In memory of Christine Brooke-Rose,
an image from the date of her death—
See also A Little Story and Before Dehors.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Turing Gate
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Sunday, October 1, 2006
Sunday October 1, 2006
Tales of Philosophy:
Recipe for Disaster
according to Jerome Kagan,
Harvard psychologist emeritus
| From Log24 — | |
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From Harvard's Jerome Kagan — |
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| "'Humans demand that there be a clear right and wrong,' he said. 'You've got to believe that the track you've taken is the right track. You get depressed if you're not certain as to what it is you're supposed to be doing or what's right and wrong in the world.'" | "People need to divide the world into good and evil, us and them, Kagan continued. To do otherwise– to entertain the possibility that life is not black and white, but variously shaded in gray– is perhaps more honest, rational and decent. But it's also, psychically, a recipe for disaster." |
Black and White: |
Shades of Gray: |
The above Kagan quotes are taken
from a New York Times essay by
Judith Warner as transcribed by
Mark Finkelstein on Sept. 29.
See also Log24 on
Sept. 29 and 30.
Related material:
Kagan's book
Surprise, Uncertainty,
and Mental Structures
(Harvard U. Press, April 2002)
and Werner Heisenberg–
discoverer of the
uncertainty principle—
as Anakin Skywalker
being tempted by
the Dark Side:
George Lucas, who has profited
enormously from public depictions
of the clash between
good and evil, light and dark,
may in private life be inclined
to agree with Hercule Poirot:
"It is the brain, the little gray cells
on which one must rely.
One must seek the truth
within– not without."
(This is another version of the
"Descartes before dehors" principle–
See "A Table," Sept. 28.)
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Thursday September 28, 2006
A Table
| From the diary of John Baez: September 22, 2006… Meanwhile, the mystics beckon:
September 23, 2006I’m going up to San Rafael (near the Bay in Northern California) to visit my college pal Bruce Smith and his family. I’ll be back on Wednesday the 27th, just in time to start teaching the next day. |
A check on the Rumi quote yields
this, on a culinary organization:
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“Out beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
This is the starting place of good spirit for relationship healing and building prescribed centuries ago in the Middle East by Muslim Sufi teacher and mystic, Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273). Even earlier, the Psalmists knew such a meeting place of adversaries was needed, sacred and blessed: |
A Field and a Table:
From “Communications Toolbox”
at MathWorks.com
For more on this field
in a different context, see
Generating the Octad Generator
and
“Putting Descartes Before Dehors”
in my own diary for December 2003.
Descartes
Après l’Office à l’Église
de la Sainte-Trinité, Noël 1890
(After the Service at Holy Trinity Church,
Christmas 1890), Jean Béraud
Let us pray to the Holy Trinity that
San Rafael guides the teaching of John Baez
this year. For related material on theology
and the presence of enemies, see Log24 on
the (former) Feast of San Rafael, 2003.
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Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Mysteries of Faith
From today's NY Times—
Obituaries for mystery authors
Ralph McInerny and Dick Francis
From the date (Jan. 29) of McInerny's death–
"…although a work of art 'is formed around something missing,' this 'void is its vanishing point, not its essence.'"
– Harvard University Press on Persons and Things (Walpurgisnacht, 2008), by Barbara Johnson
From the date (Feb. 14) of Francis's death–
The EIghtfold Cube
The "something missing" in the above figure is an eighth cube, hidden behind the others pictured.
This eighth cube is not, as Johnson would have it, a void and "vanishing point," but is instead the "still point" of T.S. Eliot. (See the epigraph to the chapter on automorphism groups in Parallelisms of Complete Designs, by Peter J. Cameron. See also related material in this journal.) The automorphism group here is of course the order-168 simple group of Felix Christian Klein.
For a connection to horses, see
a March 31, 2004, post
commemorating the birth of Descartes
and the death of Coxeter–
Putting Descartes Before Dehors
For a more Protestant meditation,
see The Cross of Descartes—
"I've been the front end of a horse
and the rear end. The front end is better."
— Old vaudeville joke
For further details, click on
the image below–
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
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Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Tuesday August 7, 2007
The Horse Whisperer
Scarlett Johansson and friend
in “The Horse Whisperer” (1998)
Thanks to University Diaries (Aug. 6) for the following:
“‘The University of Sydney has ordered an independent review into allegations that the dean of the Conservatorium of Music hired a horse whisperer to conduct management workshops.’ [Are you, like UD, a bit vague on exactly what a horse whisperer is? And are you having trouble figuring out what a horse whisperer would have to offer a management workshop? But then, what exactly is a management workshop? Read on.]”
For some background on horse whispering and management workshops, see IABC Steal Sheet, March 2004.
Related material:
The recent Log24 entries
See also Log24,
Dec. 10, 2003:
Dec. 10, 2003:
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“Descartes déclare que For further details, |
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Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Wednesday March 31, 2004
To Be
A Jesuit cites Quine:
"To be is to be the value of a variable."
— Willard Van Orman Quine, cited by Joseph T. Clark, S. J., in Conventional Logic and Modern Logic: A Prelude to Transition, Woodstock, MD: Woodstock College Press, 1952, to which Quine contributed a preface.
Quine died in 2000 on Xmas Day.
From a July 26, 2003, entry,
The Transcendent Signified,
on an essay by mathematician
Michael Harris:
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Kubrick's |
Harris's |
From a December 10, 2003, entry:
Putting Descartes Before Dehors
"Descartes déclare que c'est en moi, non hors de moi, en moi, non dans le monde, que je pourrais voir si quelque chose existe hors de moi."
For further details, see ART WARS.
The above material may be regarded as commemorating the March 31 birth of René Descartes and death of H. S. M. Coxeter.
For further details, see
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Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Wednesday December 10, 2003
Putting Descartes Before Dehors
“Descartes déclare que c’est en moi, non hors de moi, en moi, non dans le monde, que je pourrais voir si quelque chose existe hors de moi.”
For further details, see ART WARS.
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