Wednesday, December 26, 2007
I am off today ...
I'd be more impressed ...
I'm sorry. I read The God Delusion and was singularly unimpressed. I think Dawkins has evolved into a horse's ass.
The rest is ...
"Funny how when we think of ourselves as a thing, we truly come to acquire the attributes of that thing."
A look at the future ...
Well, I tried it with Jacques Brel, listened to him live singing "Les Bourgeois," which was followed by a Leonard Cohen song that sounded interesting. I will have to play with it some more. I listen mostly to classical music, so I guess it has less to offer me - though I'd be interested in learning how it tracks my tastes.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
What is and isn't ...
I think it worth noting that around the same time as Parmenides - earlier, in fact - Heraclitus had introduced the term logos, which actually has much the same meaning as the Chinese term tao, itself introduced at around the same time by the Lao-tse. Parmenides and Heraclitus are thought of proto-philosophers, but there seem to religious implications in what they were saying.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Philip Pullman is right ...
A timely move ...
Parmenides matters not just for philosophy. One of the effects of the moribund state of intellectual enquiry that Tallis worries about is found in science. Physics is reaching an 'arrest of understanding', in say the extremes of string theory. Or in neurobiology, the study of consciousness has hit a brick wall, for all that its exponents engage in elaborate strategies of denial: we are being led towards a third-person understanding of ourselves, when we have first-person consciousness; as if we were machines not minds. That is dangerous.
Another part of Tallis' concern is that along with this scientism, though diametrically opposed to it, comes an 'oppressive supernaturalism'. You see it in the confrontation between bleak, deterministic Darwinism and fundamentalist, Christian creationism. They compete for the right to respond to our deepest human needs, to understand, forcing out the infinitely more subtle Parmenidian spirit in the process.
Miraculous art ...
Yuletide Nige ...
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Nige and I ...
You heard it here first ...
Virtually unreal ...
Edward O. Wilson is mentioned in the article linked to above. He is interviewed in today's Sunday Times by Bryan Appleyard: We’re not as selfish as we think.
Today's Inquirer book page ...
Since Maxine has brought up Christopher Fry in the comments, I thought it might be worthwhile to post a link to his obituary: Christian humanist playwright who brought a spiritual elan to the drab world of postwar theatre.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Former PM becomes RC ...
Three years ago, I reviewed Philip Stephens's Tony Blair:The Making of a World Leader. Here is part of what I wrote:
An Oxford philosopher, Macmurray (1891-1976) was a personalist, holding the view that what is real is the personal, that the characteristics of personality - consciousness, freedom, purposefulness - are also the fundamental characteristics of reality itself. For Macmurray, religion is fundamental to human life and the essence of religion involves the creation of community. This, Blair has said, makes "sense of the need to involve the individual in society without the individual being subsumed in society. "
In an essay he wrote in 1993, Blair declared that the Christian faith is about "the union between individual and community. . . . The act of Holy Communion is symbolic of this message. It acknowledges that we do not grow up in total independence, but interdependently. " Sounds almost as if Jesus is Blair's favorite political philosopher.
Aha!
I now agree with Jeff McDonald's comment here, since I happen to agree that "the scientific enterprise looks to nature to answer questions about nature." In other words, science is about how nature works. Religion is about something else.
Dave Lull sent me what Ben Stein has to say about the Times piece. It's only available on subscription, but I think it only to quote a bit of it:
But then why am I in the article? I didn't schedule the interviews. No
one I interviewed ever asked me what the movie was about. So far as I
know, all of the people interviewed were paid and paid well. None of
them ever complained to me. So why am I in that article?
First, because I told the reporter that I thought Darwinism sometimes
led to racism and to the Holocaust as evil people believed they would
just help along "survival of the fittest." This, according to the
reporter, is a view commonly held by Creationists. So now I am a
Creationist, you see, a knuckle-dragging Creationist like the William
Jennings Bryan character in Inherit the Wind. ("Mr. Stein, do you now
or have you ever believed in a God of Creation?")
Second, because I denied that I ever misled anyone. So there's a photo
of me in a silly outfit with the caption, "Ben Stein denies he misled
anyone." The caption--of course-implies that I did mislead someone but
that I deny it. Now here comes the great part: NO ONE IN THE ARTICLE
ACCUSES ME OF MISLEADING HIM OR HER.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
The easiest thing to forget ...
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Disingenuous ...
Let the listings begin ...
and here is Eric Ormsby on Ted Hughes: Autobiography of a Mythic Life.
(Links courtesy of Dave Lull.)
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
End days ...
