tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52945475234542590812024-03-13T17:07:24.880-04:00Philosophy, lit, etc.Infrequent literary reflections by an analytic philosopherpraymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.comBlogger331125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-4785814974826875502021-09-23T15:50:00.004-04:002021-09-23T15:50:45.590-04:00Peter de Florez, mystery man behind MIT's De Florez Fund for Humor <div>Sept. 29 is the deadline for applications to MIT's <a href="https://shass.mit.edu/resources/internal/deflorez/application">De Florez Fund for Humor, which "was created in 1988 by MIT alumnus Peter de Florez '38."</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Peter's father was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_de_Florez">US Rear Admiral Luis de Florez</a>, who graduated from MIT in 1911 (Mechanical Engineering).</div><div><br /></div><div>In 1935, Peter de Florez and fellow MIT student Cornelius Roosevelt (grandson of Teddy) were arrested for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. "The youths were accused of peppering two policemen and a Boston newspaper man with pellets shot from air pistols on Nov. 20." (<i>NY Times</i>, "C. Roosevelt Freed In Air Pistol Case: Classmate Also Escapes Trial," Jan 14, 1936)</div><div><br /></div><div>The <i>NY Times</i> reported that de Florez married Suzanne Humphreys Ford in 1948. His name appears on some patents connected with book binding and a <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US3232243A/en?inventor=Florez+Peter+De">1962 patent for a "candy-making apparatus</a>." </div>praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-22030417405628771842021-09-07T04:16:00.023-04:002021-09-16T02:49:00.554-04:00Popular post-secondary programs among authoritarian rulers<p>I've compiled a list of what 20th- and 21st-century authoritarian leaders of nation states studied at the post-secondary level. I have not yet fully surveyed every region. I'm sure I must have made mistakes, and I'd appreciate corrections. </p><p>Most authoritarian leaders do not appear on this list, largely because they did not pursue a post-secondary education. Also, I have not included interim leaders or leaders who served for less than two years. Crucially, I'm leaving out the multitudes of authoritarian rulers who got their highest level of education at a military academy. </p><p>I classify leaders based on only their latest educational program. E.g., if someone studied Engineering and then Business, I'm just putting them in the latter category. A leader is listed twice if he (all the leaders in this list are male) studied two disciplines concurrently. </p><p>In some countries it's unclear whom to classify as the leader. In the case of Iran, I have considered both the Supreme Leader and the President to be leaders. Iran is the only country (so far) for which I've considered two national leaders.</p><p>I'm considering each national ruler as the leader of only his home country and not of countries that were subjugated by that home country. For instance, I'm not treating any Soviet ruler as a leader of Hungary. A key limitation of my method is that since I have examined only nation states, I have not included colonies, even though colonies were under authoritarian rule.</p><p>I found eight authoritarian leaders who received doctorates: Askar Akayev (Kyrgyzstan, Physics), <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56412912">John Magufuli</a> (Tanzania, Chemistry), <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c46zppwgw6lt/laurent-gbagbo">Laurent Gbagbo</a> (Ivory Coast, History), Syngman Rhee (South Korea, History), Ilham Aliyev (Azerbaijan, History), Hendrik Verwoerd (South Africa, Psychology), Thongloun Sisoulith (Laos, 'History of International Relations'), and Thaksin Shinawatra (Thailand, Criminal Justice). </p><p>Most popular field: <b>Law</b>. Second most popular: <b>Engineering</b>. (I'm not counting rulers who studied engineering in military academies.) Engineering seems especially popular among leaders in Communist and formerly Communist countries.</p><p><b>Law</b> (28): Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier (Haiti), Vladimir Lenin and Vladimir Putin (USSR or Russia), Fidel Castro (Cuba), <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/democratic-expressions-amidst-fragile-institutions-possibilities-for-reform-in-dutertes-philippines/">Rodrigo Duterte</a> (Philippines), Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg (both of Austria), Ante Pavelić (Croatia), Getúlio Dornelles 'Gegè' Vargas (Brazil), Juan María Bordaberry (Uruguay), Joaquín Balaguer (Dominican Republic), Ion Gheorghe Maurer (Romania), Manuel Estrada Cabrera (Guatemala), King Hassan II (Morocco), John Vorster and F. W. de Klerk (both of South Africa), Habib Bourguiba (Tunisia, concurrently with poli sci), Babrak Karmal (Afghanistan, concurrently with poli sci), Paul Biya (Cameroon), Ali Bongo Ondimba (Gabon), Moktar Ould Daddah (Mauritania), Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore), António de Oliveira Salazar and Marcello Caetano (both of Portugal), Slobodan Milošević (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines), Kaysone Phomvihane (Laos, did not finish), <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/hungary">Viktor Orbán</a> (Hungary, studied political science at Oxford but did not finish). </p><p><b>Engineering</b> (20): Leonid Brezhnev (USSR, metallurgy), Mohamed Morsi (Egypt), Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenistan), Xi Jinping, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin (all 3 of China), José Eduardo dos Santos (Angola, along with radio communications), Agustín Pedro Justo (Argentina), Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (Colombia), Islam Karimov and Shavkat Mirziyoyev (both of Uzbekistan), Rahmon Nabiyev (Tajikistan), Nursultan Nazarbayev (Kazakhstan), Kurmanbek Bakiyev (Kyrgyzstan), Isaias Afwerki (Eritrea), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran), Viktor Yanukovych (Ukraine), José Napoleón Duarte (El Salvador), Sukarno (Indonesia), Miguel Díaz-Canel (Cuba). </p><p><b>Physics</b> (1): Askar Akayev (Kyrgyzstan, doctorate).</p><p><b>Chemistry</b> (2): <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56412912">John Magufuli</a> (Tanzania, doctorate), Yen Chia-kan (Taiwan).</p><p><b>Biology</b> (1): Abdiqasim Salad Hassan (Somalia). </p><p><b>Radio Electronics</b> (1): Pol Pot (Cambodia, didn't finish).</p><p><b>"Technical Education"</b> (1): Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (Somalia, Master of Technical Education, Bhopal University; he also attended, without completing, an MBA program). </p><p><b>Economics</b> (8): Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor (Liberia), Andrei Gromyko (USSR), Mátyás Rákosi (Hungary, specialization in external trade), Alexander Lukashenko (Belarus, concurrently with history), Emomali Rahmon (Tajikistan), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda, along with political science -- thesis on Frantz Fanon), Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal and Jambyn Batmönkh (both of Mongolia).</p><p><b>Management, Accounting, or Business Administration</b> (4, 5 if we count Erdogan, whose claim to have a university degree is in dispute): Faure Gnassingbé (Togo), Anastasio Somoza García (Nicaragua, business administration), Sooronbay Jeenbekov (Kyrgyzstan), Pavel Filip (Moldova, also has a earlier degree in engineering). <a href="https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/turkey-erdogan-authoritarian/">Recep Tayyip Erdogan</a> (<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-36436200">disputed</a>).</p><p><b>Labour Administration or Labour Relations</b> (2): Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (Equatorial Guinea), Siaka Stevens (Sierra Leone). </p><p><b>Forestry</b> (1): Nông Đức Mạnh (Vietnam).</p><p><b>Medicine</b> (8): François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier (Haiti), Bashar Assad (Syria), Félix Houphouët-Boigny (Ivory Coast), Hastings Banda (Malawi), Mohammad Najibullah (Afghanistan), Agostinho Neto (Angola), Mahathir Mohamad (Malaysia), Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow (Turkmenistan, dentistry). </p><p><b>Physical Education</b> (1): Pierre Nkurunziza (Burundi). </p><p><b>History</b> (7): Heydar Alirza oglu Aliyev and Ilham Aliyev (both of Azerbaijan -- Aliyev the younger has a PhD), Alexander Lukashenko (Belarus), <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c46zppwgw6lt/laurent-gbagbo">Laurent Gbagbo</a> (Ivory Coast, doctorate), Syngman Rhee (South Korea, Princeton doctorate concurrent with seminary studies), Nguyễn Phú Trọng (Vietnam), Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (Somalia).</p><p><b>Political Science & International Relations</b> (3): Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (Kazakhstan), Habib Bourguiba (Tunisia, concurrently with law), Babrak Karmal (Afghanistan, concurrently with law), Thongloun Sisoulith (Laos, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210305065636/http://future-of-asia.nikkei.jp/asia2019/eng/speaker02.html">doctorate in the "History of International Relations</a>"). </p><p><b>Criminal Justice</b> (1): <a href="https://www.shsu.edu/dept/office-of-alumni-relations/awards/distinguished/people/shinawatra.html">Thaksin Shinawatra</a> (Thailand, doctorate). </p><p><b>Psychology</b> (1): Hendrik Verwoerd (South Africa, doctorate).</p><p><b>Philosophy</b> (4): <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/highlights/000914_nkrumah.shtml">Kwame Nkrumah</a> (Ghana, MA at the University of Pennsylvania, also studied with A. J. Ayer in London), Ruhollah (Ayatollah) Khomeini (Iran, studied philosophy at seminaries), Mohammad (Ayatollah) Khatami (Iran), Burhanuddin Rabbani (Afghanistan). </p><p><b>Teacher's College</b> (1): Daniel arap Moi (Kenya).</p><p><b>Theology</b> (7): Stalin (didn't finish), Jozef Tiso (Slovakia), Grégoire Kayibanda (Rwanda), Syngman Rhee (South Korea, concurrent with doctoral studies in history), Ruhollah (Ayatollah) Khomeini (Iran, studied philosophy at seminaries), Ali Hosseini Khamenei (Iran), Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (Iran). **Kwame Nkrumah obtained a theology degree at Lincoln University before taking an MA in philosophy. </p><p>Enver Hoxha of Albania studied "natural science" at the post-secondary level, but I don't know what field of science he studied. </p>praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-90969489657208482352021-05-30T01:15:00.003-04:002021-05-30T01:16:37.372-04:00Cutting sounds (Cicadas, pt. 3)<p>My <a href="https://praymont.blogspot.com/2021/03/machine-music-cicadas-pt-2.html">last post</a> included quotations in which the sound of cicadas was compared to that of a blade-grinding wheel. The blades being sharpened included scissors, knives, and razors. </p><p>Eugenio Montale likens cicadas to cutting instruments in his poem "<i>L'ombra della magnolia</i>": "On the treetop intermittently a cicada shrills ... . . . The thin cutting file will soon be hushed, the empty husk of the erstwhile singer will soon be dust, it is autumn, it is winter...." <span style="font-size: x-small;">(trans. Glauco Cambon in Cambon's "<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/461156">Eugenio Montale's 'Motets': The Occasions of Epiphany,</a>" <i>PMLA</i>, v. 82[7] [Dec., 1967]: 471-484 at 482)</span> </p><p>In her poem <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/11/13/934718174/for-the-1st-time-in-a-decade-margaret-atwood-publishes-a-new-poetry-collection">"Cicadas" (2000), Margaret Atwood</a> complains of the male cicadas' "maddening racket" and "piercing one note of a jackhammer." In "<a href="https://www.shiningrockpoetry.com/a-retrospective-essay-by-william-wright/">Nocturne for Cicada</a>," William Wright describes the insects as "Red-eyed dusk-<b>chisels</b>: they whittle the mind." In "<a href="https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/grant-jamie/poems/the-cicadas-0047012">The Cicadas</a>" (1985), Jamie Grant says the insects are "raucous as lawnmowers." </p><p>Sawing devices are commonly invoked. Pablo Neruda mentions the cicadas' "<a href="http://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2014/06/pablo-neruda-ode-to-enchanted-light.html">sawing song</a>." <span style="font-size: x-small;">("<i>Oda a la luz encantada</i>," c. 1957; trans. as "Ode to Enchanted Light" by Ken Krabbenhoft)</span> In <a href="http://www.thehypertexts.com/Henry%20George%20Fischer%20Poet%20Poetry%20Picture%20Bio.htm">Henry George Fischer</a>'s "<a href="https://afindingplace.tumblr.com/post/85817958819/cicada-cadence">Cicada Cadence</a>," cicada sounds are "ripsawing inspissated heat." For Martin Walls, in "<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42476/cicadas-at-the-end-of-summer">Cicadas At the End of Summer</a>" (2000), it is "as though a bandsaw cleaves a thousand thin sheets of titanium." In his sequence "Island of Summer" (<i>Incarnations: Poems 1966-1968</i>), Robert Penn Warren writes, "All day, cicadas, / At the foot of infinity, like / A tree, saw." </p>praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-57432637520980622282021-03-25T15:41:00.040-04:002021-03-26T23:15:14.479-04:00Machine music (Cicadas, pt 2)<p>Cicadas figure in poetry as <a href="https://praymont.blogspot.com/2021/03/singing-cicadas.html">little artists singing with the Muses</a>, but, for many, these insects' mechanical drone is the antithesis of music. </p><p>Here's <a href="http://www.medicalantiques.com/civilwar/Medical_Authors_Faculty/Potter_nathaniel.htm">Nathaniel Potter</a> in 1839: </p><p></p><blockquote>The cicadae breed annually, the locust once in <i>seventeen years</i>. ... The cicadae of Greece must have been highly gifted with musical powers to have been celebrated by Homer .... How differently would the ear of the imperial poet have decided, if he had been condemned to listen to the monotonous, protracted twang of the American locust! <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Potter, <i><a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/sygghqhp/items?sierraId=b2114817x&langCode=eng&canvas=1">Notes on the Locusta Septentrionalis Americanae Decem Septima</a> </i>[Baltimore: J. Robinson, 1839], p. 7)</span></blockquote><p></p><p>In 1843, the noise of cicadas (i.e., <i>seventeen-year locusts</i>) in Staten Island impressed <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thoreau/">Henry David Thoreau</a>, who describes them in <a href="https://www.walden.org/log-page/1843/#1843-7">a letter to his mother</a>. </p><p></p><blockquote>Pray, have you the Seventeen year locust in Concord? The air here is filled with their din. They come out of the ground at first in an imperfect state, and, crawling up the shrubs and plants, the perfect insect bursts out through the back. ... In a few weeks the eggs will be hatched, and the worms fall to the ground and enter it, and in 1860 make their appearance again. ... Their din is heard by those who sail along the shore, from the distant woods, Phar-r-r-aoh. Phar-r-r-aoh. They are departing now. Dogs, cats and chickens subsist mainly upon them in some places. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Thoreau, July 7, 1843)</span></blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><p></p><p>While this <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/plagues-of-egypt-ancient-jewish-history-118238">plague of locusts</a>' pharaonic din impressed Thoreau enough for him to mention the creatures in <a href="https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/90/walden-or-life-in-the-woods/1698/conclusion/">the Conclusion of <i>Walden</i></a>, he does not call their sound <i>music</i>. </p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oqys8lKsu4s" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>
</p><p> <br /> The noise is often said to be <i>metallic</i> or <i>mechanical</i>. Walt Whitman calls it "that brassy drone" and compares it to "the whirling of brass <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quoit">quoits</a>." <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Specimen Days, Aug. 22, 1876)</span> <a href="https://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/disciples/burroughs/biography/anc.00250.html">John Burroughs</a> mentions "the brassy crescendo of the cicada." <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i>Locusts and Wild Honey</i>, 1884)</span> </p><p>The entomologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Workman_(entomologist)">Thomas Workman</a> characterizes the sound of Brazilian cicadas this way:</p><p></p><blockquote>There is a cicada or some other insect that goes on Ping-ing-ing-ing like a fine wire vibrating and a liliputian triangle working at the same time; there is also another insect making a somewhat similar sound, but not so mechanical or peculiar. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Workman, "A Recent Visit to Brazil," <i><a href="https://archive.org/details/reportproceeding82belf/page/n3/mode/2up">Report and Proceedings of the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society for the Session 1882-83</a></i> [Nov. 7, 1882], p. 16)</span></blockquote><p></p><p>"A fine wire vibrating"—perhaps, then, it is a kind of music. For <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/archibald-lampman">Archibald Lampman</a>, "The dry cicada plies his wiry bow/ In long-spun cadence." <span style="font-size: x-small;">("<a href="https://allpoetry.com/Among-The-Timothy">Among the Timothy</a>," 1888)</span> " Or is it a strumming? "Cicadas strum the metal miles of air" in Chicago. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-frederick-nims">John Frederick Nims</a>, "<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=64&issue=1&page=16">The Woolen Bug</a>," 1944)</span> The "metal miles" of industry, of whirring mechanisms and gears.</p><p><a href="https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/robert-penn-warren/">Robert Penn Warren</a> imagines cicadas sawing and churning out "filings of brass." <span style="font-size: x-small;">("Island of Summer," <i>Incarnations: Poems 1966-1968</i>)</span> In Japan, "a gross cicada tunes its brassy gear." <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<a href="https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/d-j-enright">D. J. Enright</a>, "Sumiyoshi [i]: First Impressions," <i>Bread Rather Than Roses</i>, 1956)</span> In her novel <i>The Clock Winder</i>, Anne Tyler assimilates the noise to the "metallic, whanging sound" of a toy gun. Even in Greece, where cicadas <a href="https://praymont.blogspot.com/2021/03/singing-cicadas.html">used to be pastoral</a>, they now grate and whirr:</p><p></p><blockquote>It came from the shore in rhythmic, grating, metallic waves like the engines of an immense factory in a frenzy—the electric rattle of innumerable high-powered dynamos whirling in aimless unison. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Patrick Leigh Fermor, <i>Mani</i>, 1958, p. 41)</span></blockquote><p></p><p>We link the cicada noise to that of "machines to power daylight," <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Jamie Grant, "The Cicadas," 1985)</span> "your electric razor," <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Chungmi Kim, "Being In Love," 2004)</span> an "electric appliance," <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Dana Levin, "My Sentence," 2012)</span>, and "the dog days' electrical buzz." <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Madeline Bassnett, "<a href="https://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/season-4-interviews-and-poems">Life Cycle</a>" -- scroll way down -- 2011)</span> </p><p>Strange, that something so natural should call to mind such artifice.</p><p>Later comparisons invoke later machines. In the 19th century, the machines in question were pushed through neighborhoods by scissor-grinders, tradesmen who went door-to-door offering to sharpen household blades. The machines contained a metal wheel, which enters into Whitman's description of the cicada's sound: </p><blockquote><p>A single locust is now heard near noon from a tree two hundred feet off, as I write—a long whirring, continued, quite loud noise graded in distinct whirls, or swinging circles, increasing in strength and rapidity up to a certain point, and then a fluttering, quietly tapering fall. Each strain is continued from one to two minutes. ... Let me say more about the song of the locust, even to repetition; a long, chromatic, tremulous crescendo, like a brass disk whirling round and round, emitting wave after wave of notes, beginning with a certain moderate beat or measure, rapidly increasing in speed and emphasis, reaching a point of great energy and significance, and then quickly and gracefully dropping down and out. Not the melody of the singing-bird—far from it; the common musician might think without melody, but surely having to the finer ear a harmony of its own; monotonous—but what a swing there is in that brassy drone, round and round, cymballine—or like the whirling of brass quoits. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Whitman, <i><a href="https://www.bartleby.com/229/1113.html">Specimen Days</a></i>, 1876)</span></p></blockquote><p>In a passage from which I quoted at the start of this post, Nathaniel Potter says, </p><p></p><blockquote>How differently would the ear of the imperial poet have decided, if he had been condemned to listen to the monotonous, protracted twang of the American locust! He would have been as much pleased with the scraping of a scissor-grinder, or the grating of a file. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i>Notes on the Locusta Septentrionalis Americanae Decem Septima</i>, 1839, p. 7)</span></blockquote><p></p><p>He adds that the sound "rises and falls through the gradations; <i>crescendo</i>, <i>minuendo et cadendo</i>." </p><p>About thirty years later, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuthbert_Collingwood_(naturalist)">Cuthbert Collingwood</a> writes, </p><p></p><blockquote>There are two or three species of Cicada which are no whit inferior in noisy powers .... I shall never forget the first time of hearing the scissor-grinder in the jungle at Pappan when approaching the island in a boat, the noise being distinctly audible for at least a quarter of an hour before we reached the shore, and when there the resounding whir-r-r--whir-r-r--whir-r-r of the insect .... After continuing this deafening sound for some time, it winds up with a protracted whiz-z-z, which dies away just like the scissor-grinder's wheel when the <a href="http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/treddle">treddle</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadle">stops</a>. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i>Rambles of a Naturalist on the Shores and Waters of the China Sea</i> [London: John Murray, 1868], p. 176)</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Writing from Guyana in 1883, <a href="https://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.person.bm000008465">Sir Everard Ferdinand im Thurn</a> mentions</p><p></p><blockquote>certain curious insects, locally called razor-grinders (<i>Cicada</i>), from the extraordinary sounds that they make, ... The whole place rings with the whirr of these insects, as though fifty pairs of scissors were being sharpened at once on half a hundred grindstones. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i><a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001973239">Among the Indians of Guiana: being sketches, chiefly anthropologic from the interior of British Guiana</a></i>, 1883, p. 153)</span></blockquote><p></p><p>The simile recurs in <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/deutsch-babette">Babette Deutsch</a>'s poem "<a href="https://archive.org/details/comingofage00deut/page/110/mode/2up">July In Dutchess County</a>": </p><p></p><blockquote>Late, the dry / <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/timbal">Timbal</a> <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-6359-6_4279">of the cicada</a>, / Like the pledge of the knifegrinder's wheel, / Refines / Summer's declining edge. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i><a href="https://archive.org/details/comingofage00deut/page/n5/mode/2up">Coming of Age</a></i>, 1959, p. 111)</span></blockquote><p>
</p><p></p><div>In 2000, <a href="https://www.mbl.edu/obituaries/millicent-bell/">Millicent Bell</a> made a similar comparison in <a href="https://agnionline.bu.edu/poetry/meriggiare-pallido-e-assorto">her translation of</a> Eugenio Montale's poem "<a href="https://www.libriantichionline.com/divagazioni/eugenio_montale_meriggiare_ossi_di_seppia">Meriggiare pallido e assorto</a>" (1925). In the poem's third stanza, Bell writes, "the cicada calls like a knife on the grinder’s stone." In the original Italian, Montale does not compare the insect's sound to that of a blade-grinding instrument. (The last two lines of his third stanza are, "<a href="https://blogs.transparent.com/italian/a-hot-summers-afternoon-in-italy/">mentre si levano tremuli scricchi / di cicale dai calvi picchi</a>.") </div><br /><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ARDkvt5tswQ" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-59957162627193583092021-03-18T20:26:00.017-04:002021-03-25T15:51:31.059-04:00Singing cicadas (Cicadas, pt 1)<p>Singing cicadas abound <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/o-shrillvoiced-insect-the-cicada-poems-of-ancient-greece">in ancient Greece</a>. Already, before the CE, they sing like a king in <a href="https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/Anacreon:_A_Guide_to_Selected_Sources">Anacreon</a>'s "<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AWritings_of_Henry_David_Thoreau_(1906)_v7.djvu/144">Ode to</a> <a href="https://wordverseuniverse.wordpress.com/2019/08/23/ode-to-the-cicada-anacreontea/">the Cicada</a>" (6th century) and sing ... well ... better than donkeys in the <a href="http://attalus.org/poetry/callimachus.html">prologue to Callimachus' <i>Aetia</i></a> (3rd century). </p><p>Cicadas prefer singing to eating in <a href="https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/myth-and-philosophy-in-plato-s-phaedrus/">Plato's <i>Phaedrus</i></a> (259b-e). One there finds them <a href="https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/146/abstract/mythologies-voice-plato%E2%80%99s-cicadas-and-nature-voice">liaising with the Muses</a> while, in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meleager_of_Gadara">Meleager of Gadara</a>'s "To the Cicada" (1st century), they're singing to the nymphs. They "pour forth their lily-like voice" in the <i>Iliad</i> (<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hom.+Il.+3.151&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134">3.151</a>, trans. A. T. Murray). (Wait ... their <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1086564">voice sounds like a lily</a>...?)</p><p>Further afield, cicadas sing themselves hoarse in <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/eclogue.2.ii.html">Virgil's second <i>Eclogue</i></a>. One "sings all his life" in Richard Wilbur's "<a href="https://voetica.com/voetica.php?collection=1&poet=44&poem=3903">Cigales</a>" (1947) and another "<a href="https://poetandpoem.com/Matsuo-Basho/A-cicada-shell-2">sang itself utterly away</a>" (<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/basho">Basho</a>, trans. <a href="https://tricycle.org/magazine/remembering-r-h-blyth/">R. H.</a> <a href="https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/blythrh">Blyth</a>). </p><p>Singing cicadas greet the dusk in Tennyson's "<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45366/mariana-in-the-south">Mariana In the South</a>" (1842), accompany dry grass in Eliot's <i><a href="https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/waste-land">Waste Land</a></i> (1922, lines 354-5), and fill the night with "insensate zest" in Aldous Huxley's "The Cicadas" (1931). </p><p>A cicada goes solo in Richard Aldington's "<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12590/to-a-greek-marble">To a Greek Marble</a>" (1912). Another serenades "the absent" in John Haines' "Cicadas" (1977). They're used to it, singing their "rustic song that sounds in lonely places" (Meleager again, "The Cricket to the Cicada," trans. Rory B. Egan).</p><p>A whole choir of them break the surface "already singing" in <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=40499">David Lunde's "Cicadas"</a> (1999), and "the cicada, that brazen jongleur of the trees, shaking his iridescent rapture" (Conrad Aiken, "The Cicada," 1958) keeps singing all the way up a "persimmon tree" in George Scarborough's "The Cicada" (1977). </p><p>From such heights, the "insistent song" spins "a web of silver o'er the silence" (<a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-charles-george-douglas-roberts">Sir Charles G. D. Roberts</a>, "The Cicada in the Firs," 1893). </p><p>Robert Hass anticipated "maniacal cicadas tuning up to tear the fabric of the silence" ("Between the Wars," 1989), and Gary Snyder heard "cicada singing / swirling in the tangle" ("Song of the Tangle," 1968). Truman Capote utterly lost patience with them: </p><blockquote><p>A cicada called. Another answered. "Shut up, bettle-bugs! Whut you wanna be makin' so much racket fer? You lonesome?" (Truman Capote, "<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40623678">Preacher's Legend</a>," 1945)</p></blockquote><p><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/get-ready-brood-x-every-17-years-cicada-swarm-coming-rcna429">Billions of cicadas will soon be singing in the eastern USA</a>. </p><p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_I9rf4Fo4nQ" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-69537863608925344352020-09-16T02:16:00.001-04:002020-09-16T02:16:38.333-04:00The High Priori road<p></p><blockquote><p>Let others creep by timid steps, and slow,</p><p>On plain experience lay foundations low,</p><p>By common sense to common knowledge bred,</p><p>And last, to Nature's Cause through Nature led.</p><p>All-seeing in thy mists, we want no guide,</p><p>Mother of Arrogance, and Source of Pride!</p><p>We nobly take the high Priori Road,*</p><p>And reason downward, till we doubt of God</p><p><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alexander-pope">Alexander</a> <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/pope/phil.html">Pope</a> (<a href="https://www.bartleby.com/203/166.html">"The Dunciad" 1742, IV</a>, lines 465-72)</p></blockquote><p></p><p>In a footnote, <a href="https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/uram.20.1.23">Pope</a> refers to Hobbes, Spinoza, and Descartes.</p><p>"Allow me to congratulate you upon the felicity with which you have thus 'taken the high priori road,' and endeavoured to depreciate an anonymous letter, by declaring the correspondent to be drunk." John Cam Hobhouse (<i>A defence of the people, in reply to Lord Erskine's "Two defences of the Whigs"</i>, 1819)</p><p>"The second, or physical part of science, embracing all those inductive studies respecting unliving or unorganized bodies, which proceed mainly through out ward observation or experiment, and can as yet make little progress in 'the high priori road'." <a href="The second, or physical part of science, embracing all those inductive studies respecting un living or unorganized bodies, which proceed mainly through out ward observation or experiment, and can as yet make little progress in ",the high priori road."">Sir William</a> <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/hamilton/">Hamilton</a> ("Inaugural Address," <i>Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy</i>, 1838)</p><p>"With the economists who take the 'high priori road,' and anticipate the results of science by assuming the facts from which their principles are deduced, I presume not to contend." Robert Torrens ("<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/60212399">A letter to the Right Honourable Lord John Russell on the ministerial measure forestablishing poor laws in Ireland</a>...,"1838)</p><p>"He promised to lead us up to the great truth of all religion by a new path, -- to 'nobly take the high priori road, and reason downwards'; but, after a little digression, he conducts us back again to the old travelled way, where alone we can obtain firm footing." (anon, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25104412">Review of <i>On Natural Theology</i> by Thomas Chalmers</a>, <i>The North American Review</i>, 1842)</p><p>"I am unable to see why we should be forbidden to take the shortest cut from these sufficient premises to the conclusion, and constrained to travel the 'high priori road,' by the arbitrary fiat of logicians." <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/">John Stuart Mill</a> (<i><a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=LVAYAAAAIAAJ&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false">A System of Logic</a></i>, 1843)</p><p>"Those who have been led to regard the method of empirical psychology as the only method which preserves the reality of things, by preventing the thinker from overriding and destroying the facts of life, minister to their own self-satisfaction by taunting the speculative thinker with going along the 'high priori road' he has constructed for himself above and beyond the real world. The charge can only provoke a smile in those who know how wide of the mark it really is. Speculative philosophy makes no pretensions to the 'construction' of reality in the ordinary sense of the word, but only to such an explanation of reality as shall account for the facts in their completeness." <a href="https://www.giffordlectures.org/lecturers/john-watson">John</a> <a href="https://www.queensu.ca/encyclopedia/w/watson-john">Watson</a> (<i><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25666078">Journal of Speculative Philosophy</a></i>, 1878)</p><p>The "scientific claims [of Spencer's method] are plainly declared in chapter v., on 'Ways of judging Conduct'; from which we learn that Mr. [Herbert] Spencer's way of judging it is to be a high priori road." <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sidgwick/">Henry Sidgwick</a> (<i>Mind</i>, 1880) (<a href="www.jstor.org/stable/2246524">Spencer's reply</a>)</p><p>"A good many evolutionists have been floored by a serious interruption to the continuity of their 'high priori' road, and not a few of them do not yet know just what has hurt them. That such an evanescent and unsubstantial condition as consciousness should have the gravity necessary to throw a triumphant army of advance into confusion, could hardly be suspected." A. S. Packard, Jr. and E. D. Cope (<i><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2449095">The American Naturalist</a></i>, 1882)</p><p>"If, now and again, frequenters of 'the high priori road' have been less vocal in [<i>Mind</i>'s] pages, it is only because they have not chosen to make use of the opportunity of utterance here afforded." <a href="www.jstor.org/stable/2247797">George Croom Robertson</a> (<i>Mind</i>, 1891)</p><p>"In view of these facts it seems advisable to travel the 'high priori road' as far as it will take us, and for the rest, to rely on our best experience and judgment." Archibald Lamont Daniels ("<a href="https://academic.oup.com/jof/article-abstract/3/4/339/4759889?redirectedFrom=fulltext">The Measurement of Saw Logs and Round Timber</a>," <i>Journal of Forestry</i>, 1905) (Daniels was a math professor at the University of Vermont, see <a href="file:///C:/Users/paulr/OneDrive/Desktop/mathstat.pdf">pp. 43-44 of this pdf</a> published by his dept.)</p><p>"Ryle's extraordinary confidence that he knows what is a 'howler' and what isn't contrasts very oddly with the delicacy of a philologist's discussion of synonyms. The 'high priori road' is not yet dead in Oxford, after all." John Passmore ("<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2182115">Professor Ryle's Use of 'Use' and 'Usage'</a>," <i>Philosophical Review</i>, 1954)</p><p>"We cannot then take a 'high priori road' out of our dilemma, by defining 'free' in terms of paradigm cases." <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/mac-over/">A. C. MacIntyre</a> (<i>Mind</i>, 1957)</p><p>Also, in 1967, <a href="www.jstor.org/stable/41211032">R. S. Crane</a> titled a book chapter "Criticism as Inquiry; or, The Perils of the 'High Priori Road'" (in <i>The idea of the humanities, and other essays critical and historical</i>)</p><p>"In literature, as in other subjects, the best students are those who respond to intellectual honesty, who distrust the high priori road, and who sense that there may be some connection between limited claims and unlimited rewards." Northrop Frye (<i><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1207804">Contemporary Literature</a></i>, 1968)</p>praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-35567228235576917302020-09-13T00:25:00.008-04:002020-09-13T00:47:22.233-04:00Ipsedixitism, Part 1<p>"Ipsedixitism: <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ipsedixitism" target="_blank">dogmatic assertion or assertiveness" (<i>Merriam-Webster</i>)</a>. </p><p>"Ipse dixit: <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/ipse-dixit" target="_blank">an arbitrary and unsupported assertion" (<i>Collins</i>)</a>. </p><p>"Ipsedixitism: ... the practice of dogmatic assertion" (<i><a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=14sxAQAAMAAJ&dq=ipsedixitism&pg=PA3180#v=onepage&q=ipsedixitism&f=false" target="_blank">The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia: The Century dictionary</a></i>, 1889). </p><p>The charge applies when one makes an assertion without giving supporting reasons. </p><p>The word 'ipsedixitism' was introduced into English by <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bentham/" target="_blank">Jeremy Bentham</a>. He used the word and several of its cognates in his <i>Deontology; or the Science of Morality</i>, a manuscript that was edited by his literary executor, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bowring" target="_blank">Sir John Bowring</a>, and published posthumously in 1834. </p><p>In an essay that he contributed to that edition, <a href="https://archive.org/details/deontologyorthes01bentuoft/page/n339/mode/2up" target="_blank">Bowring traced the expression to Cicero</a>: </p><p></p><blockquote>The appellative of <i>ipse-dixitism</i> is not a new one; it comes down to us from an antique and high authority, —it is the principle recognised (so Cicero informs us) by the disciples of Pythagoras. Ipse (<i>he</i>, the master, Pythagoras), ipse dixit, —he has said it; the master has said that it is so; therefore, say the disciples of the illustrious sage, therefore so it is.