm of the ideal and that reach forth for their realisation in graphically reduced regular forms. Irregularity is displaced in favour of a graphic austerity; it is displaced by imagining that precise truth is more possible or has a higher value if associated with graphic reduction. The promise of the application of geometry is thus the extraction of this timeless truth.

It is worth noting that this should not be understood to mean that the world of appearances is an illusion. In traditional geometry ideal reality is not the opposite of the reality of appearances. Rather, appearances are merely a deficient reality in that they hide in their abundance or confusion, the eternal principles or laws that govern Nature. Geometry's promise is to simply overcome this deficiency and in so doing generate the condition of a divided graphic terrain: with truthful geometric austere imagery on one side; and natural or graphically excessive imagery on the other. As I have remarked elsewhere4, the relationship between austere imagery and geometric principles is axiomatic to geometry's claim of the separation of its eidetic reality from the abundant world of appearances and essential to the truth value it ascribes to its practice.

Returning to our main discussion, let us recall that the kaleidoscope was securely grounded in the ideal world of geometric principles, yet at the level of its production of images it could be manipulated by the observer to re-order visible nature into an unfamiliar image; a terrain visually re-arranged according to geometric-optic laws, but not however a visualisation restricted in its manifestation to traditional geometric forms. Moreover, the patterns generated by this apparatus divided yet further the already divided visual field demanded by traditional geometry. They did so in that the kaleidoscope, although enabling visible nature to be perceptually reconstituted and expressed in non-geometric forms, also reconstituted visible nature in such a way that it appeared even more chaotic or visually abundant than had been previously imposed upon the world of appearances; an imposition that was initially generated by the very conception of ideal reality and visible reality. Far from extracting the truth of space by the employment of principle expressed in austere forms, what emerges through the use of the kaleidoscope is an image of nature that exaggerates nature's "messiness".

Furthermore, the observer can witness within the kaleidoscope the presence (simultaneously and interconnectedly) of both parts of the previously mentioned geometric graphic binary: the graphically austere and the graphically abundant. These disparate graphic elements achieve a form of marriage in the chaotic image of nature being wholly contained within the frame of one of geometry's oldest forms of graphic austerity: the circle that constitutes the extreme visual frame of this toy. To witness this marriage is to comprehend the image as an ordered disarray; nature re-ordered by geometry and encased in, encircled by, an austere geometric form. That is to say, a perceptual chaos framed by order; a re-arrangement that disassembles the familiar image of nature by multiplying it through a series of reflections into an unfamiliar pattern. As austere imagery is now co-joined with abundant imagery, with the latter gaining visual centre stage so to speak, the kaleidoscope can thus be thought as an apparatus that reverses geometry's binary structure. Chaotic nature no longer holds within its folds lawful principles expressed or represented solely by austere forms; rather, chaotic nature now takes up a visible residency inside principle qua graphic austerity. Visual abundance now lies inside the austere circle.5

From such a configuration it is easy to imagine that geometry completes a full circle and generates the very chaos that it initially sought to displace in order to establish the primacy of principle, the lawfulness of its own practice (a process made possible precisely because chaos is the already always enfolded-excess in traditional geometry). For can we not see clearly here, within this instrument, the very limits or edges of traditional geometry, its ability to make a mess of things; the announcement in this generated image of the limits of traditional geometry's eidetic reality in speaking the truth to space over and above perception? Indeed, through the employment of this instrument may not the observer gain the clear perception that lawful principle is in some sort of historic twilight and has become simply a generative force for visual unfamiliarity?

We may with equal ease imagine that the vision afforded by this instrument heralds in at the level of its very ordinariness what we have been informed of late is geometry's interest in the lawfulness of messiness - I am referring here to Fractal geometry.6 This is also to understand the kaleidoscope as an apparatus that images the historic shift of power from one side of geometry's constituted binary to the other; a binary, we might note in summary, whose poles are already always demarked, both traditionally and contemporaneously, by the conception of order and chaos; the austere and the abundant; the regular and the irregular. And bear in mind as we have already discussed, that the sense of the kaleidoscope as metaphor is grounded in its ability to image change and fragmentation.