... pondering a world with readers. I like this: “an enthralling tour of the world … anticipating, often poetically, what a planet without us would be like.” Well, it wouldn't be "like" anything, since there would be no one to make the comparison. Further evidence that D.H. Lawrence may have been right and that many who warn against apocalypse deep down yearn for it.
Monday, December 17, 2007
That's it for me ...
Death be not proud ...
Vote of approval ...
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Poetry on the Net ...
xmas cheer.
Blue's Reviewing the Bookstore Massacre. (Really neat.)
Carol Saba looks at Adam Zagajewski's Ordinary Life.
Some Randy Adams computer poetry: 1 blue 5 red.
And Hedgie has Some More Short Poems.
I'm with Glenn ...
The importance of linking has eluded many in the MSM who undertake to blog.
Yes this deserves a look:
Leave it to Keith Ward ...
Intellectual abrasion ...
This is a very good article (despite this preposterous assertion: "His early years were shaped by fundamentalist religion." I'm a year older than Eagleton and had much the same sort of education as he had. It was Catholic, not fundamentalist. And damned good, I might add.) I hardly agree with Eagleton across the board, but it is hard not to sense - and admire - how passionately engaged he is.
To kill or not ...
Today's Inquirer book page ...
Also, Carlin Romano looks at Two polar, persuasive stands on reproductive genetics and offers a roundup of books Exquisitely brewed for the coffee table.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
In memoriam ...
Franklin the blogger ...
I suspect he would be. Though I must confess that regarding Ben, I am of one mind with D.H. Lawrence: "I admire him. I do not like him."
Lessing's lamentation ...
Chris Berg begs to differ: Bookish pessimists are elitist and wrong: the internet is good for you. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Good point: "Doris Lessing and Andrew Keen compare the best of the past with the average of the present. With a formula like that, it's no wonder today always loses."
Friday, December 14, 2007
And another ...
Open-ended creativity ...
I like this from John Polkinghorne: ". . . the order and disorder which intertwine in the process of the world show that the universe upheld by the divine Word is not a clear cold cosmos whose history is the inevitable unfolding of an invulnerable plan. It is a world kept in being by the divine Juggler rather than by the divine Structural Engineer ..." And having had the privilege of meeting and interviewing John Polkinghorne, I can attest to what Archbishop Hapgood says of him. A wonderful man.
Forget Dickens
The principal problem I have with goose - and I've cooked a good number - is that, when all is said and, there isn't a lot of meat to be had from one. So it takes a good deal of effort to make a meal for a relatively small dinner party.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Thank God ...
Real vs. ideal ...
I'm off today ...
Richard Rodriguez ...
Why post this on a book blog? Because it has to do with humanity and that is what literature is all about. And also because Richard Rodriguez's is one of the most civilized voices in America.
Trio
(All three links come courtesy of the intrepid Dave Lull.)
Appalling ...
Oh, really
I am actually old enough to remember when the same sort of crap was said about ... paperbacks!
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Latin lovers
I don't think there was much impact around here when, a few weeks ago, John Timpane and I weighed in on Latin (Seize the Latin, or fun with a dead language and The epic, and relevant, story of the Latin language), but maybe now that the Washington Post has noticed something similar to what I mentioned, that " 'there's a bit of a revival going on.' In 1977, only 6,000 students took the National Latin Exam. By 2005 that number had soared to 134,873" - well, who knows?
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Blogger reviews
From BooksForKids: Spoofing Santa: A Cajun Night Before Christmas and Other Downhome Sendups.
From Debra Hamel: Somoza, José Carlos: Zig Zag.
From the Emerging Writers Network: Book Review: 2007-015 The Farther Shore by Matthew Eck.
Monday, December 10, 2007
SciFi rumbles
As Scalzi says:
The ethics of book reviewing
Feel free to weigh in.
More here: Ethics in Book Reviewing Survey: The Results.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
A different take ...
Teilhard was also convinced that a further and even more profound change had taken place. On the one hand we could see humanity simply swept along in a evolutionary stream into the future over which he had no control. Or, we could see that an evolution conscious of itself could also direct itself. "Not only do we read in our slightest acts the secrets of [evolutions] proceedings; but for an elementary part we hold it in our hands, responsible for its past to its future." (p. 226) Noogenesis moves ever more clearly toward self-direction; it is now something we determine.
Teilhard was a major influence on me when I was in college. I believe in evolution, but I think it is purposeful.
Getting to know ...
When classicists go bad ...
I'm just now getting down to reading Mary's new book, The Roman Triumph. It's quite fascinating.
Language problem ...
"It took years for a consensus on the existence and causes of climate change to emerge."
