Suggestions for Further Inquiry
In future writing on this topic, I would like to take several additional approaches, to answer the following diverse questions:
Beyond the introductory chapter of Fabric of the Cosmos, Greene mentions that physicists aim "to understand why spinning motion gives rise to force" (26). How do images of spinning (e.g., the earth rotating and revolving, spiral galaxies) inform thinking about spinning thread, and the creative power in each enterprise?
How could a reading of Heidegger's Being and Time connect to the metaphors of string and fabric used in descriptions of the findings of modern physics?
Taking an anthropological look at weaving and storytelling practices across prehistory and history, we see textile production as a role for women. What light does this connection to women shed on the fabric metaphor? Considering Matt Ridley's Origins of Virtue and the idea of the division of labor promoting social cooperation for our species, how might storytelling and weaving practices be situated (or not) as a part of women's history?
How do we think about stories and spacetime similarly? How do archetypes and myth, as described by Jung and Campbell utilize fabric or threads symbolically?
How is the idea of "the end of time" (e.g. "revelation") situated in the Western tradition as part of greater conceptual structures of finitude and allegory, and how does that defy physics or not? How might Eastern traditions, which see time and existence more cyclically than linearly interact with the fabric metaphor differently?