The impulsive creator of "overgrown forests" of music might seem a more powerful and more important and more rugged fellow. Speaking for myself, I am bored with undisciplined talent. The intertwining vines and aimless vegetation that spring from careless genius are of little use to a world which suffers from obscurity, and not from too much clarity. Life is so short that no musician has the right to expect any appreciable number of people to devote any appreciable part of their listening lives to the wild free notes that dribble from his talent but casual fingers. A large number of musical compositions, a large number of grand operas and light operas, are too long, too carelessly put together, and fail for this reason. They are not above the heads of the public. They are just not worthy of the public because the creative artist involved has been too self-indulgent actually to finish off his job.
Oscar Hammerstein II
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Works Cited
Never will we know his fabulous head
where the eyes' apples slowly ripened. Yet
his torso glows: a candelabrum set
before his gaze which is pushed back and hid,
restrained and shining. Else the curving breast
could not thus blind you, nor through the soft turn
of the loins could this smile easily have passed
into the bright groins where the genitals burned.
Else stood this stone a fragment and defaced,
with lucent body from the shoulders falling,
too short, not gleaming like a lion's fell;
nor would this star have shaken the shackles off,
bursting with light, until there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
Rilke, Torso of an Archaic Apollo
where the eyes' apples slowly ripened. Yet
his torso glows: a candelabrum set
before his gaze which is pushed back and hid,
restrained and shining. Else the curving breast
could not thus blind you, nor through the soft turn
of the loins could this smile easily have passed
into the bright groins where the genitals burned.
Else stood this stone a fragment and defaced,
with lucent body from the shoulders falling,
too short, not gleaming like a lion's fell;
nor would this star have shaken the shackles off,
bursting with light, until there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
Rilke, Torso of an Archaic Apollo
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Works Cited
The sort of [ethical] non-naturalism that I find appealing is one that bears a very close structural parallel to certain non-reductionist theories in the philosophy of mind. According to these latter views, mental properties are not identical to physical ones; mental facts are not physical facts; but mental properties are realized by instantiations of physical properties. At least in worlds relevantly close to ours, there would be no mental life without the physical stuff that constitutes it.
For purposes of making a comparison with the ethical realm, there are three important features of this type of non-reductionist approach in the philosophy of mind: (1) it captures our convictions about the non-identity of mental and physical properties; (2) it is not ontologically extravagant; (3) it emphasizes a supervenience relation that obtains between the mental and the physical. Each of these three features has a natural correlate in the moral domain.
Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence
For purposes of making a comparison with the ethical realm, there are three important features of this type of non-reductionist approach in the philosophy of mind: (1) it captures our convictions about the non-identity of mental and physical properties; (2) it is not ontologically extravagant; (3) it emphasizes a supervenience relation that obtains between the mental and the physical. Each of these three features has a natural correlate in the moral domain.
Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Works Cited
For an extreme example, those neurons of the cerebellum known as Purkinje cells have about 80,000 excitatory synpatic endings.
__________________________
The second point is that, at least in my own opinion, parallel classical computation is very unlikely to hold the key to what is going on with our conscious thinking. A characteristic feature of conscious thought (at least when one is in a normal psychological state, and not the subject of a 'split-brain' operation!) is its 'oneness'--as opposed to a great many independent activities going on at once.
__________________________
Suppose that a photon arrives at the retina, having been previously reflected off a half-silvered mirror. Its state involves a complex linear superposition of its striking a retinal cell and of its not striking a retinal cell and instead, say, travelling out of the window into space. When the time is reached at which it might have struck the retina, and so long as the linear rule U of quantum theory holds true (i.e. deterministic Schroedinger state-vector evolution...), we can have a complex linear superposition of a nerve signal and not a nerve signal. While this impinges upon the subject's consciousness, only one of these two alternatives is perceived to take place, and the other quantum procedure R (state-vector reduction...) must have been effected... Thus, according to the viewpoint I have been putting forward, the procedure R could have been already effected well before we perceive the flash of light, or not, as the case may be. On this viewpoint, our consciousness is not needed in order to reduce the state-vector!
