representational inquiry regarding meaning » concrete conditions » recognition
The symbols for L-phase nodes are horizontally oriented disks, but they're wobbling disks, and so they extend more or less into the vertical dimension, marking out levels in a developmental progression. The E-node occurs just past mid-way between the horizontally flattened black disk representing ideally-opaque materiality and the vertical axis representing ideality; it thereby represents the fourth of six stages in a developmental progression.
The letter E is used to represent this node primarily given the relation of its traditional numerical value (5) to the other L-phase nodes as arranged in a triangle. See letter L for an explanation.
The original letter for E (he) depicted a human with raised arms—praising, shouting in surprise "Ha!" or calling "Hey!" The E-node pertains to recognition conditions. Admitedly this is a stretch, but as praising or shouting "Ha!" the human figure letter E is recognizing. As shouting "Hey!" the figure is catching our attention and so being recognized. A moment of recognition in either direction is cause for celebration/jubiliation (another attribute ascribed to the letter he).
Hamilton on he (from [2006] The Origins of the Western Semitic Alphabet in Egyptian Scripts): "As the only letter depicting a full human being in the early alphabet, it was the one to which particles of direct speech, an [onomatopoeic] interjection of lament or joy, *oy, 'ah!' or 'ha!' and one of immediacy, *hi, 'here!' were attached" (85-86). A demonstrative "particle of direct speech," for example, functions to direct attention. Combining sociological and psychological conditions, the E-node could represent directing attention, where the directing occurs in a social context and the attention is directed toward someone's psychological condition. Recognizing specifically involves directing attention.
