"And the nature of the center is such that, although it is single, indivisible and motionless, it is nevertheless found in many, or rather all, of the divisible and moveable lines everywhere. And of those invisible circles, that is, the Mind, the Soul and Nature, the circle of the visible world is an image."
Marsilio Ficino, Commentary of Plato's Symposium on Love (1544)
"Thus is has always been thought that the center, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which while governing the structure, escapes structurality. This is why classical thought concerning structure could say that the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it. The center is the center of totality, and yet, since the center does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its center elsewhere. The center is not the center. The concept of centered structure - although it represents coherence itself, the condition of the episteme as philosophy or science - is contradictorily coherent. And as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of a desire."
Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign and Play" 1966, in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London. 1978), 279
Both quotes from Robin Evans' The Projective Cast p.51, 53
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