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span>(Bowring, "History of the Greatest-Happiness Principle," [pp. 287-331, </span><a href="https://archive.org/details/deontologyorthes01bentuoft/page/n339/mode/2up" target="_blank">at pp. 322-323</a><span>], in Jeremy Bentham, </span><i>Deontology; or, The Science of Morality: in which the Harmony and Co-Incidence of Duty and Self-Interest, Virtue and Felicity, Prudence and Benevolence, are explained and exemplified</i><span>. Vol. I. 'Arranged and edited by John Bowring.' London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Browne, Green, and Longman, 1834)</span></span></blockquote><p></p><p>Bowring's aetiology resembles the one given in Bentham's "Article on Utilitarianism: Long Version," according to which:</p><p></p><blockquote>This appellative is not a new one invented for the present purpose, but an old one borrowed from an antique and consequently high authority. It is the principle pursued, so Cicero informs us, by the disciples of Pythagoras. 'Ipse' (referring to Pythagoras) 'ipsedixit': 'He has said the matter is so and so, therefore', said a disciple of the illustrious sage, 'so it is'. <span style="font-size: x-small;">("Article on Utilitarianism: Long Version," in <i>The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham</i>, Vol. 5, <i>Deontology together with A Table of the Springs of Action and Article on Utilitarianism</i>, ed. Amnon Goldworth [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983], p. 305, n. 43) </span></blockquote><p></p><p>It is difficult to determine the author of this last remark. Is it Bentham or Bowring? The editor of the quoted volume, Amnon Goldworth, writes that Bowring wrote sections of Bentham's posthumous works (and did not note when he had done so), adding that since parts of the original manuscript no longer exist, it is impossible sometimes to determine whether a given passage was penned by Bentham or by Bowring. Even if it was written by Bowring, Goldworth says that Bowring had discussed these works with Bentham many times and took himself, when he added material, to be adding only what Bentham had said. </p><p>Both of the above quotations mention Cicero's criticism of the Pythagoreans, which appears in paragraph 10, Book I, of Cicero's <i>De Natura Deorum</i> (<i>The Nature of the Gods</i>). Cicero wrote as follows: </p><p></p><blockquote>Those who seek my personal views on each issue are being unnecessarily inquisitive, for when we engage in argument we must look to the weight of reason rather than authority. Indeed, students who are keen to learn often find the authority of those who claim to be teachers to be an obstacle, for they cease to apply their own judgement and regard as definitive the solution offered by the mentor of whom they approve. I myself tend to disapprove of the alleged practice of the Pythagoreans: the story goes that if they were maintaining some position in argument, and were asked why, they would reply: 'The master said so', the master being Pythagoras. Prior judgement exercised such sway that authority prevailed even when unsupported by reason. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i>Cicero: The Nature of the Gods</i>, ed. and trans. Peter G. Walsh, [Oxford University Press, 1997; electronic: 2016], Book I, paragraph 10;</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">DOI: 10.1093/actrade/9780199540068.book.1)</span></blockquote><p></p><p><a href="https://archive.org/details/L268CiceroXIXDeNaturaDeorum/page/n39/mode/2up" target="_blank">Here is the same passage</a> in H. Rackham's 1933 translation (in the Loeb series), with the original Latin on the facing page (<a href="https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/cicero/nd1.shtml#10" target="_blank">and also available here</a>). </p><p>According to Cicero, a Pythagorean was prone to appeals to authority, resting his/her claims on their assertion by someone whose word provides insufficient support. This error of reasoning is not the same one as making assertions without giving supporting reasons. After all, the Pythagoreans did offer <i>a reason</i> for their claims ('Pythagoras said it!') even if not a very good one. So, the error of ipsedixitism, as defined at the beginning of this post, is not the error that Cicero charged the Pythagoreans with committing. </p>praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-24477927916895503122020-06-11T01:23:00.000-04:002020-06-11T19:54:52.833-04:00Afterwit: knowledge that comes too lateAfterwit, a handy word that seems to have faded from common use in the 17th century.<br />
<br />
The <i><a href="https://www.oed.com/">OED</a></i> offers these two definitions:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Recognition of a mistake made earlier, leading to a change in one's actions, views, etc.</blockquote>
and<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Wisdom acquired after the event, typically too late to be of use. </blockquote>
Most of the <i>OED</i>'s examples of the word's use are drawn from the 1500s and 1600s.<br />
<br />
Here are some other definitions:<br />
<br />
<i><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/afterwit">Websters</a></i>: "wisdom or perception that comes after it can be of use";<br />
<i>The <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=Kt1EAQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA103&ots=23ApqKCfOt&dq=dictionary%20and%20afterwit%20and%20knowledge%20that%20comes%20too%20late&pg=PA104#v=onepage&q=dictionary%20and%20afterwit%20and%20knowledge%20that%20comes%20too%20late&f=false">American Encyclopaedic Dictionary</a></i>: "wisdom, which comes after the event which it is designed to affect"; and<br />
<i>The <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=bjQCAAAAQAAJ&lpg=PA67&ots=xFlTz5igKj&dq=dictionary%20and%20afterwit%20and%20knowledge%20that%20comes%20too%20late&pg=PA67#v=onepage&q=dictionary%20and%20afterwit%20and%20knowledge%20that%20comes%20too%20late&f=false">Treasury of Knowledge and Library of Reference</a></i>: "wisdom that comes too late."<br />
<br />
The ever resourceful <a href="https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/afterwit/">Samuel Johnson</a> defined 'afterwit' as, "The contrivance of expedients after the occasion of using them is past."<br />
<br />
I like the gloss given by <a href="https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/a8f8d045-5246-36df-9426-888dd6b25d67">T. J. B. Spencer</a> in his 1980 edition of <a href="http://elizabethandrama.org/the-playwrights/john-ford/introduction-to-john-ford/">John Ford</a>'s play <i><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/mar/19/the-broken-heart-review-caroline-steinbeis">The Broken Heart</a></i> (1633), where 'afterwit' is "knowledge that comes too late." <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Manchester University Press, <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=onvQAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA160&ots=9vw8BoxQqF&dq=afterwit%20%22knowledge%20that%20comes%20too%20late%22&pg=PA161#v=onepage&q=afterwit%20%22knowledge%20that%20comes%20too%20late%22&f=false">p. 160 n. 12</a>)</span><br />
<br />
The word made it to America, where it was used by Captain Edward Johnson (1599-1672) in his <i><a href="https://archive.org/details/wonderworkingpro00john/page/206/mode/2up">Wonder-working providence</a> of Sions Saviour in New England</i>. (1654). The word lingered long enough in American memory to make it into the writings of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_wit_name.html">Benjamin Franklin</a>, who took the pseudonym '<a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0080">Anthony Afterwit</a>.'<br />
<br />
As a fictional character's name, 'Afterwit' appears to have been a popular satirical device. In his journal <i>Champion</i> (1739), <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/henry-fielding">Henry Fielding</a> took the name <a href="http://tobiassmollett.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-sophia-pamphlets.html">Afterwit</a> while penning <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=fW8PAAAAQAAJ&lpg=PA51&ots=Lt6rzOknm9&dq=%22afterwit%22%20and%20%22captain%20vinegar%22&pg=PA51#v=onepage&q=%22afterwit%22%20and%20%22captain%20vinegar%22&f=false">a letter</a> to <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/30224968">Captain Hercules Vinegar</a> (another of Fielding's pseudonyms). A 'Mrs. Afterwit' figures in Issue No. 652 of Addison and Steele's <i>Spectator</i>. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Feb. 28, 1715, pp. 76-77)</span> More than fifty years earlier, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilson_(playwright)">John Wilson</a> applied <a href="https://archive.org/details/dramaticworksjo00wilsgoog/page/n36/mode/2up">the name</a> to a royalist character in <i><a href="https://archive.org/details/dramaticworksjo00wilsgoog/page/n20/mode/2up">The Cheats</a></i> (1663). And <a href="https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/william-burnaby">William Burnaby</a> had two characters discuss a <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A30312.0001.001?type=simple&rgn=full+text&q1=afterwit&submit=Go">Sir Humphrey Afterwit</a> in <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A30312.0001.001/1:10?rgn=div1;submit=Go;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=afterwit">Act IV</a> (<a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?cc=eebo;c=eebo;idno=a30312.0001.001;node=A30312.0001.001:10;seq=40;submit=Go;type=simple;vid=47921;q1=afterwit;page=root;view=text">Scene I</a>) of his 1700 play, <i><a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A30312.0001.001/1:5?rgn=div1;view=toc">The reform'd wife a comedy</a></i>.<br />
<br />
In 1600, <a href="http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/CommentRecord.php?action=GET&cmmtid=7094">Samuel Nicholson</a> wrote a poem called '<a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A08212.0001.001/1:3?rgn=div1;view=fulltext">Acolastus his after-wit</a>'. We also find the word 'afterwit' in this passage from Ch. 12 of <a href="https://www.blogger.com/Tristram%20Shandy:%20%22Trust%20me,%20dear%20Yorick,%20this%20unweary%20pleasantry%20of%20thine%20will%20sooner%20or%20later%20bring%20thee%20into%20scrapes%20and%20difficulties,%20which%20no%20afterwit%20can%20extricate%20thee%20out%20of.%22">Laurence Sterne</a>'s <i>Tristram Shandy</i>: "Trust me, dear Yorick, this unweary pleasantry of thine will sooner or later bring thee into scrapes and difficulties, which <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=2Nqu6j_eXQAC&lpg=PA22&ots=Yfl2pCQptv&dq=sterne%20%22afterwit%22&pg=PA22#v=onepage&q=sterne%20%22afterwit%22&f=false">no afterwit</a> can extricate thee out of." Finally, in the <a href="http://m.joyceproject.com/chapters/scylla.html">9th episode</a> of his <i><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm">Ulysses</a></i> ('<a href="http://www.ulyssesguide.com/9-scylla-charybdis">Scylla and Charybdis</a>'), James Joyce writes, "<a href="https://joyceconcordance.andreamoro.net/ulyssespage.py?w=afterwit&e=9#row10169">Afterwit. Go back.</a>"<br />
<br />
In the 20th century, the word survived in the dialect of Yorkshire, where it was said that "<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=7PMZJqSR4sAC&lpg=PA163&ots=AUkuLwMyW9&dq=%22durham%20folks%20are%20troubled%20with%20afterwit%22&pg=PA163#v=onepage&q=%22durham%20folks%20are%20troubled%20with%20afterwit%22&f=false">Durham folks are troubled with afterwit</a>."<br />
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Such dialect uses preoccupied an anonymous author in the <i>Guardian</i> in 1943. On Sept. 20 and 22, 'afterwit' is the focus of the column headed 'Miscellany'. In the first entry, 'afterwit' is defined as realizing a witty retort too late to be of use and, so, is assimilated to <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/meaning-french-expression-avoir-lesprit-descalier-1368730">Diderot</a>'s <i><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/esprit%20de%20l%27escalier">l'esprit de</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier">l'escalier</a></i>. The author credits a correspondent from Lancashire with bringing 'afterwit' to his attention. In the second entry, the author reports that (according to some readers) the word occurs more often in Yorkshire than Lancashire. S/he adds that 'afterwit' is sometimes replaced by 'latter-wit', especially when preceded by the phrases 'troubled with ...' and 'plagued by ...'. The author then says, "In the OED version the 'wit' of afterwit has to do with knowledge rather than repartee; the word means after-knowledge as opposed to fore-knowledge." (p. 3)<br />
<br />
On March 20, 1931 (p. 6), the <i>Washington Post</i> reprinted a piece from the <i>London Times</i> under the heading 'Afterwit'. The author uses the phrase "the pangs of afterwit" and "troubled by afterwit" and asks "whether afterwit is a blessing or a curse." S/he adds, "Is it preferable to go on in blithe unconsciousness that we might have done so much better, or to become painfully aware of opportunity gone by; to be permanently stupid, or to be wise too late? The choice is hard."praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-61699317292171193112020-04-17T20:40:00.008-04:002020-09-13T00:32:52.112-04:00Misology - a hatred of argument, reasoning, or enlightenment"Misology: a hatred of argument, reasoning, or enlightenment." That's <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misology">Merriam-Webster's definition</a>. Here's the definition in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagobert_D._Runes">Dagobert Runes</a>' <i>Dictionary of Philosophy</i> (1942): "<a href="http://www.ditext.com/runes/m.html">Misology: (Gr. <i>miseo</i>: to hate; <i>logia</i>: proposition) A contempt for logic</a>." In the <i>Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology</i> (1902), <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mark_Baldwin">James Mark Baldwin</a> gives this definition:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://archive.org/details/philopsych02balduoft/page/86/mode/2up">Misology [Gr. ...] : Ger. <i>Misologie</i> ; Fr. <i>misologie</i> ; Ital.<i>misologia</i>. Hatred and despair of reason.Sometimes applied to intellectual PESSIMISM</a>. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(v. 2, The Macmillan Company, 1902)</span></blockquote>
Closely related is <a href="https://dictionary.apa.org/misologia">"misologia: an aversion to speaking or arguing" (<i>APA Dictionary of Psychology</i>)</a>.<br />
<br />
The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misology">Wikipedia entry for misology</a> provides an interesting history of the word. It notes the occurrence of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misology#Notes">the ancient Greek</a> <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=misologi%2Fa+&la=greek">μισολογία</a> in Plato's <i><a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html">Phaedo</a></i> (89d). Wikipedia also <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misology#Modern_provenance">identifies Kant's use</a> of the German "<i>Misologie</i>" in the <i>Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten</i> (395.32, 1785), where Kant defines it as a 'hatred of reason.' <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=1rHevWO2Y-wC&lpg=PA268&ots=ELPVURQ_wR&dq=misologie%20%22immanuel%20kant%22&pg=PA268#v=onepage&q=misologie%20%22immanuel%20kant%22&f=false">According to Henry Hitchings</a>, Samuel Taylor Coleridge based his use of "misology" on Kant's <i>misologie</i>.<br />
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Webster's pegs the introduction of the English "misology" as being "<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misology">circa 1834</a>." The online version of Webster's does not identify the source. I believe the author of the Webster's entry had in mind the appearance of "misology" in an article in <i>The Quarterly Review</i> by <a href="http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/AuthorRecord.php?action=GET&recordid=33472">Henry Nelson Coleridge</a>, nephew and son-in-law of the great romantic poet. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">("<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=uH2baOjYKisC&dq=%22misology%22&pg=PA21#v=onepage&q=%22misology%22&f=false">The Poetical works of S. T. Coleridge</a>," <i>The Quarterly Review</i>, No. 103 [1834], p. 21)</span> The article was published anonymously in 1834, but <a href="http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/CommentRecord.php?action=GET&cmmtid=12318">here is a cleaner copy of it with H. N. Coleridge identified</a> as its author.<br />
<br />
Henry Coleridge used "misology" while quoting his famous uncle's assessment of Goethe's epic poem: "The intended theme of the <i>Faust</i> is the consequences of a <b>misology, or hatred and depreciation of knowledge</b>, caused by an originally intense thirst for knowledge baffled." <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Ibid.)</span> Henry C. seems to have based the quotation on some written record of his uncle's 'table talk', since the same passage appears in <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=UpoKAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22consequences%20of%20a%20misology%22&pg=PA423#v=onepage&q=%22consequences%20of%20a%20misology%22&f=false">the "Table Talk" entry for February 16, 1833</a>. Apparently, S. T. <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=vg1IAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22misology%22&pg=PA360#v=onepage&q=%22misology%22&f=false">Coleridge also applied "misology" to some religious sects in his book annotations</a>.<br />
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In his 1992 article, James McKusick counts "misology" among Coleridge's "merely bizarre" coinages. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/438080">James C. McKusick, "'Living Words': Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Genesis of the 'OED' <i>Modern Philology</i>, Vol. 90 [1992]: 1-45, at 20</a>)</span> In fact, though, Coleridge was not the first author to use the word in English.<br />
