Arturo Schwarz surely must have noticed, when making his series of readymade reproductions, that he could not just walk into a store and buy any of the supposedly "off the rack," "let's buy it, display it in a museum and enjoy the joke" objects. Shouldn't we use our (non-retinal) minds and recognize that our perspective on the readymades has been wrong; as illustrated by the wrong perspective within the readymades. (Duchamp was involved in producing a magazine titled Rong Wrong (1917). He said that the printer got it wrong too, because he left out the first W in the magazine title. Does this magazine also form part of the same continuum of doubt -- Rong [printer], Wrong [magazine], wrong [readymades], wrong [us, about the readymades]?¹ After all, doubt leads us, and always occurs before any discovery? Duchamp also made an etching (1959) using only the letters, NON. Was "NON" left floating alone as an isolated clue meant to be combined with something else in his oeuvre that we thought to be true in our perspective? For example, "NON-readymade?" Duchamp himself continually surprised us by combining his work as he went along. A landscape drawing for example, Du Tignet, (1959) would later be combined with the Large Glass (1915-23) to create a new 3rd drawing Cols alités (1959) which revealed his work in a new combination. Duchamp himself proclaimed his "goal" to be "combinations that only grey matter can succeed in rendering" (Krauss, p 434). In chess, combinations are the creative patterns and strategies of the game -- and so too, for discovery and logic. One event is an isolated fact; two events may have a causal relation or may be a chance coincidence; but three facts in relations or combination, usually marks a pattern and a discovery.

As in following the crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel, finding one "wrong" readymade, then another, and finally a whole series of examples of wrong readymades, sets up for us (in retrospect) a scenario of logical induction. Induction works fundamentally as a three-step "ascending" process moving from the "particular" to the "general": step 1, we find one particular fact for example; step 2, we discover many similar facts or examples; which leads us to step 3, a generalization or a discovery of a new law, giving us a new perspective. ² Since we now have stepped up from single facts (readymades observed to be wrong), to a set of related facts (a set of wrong readymades), we are forced to rethink our perspective and to make a new generalization (Poincaré, 1902/1952, p16).³

Duchamp scholars have kept silent, or simply noted the contradictions, (for example, an inability to replicate the dropping of the three threads in the 3 Standard Stoppages), leading them to conclude (in other words, to make a generalization) that perhaps the contradictions embodied Duchamp's point and constituted an end in itself (Buskirk, p 195-199). But Duchamp was a brilliant thinker and master level chess player who competed in international tournaments. Extolling the virtues of mental beauty in chess, he declared that "while all artists are not chess players all chess players are artists" (Schwarz, 1969A, p 68).

So let's be chess players and think. If contradiction itself constituted Duchamp's point, this result wouldn't be analogous in any way with the strategies, moves, and patterns that, according to Duchamp, establish the mental beauty of chess. Moreover, Duchamp said that all his artistic productions were "non-retinal" like chess. Local contradictions are analogous to single chess moves or single facts. How can such a limited item be interesting to a chess player? A local move does not define the "beauty of grey matter" that Duchamp specifically describes (Schwarz, 1969A, p 68-69).

This topic of single facts leads back to what Duchamp identified as perhaps his favorite, and most important work, the 3 Standard Stoppages. After memorializing his three acts of chance by dropping three meter-length threads, and mounting them on canvases, Duchamp later made, three wooden measuring sticks based upon his result, (as shown in Illustration 16, in Part I) and then declaring them to be a new measuring system. He then put all the elements of his system in a croquet box.

Combining Poincaré's probabilistic theory of discovery with the 3 Standard Stoppages (stoppages refer to invisible mending or sewing in French), we can understand what Duchamp did. With the 3 Standard Stoppages Duchamp has given us a readymade readymade for our verification (measure and experiment) of his readymades; all in a readymade croquet box! In other words, he has given us a box of tools needed to make new generalizations -- the very thing that changes by chance discovery! Upon reflection, this procedure is far more valuable than if Duchamp had handed us a new, single discovery. Discoveries, as we learned from both Poincaré and Duchamp, change "every 50 years" (Tomkins, p. 18, 34, Poincaré, 1908, p. 123). Here we have the means for verifying our own discoveries -- and his!⁴