The Iliad - Homer, Books VII - IX: Hector and the Trojans are on the attack. At the manipulation of the gods, Hector challenges Achaeans to single-man combat. He fights Ajax to a draw because "it's getting dark out" and all go home for supper. Trojans want to give up Helen and end war. Paris will have none of it: "Your words are not to my liking". More fighting and Agamemnon wants to go home. Diomed berates him. Nestor encourages him to appease Achilles so he'll win war for them. They try, but Achilles will have none of it. Can Paris be any more of a brat? His keeping Helen would be a weak plot point in itself, but Zeus's intervention strengthens it some. Achilles isn't much better; his two motives: stubborn vengeance and honoring his own name. Where is a good man to be found?
Of Experience - Michel De Montaigne: We all want knowledge, "where reason is wanting we therein employ experience". Laws and interpretations of books abound, over-complicate life. Better to "feel" the "law of the world". Need to learn enough to know that you're ignorant and need to learn more. Need to be open to criticism (very hard). Discusses his personal habits and medical concerns. Obey your appetites. Be adaptable to everything nature throws at you. "We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade." Our conduct and living is more important than accomplishments. Pleasure of the moment is to be sought and cherished, ignore "fancies" and future worries. "Love life and cultivate it." All is good, inevitable, the only thing is what we do with it. Quite Stoic in its emphasis on temperance, which always seemed to me to be sort of fatalistic: "the course of nature is both good and inevitable, so don't fight it." Start with Christianity, then take the face off Nature (though he talks about God some), and make it somehow unfallen (normal instead of abnormal). It's like he sees the value of suffering for soul-building, but doesn't really see nature and suffering within it as an abnormal situation. Then again, maybe he does.
The Republic - Plato, Book X: The ideal State must reject imitative poetry, art, etc. as "ruinous to the understanding of the hearers". For example, there are three beds: the true bed in the Platonic heaven (the form), the bed from the carpenter, and the image of a bed from a painter. The imitative painter is bad because: 1) there is no truth in his imitations; 2) he is prone to imitate the bad parts of life (especially the poet). Imitative artists do the opposite to people's passions than they should - "she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled". Soul is immortal and justice is best for the soul. All things will work together for good for the the just man, but curses will catch up to the unjust man. All get their just recompense. Myth of souls in afterlife picking new bodies for next life. Injustice always brings them to make bad choices, which then lead to the next life, etc. Critique of imitator seems to be too tight. Doesn't the carpenter need to draw up a blueprint, or at least imagine how the thing works? Doesn't the imitator know something of how the thing works, at least how it looks and what impressions it gives to viewers? Just seems too harsh a criticism. As for justice being good for the soul - doesn't that argument fall apart if the myth isn't true?
Federalist Papers #54 - Madison or Hamilton: Should taxes and the number of appointed representatives to the House be based on the same census numbers? Yes. Why does this matter? Because of slavery. The Southerner want their slaves considered to be both property and persons (thus, they'd get more representatives). Lest the solution be extreme (i.e. slaves don't count at all), let them be considered "as divested of 2/5ths of the man". Hence the 3/5ths compromise. Seems like non-slavery states would want to oppose any counting of slaves in the census either for purely competitive reasons or as a moral punishment. It's such a crazy compromise though. Surely they didn't think that such an unprincipled solution would stand the test of time. Also crazy to think that the North was forced to call slaves non-persons while the South would want to affirm their personhood.
On a Piece of Chalk - T. H. Huxley: There's a layer of chalk underneath England, as well as most of Europe and part of the Middle East that is in fact an ancient seafloor. On top of it is a layer with the remains of trees and large mammals that don't exist in those places (or at all) any longer. This chalk layer also extends under where Eden would be (i.e. "The chalk is vastly older than Adam himself"). Different species of animals such as crocodiles in the different layers. Why not assume the gradual natural processes that brought about the geological changes also brought about changes in the animals themselves? Because to think any different would be a "wild fancy". And if one group of animals came about this way, "it seems folly to deny that all may have arisen in the same way". Why assume there's a difference between geological changes and biological changes? Because we haven't been given any reason to connect the two. Not even an attempt. Is this the presentation of Darwinism that Western civilization was won over by? An old earth doesn't just get you Darwinism; it's necessary but by far not sufficient. Unlike purely physical/geological features, life forms are essentially digital information-processing systems - that's what sets them apart and that's what needs to be explained but that's what's completely equivocated on here. Even if you prove the adaptation of crocodiles into separate species, that says nothing about the origins of crocodiles in the first place. Sorry, I could go on and on. Not a good way to be a Darwinist, if one were so inclined.
The Process of Thought - John Dewey, Ch. XIX: Certain things need to be balanced in education. Implicit with explicit information. Explain former too little, students will be confused on terms; explain latter too much students will be bored. Ideally, students will be conscious of ends and means, unconscious of "personal attitudes and procedures". Both play and work are concerned with ends, play only less so. If no ends are in mind, play is "fooling". Work without ends in mind is "drudgery". Both are to be avoided. Ideally, students will have balance of work/play attitude. Interest should be in the "unfolding of the subject on its own account", "interest in truth for its own sake". Artist is good example of this harmony of work/play. Test of ideal teacher as this artist is whether they can impart this love of subject in their student. Mix also needed between new and foreign to remove boredom. The novel needed to stimulate imagination. Seems like the harmonies he's arguing for aren't just the "happy mean", but the actual proper functioning of a finite person as they were created to operate and learn about the world - big difference. It'd be "teaching as it should be", not just randomly the most efficient strategy. His description of mental "incubation" is basically what Poincare was describing last week.
Here's the reading for this week:
- The Iliad of Homer, Books X-XII (GBWW Vol. 3, pp. 111-148)
- “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift (GGB Vol. 7, pp. 42-49)
- “Characters” by Jean de la Bruyère (GGB Vol. 6, pp. 102-105)
- Federalist #55-56 (GBWW Vol. 40, pp. 172-176)
- “On Mathematical Method“by Alfred N. Whitehead (GGB Vol. 9, pp. 51-67; Chapters I-III of An Introduction to Mathematics)
- “The Sentiment of Rationality” by William James (GGB Vol. 10, pp. 58-87)
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