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I found an earlier use of "misology" in <a href="https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdfplus/10.3366/E1479665109000396">John Richardson</a>'s 1819 translation of Kant's <i>Logik</i> (1800): <i><a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b117463&view=1up&seq=44">Logic from the German of Emmanuel Kant</a></i>. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(London: Printed for W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1819)</span> Here is an excerpt from Richardson's translation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Who hates science, but does not love wisdom the less on that account, is named a <b>misologist</b>. <b>Misology</b> commonly arises from a want of scientific knowledge, and from a certain sort of vanity therewith conjoined. And sometimes those, who at first cultivated the sciences with great diligence and success, but in the end found no satisfaction in all their knowledge, fall into the fault of misology. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b117463&view=1up&seq=44">p. 32</a>)</span></blockquote>
I have consulted <a href="https://universaltheosophy.com/pdf-library/1793_The-Cratylus-Phaedo-Parmenides-and-Timaeus.pdf">Thomas Taylor's 1793 translation of Plato's <i>Phaedo</i></a> (esp. 89d2-3), and did not find any use there of "misology." Rather than using a single word for Plato's term, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Taylor_(neoplatonist)">Taylor</a> uses the phrase "hatred of reason." <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<i>Four Dialogues of Plato: The Cratylus, Phædo, Parmenides and Timæus</i>, [1793], pp. 197-8) </span>It may be, though, that some earlier translator of Plato's work into English used "misology."<br />
<br />
Professor Mark Mercer has <a href="http://professormarkmercer.ca/boards/In%20Defence%20of%20Misology.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0b2QsnUZKkbJNdc1JYeQmBM_9UbIsKpqUJ6HMnWPhlABTHxHo_OrDKrok">a pdf entitled "In Defence of Misology."</a>praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-7408528005729627792020-04-16T16:04:00.004-04:002021-03-25T15:54:44.754-04:00Misosophy: hatred of wisdom. A label applied to Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Papists, Positivists, and Calvinists<a href="https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/253163?"><i>Misosophy</i>, n. Hatred of wisdom</a>. So says the OED. The earliest use of the word cited by the OED is in <a href="http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Coleridg/bio.html">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</a>'s posthumously published "<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8956/8956-h/8956-h.htm#section4">Notes of Hooker</a>" (in the 1830s). Coleridge there writes,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There are, and can be, only two schools of philosophy, differing in kind and in source. Differences in degree and in accident, there may be many; but these constitute schools kept by different teachers with different degrees of genius, talent, and learning; — auditories of philosophizers, not different philosophies. Schools of psilology (the love of empty noise) and <b>misosophy</b> are here out of the question.</blockquote>
About forty years before Coleridge's coinage, <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Capmartin_de_Chaupy">Bertrand Capmartin de Chaupy</a> wrote a book called <i><a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Philosophie_des_lettres_qui_aurait_pu_to.html?id=GX9GQwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Philosophie des lettres, qui aurait pu tout sauver. <b>Misosophie</b> voltairienne, qui n'a pu que tout perdre</a></i>, which translates roughly as <i>Philosophy of letters, which could have saved everything. Voltairian <b>misosophy</b>, which could only lose everything</i>. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Paris, chez Mme. Dufresne, au Palais royale, 1790, 2 volumes)</span><br />
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"Misosophy" pops up in a philosophical dictionary in 1878:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
MIS, MISO.-1. (Gr. [...], to hate;) in a number of compounds, as misagathy, hatred of the good; misandry and misanthropy, hatred of men; misarety, hatred of virtue; misogyny, misology, <b>misosophy</b>, misotheism. 2. From the Germanic languages, denoting wrong, failure, defect, as misdeed, mistrust, misuse. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Charles Porterfield Krauth, <i><a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t5q816r43&view=1up&seq=800">A Vocabulary of the Philosophical Sciences</a></i>: </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Including the <i>Vocabulary of Philosophy, Mental, Moral and Metaphysical</i>, by William Fleming, from the 2d Ed., 1860: and the 3d, 1876, Ed. by Henry Calderwood, LL. D.],</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Sheldon & Company, 1878, p. 770)</span></blockquote>
The word appeared in religious controversies. For instance, here's the barrister Henry Thomas Braithwaite in 1872: "That therefore is <b>misosophy</b> which discourages spoken petitions to the Throne of Grace on the plea that a Spirit cannot hear words." <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<i><a href="https://archive.org/details/essepossecompari00brai/page/n141/mode/2up/search/misosophy?q=misosophy">Esse and Posse: A Comparison of Divine Eternal Laws and Powers</a></i> [London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1872], p. 252)</span><br />
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In 1880, the poet <a href="http://swinburnearchive.indiana.edu/swinburne/view#docId=swinburne/acs0000503-01.xml">Algernon Charles Swinburne</a> used the term in a dig at Carlyle. I can't resist quoting the whole intriguing passage:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Four principles of thought, we may say, are here impeached and impugned: a double enemy is assailed by the lover of faith and reason, love and hope, in the militant materialism of Papists and Positivists; by the lover of justice and mercy, humanity and freedom, in the Catholic philosophy of de Maistre and the Calvinistic <b>misosophy</b> of Carlyle. And if the sarcasms on theology seem to any reader more keen and violent than the satire on any other form of unbelief or infidelity to the truth as here conceived, he should remember that superstition with a lining of materialism is surely a worse thing than materialism stark naked; and that while it is palpably possible to be a materialist without being a Christian, it is implicitly impossible to be a Christian without being a materialist. <span style="font-size: x-small;">("Victor Hugo: <i>Religions et Religion</i>," <i>Fortnightly Review</i> no. 162 [June 1, 1880], p. 763)</span></blockquote>
WHEW! A few years later, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hayman_(educationist)">Henry Hayman</a> slaps the label on German pessimism, especially the thought of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer/">Schopenhauer</a> and <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/hartmann/">Hartmann</a>. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=fRgFAAAAQAAJ&dq=%22misosophy%22&pg=RA1-PA124#v=onepage&q=%22misosophy%22&f=false">"Pessimism," <i>The Churchman</i> No. 62 [November, 1884], pp. 113-125, at p. 124</a>)</span><br />
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In these late 19th-Century cases, the authors take themselves not to be introducing a new word when they use "misosophy," unlike some later authors. For example, the word was re-invented (or reconstructed from the ancient Greek roots) by the Congregationalist theologian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._T._Forsyth">Peter Taylor Forsyth</a> in 1915. He wrote, "Its Christianity has at heart always protested against its philosophy, or rather, if one may coin a word, its <b>misosophy</b>." <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://archive.org/details/methodistreview9753unse/page/n387/mode/2up">P. T. Forsyth, "Faith, Metaphysic, and Incarnation," <i>The Methodist Review</i> [September, 1915], p. 701</a>) </span><br />
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I cannot tell whether Gilbert Ryle thought he was coining a new term when he wrote the following: "A fraternity of persons of kindred credulities could only constitute a school of '<b>misosophy</b>'." <span style="font-size: xx-small;">('<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3746884">Taking Sides in Philosophy</a>,' <i>Philosophy</i> 12 [Jul., 1937]: 317-332, at 318-319)</span> His decision to flag the term with quotation marks suggests that he might have (thanks to Bernard Kobes for this observation).<br />
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<a href="https://www.giffordlectures.org/lecturers/seyyed-hossein-nasr">Seyyed Hossein Nasr </a>attributes the coinage of the word (or of its German equivalent) to Hermann Türck, a 19th-Century critic of Nietzsche. Here's Nasr:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The result has been the creation of philosophies which, from the traditional point of view, could only be called monstrous and which can only be characterized as what the German scholar H. Türck has called 'misosophy', that is, the hatred rather than love of wisdom and which others have considered as 'antiphilosophy'. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=IChnJl0Mu4sC&lpg=PA43&ots=Biz3TbWLBl&dq=Seyyed%20Hossein%20Nasr%20knowledge%20and%20the%20sacred%20%22misosophy%22&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q=Seyyed%20Hossein%20Nasr%20knowledge%20and%20the%20sacred%20%22misosophy%22&f=false">Seyyed Hossein Nasr, <i>Knowledge and the Sacred: Revisioning Academic Accountability</i>, State University of New York Press [19889], p. 43</a>)</span></blockquote>
Türck did this in <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=QI-dCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA461&dq=%22misosophie%22%20and%20%22t%C3%BCrck%22&pg=PA461#v=onepage&q=%22misosophie%22%20and%20%22t%C3%BCrck%22&f=false">applying the term to his opponents</a> (Nietzsche, Stirner, and Ibsen), contrasting these putative egoists with persons of true genius.<br />
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In <i><a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=-lpHMIbNdLEC&lpg=PA23&dq=%22gabriel%20marcel%22%20and%20%22misosophy%22&pg=PR4#v=onepage&q=%22gabriel%20marcel%22%20and%20%22misosophy%22&f=false">The Way of Phenomenology</a></i>, <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Pegasus [1970], p. 23, n. 4)</span> Richard M. Zaner credits <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcel/">Gabriel Marcel</a> with inventing the word. Zaner cites Marcel's book <i>Man against Mass Society</i>. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Regnery, [1952], trans. G. S. Fraser)</span> Marcel's book (<i>Les hommes contre l'humain</i>) appeared first in French in 1951. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(La Colombe)</span> Since the libraries are closed, I cannot find hard copies of Marcel's book (in translation or in the original French), so it is difficult to determine what Marcel wrote. Based on <a href="http://lonergan.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Persons.pdf">some</a> <a href="http://merton.org/ITMS/Seasonal/37/37-3Collins.pdf">web</a> <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=xnLoDQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA247&dq=civilization%20in%20which%20technical%20progress%20is%20tending%20to%20emancipate%20itself%20more%20and%20more%20from%20speculative%20knowledge%2C%20a%20civilization%20which%2C%20one%20may%20say%2C%20finally%20denies%20the%20place%20of%20contemplation%20and%20shuts%20out%20the%20very%20possibility%20of%20contemplation%2C%20such%20a%20civilization%2C%20I%20say%2C%20sets%20us%20inevitably%20on%20the%20road%20towards%20a%20philosophy%20which%20is%20not%20so%20much%20a%20love%20of%20wisdom%20as%20a%20hatred%20of%20wisdom%3A%20we%20ought%20rather%20to%20call%20it%20a%20misosophy.&pg=PA247#v=onepage&q=civilization%20in%20which%20technical%20progress%20is%20tending%20to%20emancipate%20itself%20more%20and%20more%20from%20speculative%20knowledge,%20a%20civilization%20which,%20one%20may%20say,%20finally%20denies%20the%20place%20of%20contemplation%20and%20shuts%20out%20the%20very%20possibility%20of%20contemplation,%20such%20a%20civilization,%20I%20say,%20sets%20us%20inevitably%20on%20the%20road%20towards%20a%20philosophy%20which%20is%20not%20so%20much%20a%20love%20of%20wisdom%20as%20a%20hatred%20of%20wisdom:%20we%20ought%20rather%20to%20call%20it%20a%20misosophy.&f=false">searching</a>, Marcel seems to have written (in G. S. Fraser's translation) of a<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
civilization in which technical progress is tending to emancipate itself more and more from speculative knowledge, and finally to question the traditional rights of speculative knowledge, a civilization which, one may say, finally denies the place of contemplation and shuts out the very possibility of contemplation, such a civilization, I say, sets us inevitably on the road towards a philosophy which is not so much a love of wisdom as a hatred of wisdom: we ought rather to call it a <b>misosophy</b>. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i>Man Against Mass Society</i>, p. 48)</span></blockquote>
Finally, there is <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/">Gilles Deleuze</a>'s remark in his 1968 book <i>Différence et répétition</i>: "Everything begins with misosophy." <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<i>Difference and Repetition</i>, trans. Paul Patton, Columbia University Press, [1994])</span><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a73N5IM3VcA" width="459">praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-16438301238028175552020-04-15T15:59:00.000-04:002020-04-15T20:25:11.160-04:00Byron's quarantine poem, another de-motivational postYesterday, I <a href="https://praymont.blogspot.com/2020/04/leibniz-in-quarantine.html">posted about Leibniz</a>'s uninspiring time in quarantine.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lord-byron">Byron</a>, too, seems to have derived little from the measure. Like many travelers in the Mediterranean of his day, Byron had to put in time at a quarantine station at Malta.<br />
<br />
On leaving the station, he dashed off a terrible poem called "<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=Y8gNAAAAQAAJ&lpg=PA239&ots=ye9TNJiewj&dq=byron%20%22farewell%20to%20malta%22&pg=PA239#v=onepage&q=byron%20%22farewell%20to%20malta%22&f=false">Farewell to Malta</a>" (May 26, 1811). Here's an excerpt:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Adieu, thou damned’st quarantine,<br />
That gave me fever, and the spleen!<br />
Adieu, that stage which makes us yawn, Sirs,<br />
Adieu, his Excellency’s dancers! ...<br />
And now, O Malta! since thou’st got us,<br />
Thou little military hothouse!<br />
I’ll not offend with words uncivil,<br />
And wish thee rudely at the Devil,<br />
But only stare from out my casement,<br />
And ask, for what is such a place meant?<br />
Then, in my solitary nook,<br />
Return to scribbling, or a book,<br />
Or take my physic while I’m able<br />
(Two spoonfuls hourly by the label),<br />
Prefer my nightcap to my beaver,<br />
And bless the gods I’ve got a fever.</blockquote>
Byron gave the poem to a ship's commander. According to the <i><a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9780230008977">Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Byron</a></i> <span style="font-size: x-small;">(M. Garrett, 2010)</span>, this poem "caused offence 'to all, but particularly' <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildebrand_Oakes">Major-General Hildebrand Oakes</a>, governor or commissioner of the island." <span style="font-size: x-small;">(p. 104)</span> Byron wrote of hearing that, "They are all, but particularly Oakes, in a pucker." <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<a href="https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/19386/lot/37/">Letter to Hobhouse, Nov. 3, 1811</a>)</span><br />
<br />
Byron kept no copy of the poem.praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-42931058906409361572020-04-14T21:24:00.000-04:002020-04-21T20:07:59.279-04:00Community in solitudeCatherine Malabou (2020):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We know that Karl Marx made fun of eighteenth-century robinsonades like Rousseau’s. Marx said that the origin of the social can by no means be a state of nature where isolated men finally come to meet and form a community. Solitude cannot be the origin of society. ... I think on the contrary that ... a suspension ... of sociality is sometimes the only access to alterity, a way to feel close to all the isolated people on Earth. <span style="font-size: x-small;">('<a href="https://critinq.wordpress.com/2020/03/23/to-quarantine-from-quarantine-rousseau-robinson-crusoe-and-i/">To Quarantine from Quarantine: Rousseau, Robinson Crusoe, and “I”</a>' [<i>In the Moment</i> blog, March 23, 2020])</span></blockquote>
Alone together. On a related note ...<br />
<br />
Thomas Clark (1666):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But being thus constrain’d to house-abode,<br />
And so withheld from following work abroad,<br />
Also of all things else almost bereft,<br />
This yet some solace was and comfort left,<br />
That though debarr’d Society with me,<br />
I still might have converse with Book and Pen: [...]<br />
And such good Books I had (though read before)<br />
I now found time enough to re-read o’re,<br />
With profit too (I hope) for Information,<br />
Which may conduce to practice[al] Conversation.<br />
This studious course, to which I was inclin’d,<br />
Diverted many sad thoughts from my mind<br />
And thereby did that saying versify,<br />
'When most alone, then least alone was I.'<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">("Meditations in my Confinement," <i><a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=ACOgCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT283&dq=thomas%20clark%20%22meditations%20in%20my%20confinement%22&pg=PT283#v=onepage&q=thomas%20clark%20%22meditations%20in%20my%20confinement%22&f=false">The Plague Epic in Early Modern England: Heroic Measures</a></i>, 1603–1721, ed. Rebecca Totaro)</span></blockquote>