___________________________
...consider the ruthless process of natural selection. View this process in the light of the fact that, as we have seen in the last chapter, not all of the activity of the brain is directly accessible to consciousness. Indeed, the 'older' cerebellum--with its vast superiority in local density of neurons--seems to carry out very complex actions without consciousness being directly involved at all. Yet Nature has chosen to evolve sentient beings like ourselves, rather than to remain content with creatures that might carry on under the direction of totally unconscious control mechanisms. If consciousness serves no selective purpose, why did Nature go to the trouble to evolve conscious brains when non-sentient 'automaton' brains like cerebella would seem to have done just as well?
...why should natural selection bother to favour such a race of individuals, when surely the relentless free market of the jungle should have rooted out such useless nonsense long ago!
___________________________
One view that I have heard expressed is that awareness might be of an advantage to a predator in trying to guess what its prey would be likely to do next by 'putting itself in the place' of that prey. By imagining itself to be the prey, it could gain an advantage over it.
It may well be that there is some partial truth in this idea, but I am left very uneasy by it. In the first place, it supposes some pre-existing consciousness on the part of the prey itself, for it would hardly be helpful to imagine oneself to 'be' an automaton, since an automaton--by definition unconscious--is not something that is possible to 'be' at all!...
The idea alluded to above seems to relate to a point of view about consciousness that one often hears put forward, namely that a system would be 'aware' of something if it has a model of that thing within itself, and that it becomes 'self-aware when it has a model of itself within itself... Despite the claims that seem to be frequently made, the real issues concerning awareness and self-awareness are, in my opinion, hardly being touched by considerations of this kind. A video-camera has no awareness of the scenes it is recording: nor does a video-camera aimed at a mirror possess self-awareness.
_____________________________
It has, indeed, been an underlying theme of the earlier chapters that there seems to be something non-algorithmic about our conscious thinking. In particular, a conclusion from the argument in Chapter 4, particularly concerning Goedel's theorem, was that, at least in mathematics, conscious contemplation can sometimes enable one to ascertain the truth of a statement in a way that no algorithm could... Indeed, algorithms, in themselves, never ascertain truth! It would be as easy to make an algorithm produce nothing but falsehoods as it would be to make it produce truths. One needs external insights in order to decide the validity or otherwise of an algorithm... I am putting forward the argument here that it is this ability to divine (or 'intuit') truth from falsity (and beauty from ugliness!), in appropriate circumstances that is the hallmark of consciousness.
______________________________
Why do I say that the hallmark of consciousness is a non-algorithmic forming of judgements? Part of the reason comes from my experiences as a mathematician. I simply do not trust my unconscious algorithmic actions when they are inadequately paid attention to by my awareness. Often there is nothing wrong with the algorithm as an algorithm, in some calculation that is being performed, but is it the right algorithm to choose, for the problem in hand?
______________________________
One may start from some axioms, from which are to be derived various mathematical propositions. The latter procedure may indeed be algorithmic, but some judgement needs to be made by a conscious mathematician to decide whether the axioms are appropriate.
______________________________
To my way of thinking, there is still something mysterious about evolution, with its apparent 'groping' towards some future purpose. Things at least seem to organize themselves somewhat better than they 'ought' to, just on the basis of blind-chance evolution and natural selection. It may well be that such appearances are quite deceptive. There seems to be something about the way that the laws of physics work, which allows natural selection to be a much more effective process than it would be with just arbitrary laws.
______________________________
We must first consider the possibility that different mathematicians use inequivalent algorithms to decide truth. However, it is one of the most striking features of mathematics (perhaps almost alone among the disciplines) that the truth of propositions can actually be settled by abstract argument! A mathematical argument that convinces one mathematician--providing that is contains no error--will also convince another, as soon as the argument has been fully grasped. This also applies to the Goedel-type propositions.
