If you're interested in playing Nomic, see my project obsidian-nomic for a helpful starter-kit that can aid in tracking your game!
Nomic was invented by Peter Suber, a philosopher who wished to create an interactive way to explore the role of self-amendment in legal systems. Suber is interested in the concept of laws and rules that are able to able to modify or make statements about themselves. In this way, Nomic may be seen as being quite similar to a Formal SystemFormal System
What is a formal system?
Start with an AxiomAxiom
Quick Definition
An axiom is a logical presupposition that cannot be proven to be true – instead, we take it on faith that it is true.
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Continue with a rule or self-imposed constraintFormal Constraint
Quick Definition
Mathematics
A formal constraint (what I consider to be analogous with Hofstadter'sGödel, Escher, Bach- An Eternal Golden Braid
Purchase a copy on IndieBound.
Read the Wikipedia article on GEB.
Background
I first encountered this book by Douglas Hofstadter in high school and became enraptured. The concepts from Gödel, Escher, Bach that have most influenced my thinking and artistic practice are summarized in the notes to "Creativity and Constraint: Queering the Formal System."
Gödel, Escher, Bach (also abbreviated as GEB) usually proves too difficult for me to adequately summarize in conversation; I'll try to be... "rule of production" or "rule of inference") is a method for transforming one result of a formal system into another result. In mathematics, we can use mathematical induction to derive a theorem from an axiom or from another theorem. Because we trust that our rules of induction will preserve the truth of our mathematical statements, following t...
A....
Interestingly, Nomic is first and foremost a game, and so it provides even further insights into the ways that formal systems are interpreted, legitimized, and (mis)understood by their human practitioners. For me it is the human dimension of engagement with Nomic that proves to be most interesting; somewhat like the concept of the suspension of disbelief in the arts, the formal system of a game must first be legitimized (as the premise of a play or novel must be legitimized for the viewer/reader) before its players can truly begin to play out the formal system of the game. (Very few people will decide to willingly participate in a game in which they perceive the rules to be unfair or capricious).
At the same time, it is quite possible for the players of a game of Nomic to create unresolvable paradoxesGödel, Escher, Bach- An Eternal Golden Braid
Purchase a copy on IndieBound.
Read the Wikipedia article on GEB.
Background
I first encountered this book by Douglas Hofstadter in high school and became enraptured. The concepts from Gödel, Escher, Bach that have most influenced my thinking and artistic practice are summarized in the notes to "Creativity and Constraint: Queering the Formal System."
Gödel, Escher, Bach (also abbreviated as GEB) usually proves too difficult for me to adequately summarize in conversation; I'll try to be... that can effectively break the game itself. In these extreme cases, players come face-to-face with the fraught prospect of interpreting the formal system that they have created (or modified). In such cases, one can come to the conclusion that the formal system underpinning the rules of the game is really the complex system of social norms and expectations by which players agree to follow the rules of the game and use their reason, common sense, and principles of fairness to resolve disputes which cannot successfully be answered according to the rules of the game.
Suber himself acknowledges as much in his introduction to the rules of Nomic:
If appropriate qualifications are made for the informality of custom and etiquette, a case could be made that normal social life is just a system of indefinite tiers. Near the top of the "difficult" end of the series, below entrenched cultural norms, are actual laws, rising through case precedents, regulations and statutes, to constitutional rules. At the bottom of the scale are those rules of personal behavior that individuals may amend unilaterally without incurring censure. Above those are rules for which amendment is increasingly costly, starting with (say) costs on the order of furrowed brows and clucked tongues, passing through indignant blows and vengeful homicide.
Nomic shows us that we interact with many such invisible social constraints and systems every minute of our lives.
Observations
Suber reflects in the introduction to Nomic that:
The continuing identity of the game, like that of a state, is due to the fact (when it is a fact) that all change is the product of existing rules properly applied, and none is revolutionary.
This seems to have an analogue with the concept of organicismOrganicism
The concept of organicism is wily and potentially problematic – it has a history of being a useful aesthetic descriptor, but it can also be attached to a variety of oppressive ideologies. The most salient discussions for my thinking have surrounded organicism in music.
Heinrich Schenker devised influential theories for describing and analyzing works of Western classical music from the "common practice period."[[This time period is from roughly 1650 to 1900.::rsn-transclude]] These theories w... in Western Classical music composition, where the use of variation techniquesFormal Constraint
Quick Definition
Mathematics
A formal constraint (what I consider to be analogous with [[Gödel, Escher, Bach- An Eternal Golden Braid|Hofstadter's]] "rule of production" or "rule of inference") is a method for transforming one result of a formal system into another result. In mathematics, we can use mathematical induction to derive a theorem from an axiom or from another theorem. Because we trust that our rules of induction will preserve the truth of our mathematical statements, following t... (or developmental techniques) is seen as conferring a status of "organicism" and unity to a work. (It is another questions whether or not composers ought to value such properties as "organicism," and I am keenly aware that the valorization of "organicism" in composition has been affected by the nationalist ideals of Germanic music and the problematic theories of Heinrich Schenker).
Resources
- Suber, Peter. “Nomic: A Game of Self-Amendment.” Last updated in 2003. resource here
Last modified on 01-28-2022.