Alternatively, if we imagine ourselves as somehow oscillating (irreverently and forever tentatively) between these twin perceptions, between geometry constructing a mess and geometry's desire for messiness, we could with a certain irreverence construct the question that informs the thinking of the kaleidoscope as a problematic: the question of the origin of change as the geometric truth of space. In other words, will the kaleidoscope's image in its ability to announce both the closure of geometry's lawfulness and its re-birth - the shift from law-as-principle to that of law-as-process - will this image stand as some haunting presence insufficiently captured by geometry's historicisation of its own practice? Or more precisely, how in the light of the persistent presence of this nursery plaything may geometry historically locate with assured security the origin of its interest in lawful messiness, its interest in change: will it be in Fractals or in this philosophical toy; in the recent discovery of "nature's own geometry" or in the laughter of some child gazing at the visual ruins of geometry's promise of truth through the application of its principles?

And finally, by way of extending the life of this oscillation or tremor for just a moment longer, we need but recall Husserl's eloquent observation of the persistence of geometry in speaking the truth of space in all modalities and discourses; albeit a truth that forever ascribes different values to different modalities and to different discourses? For, after all, within the already prescribed all-encompassing claims implicit in the conception of "nature's own geometry" is not laughter itself finally open to geometricisation; open to being comprehended as an iterative process that speaks, in some manner yet to be discovered by geometry, the truth of space? For:

Laughter manifests itself, each time a change in level suddenly occurs.... Laughter attains not only the peripheral regions of existence, and its object is not only the existence of fools and children ... through a necessary reversal, it is sent back from the child to its father and from the periphery to the center ... laughter traverses the human pyramid like a net-work of endless waves that renew themselves in all directions.

Laughter only assumes its fullest impact on being at the moment when, in the fall that it unleashes, a representation of death is cynically recognized.

[And] being itself ... is spasmodically shaken by the idea of the ground giving way beneath its feet. It is in universality ... that the necessity of engaging in a struggle, no longer with an equal group but with nothingness, becomes clear. THE UNIVERSAL resembles a bull, sometimes absorbed in the nonchalance of animality and abandoned to the secret paleness of death, and sometimes hurled by the rage of ruin into the void ceaselessly opened before it by a skeletal torero. But the void it meets is also the nudity it espouses ... and it is no longer, like the bull, the plaything of nothingness, because nothing itself is its plaything; it only throws itself into nothingness in order to tear it apart and to illuminate the night for an instant, with an immense laugh - a laugh it never would have attained if this nothingness had not totally opened beneath its feet. (Bataille 176-177)

Notes

1. See principally; Rev. James Wood, Elements of Optics. This work contains the basic optic theory specifically referred to by Brewster.

2. For a historical debate on the origins of the kaleidoscope see Annals of Philosophy etc., xi (January to June, 1818), 375-378, 451-452, and editor's comments 452. The first of these articles was by Roget of Thesaurus fame.

3. I refer here to Plato's utilisation in the Meno of graphic austerity as the tool to bring to the surface, literally and figuratively, the inherent presence of geometry in the mind of the slave.

4. See my "Critique and a Science for the Sake of Art".

5. We may readily see that geometry's austere imagery has always enclosed art, ie. rectangular frames and so on. However the point here is that, traditionally speaking, geometry has never claimed to have actually produced abundance qua art by the employment of the principle.

6. See B. Mandelbrot. According to Mandelbrot, the term "Fractal" incorporates the sense of breaking-up i.e., fragmentation (4).

Works Cited

Bataille, Georges. "The Labyrinth". Trans. A. Stoek. Visions of Excess, Selected Writings: Theory and History of Literature, vol. 14. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1985. 171-177.

Brewster, David. Treatise on the Kaleidoscope. London and Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable & Co., and Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown; And Hurst, Robinson & Co, 1819.

Crary, Jonathon. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: MIT P, 1990.

Gray, Noel. "Critique and a Science for the Sake of Art". Leonardo 24,3 (1991): 317-320.

Mandelbrot, Benoit B. The Fractal Geometry of Nature. New York: Freeman, 1983.

Ricoeur, Paul. The Rule of the Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies in the Creation of Meaning in Language. Trans. R. Czerny. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978.

Wood, Rev. James. Elements of Optics, Dsigned for the Use of Students in the University. Cambridge: J. Burgess, 1801.