_______________________________
Poincaré describes, first, how he had intensive period of deliberate, conscious effort in his search for what he called Fuchsian functions, but he had reached an impasse. Then:
"...I left Caen... The incidents of the travel made me forget my mathematical work. Having reached Coutances, we entered an omnibus to go to some place or other. At the moment when I put my foot on the step, the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry. I did not verify the idea: I should not have had time, as upon taking my seat in the omnibus, I went on with a conversation already commenced, but I felt a perfect certainty. On my return to Caen, for convenience sake, I verified the result at my leisure."
___________________________
Aesthetics in the arts is a sophisticated subject, and philosophers have devoted lifetimes to its study. It could be argued that in mathematics and the sciences, such criteria are merely incidental, the criterion of truth being paramount. However, it seems to be impossible to separate one from the other when one considers the issues of inspiration and insight. My impression is that the strong conviction of the validity of a flash of inspiration (not 100 per cent reliable, I should add, but at least far more reliable than just chance) is very closely bound up with its aesthetic qualities. A beautiful idea has a much greater chance of being a correct idea than an ugly one.
___________________________
A striking example is given vividly by Mozart:
"When I feel well and in a good humor, or when I am taking a drive or walking after a good meal, or in the night when I cannot sleep, thoughts crowd into my mind as easily as you could wish. Whence and how do they come? I do not know and I have nothing to do with it. Those which please me I keep in my head and hum them; at least others have told me that I do so. Once I have my theme, another melody comes, linking itself with the first one, in accordance with the needs of the composition as a whole: the counterpoint, the part of each instrument and all the melodic fragments at last produce the complete work. Then my soul is on fire with inspiration."
____________________________
To speak of 'Plato's world' at all, one is assigning some kind of reality to it which is in some way comparable to the reality of the physical world. On the other hand, the reality of the physical world itself seems more nebulous than it had seemed to be before the advent of the SUPERB theories of relativity and quantum mechanics... The very precision of these theories has provided an almost abstract mathematical existence for actual physical reality. Is this in any way a paradox? How can concrete reality become abstract and mathematical? This is perhaps the other side of the coin to the question of how abstract mathematical concepts can achieve an almost concrete reality in Plato's world.
___________________________
Of course mathematicians sometimes make mistakes. It seems that Turing himself believed that this was where the 'loophole' to the Goedel-type arguments against human thinking being algorithmic lay. But it seems unlikely to me that human fallibility is the key to human insight!
___________________________
It seems to me that the fact that animals require sleep in which they appear sometimes to dream (as is often noticeable with dogs) is evidence that they can possess consciousness. For an element of consciousness seems to be an important ingredient of the distinction between dreaming and non-dreaming sleep.
Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind
__________________________
The second point is that, at least in my own opinion, parallel classical computation is very unlikely to hold the key to what is going on with our conscious thinking. A characteristic feature of conscious thought (at least when one is in a normal psychological state, and not the subject of a 'split-brain' operation!) is its 'oneness'--as opposed to a great many independent activities going on at once.
__________________________
Suppose that a photon arrives at the retina, having been previously reflected off a half-silvered mirror. Its state involves a complex linear superposition of its striking a retinal cell and of its not striking a retinal cell and instead, say, travelling out of the window into space. When the time is reached at which it might have struck the retina, and so long as the linear rule U of quantum theory holds true (i.e. deterministic Schroedinger state-vector evolution...), we can have a complex linear superposition of a nerve signal and not a nerve signal. While this impinges upon the subject's consciousness, only one of these two alternatives is perceived to take place, and the other quantum procedure R (state-vector reduction...) must have been effected... Thus, according to the viewpoint I have been putting forward, the procedure R could have been already effected well before we perceive the flash of light, or not, as the case may be. On this viewpoint, our consciousness is not needed in order to reduce the state-vector!
