Neo-Pillarism — The Tower

Neo-Pillarism is a late recension of Pillarism, the architectural and philosophical movement active YDSL 112–342, which holds that the structural integrity of the Tower is maintained not by masonry but by non-material "Pillars of Certainty." Neo-Pillarism differs from the original school chiefly in the matter of remainder: where classical Pillarism named a fixed and closed set of certainties — customarily seven, though the count was never settled in writing — Neo-Pillarism holds that the pillars are still being discovered, and that new ones may be raised by any competent party who can demonstrate a certainty that has never yet failed. Its founding text is the Reclamation of the Eighth Pillar, a memorandum of YDSL 611 deposited in Annex Ω-3 and, by the terms of its own deposit, not to be consulted.

Origins and the Reclamation

Neo-Pillarism is conventionally dated from the winter of YDSL 611, when the surveyor Ondra Vel returned from a descent of the eastern shaft with an inventory of eight supports where the doctrine of Elara of the Unseen Foundation had admitted seven. Vel's claim rested on a single observation: that the shaft's seventh landing had held for four hundred years without a recorded failure, and that no pillar had been credited with it. The memo he filed makes the argument plainly.

"A certainty unattributed is not a certainty absent. The landing bears weight. Something bears the landing."

— Reclamation of the Eighth Pillar, paragraph 3

The Office of Structural Metaphysics received the memo and returned it unread, on the grounds that it had been submitted on the wrong form. Vel resubmitted it on the correct form; the Office then read it, and rejected it. The rejection is not preserved. Vel's appeal is.

The Doctrine of Remainder

The central innovation of Neo-Pillarism is the doctrine of remainder, set out in the Fourth Concordance, Annex 12, which distinguishes between the certainty as an object and the certainty as a residue — the small, unexamined confidence that remains when every articulable certainty has been accounted for. Neo-Pillarists argue that the residue is load-bearing. Critics argue that the residue is a euphemism for whatever the surveyor could not explain, and that a pillar defined as the leftover is a pillar that can never be checked.

The dispute is older than either party admits. The Office of Structural Metaphysics has held, since at least the Sixth Concordance, that an unexamined certainty cannot be inspected and therefore cannot be cited; Neo-Pillarists answer that it can be cited precisely because it has never failed, and that this is a better record than most pillars have. Both sides quote the Second Concordance, which supports neither.

Practice and the Visiting Rule

Neo-Pillarism is a working practice as much as a school. Its adherents conduct periodic "soundings," in which a claim is made in the presence of a witness and then left alone for a stated interval, on the reasoning that a certainty which requires constant maintenance is not a certainty. The interval is usually one hundred days. Visitors to a sounding chamber are asked not to lean on the rail.

The practice has produced at least one celebrated failure. In YDSL 744 a sounding conducted on Floor 341 — a floor whose fabric is consistent with the Neo-Bureaucratic style of commercial annexes built between Cycles 150 and 200, and therefore judged a favourable site — collapsed on its ninetieth day without a recorded cause. The Incident at the Latent Keystone is sometimes attributed to it; the Office of Structural Metaphysics has declined to attribute it to anything.

Relationship with the Chiaroscuro School

Neo-Pillarism's most persistent institutional antagonist is the Chiaroscuro School, the administrative faction within the Librarians that advocates a moderated return to the visual and epistemological principles of Late Imperial Chiaroscuro. The two movements do not disagree about load. They disagree about light. The Chiaroscuro School holds that a support must be seen to be trusted; Neo-Pillarism holds that a support which can be seen is a support which is being watched, and that watching is a form of interference.

The quarrel hardened in YDSL 802, when the School petitioned for the soundings to be conducted in lit chambers. The petition was granted. The Neo-Pillarists then conducted their soundings in lit chambers, and reported no change in results — a manoeuvre the School described in its reply as "unresponsive to the spirit of the grant," and which remains the most cited instance of Concordance citation used purely to end a conversation.

Criticism and the Standing Count

The most common objection to Neo-Pillarism is that it cannot state how many pillars there are. Defenders reply that neither could classical Pillarism, and that this is not a defect but the point: the count is a finding, not a premise. The Office of Structural Metaphysics maintains a standing count, presently at eight, revised downward in YDSL 690 and restored in YDSL 691 pending review. The review has not concluded.

A smaller objection concerns the Reclamation memorandum's deposit terms. Because the founding text of the movement is sealed in Annex Ω-3, Neo-Pillarists cite it chiefly at second hand, through Vel's appeal, which quotes it in full. The appeal is not sealed. This is generally regarded as the most Pillarist thing about them.