creation likened to an act of language : eco: by naming things god gave them 'ontological status' : babel : the emergence of many european languages at the end of the fifth century was a babel-like event, a 'metahistorical' event : hence a longing for the original 'adamic' language : pei: 'unless we choose to accept the doctrine of predestination, it is chance that makes history' : the notion of coleridge that a 'willing suspension of disbelief' is required : for example must we brush aside any supposed literal intent in dante's map and, as with scholarly convention, simply enjoy the lyrical and storytelling aspects : or can one at once not believe the literal intent and also believe that it is true : singleton: that dante, in convivio 'recognizes two kinds of allegory': an 'allegory of poets' and an 'allegory of theologians' : '... surely the allegory of the Comedy is the allegory of poets in which the first and literal sense is a fiction and the second or allegorical sense is the true one.' : and later: 'when we read the Divine Comedy today, does it matter, really, whether we take its first meaning to be historical or fictive, since either case we must enter into that willing suspension of disbelief required in the reading of any poem?' : pei: 'Unless we choose to accept the doctrine of predestination, it is chance that makes history' presupposes that historical, or literal, events described in poems as allegory and metaphorical truths cannot be accepted as at once historically false and actually true : at first, the presupposition appears reasonable : an old testament literalist will regard the exodus as both literally true historically and metaphorically true as a symbol of redemption : but can the exodus be regarded as at once historically inaccurate, not-literal, but also factually true : to do so, the question: 'did it actually happen' is not the relevant question, or is not the same question as: 'is it true' : so this implies that even a most fundamental axiom of logic is flawed, indicating there is much happening that we are unable to perceive : meta ta physika : after the physics : memory, and therefore time, plays a most important role : because history is filtered through memory, time, the collapse of which would eliminate inconsistencies and frauds that distract one, after the physics : framed in the absence of time these questions become nonsense : without time (theta), historical fact is not relevant : aristotle's evaluation of poetry and myth over history, which he declares trivial : 'history entails what has happened, poetry what might happen : poetry is more serious than history : poetry describes the universal, history describes the particular' : this can be the basis for the collapse of time, theta : eco's account of the search for the original adamic language : karen armstrong describes the use of the word logos by philo and in john's gospel : where eco calls creation an act of language, because by naming things god gave them 'ontological status' : this is emphasized by 'saying it was good' : the question of who god was talking to : as with when he remarks that adam is now 'one of us' : these expressions are spoken by god in what language : so armstrong describes philos' 'theory of the divine Logos' ... 'God had formed a master plan (logos) of creation ...' : later she contrasts st. john's gospel : 'In his prologue, he described the Word (logos) which had been "with God from the beginning" and had been the agent of creation' : and she further notes: 'In the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew scriptures known as the targums, ..., the term Memra (word) is used to describe God's activity in the world' : how does the absence of theta apply to logos and the ongoing search for the adamic language : paradox: god, the first cause, primary mover, embodied in 'the word', the conception of which implies communication, involving more than a single being : the irony of the logos : with the collapse of theta the logos must take on another meaning, distinct from the connotation of discourse : sound; the music of the spheres : the circle, according to the platonists, is best of all shapes in representing the immutability of god because it expresses a line returning to its original path