___________________________
...consider the ruthless process of natural selection. View this process in the light of the fact that, as we have seen in the last chapter, not all of the activity of the brain is directly accessible to consciousness. Indeed, the 'older' cerebellum--with its vast superiority in local density of neurons--seems to carry out very complex actions without consciousness being directly involved at all. Yet Nature has chosen to evolve sentient beings like ourselves, rather than to remain content with creatures that might carry on under the direction of totally unconscious control mechanisms. If consciousness serves no selective purpose, why did Nature go to the trouble to evolve conscious brains when non-sentient 'automaton' brains like cerebella would seem to have done just as well?
...why should natural selection bother to favour such a race of individuals, when surely the relentless free market of the jungle should have rooted out such useless nonsense long ago!
___________________________
One view that I have heard expressed is that awareness might be of an advantage to a predator in trying to guess what its prey would be likely to do next by 'putting itself in the place' of that prey. By imagining itself to be the prey, it could gain an advantage over it.
It may well be that there is some partial truth in this idea, but I am left very uneasy by it. In the first place, it supposes some pre-existing consciousness on the part of the prey itself, for it would hardly be helpful to imagine oneself to 'be' an automaton, since an automaton--by definition unconscious--is not something that is possible to 'be' at all!...
The idea alluded to above seems to relate to a point of view about consciousness that one often hears put forward, namely that a system would be 'aware' of something if it has a model of that thing within itself, and that it becomes 'self-aware when it has a model of itself within itself... Despite the claims that seem to be frequently made, the real issues concerning awareness and self-awareness are, in my opinion, hardly being touched by considerations of this kind. A video-camera has no awareness of the scenes it is recording: nor does a video-camera aimed at a mirror possess self-awareness.
_____________________________
It has, indeed, been an underlying theme of the earlier chapters that there seems to be something non-algorithmic about our conscious thinking. In particular, a conclusion from the argument in Chapter 4, particularly concerning Goedel's theorem, was that, at least in mathematics, conscious contemplation can sometimes enable one to ascertain the truth of a statement in a way that no algorithm could... Indeed, algorithms, in themselves, never ascertain truth! It would be as easy to make an algorithm produce nothing but falsehoods as it would be to make it produce truths. One needs external insights in order to decide the validity or otherwise of an algorithm... I am putting forward the argument here that it is this ability to divine (or 'intuit') truth from falsity (and beauty from ugliness!), in appropriate circumstances that is the hallmark of consciousness.
______________________________
Why do I say that the hallmark of consciousness is a non-algorithmic forming of judgements? Part of the reason comes from my experiences as a mathematician. I simply do not trust my unconscious algorithmic actions when they are inadequately paid attention to by my awareness. Often there is nothing wrong with the algorithm as an algorithm, in some calculation that is being performed, but is it the right algorithm to choose, for the problem in hand?
______________________________
One may start from some axioms, from which are to be derived various mathematical propositions. The latter procedure may indeed be algorithmic, but some judgement needs to be made by a conscious mathematician to decide whether the axioms are appropriate.
______________________________
To my way of thinking, there is still something mysterious about evolution, with its apparent 'groping' towards some future purpose. Things at least seem to organize themselves somewhat better than they 'ought' to, just on the basis of blind-chance evolution and natural selection. It may well be that such appearances are quite deceptive. There seems to be something about the way that the laws of physics work, which allows natural selection to be a much more effective process than it would be with just arbitrary laws.
______________________________
We must first consider the possibility that different mathematicians use inequivalent algorithms to decide truth. However, it is one of the most striking features of mathematics (perhaps almost alone among the disciplines) that the truth of propositions can actually be settled by abstract argument! A mathematical argument that convinces one mathematician--providing that is contains no error--will also convince another, as soon as the argument has been fully grasped. This also applies to the Goedel-type propositions.
_______________________________
Poincaré describes, first, how he had intensive period of deliberate, conscious effort in his search for what he called Fuchsian functions, but he had reached an impasse. Then:
"...I left Caen... The incidents of the travel made me forget my mathematical work. Having reached Coutances, we entered an omnibus to go to some place or other. At the moment when I put my foot on the step, the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry. I did not verify the idea: I should not have had time, as upon taking my seat in the omnibus, I went on with a conversation already commenced, but I felt a perfect certainty. On my return to Caen, for convenience sake, I verified the result at my leisure."