Updated April 21, 2020: <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/04/21/numbering-the-dead/">Shannon Pufahl at the <i>NY Review Daily</i></a>: "Much of the future will be forged by the strange irony of our present moment: alone in our homes or tents or hospital beds, restricted from physical contact with one another, we are strangely and profoundly together. We are bound by a common experience in new, unprecedented, global numbers."<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2twY8YQYDBE" width="459"></iframe><br />praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-40213557013678858382020-04-14T16:51:00.001-04:002020-04-15T15:39:26.383-04:00Leibniz in quarantine, a de-motivational postWe've heard that <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-truth-about-isaac-newtons-productive-plague">Isaac Newton developed calculus while in quarantine</a>. It turns out that another calculus pioneer, Leibniz, was also in quarantine, but much later.<br />
<br />
In October, 1713, Leibniz was quarantined in Vienna "due to an incident of the plague in the apartment opposite to his" (Gango, 2015).<br />
<br />
What did Leibniz do with his time? He wrote letters lobbying to become the Chancellor of Transylvania. He didn't know or care much about Transylvania, but the post would have provided him with a salary and allowed him to live in Vienna. His bid for this post failed and <a href="http://hist.science.online.fr/storie/IERI/NewtonVoltaireEmilie/Newton%20vs_%20Leibniz.htm">Leibniz had to return to Hanover, where he died in 1716</a>.<br />
<br />
Source: Gabor Gango, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43818501">G. W. Leibniz's Candidature for the Chancellorship of Transylvania</a>, <i>Studia Leibnitiana</i>, 47 (2015): 44-66.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fZiRFp7uEPw" width="459"></iframe><br />praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-27228400995999813042020-04-11T14:17:00.001-04:002020-04-18T13:00:27.302-04:00Ultracrepidarian"Ultracrepidarian: someone who has no special knowledge of a subject but who expresses an opinion about it." (<a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ultracrepidarian?fbclid=IwAR0E-ZGrXbRf2E2uuiU3bAKYFN4_zzeLncgteb2p1KyxvKa91cSc8aOEGcI">Cambridge Dictionary</a>)<br />
<br />
A neat word coined by <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/PRhazlitt.htm">William</a> <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-etudes-anglaises-2013-1-page-46.htm#">Hazlitt</a>. I found these uses of it:<br />
<br />
1. "Like a conceited mechanic in a village alehouse, you would set down everyone who differs from you as an ignorant blockhead, and very fairly infer that anyone who is beneath yourself must be nothing. You have been well called an Ultra-Crepidarian critic." William Hazlitt, "<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=kn8sTKo9kGUC&dq=Like%20a%20conceited%20mechanic%20in%20a%20village%20alehouse%2C%20you%20would%20set%20down%20everyone%20who%20differs%20from%20you%20as%20an%20ignorant%20blockhead%2C%20and%20very%20fairly%20infer%20that%20anyone%20who%20is%20beneath%20yourself%20must%20be%20nothing.%20You%20have%20been%20well%20called%20an%20Ultra-Crepidarian%20critic%20hazlitt&pg=PA9#v=onepage&q=Like%20a%20conceited%20mechanic%20in%20a%20village%20alehouse,%20you%20would%20set%20down%20everyone%20who%20differs%20from%20you%20as%20an%20ignorant%20blockhead,%20and%20very%20fairly%20infer%20that%20anyone%20who%20is%20beneath%20yourself%20must%20be%20nothing.%20You%20have%20been%20well%20called%20an%20Ultra-Crepidarian%20critic%20hazlitt&f=false">Letter to William Gifford</a>" (1819)<br />
<br />
2. "In England excess in alcohol is responsible for only a very small proportion of cases of mental disease at all, in spite of ultracrepidarian views to the contrary." James R. Whitwell, <a href="https://search.proquest.com/openview/82c00c210c9ecafd/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=581">letter to <i>The English Review</i> (March, 1929)</a>. p. 249.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PZeDFwTcnCc" width="459"></iframe><br />
<br />
3. "The Oklahoma Senate does not like what Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson said about the National Guard but it refused yesterday to call him 'ultracrepidarian.' A resolution had been introduced accusing Wilson of 'gross and unwarranted insult' .... Senator J. R. Hall, a Democrat, introduced an amendment which would have inserted 'ultracrepidarian.'" <i>St. Louis Post-Dispatch</i> (Jan. 31, 1957): 1.<br />
<br />
4. "Now if Sino-Indo-European lexical comparison was just yet another drowsy backwater of the inveterate craze for ultracrepidarian transcontinental etymologizing, it would probably not even be justified to mention Ulenbrook's book in print." Wolfgang Behr, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1580497">Review of <i>Zum Alteurasischen. Eine Sprachvergleichung</i> by Jan Ulenbrook</a>, <i>Oriens</i> 36 (2001): 356-361, at 360.<br />
<br />
5. "Philosophers are good at answering broadly conceptual questions of the first sort. They are no better than anyone else at answering questions of the second sort, despite their ultracrepidarian tendencies." Dudley Knowles, "<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/23362623">Good Samaritans and Good Government</a>," <i>Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society</i> New Series 112 (2012): 161-178, at p. 161.<br />
<br />
6. "The FBI Hair Comparison Review does not seek to provide a precise and scientifically defensible estimate of the prevalence of ultracrepidarian testimony." David H. Kaye, "<a href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=2647430">Ultracrepidarianism in Forensic Science: The Hair Evidence Debacle</a>," <i>Washington and Lee Law Review</i> 72, no. 2 (2015): 230-257, at p. 247.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jVIUCflzUp0?t=96" width="459"></iframe><br />
<br />
The inspiration for Hazlitt's coinage seems to lie in <i><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plin.+Nat.+toc">Naturalis Historia</a></i> by <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Pliny_the_Elder/">Pliny the Elder</a>, in which a painter tells a shoemaker and wannabe art critic to stick to judging shoes. This episode in <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100331961">Pliny</a> gave rise to the Latin saying, "<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutor,_ne_ultra_crepidam?fbclid=IwAR2Af8tlUdsSfr4nhf6kmQwOUWixs5vC16xV-wmSlg7s8r7tgqhubst2WOI">Sutor, ne ultra crepidam</a></i>."<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e-P3pjPXrhc" width="459"></iframe><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">This post is derived from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/praymont/posts/10157944740570673">my Facebook post</a> of April 8. </span>praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-44941584261229656652020-01-26T01:22:00.000-05:002020-01-26T01:24:33.184-05:00Ronald Knox and Gestalt switchesHere's Mgr. <a href="http://doyouwriteunderyourownname.blogspot.com/2009/02/wine-of-certitude.html">Ronald Knox</a> using (in 1927) a visual-perception analogy to point out a change in belief that involves no new data but, instead, seeing old data in a new way:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[S]uddenly, when I’m thinking of something quite different, a game of patience, for example, I see the whole thing in a new mental perspective. It’s like the optical illusion of the tumbling cubes – you know, the pattern of cubes which looks concave to the eye; and then, by a readjustment of your mental focus, you suddenly see them as convex instead. What produces that change? Why, you catch sight of one particular angle in a new light, and from that you get your new mental picture of the whole pattern. Just so, one can stumble upon <i>a new mental perspective about a problem like this by suddenly seeing one single fact in a new light</i>. And then the whole problem rearranges itself. (emphasis added)</blockquote>
The passage appears in the first of <a href="https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Ronald_A._Knox">Knox</a>'s mystery novels to feature <a href="http://detecs.org/bredon.html">Miles Bredon</a>, <i><a href="https://mysteriesahoy.com/2018/05/23/the-three-taps-by-ronald-knox/">The Three</a> <a href="https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/knox-taps/knox-taps-00-t.txt">Taps</a></i> (1927). At the beginning of Ch. 25, Bredon says that when he's really stumped by a crime and continually hitting dead ends, he likes to get lost in a card game called '<a href="https://www.parlettgames.uk/histocs/patience.html">Patience</a>'. Absorption in the game facilitates a change in how he interprets the facts of the crime. The result seems to be not the taking in of any new facts, or data, but, rather, a new discovery or realization that emerges from seeing the facts in a new way. He sees one "fact in a new light," and then the related facts show up in a newly noticed "pattern."<br />
<br />
I believe the optical illusion to which Knox refers is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombille_tiling#Artistic_and_decorative_applications">reversible "cubes illusion</a>" (described in <a href="http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/warren_howard.html">Howard Crosby Warren</a>'s textbook, <i><a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=ByxVAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA262&redir_esc=y">Human Psychology</a></i> [1919, p. 262] - though I don't claim that this book was Knox's source).<br />
<br />
Post-war philosophers made similar use of another visual phenomenon, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology#Properties">gestalt</a> <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=5m5z_ca-qDkC&lpg=PA52&ots=a5EpIP567x&dq=benussi%20%22gestalt%20switch%22&pg=PA52#v=onepage&q=benussi%20%22gestalt%20switch%22&f=false">switch</a> (though they didn't all use that phrase).<br />
<br />
Wittgenstein reflects on gestalt switches in his discussions of aspect-seeing, using the example of <a href="https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~jfkihlstrom/JastrowDuck.htm">Jastrow's duck-rabbit</a> image, in his <i>Philosophical Investigations</i> (Part 2, sect. 11) and <i>Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology</i> (v. I, sect. 70). (Cf. <a href="https://www.roangelo.net/logwitt/gestalt-shift.html">Robert Angelo's page</a> on these Wittgensteinian passages.) Wittgenstein's reflections are focused on cases of visual perception, in which what one sees (a matrix of lines or dots) remains the same while what one sees (a duck or a rabbit) changes. In these cases, <i>the visual input remains constant while its interpretation or categorization varies</i>. (I don't attribute that characterization to Wittgenstein.)<br />
<br />
In the above quotation of Knox, <i>the input data remain constant while their interpretation varies</i>, where the former are the 'facts' of a criminal case. So, while Knox relies on an analogy with visual perception, the diversely interpreted inputs in his example are not limited to visual phenomena.<br />
<br />
There must be earlier examples of this idea (<i>same facts - different interpretation</i>).<br />
<br />
The first chapter of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwood_Russell_Hanson">N. R. Hanson</a>'s <i><a href="https://archive.org/details/PatternsOfDiscovery/page/n11">Patterns of Discovery</a></i> (1958) builds on Wittgenstein's reflections to illustrate the theory-laden nature of perception. Also, <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/s-change/#SSH3aii">Thomas</a> <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/#PercObseIncoWorlChan">Kuhn</a> used the example of gestalt switches in his characterization of a paradigm shift. In philosophy of religion, <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/wisdom/#H7">John Wisdom riffed on a similar theme</a> in his 'parable of the garden' in 'Gods' (1944), focusing on disagreements in which the parties <a href="http://www.ditext.com/hick/7.html">agree on the facts but interpret them differently</a>. Recently, <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=SzrSqZEtxugC&lpg=PA40&ots=bKnNA_4Ppv&dq=gestalt%20switch%20seeing%20the%20facts%20in%20a%20new%20way&pg=PA40#v=onepage&q=gestalt%20switch%20seeing%20the%20facts%20in%20a%20new%20way&f=false">Ray Monk</a> has applied the idea of gestalt shifts to the writing of biography.<br />
<br />
Did any of the gestalt psychologists or <a href="https://philarchive.org/rec/SMIGTA-2">philosophers</a> make something like Knox's point? Perhaps <a href="https://www.famouspsychologists.org/max-wertheimer/">Max Wertheimer</a> did in his book <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Wertheimer#Productive_thinking">Productive Thinking</a></i> (1945) -- I haven't read it yet.<br />
<br />
This notion (<i>same facts - different interpretation</i>) must have earlier examples. I expect some 19th-century German made the point. I'd appreciate any help in finding such sources.praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-61538851267281385502019-12-18T22:33:00.002-05:002019-12-22T00:42:00.025-05:00Towns in my history (part 2)I <a href="https://praymont.blogspot.com/2019/02/towns-in-my-history-part-1.html">posted about</a> my childhood home of Goderich, a town centred on a round 'Square'. At its hub, which was actually an octagon, the clean lines of an Art Deco courthouse cut right angles amid a gnarled host of old maple, chestnut, and elm trees.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO_G8AE24MrWGDu-fsZHvpzpztynTVKZlTePmXFCy4UX99xRXfxy_kp54j3HioaKjvmaVWlhd9PETMMA3KK_hJmsO3GGOihsFLMrLcz4WbyAoMkc0ZS1T3oRh_5ZwqTe321fQMSk0ghag/s1600/GoderichCourthouseSquare.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO_G8AE24MrWGDu-fsZHvpzpztynTVKZlTePmXFCy4UX99xRXfxy_kp54j3HioaKjvmaVWlhd9PETMMA3KK_hJmsO3GGOihsFLMrLcz4WbyAoMkc0ZS1T3oRh_5ZwqTe321fQMSk0ghag/s400/GoderichCourthouseSquare.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Square, Goderich.<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Source: <a href="http://civix.ca/resources/secondary-municipalities/">http://civix.ca/resources/secondary-municipalities/</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The courthouse wall that faced my street featured a clock above the central window, so that when I <a href="https://goo.gl/maps/hiNHsvCEA642">looked up the street from my front yard</a>, there they were: the law and correct time.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTxgPSUilgJmDPDOKv0ccUfG8zW3B-AYCBsijfL54cLN-2f9LLi7XzUX9ZoRe6a928hfib9Yf4FgF35KRHzLKeEt_wwJCwLIZLvZmxbMPO96Pvi9r7bE-C86Xxc5oinrCof5hoEQjBuhM/s1600/GoderichCourtHouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTxgPSUilgJmDPDOKv0ccUfG8zW3B-AYCBsijfL54cLN-2f9LLi7XzUX9ZoRe6a928hfib9Yf4FgF35KRHzLKeEt_wwJCwLIZLvZmxbMPO96Pvi9r7bE-C86Xxc5oinrCof5hoEQjBuhM/s400/GoderichCourtHouse.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Huron County Courthouse.<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Wikimedia Commons, Rjsbird287 CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Venturing the other way took one to another juristic octagon, the <a href="https://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/dfhd/page_nhs_eng.aspx?id=375">Huron</a> <a href="https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=12027&pid=0">County gaol</a>, an <a href="https://www.huroncountymuseum.ca/gaol/">honest-to-goodness</a> <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=kqyX39jx3gcC&lpg=PA83&ots=bqJmt-mSY_&dq=%22goderich%22%20bentham%20panopticon&pg=PA83#v=onepage&q=%22goderich%22%20bentham%20panopticon&f=false">Benthamite panopticon</a>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDPIy9Ex0mup7kYfkRV4cG5yyhQpfXjOFQve-m26gvG5Ri8vW9ZucPi_tTqEo4o07LZVpDy23NRNtKNqyJUCISnL1SuBvKLdw5hVEprbjxOI1qotGdjSK8PQYRLuCZc88DOxzNumy50lM/s1600/HuronGaolByBruceForsyth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDPIy9Ex0mup7kYfkRV4cG5yyhQpfXjOFQve-m26gvG5Ri8vW9ZucPi_tTqEo4o07LZVpDy23NRNtKNqyJUCISnL1SuBvKLdw5hVEprbjxOI1qotGdjSK8PQYRLuCZc88DOxzNumy50lM/s400/HuronGaolByBruceForsyth.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Huron County Gaol.<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo from <a href="https://militarybruce.com/if-these-walls-could-talk-historic-county-jails-offer-an-insight-into-the-past-of-crime-punishment/">Bruce Forsyth's page</a> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/</span></span></td></tr>
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The prominence of the octagon in the town's physiognomy has long fueled speculation, including this note in Goderich's <i>Downtown Core Master Plan</i>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The uncanny resemblance between the Goderich Gaol design and that of the Square may be mere coincidence, as may be the octagonal shape coinciding with the eight letters of the town’s name, or it may have been deliberate. Certainly an octagon is a very unusual shape for a town 'square' and has few precedents beyond a utopian town layout found in Northern Italy [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmanova">Palmanova</a>] and in unbuilt town designs from the Renaissance. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Town of Goderich, <i>Downtown Core Master Plan</i> [May 14, 2012], p. 6 n. 1)</span></blockquote>
These observations conjure a dystopian theme, setting Goderich in the ambit of an all-seeing authority. This motif may find an echo in the Calvinism of the area's settlers, but I won't pursue it. While the <a href="http://www.mysteryquests.ca/quests/05/support/3857en.html">region has</a> <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=P_6LPqFkHzkC&lpg=PA30&ots=4Xst3j0hIB&dq=%22huron%20county%22%20and%20%22black%20donnellys%22&pg=PA30#v=onepage&q=%22huron%20county%22%20and%20%22black%20donnellys%22&f=false">its dark</a> <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=cdGfDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT37&vq=goderich&pg=PT37#v=snippet&q=goderich&f=false">history</a>, <a href="https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/about/pubs/truscott/section2.php">including</a> the <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=er55_vN4EvkC&lpg=PT92&ots=7KBckEvtnH&dq=goderich%20%22truscott%22&pg=PT91#v=onepage&q=goderich%20%22truscott%22&f=false">miscarriage of justice </a><a href="https://militarybruce.com/case-not-closed-the-enduring-tragedy-of-the-harper-truscott-murder-case/">in the Truscott case</a>, this was before my brief time there. No overbearing authority loomed in my childhood experience of the place. By then, the <a href="https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/blog/article/371/">gaol</a> had already become a museum, and the courthouse seemed barely occupied, a place people visited to pay parking tickets (if they ever went there at all).praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-52647981189348434022019-12-14T14:35:00.001-05:002020-01-26T01:24:05.397-05:00Mgr Ronald Knox anticipating Popper's critique of psychoanalysisHere's a bit of 'found philosophy' in Monsignor <a href="https://catholicinsight.com/apologist-ronald-knox-remembered/">Ronald</a> <a href="http://www.transpositions.co.uk/ronnie-knox-the-priest-as-man-of-letters/">Arbuthnott</a> <a href="https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Ronald_A._Knox">Knox</a>'s first mystery novel, <i>The <a href="https://smsa.org.au/limelight/the-viaduct-murder-by-ronald-knox/">Viaduct</a> <a href="https://www.fantasticfiction.com/k/ronald-a-knox/viaduct-murder.htm">Murder</a></i> (1925):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If you’re out for [money], I should take to psycho-analysis. The system’s the same, generally speaking, only instead of dealing with primitive man, whom you can disregard because he isn’t there, you are dealing with a living man, who will probably tell you that you are a liar. Then you tell him that he is losing his temper, which is the sign of a strong inhibition somewhere, and that’s just what you were saying all along. <b>The beauty of psycho-analysis is that it’s all ‘Heads-I-win-tails-you-lose.’ In medicine, your diagnosis of fever is a trifle disconcerted if the patient’s temperature is sub-normal. In psychoanalysis you say, 'Ah, that just proves what I was saying.' </b>(Emphasis added)</blockquote>
