A system, at its heart, is a flow of matter into a matrix of interconnected nodes, each part complimenting the function of the whole. This paper explores a series of medieval visions of knowledge in which human ideas arrange themselves in a non-human hydrological cycle that merges natural and intellectual interaction into a single dynamic whole. This conglomeration and organisation of thought stems from the power of water to move, to carry ideas, to bridge subject and object, to narrate intellection and imagination. This water, a fluvial material abstracted from imagining the traits of water apprehensible by the senses, links ideas, builds bridges, creates networks. This is abstract hydrology, worlds of water thought and dreamt that flow through time. In this work in progress paper, I will explore a section of my thesis on fluid uncertainty that is currently under development. Consisting of three incomplete essays, the section acts as a bridge between the medieval content of my core thesis and some of the fluid ideas of modernity. First, I will discuss the notion of a fluid ecology as an interconnection linking medieval sentiments to the uncertainty of modernity. Secondly, I will discuss the implications of our emotionally ambiguous link to the ocean in an age of unsustainability and degradation, and whether inspiration from the pre-modern might help to guide our way. Third and finally, I will compare medieval and modern strategies for coping with the uncertainty of a world rendered in figurative flux.

1. Composing Abstract
Hydrology
Exploring the Blue Humanities of Uncertainty
Work in Progress Seminar
2nd November 2012, English and Cultural Studies

2. Tributaries
Introducing my broader thesis
1. Exploring Fluid Ecology
2. The Sea of the World and Liquid Modernity
3. Oceanic Affect in the Twenty-first century:
Medieval lessons?

3. “…‘primitive’ is taken from a spring [fons] where water coming
through hidden channels first [primus] appears. ‘Derivative’ is
taken from the stream [rivus] that flows forth [de] from the spring
itself. Hence just as a stream can be deduced from another stream,
so one derivative originates from another. But spring and streams
[rivi] flow down to produce a river [flumen]. For all rivers come
out of the sea, and finally return to the sea. And the sea does not
overflow [redundat]. Similarly, all sentences [orationes] take their
origin from grammar, and they return to the same, and yet
grammar is not redundant [redundat].”
Joannes Balbus' (John of Genoa's) Catholicon, in R. Copeland and I. Sluiter, Medieval
Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300 -1475, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 2009, , p. 361.

4. Fluid Ecology
Existing in an ever-escaping world

5. Proposal One:
Turbulence is an ambivalent and yet
necessary force of moral motion, and this is
fruitful for the study of poetics

7. Soul:
Poor wretches, what will become of you in this sea? Why did you put your
trust in that deceptive calm? Why, in a precarious situation, were you so
carefree? Why were you not suspicious of the smoothness of the sea?
Why were you not afraid to trust your lives to the treacherous element?
Why do you leave the firmness of the shore? … 0 unhappy wretched
men, see how swiftly your joy has been changed, and into what sorry
plight your life has fallen. Once, in your foolish rejoicing, you found
amusement in the fishes of the sea. Now, when you are shipwrecked
and miserably cast away, they receive you as their food.
Noah's
Ark
III,
De
Vanitate
Mundi,
in
Hugh
of
St.
Victor,
Selected
Spiritual
Wri7ngs
/
Translated
by
a
Religious
of
C.S.M.V.,
with
an
Introduc7on
by
Aelred
Squire,
O.P.,
Classics
of
the
Contempla7ve
Life.
(London:
Faber,
1962),
pp.
171-­‐172.

8. Proposal Two:
Despite its many dangers and uncertainties,
turbulence is a force that is both necessary
and morally enabling

10. “Fear prompts us to take defensive action. When it is taken,
defensive action gives immediacy and tangibility to fear. It is
our responses that recast the sombre premonitions as daily
reality, making the world flesh…Among the mechanisms
vying to approximate to the dream model of perpetuum mobile,
the self-reproduction of the tangle of fear and fear-inspired
actions comes closes to claiming pride of place.”
Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty’, Cambridge, Polity Press,
2007, p. 9.

11. Proposal Three:
Nothing temporal will ever cease to move,
and this is an inspiration rather than a
danger

12. “At the outset of the treatise De archa Noe Hugh of St Victor
recounts the occasion that gave rise to a conversation that
led ultimately to the writing of the treatise. One day, Hugh
says, he was answering questions put to him by his fellow
regular canons, when discussion became focused on the
'instability and restlessness' of the human heart. Implored by
his brothers in religion to show the cause of this instability
and, furthermore, to teach them if it could be cured 'by any
skill [arte] or by the practice of some discipline [laboris
cuius libet exercitatione]’.”
Grover A. Zinn, ' Minding Matter: Materia and the World in the Spirituality and Theology of Hugh
of St. Victor', in Matter, E. Ann (ed), Mind Matters: Studies Of Medieval and Early-Modern Intellectual History
In Honour Of Marcia Colish, Brepols, 2009, pp. 47-48.

13. Blue Humanities
Merging Affect and Approach

15. “The thawing of sea ice covering the Arctic could disturb or
even halt large currents in the Atlantic Ocean. Without
the vast heat that these ocean currents deliver–comparable
to the power generation of a million nuclear power plants–
Europe’s average temperature would likely drop 5 to 10°C
(9 to 18°F), and parts of eastern North America would be
chilled somewhat less. Such a dip in temperature would be
similar to global average temperatures toward the end of
the last ice age roughly 20,000 years ago.”
~NASA – ‘A Chilling Possibility’

16. Oceanic Uncertainty:
Mitigation or Adaptation?
The Blue Humanities
Mitigation:
Resistance, Regulatation, Alteration, Restriction
Adaptation:
Reconsideration, Renewal, Flexibility, Philosophy,
Humanity?
“Empty
your
mind.
Be
formless,
shapeless,
like
water…”
~Bruce
Lee

18. The
Lilypad
–
A
floa7ng
and
self-­‐sustaining
habitat
for
50,
000
climate
change
refugees
–
Vincent
Callebaut
Architectures

19. Questions for you
1. Which threads most effectively link the twenty-
first century ocean to the past?
2. How can the abstract imagining of the ocean
and with the ocean enrich intellectual and
emotional life?
3. What sources and theoretical framework best
resonate with these ideas?