___________________________
Aesthetics in the arts is a sophisticated subject, and philosophers have devoted lifetimes to its study. It could be argued that in mathematics and the sciences, such criteria are merely incidental, the criterion of truth being paramount. However, it seems to be impossible to separate one from the other when one considers the issues of inspiration and insight. My impression is that the strong conviction of the validity of a flash of inspiration (not 100 per cent reliable, I should add, but at least far more reliable than just chance) is very closely bound up with its aesthetic qualities. A beautiful idea has a much greater chance of being a correct idea than an ugly one.
___________________________
A striking example is given vividly by Mozart:
"When I feel well and in a good humor, or when I am taking a drive or walking after a good meal, or in the night when I cannot sleep, thoughts crowd into my mind as easily as you could wish. Whence and how do they come? I do not know and I have nothing to do with it. Those which please me I keep in my head and hum them; at least others have told me that I do so. Once I have my theme, another melody comes, linking itself with the first one, in accordance with the needs of the composition as a whole: the counterpoint, the part of each instrument and all the melodic fragments at last produce the complete work. Then my soul is on fire with inspiration."
____________________________
To speak of 'Plato's world' at all, one is assigning some kind of reality to it which is in some way comparable to the reality of the physical world. On the other hand, the reality of the physical world itself seems more nebulous than it had seemed to be before the advent of the SUPERB theories of relativity and quantum mechanics... The very precision of these theories has provided an almost abstract mathematical existence for actual physical reality. Is this in any way a paradox? How can concrete reality become abstract and mathematical? This is perhaps the other side of the coin to the question of how abstract mathematical concepts can achieve an almost concrete reality in Plato's world.
___________________________
Of course mathematicians sometimes make mistakes. It seems that Turing himself believed that this was where the 'loophole' to the Goedel-type arguments against human thinking being algorithmic lay. But it seems unlikely to me that human fallibility is the key to human insight!
___________________________
It seems to me that the fact that animals require sleep in which they appear sometimes to dream (as is often noticeable with dogs) is evidence that they can possess consciousness. For an element of consciousness seems to be an important ingredient of the distinction between dreaming and non-dreaming sleep.
Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind
Works Cited
It seems, also, that the various observers' aesthetic judgements might well get involved in what they deem to be 'order', rather than 'disorder'. We could imagine some artist taking the view that the collection of shattered glass fragments was far more beautifully ordered than was the hideously ugly glass that once stood on the edge of the table! Would entropy have actually been reduced in the judgement of such an artistically sensitive observer?
In view of these problems of subjectivity, it is remarkable that the concept of entropy is useful at all in precise scientific descriptions--which it certainly is! The reason for this utility is that the changes from order to disorder in a system, in terms of detailed particle positions and velocities, are utterly enormous, and (in almost all circumstances) will completely swamp any reasonable differences of viewpoint as to what is or is not 'manifest order' on the macroscopic scale.
_________________________
This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even write the number down in full, in the ordinary denary notation: it would be '1' followed by 10^123 successive '0's! Even if we were to write a '0' on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe--and we could throw in all the other particles for good measure--we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed.
_________________________
If the photo-cell indeed registers, then it is virtually certain that the photon came from the lamp and not from the laboratory wall! In the case of our time-reversed question, the quantum-mechanical calculation has given us completely the wrong answer!
The implication of this is that the rules for the R part of quantum mechanics simply cannot be used for such reversed-time questions.
Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind
In view of these problems of subjectivity, it is remarkable that the concept of entropy is useful at all in precise scientific descriptions--which it certainly is! The reason for this utility is that the changes from order to disorder in a system, in terms of detailed particle positions and velocities, are utterly enormous, and (in almost all circumstances) will completely swamp any reasonable differences of viewpoint as to what is or is not 'manifest order' on the macroscopic scale.
_________________________
This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even write the number down in full, in the ordinary denary notation: it would be '1' followed by 10^123 successive '0's! Even if we were to write a '0' on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe--and we could throw in all the other particles for good measure--we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed.