The words are spoken by Gordon, one of the novel's quartet of amateur detectives, during his critique of his friend's too-clever-by-half theories about a murder (and just after denouncing anthropology).<br />
<br />
<a href="https://branemrys.blogspot.com/2013/08/ronald-knox.html">Knox</a> was <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/late-bloom">Penelope</a> <a href="https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/penelope-fitzgerald">Fitzgerald</a>'s uncle. Fitzgerald wrote about him in <i><a href="https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780007118304/the-knox-brothers/">The Knox</a></i> <i><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/may/27/featuresreviews.guardianreview29">Brothers</a></i>. There's also a <a href="https://archive.org/details/monsignorronaldk00waug/page/n9">biography</a> <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27657738">about</a> <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/06/the-last-great-homilist">Knox</a> by his friend, <a href="https://evelynwaughsociety.org/2017/ronald-knox-revival/">Evelyn Waugh</a>, and <a href="https://pims.ca/publication/isbn-978-0-88844-425-7/">another</a> by <a href="http://www.transpositions.co.uk/author/francesca-bugliani-knox/">Francesca Bugliani</a> <a href="http://ronaldknoxsociety.blogspot.com/2013/06/ronnie-knox-man-for-all-seasons.html">Knox</a>.<br />
<br />
In 2011, I <a href="https://praymont.blogspot.com/2011/01/seems-vaguely-popperian.html">noted George Eliot's anticipation</a> of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#PrimLiteWorkPopp">Popper</a>'s use of falsifiability as a mark of empirical science.praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-71420319227048180172019-02-22T13:06:00.000-05:002019-12-21T22:38:08.027-05:00Towns in my history (part 1)I was born after the first malls had opened, but they still confronted me as a deviation from the norm, which had been established for me by the traditional, downtown hub of <a href="http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/goderich/">Goderich</a>, Ontario. The town's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agora">ag</a><a href="https://www.academia.edu/17851885/Looking_at_public_space_-_the_Greek_agora_in_Hellenistic_and_Roman_times">ora</a> was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goderich,_Ontario#The_Square">the Square</a>, an area delimited by a road that (ignoring its name) follows the contour of an octagonal yard, in which stands the <a href="http://www.canadianlawyermag.com/legalfeeds/2183/courthouses-of-canada-huron-county-court-house.html">Huron County courthouse</a>. The <a href="https://www.goderich.ca/en/my-goderich/about-goderich.aspx">town</a>'s main shops and businesses lined the outer edge of the road. Our house was a short walk north of <a href="https://skyrisecities.com/news/2016/07/architrivia-goderich-town-square-rare-canadian-example-19th-century-urban-planning">the Square</a>, which I visited often with friends or on errands for my parents. At first, attempts to reconcile <a href="https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=7450">the Square</a>'s name and shape flabbergasted my juvenile mind, yet immersion in the local culture soon led me to accept the contradiction as something perfectly natural and puzzling to outsiders only.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUpBibkaeih676ajFNkc1i6gIWCXciwWtRlA647k1H7mBM_CWvEJd95sT_FKQQYBLB0K2MRy50Nr5Bd8W4xpE8E1lEd08M_5Tnnn5ru4Xl2UBWYfyxBQf5kZZLlmW_rzBJ6th2Q3MAZIo/s1600/21777-75211.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="587" data-original-width="1200" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUpBibkaeih676ajFNkc1i6gIWCXciwWtRlA647k1H7mBM_CWvEJd95sT_FKQQYBLB0K2MRy50Nr5Bd8W4xpE8E1lEd08M_5Tnnn5ru4Xl2UBWYfyxBQf5kZZLlmW_rzBJ6th2Q3MAZIo/s400/21777-75211.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Square (1920), <a href="https://skyrisecities.com/news/2016/07/architrivia-goderich-town-square-rare-canadian-example-19th-century-urban-planning">archival image</a></td></tr>
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The original courthouse, an Italianate structure completed in 1856, burned down in 1954.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGIzWp6jVJeHhSHtB_0LQZZ29PbQZtR8BxAOF3HVADVe4g1_lOYC4QUwsdTPTtEErNsFUML6oXGsU3bLlQWBzNZDvZJSn8BKppO3nxxuCafBCFP2qiuH-CqVi-sesCT7RrfLUEp3ApSag/s1600/Scan6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="695" data-original-width="1055" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGIzWp6jVJeHhSHtB_0LQZZ29PbQZtR8BxAOF3HVADVe4g1_lOYC4QUwsdTPTtEErNsFUML6oXGsU3bLlQWBzNZDvZJSn8BKppO3nxxuCafBCFP2qiuH-CqVi-sesCT7RrfLUEp3ApSag/s400/Scan6.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Huron County courthouse, before 1954 (postcard, Valentine and Sons United Publishing Co.)</td></tr>
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The courthouse yard's shape was set by the town's co-founder, <a href="https://www.lib.uoguelph.ca/find/find-type-resource/archival-special-collections/scottish-studies/john-galt-collection">John</a> <a href="http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/galt_john_7E.html">Galt</a>, impressed (as he was) by the insight of an ancient Roman planner, <a href="http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Vitruvius.html">Marcus Vitruvius Pollio</a>, <a href="http://books.google.ca/books?id=1zNNdADCYcAC&lpg=PA71&ots=zg25kVOMvg&dq=vitruvius%20urban%20planning&pg=PA74#v=onepage&q=%22acute-angled%22&f=false">whose idea it had been that polygonal sites are easier to defend</a> from attackers, such as the Visigoths (or the Americans on the other side of the lake).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisQhQOj83jxpCFA_GCiHxp_kpqXpGkP-ZQdp72ue8wmi6uc6MmG1Ebbg6SxFRBpGa_0uw5wOROYVrsDOim74TiYPi9uCNvtha0OLUEIe4fJ6uRwG4KWEGobintu4FxZuXx4c6sN1G9zaM/s1600/Goderich_Court_House_2012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="1600" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisQhQOj83jxpCFA_GCiHxp_kpqXpGkP-ZQdp72ue8wmi6uc6MmG1Ebbg6SxFRBpGa_0uw5wOROYVrsDOim74TiYPi9uCNvtha0OLUEIe4fJ6uRwG4KWEGobintu4FxZuXx4c6sN1G9zaM/s400/Goderich_Court_House_2012.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The new courthouse, built in 1954 (<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Goderich_Court_House_2012.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, JustSomePics [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)])</td></tr>
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One was continually meeting history in <a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/heritage-resources-centre/sites/ca.heritage-resources-centre/files/uploads/files/9%20Goderich%20Harbour%20CHL%20Study%20-%20May%204%2C%202010%20-%20FINAL.pdf">Goderich</a> -- in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huron_Historic_Gaol">old jail</a> (or '<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/booksandarts/jail-or-gaol-how-should-australia-spell-it/7532694">gaol</a>'), with <a href="https://www.huroncountymuseum.ca/i-know-where-the-bodies-are-buried-deaths-at-the-huron-jail/">its</a> <a href="https://canadiancorrections.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/25-December-1941-Turnkey-Kearwood-Kip-Wellington-White.pdf">legacy</a> <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=P_6LPqFkHzkC&lpg=PA30&ots=4Xst5p0gIG&dq=goderich%20gaol%20%22huron%20county%22%20and%20%22james%20donnelly%22&pg=PA30#v=onepage&q=goderich%20gaol%20%22huron%20county%22%20and%20%22james%20donnelly%22&f=false">of</a> <a href="http://www.executedtoday.com/2011/12/07/1869-nicholas-melady-the-last-public-hanging-in-canada/">violence</a>, in the lore about <a href="https://www.heritagetrust.on.ca/en/index.php/plaques/great-storm-of-1913">devastating</a> <a href="http://www.huroncountyhistoricalsociety.ca/hchs_news_and_events_1913_Great_Storm_Remembrance.html">storms</a> that had swept in from the lake, in the <a href="https://www.huroncountymuseum.ca/museum/">local museum</a> with its stuffed, two-headed calf and yard full of old artillery pieces, or in the <a href="http://ontariowarmemorials.blogspot.com/2012/08/goderich.html">war memorial</a> on the courthouse lawn.<br />
<br />
The most conspicuous history was a relic of the early-mid-19th century, when the place was designed and built as an outpost of the British Empire. The Empire loomed at practically every turn. Among the town's streets are these: Victoria St., Trafalgar St., Nelson St., Wellington St., Waterloo St., Wolfe St., Brock St., Elgin Ave. The commemorations said little of the Indigenous peoples who had lived there for millennia: <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/huron">the Wendat</a> (or <a href="https://www.wyandotte-nation.org/culture/history/published/native-peoples/">Wyandotte</a> [aka Hurons]), after whom the county was named, the <a href="http://archaeologymuseum.ca/the-attawandaron-discoveries/">Attiwandarons</a> of <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/neutral">the 'Neutral'</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_Nation">Confederacy</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississaugas">the Mississaugas</a>. They were largely gone from the town and its official, public memory.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.heritagetrust.on.ca/en/index.php/plaques/founding-of-goderich">Goderich</a>, like its environs in Huron and <a href="http://www.huronkinloss.com/huron.cfm">Bruce</a> Counties (<a href="http://thewalrus.ca/alice-in-borderland/">Alice</a>-<a href="http://canadiantourism.blogspot.ca/2013/10/alice-munros-nobel-prize-for-literature.html">Munro</a> <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1791/the-art-of-fiction-no-137-alice-munro">country</a>), was colonized mainly by <a href="http://www.windsorscottish.ca/menus.php?n=Scots%20in%20Canada">Scots</a>-Irish immigrants, some of whom had fled the <a href="http://www.sath.org.uk/edscot/www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotsandcanada/journeytoanewworld/highlandclearances/index.html">Highland</a> <a href="https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/scl/article/view/8156/9213">Clearances</a>. Both of Goderich's co-founders, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/5JLBCh6wZNTM4RF9cWtMwyt/john-galt">Galt</a> and <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=KwTOAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA184&ots=hIoXUP1y78&dq=india%20william%20tiger%20dunlop&pg=PA185#v=onepage&q=india%20william%20tiger%20dunlop&f=false">William</a> <a href="http://www.ontarioplaques.com/Plaques/Plaque_Huron13.html">'Tiger'</a> <a href="http://biographi.ca/en/bio/dunlop_william_7E.html">Dunlop</a>, were Scotsmen. <a href="http://canadianpoetry.org/volumes/vol6/draper.html">Dunlop</a> took his nickname from an earlier imperial adventure (<a href="https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC1878769&blobtype=pdf">when he had</a> <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n01/colin-munro/thus-were-the-british-defeated">tried to clear</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagar_Island">Saugor Island</a> in India of its tigers). He and Galt worked for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Company">Canada</a> <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=BLsfrDfyH98C&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Company</a>, the main function of which was to facilitate the movement of British and Irish settlers into the area.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR6Q106FBR6Efv_z1EtCxoCFHXCt6GvqsEQswUjdjOh2oWXReuL_593FPVfcmc8R0ZBVYir0TKk9xedb5k6nx4Xn0FNX6J6voXP4hLoMvMuAyVMtLIxLRAegwD11rSYwKvkrcAF8l00ig/s1600/Canada_company_arms.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="264" data-original-width="254" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR6Q106FBR6Efv_z1EtCxoCFHXCt6GvqsEQswUjdjOh2oWXReuL_593FPVfcmc8R0ZBVYir0TKk9xedb5k6nx4Xn0FNX6J6voXP4hLoMvMuAyVMtLIxLRAegwD11rSYwKvkrcAF8l00ig/s400/Canada_company_arms.jpg" width="384" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coat of Arms of the <a href="https://archive.org/stream/landsinuppercan00cana#mode/2up">Canada Company</a></td></tr>
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<br />praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-37205850122645960542018-01-10T21:48:00.001-05:002018-01-10T21:48:30.056-05:00Follow-ups on earlier posts<b>Follow-up 1</b>: Almost one year ago, I <a href="https://praymont.blogspot.ca/2016/01/analytic-philosophy-and-world-war-i.html">posted a list</a> of UK philosophers who were among the combatants in WWI. I've added another name to that list: <a href="https://www.leonroth.org/leon-roth">Leon</a> <a href="http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3493">Roth</a>, who served in the <a href="http://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/57216">Jewish Battalion</a> of the <a href="https://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/units/4852/royal-fusiliers-london-regiment/">Royal Fusiliers</a>. Like Rupert Clendon Lodge (see previous post), <a href="https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/products/88103">Roth</a> won Oxford's John Locke Scholarship in Mental Philosophy and taught at Manchester University before leaving England. Roth then taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.<br />
<br />
It's been easier to identify <a href="https://praymont.blogspot.ca/2016/04/french-and-central-european.html">French</a> or <a href="https://praymont.blogspot.ca/2016/02/fragments-on-wwi-and-philosophers.html">German</a> <a href="https://praymont.blogspot.ca/2016/01/analytic-philosophy-and-world-war-i.html">philosophers</a> who fought in WWI. I guess that's because France and Germany sent higher percentages of their male populations to one of the fronts, including many more middle-aged men, who were old enough to have begun a career in academic philosophy.<br />
<br />
<b>Follow-up 2</b>: In October, <a href="https://praymont.blogspot.ca/2017/10/caporetto.html">I posted a note on Caporetto</a>. Since then, <a href="https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/hemingway-hugh-dalton/">Mark Thompson has written in the <i>TLS</i> about Hemingway's sources</a> for descriptions of the battleground in <i>A Farewell to Arms</i>. <a href="http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/ambulance.htm">Other American writers who volunteered</a> for <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3031464">ambulance duty</a> in WWI include <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/Jpassos.htm">John Dos Passos</a> and E. E. Cummings. <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-ambulance-drivers-hemingway-and-dos-passos-rerouted-the-course-of-american-literature">John McGrath Morris has written</a> a book about Hemingway and Dos Passos: <i><a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/james-mcgrath-morris/the-ambulance-drivers/9780306823831/">The Ambulance Drivers</a></i>.<br />
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<b>Follow-up 3</b>: I ended <a href="https://praymont.blogspot.ca/2018/01/hegel-in-canada.html">my recent post on Hegel in Canada</a> with a note about <a href="http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rupert-clendon-lodge/">Rupert Clendon Lodge</a>. As I <a href="https://praymont.blogspot.ca/2016/09/critical-and-reflective-thinking-2.html">noted in 2016</a>, one of Lodge's undergrad students was <a href="http://mcluhansnewsciences.com/mcluhan/2017/07/the-comparative-method-of-rupert-lodge/">Marshall McLuhan</a>. Lodge also <a href="http://mcluhansnewsciences.com/mcluhan/2016/05/w-o-mitchell-on-rupert-lodge/">taught the novelist W. O.</a> <a href="http://www.ucalgary.ca/lib-old/SpecColl/mitchell/biocrit.htm">Mitchell</a>, <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=g3TpVzpupaUC&lpg=PA365&ots=LZWzDtrnja&dq=mitchell%20%22since%20daisy%20creek%22&pg=PA365#v=onepage&q=mitchell%20%22since%20daisy%20creek%22&f=false">who</a> <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=M4RN0jCrkpcC&lpg=PT205&ots=_wfeLJZI_i&dq=rupert%20lodge%20%22who%20has%20seen%20the%20wind%22&pg=PT205#v=onepage&q=rupert%20lodge%20%22who%20has%20seen%20the%20wind%22&f=false">based a character</a> (Dr. Lyons) partly on Lodge in <i><a href="http://www.womitchell.ca/summaries%20and%20reviews.htm#M&S Daisy Creek">Since Daisy</a></i> <i><a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=QtrNrg9lqm8C&lpg=PA249&ots=0V8km93GSz&dq=mitchell%20%22since%20daisy%20creek%22&pg=PA249#v=onepage&q=mitchell%20%22since%20daisy%20creek%22&f=false">Creek</a></i>. So, add this to my "<a href="https://praymont.blogspot.ca/search/label/PhilosophersInFiction">philosophers in fiction</a>" set of posts.<br />
