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Live can be told in numerous ways. The conventional metaphor for life is life as a path or as a string, where occurrences follow one another like pearls on a string. It is thought that it is the same person running through all the events, though experience changes him. A chain of events is bound together by proximity in time. Its logic is chronology.


Life can also be told on the basis of selected resemblances. The criterion for selection is not continuity in time but similarity by theme. From this point of view, life is not a string, but many strings, from which is possible to weave many different tapestries. The tapestry depends on the chosen criterion for similarity. The logic of the tapestry is the logic of patterns: The pattern has priority over time. The smallest constituent part of the tapestry is not the event, but the knot: The connexion of temporally remote events is revealed as coherent.

(The first two passage from my autobiography. To comply with a rising demand, the text is in English. Hope it’s OK for my Danish readers. A special thank to Aristotle)