_________________________
If the photo-cell indeed registers, then it is virtually certain that the photon came from the lamp and not from the laboratory wall! In the case of our time-reversed question, the quantum-mechanical calculation has given us completely the wrong answer!
The implication of this is that the rules for the R part of quantum mechanics simply cannot be used for such reversed-time questions.
Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Works Cited
One day, Churchill entered a men's room in the House of Commons and noticed Attlee at a urinal. Without saying anything, Churchill chose a urinal at the opposite side of the room. When Attlee took notice of Churchill, he said, "Feeling a bit standoffish today, Winston?" Churchill, who may have been waiting for this moment for years, replied: "That's right, Clement. Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it."
Marcus Grothe, Viva la Repartee
Marcus Grothe, Viva la Repartee
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Works Cited
By some miraculous insight Plato seems to have foreseen, on the basis of what must have been very sparse evidence indeed at that time that: on the one hand, mathematics must be studied and understood for its own sake, and one must not demand completely accurate applicability to the objects of physical experience; on the other hand, the workings of the actual external world can ultimately be understood only in the terms of precise mathematics--which means in terms of Plato's ideal world 'accessible via the intellect'!
___________________________
It is a striking fact that all the established departures from the Newtonian picture have been, in some fundamental way, associated with the behaviour of light... It is reasonable to speculate that Newton himself would have been ready to accept that deep problems for his picture of the world lay hidden in the mysterious behaviour of light.
Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind
___________________________
It is a striking fact that all the established departures from the Newtonian picture have been, in some fundamental way, associated with the behaviour of light... It is reasonable to speculate that Newton himself would have been ready to accept that deep problems for his picture of the world lay hidden in the mysterious behaviour of light.
Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Works Cited
["]But, Warren, please remember how it is:
He’s come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan. You mustn’t laugh at him.
He may not speak of it, and then he may.
I’ll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon."
It hit the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.
Robert Frost, The Death of the Hired Man
He’s come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan. You mustn’t laugh at him.
He may not speak of it, and then he may.
I’ll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon."
It hit the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.
Robert Frost, The Death of the Hired Man
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Works Cited
Why then is there so much confidence in these numbers for the accurate description of physics, when our initial experience of the relevance of such numbers lies in a comparatively limited rage? This confidence--perhaps misplaced--must rest (although this fact is not often recognized) on the logical elegance, consistency, and mathematical power of the real number system, together with a belief in the profound mathematical harmony of Nature.
_____________
How 'real' are the objects of the mathematician's world? From one point of view it seems that there can be nothing real about them at all. Mathematical objects are just concepts; they are the mental idealizations that mathematicians make, often stimulated by the appearance and seeming order of aspects of the world about us, but mental idealizations nevertheless. Can they be other than mere arbitrary constructions of the human mind? At the same time there often does appear to be some profound reality about these mathematical concepts, going quite beyond the mental deliberations of any particular mathematician. It is as though human thought is, instead, being guided towards some external truth--a truth which has a reality of its own, and which is revealed only partially to any one of us.
Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind
_____________
How 'real' are the objects of the mathematician's world? From one point of view it seems that there can be nothing real about them at all. Mathematical objects are just concepts; they are the mental idealizations that mathematicians make, often stimulated by the appearance and seeming order of aspects of the world about us, but mental idealizations nevertheless. Can they be other than mere arbitrary constructions of the human mind? At the same time there often does appear to be some profound reality about these mathematical concepts, going quite beyond the mental deliberations of any particular mathematician. It is as though human thought is, instead, being guided towards some external truth--a truth which has a reality of its own, and which is revealed only partially to any one of us.
Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind
Monday, May 14, 2007
Works Cited
10. A Prayer in Spring
OH, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.
Robert Frost, A Boy's Will
OH, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.
Robert Frost, A Boy's Will
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Works Cited
In his memoir of the Sixties, Radical Son (1997), David Horowitz says that when a friend found out that Horowitz had never taken LSD, he said, "You have to take LSD. Until you've dropped acid, you don't know what socialism is."