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Also, while there's no Wikipedia entry for Rupert Clendon Lodge, his relatives are certainly well represented there. One of his uncles was a physicist, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Lodge">Sir Oliver Lodge</a>. Another uncle was a historian, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lodge">Sir Richard Lodge</a>. Rupert's aunt was also a historian, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Constance_Lodge">Eleanor Constance Lodge</a> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_British_Empire">CBE</a>). A third uncle was the mathematician <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lodge">Alfred Lodge</a>. Rupert's grand-uncle was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Lodge">Rev. Samuel Lodge</a>. Among Rupert's 1st-cousins were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Lodge">Alexander Lodge</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_W._F._Lodge">Oliver W. F. Lodge</a>. Still <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Lodge#Notable_relatives">more of his relatives</a> have Wiki entries.praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-85324989792033942562018-01-09T15:13:00.000-05:002019-01-01T22:30:15.756-05:00Hegel in CanadaI've been reading up on the history of Canadian philosophy. Anglo-Canadian academic philosophy was strongly influenced by British, particularly Scots, Hegelians. In 1994, <a href="https://www.archeion.ca/professor-john-william-burbidge-fonds">John</a> <a href="https://www.trentu.ca/philosophy/faculty-research/john-burbidge">Burbidge</a> published <a href="https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=owl&id=owl_1994_0025_0002_0215_0220">'Hegel in Canada'</a>, a short piece in which he documented Hegel's influence in Canada via <a href="http://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/biography/?id=WH17439&type=P">John</a> <a href="https://www.giffordlectures.org/lecturers/john-watson">Watson</a> (among others), a student of <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/caird/">Edward</a> <a href="https://www.giffordlectures.org/lecturers/edward-caird">Caird</a>'s who taught at <a href="http://www.queensu.ca/encyclopedia/w/watson-john">Queen's University</a> (Kingston, Ontario). According to Burbidge, <a href="http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/john-watson/">Watson</a> influenced the training of Presbyterian clergy at Queen's. <a href="http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/1994/02/canadas-hegel/">Here's another item</a> on Hegel and Canada; it's by sociologist David MacGregor.<br />
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A new collection of papers, <i><a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/hegel-and-canada-1">Hegel and Canada</a></i> (ed. Susan Dodd & Neil G. Robertson), will be released in 2018 by the University of Toronto Press.<br />
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In his paper on Watson's influence at Queen's, Burbidge quoted a line about 'seeing life clearly and seeing it whole'. He says that he had often heard these words during his Canadian upbringing, and he takes the phrase to be an especially apt characterization of an idealist outlook. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<b>Update</b> [Jan. 1, 2019]: 'The true is the whole' [Hegel, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/pinkard-translation-of-phenomenology.pdf"><i>The Phenomenology of Spirit</i>, 'Preface', trans. Terry Pinkard</a>, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phprefac.htm#m020">sec. 20</a> -- that last link is to the older trans. by J. B. Baillie].)</span><br />
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I have the impression that I've heard the line before but can't recall the context. A similar line was used by <a href="http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Charles_Prestwich_Scott">Charles Prestwich Scott</a>, an editor (and owner) of the <i>Manchester <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/international">Guardian</a></i>. Scott had said that '<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=oZVBDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA47&ots=EKR5pAfb3b&dq=prestwich%20scott%20%22see%20life%20steady%22&pg=PA47#v=onepage&q=prestwich%20scott%20%22see%20life%20steady%22&f=false">the function of a good newspaper and therefore of a good journalist is to see life steady and see it whole</a>'. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/18/books/l-seeing-life-steadily-and-seeing-it-whole-051632.html">Stephen C. Bandy pointed out</a> that essentially the same phrase was earlier used by <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/matthew-arnold">Matthew Arnold</a> in his poem <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/254/7.html">'To a friend'</a> (1849), where Arnold wrote of one who 'saw life steadily and saw it whole'. <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=bLWNM7MKeM0C&lpg=PA24&dq=idealism%20%22see%20life%20clearly%22&pg=PA24#v=onepage&q=idealism%20%22see%20life%20clearly%22&f=false">H. G. Wells used</a> similar wording in a discussion of Gissing in 1897. Probably, though, it was <a href="https://search.proquest.com/openview/aa35c257eb0e8d9058b3389a62622420/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1821427">Hamilton Wright</a> <a href="http://snac-web.iath.virginia.edu/index.php?command=view&constellationid=5383108">Mabie</a> who's responsible for the line's currency in Canada and for its association with idealism (in a loose, popular sense of that label). While largely forgotten now, Mabie published widely in popular American magazines. In his '<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=yGZZXIrbUKQC&lpg=PA255&ots=1WukFVMnsC&dq=idealism%20%22see%20life%20clearly%22&pg=PA255#v=onepage&q=idealism%20%22see%20life%20clearly%22&f=false">Interpretation of Idealism</a>' (<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=PJh6BAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA358&ots=cQik7TbyPP&dq=idealism%20hamilton%20wright%20mabie&pg=PA340#v=onepage&q=idealism%20hamilton%20wright%20mabie&f=false">1896</a>), <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Wright_Mabie">Mabie</a> valorized the idealist's attempt 'to see life clearly and to see it whole', by which he meant not just grasping given 'facts' (or data) but understanding them in context, or in relation to a larger whole.<br />
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Finally, one of the British idealists who moved to Canada was <a href="http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rupert-clendon-lodge/">Rupert</a> <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=Ijpj1tB3Qr0C&lpg=PA1496&dq=1926%20lodge%20%22american%20philosophical%20association%22&pg=PA1496#v=onepage&q=1926%20lodge%20%22american%20philosophical%20association%22&f=false">Clendon</a> <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=aqOvAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA582&dq=philosophy%20%22queen%27s%20university%22%20and%20%22rupert%20clendon%20lodge%22&pg=PA582#v=onepage&q=philosophy%20%22queen's%20university%22%20and%20%22rupert%20clendon%20lodge%22&f=false">Lodge</a> (1886-1961). He was influenced mainly by Bosanquet's version of idealism. <a href="https://www.pdcnet.org/collection/show?id=wcp17_1988_0004_0738_0744&file_type=pdf">Lodge</a> won Oxford's John Locke Scholarship in Mental Philosophy and taught at the University of Manchester before leaving England. He was visiting Germany on a scholarship when WWI began. He had to leave in a hurry. After fleeing Germany, he taught at the University of Minnesota. He bounced around between there and the University of Alberta before settling in at the University of Manitoba (in Winnipeg) in 1920, where he was appointed Professor of Logic and History of Philosophy and headed the philosophy department for almost thirty years. I've started a public <a href="https://www.ancestry.ca/family-tree/person/tree/118246895/person/390169925450/facts">page on Lodge</a> at Ancestry.com.praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-87489016593215122282017-10-11T02:58:00.001-04:002017-10-11T23:36:11.632-04:00CaporettoOne hundred years ago the terrible WWI <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/caporetto_battle_of">Battle of Caporetto</a> began (on Oct. 24). The battle was named for a town that is now in Slovenia (and is called '<a href="https://www.culture.si/en/Kobarid_Museum">Kobarid</a>' in Slovene) and that used to be in Yugoslavia, in Italy, in Austria-Hungary, etc.<br />
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Caporetto was the 12th Battle of the Isonzo, the last in <a href="http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/isonzo.htm">a series </a>of costly and generally <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/isonzo_battles_of">poorly planned attacks</a> in <a href="http://geographical.co.uk/places/mountains/item/955-isonzo-a-brutal-first-world-war-front">difficult mountain</a> <a href="http://mashable.com/2016/11/27/wwi-italian-front/#_Vp6C21ZFkq2">terrain</a>.<br />
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It was a cataclysmic defeat for the Italians that nearly knocked them out of the War. In the cultural memory, what the Somme is for the British and Canadians, and what Verdun is for the French and Germans, Caporetto is for the Italians. Technically, while Italy lost at Caporetto, the British won the Somme and the French won at Verdun, but these last two battles nonetheless signify for all parties involved the War's senselessness and catastrophic waste.<br />
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One of the young men on the Italian side of this battle was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_XXIII#Priesthood">Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli</a> (aka <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=0p6CAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA72&ots=UIwMpJIkbJ&dq=pope%20john%20angelo%20roncalli%20isonzo&pg=PA72#v=onepage&q=pope%20john%20angelo%20roncalli%20isonzo&f=false">Pope John XXIII</a>), who was a chaplain (according to <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_XXIII.#Priester.2C_Professor_und_Milit.C3.A4rkaplan">his German <i>Wikipedia</i> entry</a>). Among the Italian soldiers to be killed at <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/most-treacherous-battle-world-war-i-italian-mountains-180959076/">Caporetto</a> was the mathematician <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenio_Elia_Levi">Eugenio</a> <a href="http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Levi_Eugenio.html">Elia</a> <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40329-015-0082-4">Levi</a>.<br />
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Like other major WWI engagements, Caporetto's cultural ramifications reverberated for many years after the War and include important literary works by people who were swept up in the battle or its aftermath. In English there's <a href="http://cambridgeforecast.org/blog2/2011/03/04/hemingway-and-the-battle-of-caporetto-a-farewell-to-arms/">Hemingway</a>'s <i><a href="https://archive.org/details/farewelltoarms01hemi">A Farewell to Arms</a></i>, which describes the Italian retreat and derives partly from the author's experiences with a volunteer ambulance service in Italy about six months after Caporetto.<br />
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In Italian, there's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curzio_Malaparte">Curzio Malaparte</a>'s <a href="https://www.lesbelleslettres.com/livre/2537-viva-caporetto"><i>Viva Caporetto!</i></a> (for which I can't find an English trans.). <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilio_Lussu">Emilio Lussu</a>'s memoir, <i><a href="https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_anno_sull%27Altipiano">Un anno sull'Altipiano</a></i>, covers the battle and has been translated into English (as <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/reviews/soldier-southern-front"><i>A Soldier on the Southern Front</i></a>). Novelist and engineer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Emilio_Gadda">Carlo Emilio Gadda</a> was taken prisoner at Caporetto, an experience which he describes in his <i><a href="http://www.altritaliani.net/spip.php?article2054">Giornale di guerra e di prigionia</a></i> (or <i><a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=3uq0bObScHMC&lpg=PA528&ots=dJvdwwRQNz&dq=gadda%20war%20diary&pg=PA528#v=onepage&q=gadda%20war%20diary&f=false">War and</a> </i><i><a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=zQ2-0xUXHnYC&lpg=PA20&ots=naqCu4WZpq&dq=gadda%20war%20diary&pg=PA21#v=onepage&q=gadda%20war%20diary&f=false">Prison Diary</a></i>, unavailable in English). While a POW, Gadda befriended two other literary prisoners from Caporetto, <a href="http://biography.yourdictionary.com/ugo-betti">Ugo</a> <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095502833">Betti</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonaventura_Tecchi">Bonaventura Tecchi</a>. I don't know if these last two authors published anything explicitly about their WWI experiences.<br />
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<a href="https://www.ttbook.org/people/umberto-rossi">Umberto Rossi</a> has written about <a href="https://www.academia.edu/17778245/Broken_Images_of_a_Defeat_Gadda_Comisso_Malaparte_and_the_Rout_of_Caporetto">Caporetto's traces</a> in Italian literary culture.<br />
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<a href="http://www.raiscuola.rai.it/articoli/caporetto-un-bilancio/28756/default.aspx">Rai has a short video about the battle</a>.<br />
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The Italians faced an attacking force of Germans and Austro-Hungarians. <a href="http://michaeltfassbender.com/nonfiction/the-world-wars/battles-and-campaigns/rommel-at-caporetto-1917/">Erwin</a> <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/GERrommel.htm">Rommel</a> led part of the German group. The Hapsburg troops included many <a href="http://www.100letprve.si/en/world_war_1/slovenes_and_world_war_i/">Slovenes</a>, Croatians, Bosnian Muslims, and Hungarians. Among the Hapsburg officers at Caporetto were <a href="https://mises.org/library/mises-wartime#3">Ludwig von Mises</a> and the composer <a href="http://orelfoundation.org/index.php/composers/article/viktor_ullmann/">Viktor</a> <a href="http://wikivisually.com/lang-it/wiki/Viktor_Ullmann">Ullmann</a>, who survived WWI but was murdered at Auschwitz Oct. 18, 1944.praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-62750061718408184162017-10-07T11:51:00.000-04:002017-10-07T11:51:47.911-04:00Philosophy of/in Literature links<a href="http://lithub.com/joanna-kavenna-champion-of-the-contemporary-philosophical-novel/">Nicole Im interviews philosophical novelist Joanna Kavenna</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://glasgowreviewofbooks.com/2016/08/18/ana-blandiana-and-holderlins-eternal-question/">Viorica Patea on <span style="color: black;">'Ana Blandiana and Hölderlin</span></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://glasgowreviewofbooks.com/2016/08/18/ana-blandiana-and-holderlins-eternal-question/">'s Eternal Question'</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><a href="https://daily.jstor.org/jane-austen-and-the-value-of-flaws/">Erin Blakemore on 'Jane Austen and the Value of Flaws'</a>. </span><br />
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<a href="http://languagegoesonholiday.blogspot.ca/2017/09/war-and-peace-and-wittgenstein.html">Duncan Richter on '<i>War and Peace</i> and Wittgenstein'</a>. From 2015, <a href="http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/thinking-tolstoy-and-wittgenstein-1">Henry W. Pickford's book <i>Thinking with Tolstoy and Wittgenstein: Expression, Emotion, and Art</i></a>.<br />
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<a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/article/628754">Danièle Moyal-Sharrock on 'Wittgenstein and Leavis: Literature and the Enactment of the Ethical'</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/12843/12161">'Showing and Saying: An Aesthetic Difference' by Vicente Sanfélix Vidarte</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://edmooneyblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/melvilles-moby-dick-between-philosophy-and-literature/">E. F. Mooney on 'Melville’s <i>Moby Dick</i>: Between Philosophy and Literature'</a>.<br />
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From 2013, <a href="https://edmooneyblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/14/philosophical-style-lyricism-intimacy/">a conversation between E. F. Mooney and Dean Dettloff on 'Philosophical Style, Lyricism, Intimacy'</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/11/10/kierkegaards-rebellion/">Peter E. Gordon reviews Daphne Hampson's <i>Kierkegaard: Exposition and Critique</i></a>.</div>
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<a href="https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/montaigne-life-essays/">Patrick J. Murray reviews recent books on Montaigne</a>. </div>
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<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/142959/theres-new-literary-celebrity-town-name-baruch-spinoza">Josephine Livingstone on</a> Rachel <a href="http://www.omnivoracious.com/2017/06/rachel-kadish-historical-fiction-amazon-book-review.html">Kadish</a>'s <i>Weight of Ink</i>. </div>
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The <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/36584">latest issue of <i>Philosophy of Literature</i></a> has a symposium on "Literature and Moral Vision" (paywall).praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-21803580184914970172017-10-01T22:37:00.002-04:002017-10-01T22:37:38.085-04:00Annus horribilis!Well, that was a horrible year.<br />
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My father died. I was hospitalized with congestive heart failure. My mother-in-law died. Other bad things happened.<br />
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I look forward to posting again, starting with some link lists.praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-8485825088478535672016-10-30T21:31:00.000-04:002016-10-30T21:31:14.132-04:00Sundry items making no coherent wholeI've added content to the following old posts:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://praymont.blogspot.ca/2016/08/americas-critical-thinking-movement-in.html">America's Critical-Thinking Movement in the 1930s & '40s</a></li>
<li><a href="http://praymont.blogspot.ca/2015/05/some-quotations-on-facts.html">Some quotations on facts</a></li>
<li><a href="http://praymont.blogspot.ca/2016/08/john-albert-chadwick-wwi-vet-who-left.html">John Albert Chadwick, WWI vet who left Cambridge logic for an Ashram</a></li>
</ul>
These old lines by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/30/us/mike-royko-the-voice-of-the-working-class-dies-at-64.html">Mike Royko</a> seem timely:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I always believed that being a Cubs fan built strong
character. It taught a person that <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=MreWK-fxwzMC&lpg=PA36&ots=6oio7NbVGF&dq=I%20always%20believed%20that%20being%20a%20Cubs%20fan%20built%20strong%20character.%20It%20taught%20a%20person%20that%20if%20you%20try%20hard%20enough%20and%20long%20enough%2C%20you%27ll%20still%20lose.%20And%20that%27s%20the%20story%20of%20life.&pg=PA36#v=onepage&q=I%20always%20believed%20that%20being%20a%20Cubs%20fan%20built%20strong%20character.%20It%20taught%20a%20person%20that%20if%20you%20try%20hard%20enough%20and%20long%20enough,%20you%27ll%20still%20lose.%20And%20that%27s%20the%20story%20of%20life.&f=false">if you try hard enough and long enough, you'll still lose.</a> And that's the story of life. .... [a year later] Being a
Cub Fan prepares you for life because everyone in life winds up a loser.