Stephen Miller, Conversation: A History of a Declining Art
Stephen Miller, Conversation: A History of a Declining Art
Works Cited
At first glance it would seem that contemporary society in the West suffers mainly from a lack of politeness... Reviewing a contemporary memoir, a critic in an English newspaper said: "Frey [the author] can really write. Brilliantly. And if you don't think so, f*** you."
______________________
In the mid-twentieth century many writers--among them Jean-Paul Sartre and Mary McCarthy--praised neo-Spartan regimes (China and North Vietnam) but preferred to live in Neo-Athenian regimes.
______________________
Addison and Steele refer to many fictitious clubs. There is the Widow-Club, where the conversation "often turns upon their former Husbands, and it is very diverting to hear them relate their several Arts and Stratagems, with which they amused the Jealous, pacified the Cholerick, or wheedled the Good-natured Man, 'till at last, to use the Club-phrase, They sent him out of House with his Heels foremost." There is the Lawyers Club, whose members discuss "several Ways of abusing their Clients, with the Applause... given to him who has done it most Artfully."
______________________
When the Earl once said to Wilkes: "You will die, sir, either on the gallows or from the pox," Wilkes replied: "That depends, sir, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
______________________
In Ben Jonson's Epicene (1609), a fatuous windbag and lecher named Sir Amorous La Foole brags of his French ancestry. Listening to his blather, another character says: "Did you ever hear such a wind-fucker as this?"
______________________
After implying that the Apostles often were pompous bores, Woolf says their conversation improved immeasurably as a result of a peculiar incident, though she jokingly says that she may have invented the incident... "Suddenly the door opened and the long and sinister figure of Mr Lytton Strachey stood on the threshold... He pointed his finger at a stain on Vanessa's white dress. 'Semen?' he said." The word changed things utterly, Woolf says. "We burst out laughing. With that one word all barriers of reticence and reserve went down. A flood of the sacred fluid seemed to overwhelm us."
______________________
Washington is a city of conversation because there is "a social indifference to the vulgar vociferous Market... Nobody was in 'business'--that was the sum and substance of it; and for the one large human assemblage on the continent of which this was true the difference made was huge."
...Going to Washington, he says, makes one "forget an hour the colossal greed of New York." Yet James may not have been as enamored of Washington as he claimed. Writing to Mrs. William James, he confesses: "to live here would be death and madness."
Stephen Miller, Conversation: A History of a Declining Art
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In the mid-twentieth century many writers--among them Jean-Paul Sartre and Mary McCarthy--praised neo-Spartan regimes (China and North Vietnam) but preferred to live in Neo-Athenian regimes.
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Addison and Steele refer to many fictitious clubs. There is the Widow-Club, where the conversation "often turns upon their former Husbands, and it is very diverting to hear them relate their several Arts and Stratagems, with which they amused the Jealous, pacified the Cholerick, or wheedled the Good-natured Man, 'till at last, to use the Club-phrase, They sent him out of House with his Heels foremost." There is the Lawyers Club, whose members discuss "several Ways of abusing their Clients, with the Applause... given to him who has done it most Artfully."
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When the Earl once said to Wilkes: "You will die, sir, either on the gallows or from the pox," Wilkes replied: "That depends, sir, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
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In Ben Jonson's Epicene (1609), a fatuous windbag and lecher named Sir Amorous La Foole brags of his French ancestry. Listening to his blather, another character says: "Did you ever hear such a wind-fucker as this?"
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After implying that the Apostles often were pompous bores, Woolf says their conversation improved immeasurably as a result of a peculiar incident, though she jokingly says that she may have invented the incident... "Suddenly the door opened and the long and sinister figure of Mr Lytton Strachey stood on the threshold... He pointed his finger at a stain on Vanessa's white dress. 'Semen?' he said." The word changed things utterly, Woolf says. "We burst out laughing. With that one word all barriers of reticence and reserve went down. A flood of the sacred fluid seemed to overwhelm us."
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Washington is a city of conversation because there is "a social indifference to the vulgar vociferous Market... Nobody was in 'business'--that was the sum and substance of it; and for the one large human assemblage on the continent of which this was true the difference made was huge."
...Going to Washington, he says, makes one "forget an hour the colossal greed of New York." Yet James may not have been as enamored of Washington as he claimed. Writing to Mrs. William James, he confesses: "to live here would be death and madness."
Stephen Miller, Conversation: A History of a Declining Art
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Works Cited
I have met many intellectuals whose conversation was bad for my mind: Marxists, existentialists, postmodernists. A Marxist colleague at the National Enquirer, where I worked for several months in the mid-1960s, never stopped ranting about the evils of "the System." (He had a Ph.D. in history.) A colleague at a Washington think tank, where I worked in the mid-1970s, talked continually about the negative effects of modernity. (He had a Ph.D. in philosophy.) If I hear someone say modernity or dialectical or existential or psychoanalytical, I can no longer pay attention, for I am thinking--perhaps unfairly--that this person is going to bore me to death.
Stephen Miller, Conversation: A History of a Declining Art
Stephen Miller, Conversation: A History of a Declining Art
Friday, April 13, 2007
Works Cited
I might as well give you my opinion of these two kinds of sin as long as, in a way, against each other we are pitting them,
And that is, don't bother your head about the sins of commission because however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you wouldn't be committing them.
It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin,
That lays eggs under your skin.
The way you really get painfully bitten
Is by the insurance you haven't taken out and the checks you haven't added up the stubs of and the appointments you haven't kept and the bills you haven't paid and the letters you haven't written.
Also, about sins of omission there is one particularly painful lack of beauty,
Namely, it isn't as though it had been a riotous red-letter day or night every time you neglected to do your duty;
You didn't get a wicked forbidden thrill
Every time you let a policy lapse or forget to pay a bill;
You didn't slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly cry Whee,
Let's all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this round of unwritten letters is on me.
No, you never get any fun
Out of things you haven't done,
But they are the things that I do not like to be amid,
Because the suitable things you didn't do give you a lot more trouble than the unsuitable things you did.
The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if some kind of sin you must be pursuing,
Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.
Ogden Nash, Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man
Works Cited
Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.
Millay
Friday, April 06, 2007
Works Cited
Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. To open the mind so wide as to keep nothing in it or out of it is not a virtue; it is the vice of the feeble-minded.
G.K. Chesterton, Autobiography
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Works Cited
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
Frost, Reluctance
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
Frost, Reluctance
Monday, April 02, 2007
Works Cited
When the black snake
flashed onto the morning road,
and the truck could not swerve--
death, that is how it happens.
Now he lies looped and useless
as an old bicycle tire.
I stop the car
and carry him into the bushes.
He is as cool and gleaming
as a braided whip, he is as beautiful and quiet
as a dead brother.
I leave him under the leaves
and drive on, thinking
about death: its suddenness,
its terrible weight,
its certain coming. Yet under
reason burns a brighter fire, which the bones
have always preferred.
It is the story of endless good fortune.
It says to oblivion: not me!
It is the light at the center of every cell.
It is what sent the snake coiling and flowing forward
happily all spring through the green leaves before
he came to the road.
Mary Oliver, The Black Snake
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Works Cited
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
Robert Frost, Birches
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Works Cited
Those who think that they have had religious experiences of their own have to judge for themselves the quality of that experience. But the great majority of the adherents to the world's religions are relying not on religious experience of their own but on revelations that were supposedly experienced by others. It might be thought that this is not so different from the theoretical physicist relying on the experiments of other, but there is an important distinction. The insights of thousands of individual physicists have converged to a satisfying (though incomplete) common understanding of physical reality. In contrast, the statements about God or anything else that have been derived from religious revelation point in radically different directions. After thousands of years of theological analysis, we are no closer now to a common understanding of the lessons of religious revelation.
Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory
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