Just check the cemetery. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Royko, 'A Farewell to Cubs' April 20, 1980, and 'When Ya Gotta Go' April 9, <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=MreWK-fxwzMC&lpg=PA36&dq=I%20always%20believed%20that%20being%20a%20Cubs%20fan%20built%20strong%20character.%20It%20taught%20a%20person%20that%20if%20you%20try%20hard%20enough%20and%20long%20enough%2C%20you%27ll%20still%20lose.%20And%20that%27s%20the%20story%20of%20life.%22&pg=PA36#v=onepage&q=cemetery&f=false">1981</a>, rpt. in <i>For the Love of Mike: More of the Best by Mike Royko</i> [University of Chicago Press, 2001], p. 35 & p. 40)</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2371576761/">Leonard Nimoy explains the Spock pinch</a> (the link is to the video for a 1969 CBC interview).<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160718-ten-lost-books-you-should-read-now">BBC's list of 10 'lost' books worth our time</a>.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/03/top-10-philosophers-fictions">The <i>Guardian</i>'s 'top 10 philosopher's fictions'</a>.<br />
<br />
Pardon my crooked scanning of this image:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkIa7YSDY4ybg8urZy_sVAa10D0D_o8tgTIENwbUqtRT4nRtzG4mqfZt-uW8EyOHkBNpxldruk5sgf9qvThLd3oJ8Mrc8Fx9mxzT4aXU6tjh9sNmJ-qf7GfzrnhG4h17IN6Pz57XTzho0/s1600/img491.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkIa7YSDY4ybg8urZy_sVAa10D0D_o8tgTIENwbUqtRT4nRtzG4mqfZt-uW8EyOHkBNpxldruk5sgf9qvThLd3oJ8Mrc8Fx9mxzT4aXU6tjh9sNmJ-qf7GfzrnhG4h17IN6Pz57XTzho0/s400/img491.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New Words in 1919 (from <i>The New Republic</i>, Oct. 1, 1919)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Hermann Broch (c. 1939-1948): 'When living in a twilight haze, one cannot distinguish between the conditions of nature and those of culture. One's attitude towards culture, then, resembles that of animals towards nature.'* <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<i>Hermann Broch Massenwahntheorie: Beitrage zu einer Psychologie der Politik</i>, ed. Paul Michael Lützeler, [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1979], p. 69; trans. of 1st sentence: Stefan Andriopoulos, <i>Possessed</i>, trans. author & Peter Jansen [University of Chicago Press, 2008], n. 456)</span><br />
<br />
Roland Barthes (1984): '<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=qj_Qe3aaItUC&lpg=PA65&ots=FyZOtZqIXH&dq=barthes%20%22myth%20consists%20in%20turning%20culture%20into%20nature%22&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q=barthes%20%22myth%20consists%20in%20turning%20culture%20into%20nature%22&f=false">Myth consists in turning culture into nature</a>, or at least turning the social, the cultural, the historical into "the natural".' <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Barthes, in <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520066298"><i>The Rustle of Language</i></a>, trans. Richard Howard, [NY: Hill & Wang, 1986; 1st published in French in 1984], p. 65)</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0016%2FBROAD">C. D. Broad</a> (1954):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[Aunt Julia's] cat for a great many years was a large tom, whom even I (who am inclined to be weak about cats) must admit to have been ugly, greedy, lecherous, and lacking in affection. She lavished good food on him .... She had named him <i>Urijah</i> .... Urijah survived his mistress for several years. He was treated with the same marked generosity by my cousin Ernest, who surely cannot have approved of his character, and died in extreme and unlovely old age. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Broad, 'Autobiography', <i>The Philosophy of C. D. Broad</i>, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp [NY: Tudor Publishing Company, 1959], p. 20)</span></blockquote>
James Lees-Milne (1942): '... Ronnie Norman, the eternal handsome schoolboy, noisily loquacious until
he finds the conclusion to an argument, when he stops like an unwound
clock.' <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(James Lees-Milne, <i>Diaries, 1942-1954</i>, ed. Michael Bloch, entry for Jan 12, 1942)</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/the-indiscreet-charm-of-beryl-bainbridge/">The 'Indiscreet charm of Beryl Bainbridge' by Philip Hensher</a>.<br />
<br />
Beryl Bainbridge in <i>Coronation Street</i>: <br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oKJHxUYhxqU" width="459"></iframe><br />
<br />
* Broch's above-quoted remarks in German: '<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=t3BTCwAAQBAJ&lpg=RA5-PA69&ots=rdPGd0PyZO&dq=Wenn%20der%20Mensch%20sich%20im%20D%C3%A4mmerzustand%20befindet%2C%20kann%20er%20nicht%20zwischen%20den%20Gegebenheiten%20von%20Natur%20und%20Kultur%20unterscheiden.%20Seine%20Einstellung%20gegenuber%20der%20Kultur%20ahnelt%20dann%20der%20des%20Tieres%20gegenuber%20der%20Natur.&pg=RA5-PA69#v=onepage&q=Wenn%20der%20Mensch%20sich%20im%20D%C3%A4mmerzustand%20befindet,%20kann%20er%20nicht%20zwischen%20den%20Gegebenheiten%20von%20Natur%20und%20Kultur%20unterscheiden.%20Seine%20Einstellung%20gegenuber%20der%20Kultur%20ahnelt%20dann%20der%20des%20Tieres%20gegenuber%20der%20Natur.&f=false">Wenn
der Mensch sich im Dämmerzustand befindet, kann er nicht zwischen den
Gegebenheiten von Natur und Kultur unterscheiden. Seine Einstellung
gegenuber der Kultur ahnelt dann der des Tieres gegenuber der Natur</a>.'praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5294547523454259081.post-27262145800221098222016-10-16T06:46:00.000-04:002017-03-19T19:05:37.999-04:00Did an Oxford-comma error lead the press to overstate British gains at the Battle of Loos?<a href="http://www.poynter.org/2014/ap-style-should-adopt-the-oxford-comma/256443/">Debate</a> <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/33637/best-shots-fired-oxford-comma-wars">has</a> <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/486965">long</a> <a href="http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/31886/the-comma-that-launched-a-thousand-ships-clean.html">raged</a> <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2011/06/30/137525211/going-going-and-gone-no-the-oxford-comma-is-safe-for-now">about</a> <a href="http://www.monash.edu/about/editorialstyle/editing/punctuation#commas">use</a> <a href="http://afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/faqs-on-style-2/">of</a> <a href="http://www.adamsdrafting.com/the-serial-comma-can-cause-ambiguity/">the</a> <a href="http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/01/video-oxford-comma/">Oxford</a> <a href="https://pwrites.princeton.edu/2016/01/28/defining-understanding-and-using-the-serial-comma/">comma</a> (<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=hmbiCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA172&ots=BuZ4XaiDQF&dq=serial%20comma%20republican%20taxes&pg=PA173#v=onepage&q=serial%20comma%20republican%20taxes&f=false">aka</a> the <a href="http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/04/using-serial-commas.html">serial comma</a>). <a href="https://ooligan.pdx.edu/funny-usage-the-oxford-comma/">This troubling comma</a> has <a href="https://twitter.com/iamoxfordcomma">its own Twitter feed</a>, and it can be <a href="http://mariebuckley.com/lets-get-serious-about-the-serial-comma/">crucial</a> <a href="http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/criminal/articles/spring2015-0315-serial-comma-interpreting-criminal-statutes.html">for interpreting laws</a>. [<b>Update March 19, 2017</b>: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html">Here's a more recent example of a legal case</a> involving the controversial comma.]<br />
<br />
I was raised in accordance with <a href="http://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2source?lang=eng&srchtxt=THE%20CANADIAN%20STYLE%20GUIDE%20TO%20WRITING%20AND%20EDITING&i=1&index=alt&src_id=S-2-158E1985,SRCL110891303&rlang=en&titl=The%20Canadian%20Style%3A%20A%20Guide%20to%20Writing%20and%20Editing&fchrcrdnm=1#resultrecs">The Canadian Style</a>, which includes <a href="http://www.bt-tb.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/btb.php?lang=eng&cont=1431">the Government's of Canada's recommendation not to bother</a> with the serial comma unless it is required for resolving an ambiguity. Some have called any wider use of the serial comma <a href="http://ext-marketing.com/marketing-articles/the-serial-comma/">unCanadian</a>. Indeed, it is said to be <a href="https://editex.com/avoiding-americanisms-when-using-australianbritish-english/">unAustralian</a> and <a href="http://www.gsbe.co.uk/grammar-commas-and-full-stops.html#commas:%20the%20serial%20comma%201">unBritish</a>, too (despite its Oxford pedigree). It is reputed to be an American thing. <br />
<br />
I found an antecedent of the Government of Canada's advice in an Ontario high-school textbook from the 1920s. The book is called <a href="https://archive.org/details/highschoolenglis00irwi"><i>High-School English Composition</i></a>. <sup><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(H. W. Irwin and J. F. van Every [Toronto: The Copp Clark Company, 1921, rpt. 1929])</span></sup> The authors say that the serial comma should be used only when necessary. To exemplify its capacity to alter one's meaning, they give this example:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
During the Great War, when the British troops were engaged in a critical struggle with the Germans for the possession of Hill 70, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_French,_1st_Earl_of_Ypres">General French</a> sent the following message to England: 'We captured the western outskirts of Bulluch [<i>sic.</i>, should be Hulluch], the village of Loos, and the mining works around it and Hill 70.' By an error, the message was made to read: 'We captured the western outskirts of [H]ulluch, the village of Loos, and the mining works around it, and Hill 70.' The insertion of the comma after 'it' conveyed the impression that Hill 70 had been captured. In consequence, public celebrations and rejoicings were held in all parts of the country. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://archive.org/stream/highschoolenglis00irwi#page/198/mode/2up">pp. 199-200</a>)</span></blockquote>
It's difficult to find much by way of corroboration for this tale, and the putative celebrations sound far-fetched. Still, the sentence that implies the taking of Hill 70 (and <a href="https://collections.westbeyondthewest.ca/uploads/r/terrace-public-library/0/d/0dbaae375d3a4dac42e6397dc98f1034d92a567a574226b70c047d72ac201e3b/OMh-08-00-10011915.pdf">close</a> <a href="http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/ref/collection/daily_star/id/2381">re-phrasings</a> of it) <a href="http://tablet.archive.netcopy.co.uk/article/2nd-october-1915/1/chronicle-of-the-week">did appear in newspapers on Sept. 27, 1915 and shortly thereafter</a>. On Oct. 16, 1915, <a href="http://nyti.ms/2e882WL">the <i>New York Times</i> (p. 2) quotes</a> a passage from the British <i>Daily News</i> under the headline, 'War Office Official Gives Evasive Answers When Questioned', according to which the Under Secretary for War had tried to clarify matters by saying:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There has been a misunderstanding on this point. The message from <a href="http://www.westernfrontassociation.com/the-great-war/great-war-on-land/battles-of-the-month/5091-the-battle-of-loos-the-dismissal-of-field-marshal-sir-john-french.html">Sir John French</a>, which was published in the papers of Sept. 27, stated that we had captured the western outskirts of Hulluch village, Loos and the mining works around it and Hill 70. This was been [sic.] read to mean that Hill 70 had been taken. If the words were correctly read it would be seen that the capture only of the mining works around Hill 70 was claimed.</blockquote>
praymonthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799593980838361293noreply@blogger.com0