Well should we give up more of our freedoms, and spend more billions to “keep us safe from terrorist?” Or accept the fact that we stopped this one, but can’t stop them all, with the reminder that, in reality, there are far greater threats to us then a few crazed bomber, after all how many of them has there been since 9/11 as compared with how many of us have been killed by good, old Americans with guns?
Those who are willing to sacrifice their basic liberties to assure their security deserve neither.
Look it up ANandy - Dick can rot in hell, while I quote Benjamin Franklin. The patriot act didn’t prevent a bleeep thing. Sharp eyed individuals (That actually SERVED in Vietnam) stopped the wanton destruction and loss of life.
Ken Warren said, about 7 hours ago -
“…we stopped this one…”
WE? We didn’t stop anything - the only thing that kept Times Square from becoming another Oklahoma City was that the klutz didn’t know how to put a bomb together correctly… (forgetting the keys to his getaway car and home in the ignition of the car bomb probably didn’t help his cause much, either…)
@rikoshayrabbit -
does he delete his comments, or does gocomics do the job for him?
Just as a speculation – assuming that they have caught the right guy (keeping in mind that he’s innocent until proven guilty) – he seems kind of pathetic. I bet there’s some kind of psychological breakdown here. I’m not excusing anyone. But it almost feels as if he wanted to fail and wanted to get caught. I guess we don’t yet know what contacts he had, and perhaps he was a lone wolf, but extremist groups can prey on the unhinged to do the dirty work.
The most amazing part of the whole story, I think, is that there have been relatively few attacks of this sort. Right after 9/11 I expected a wave of attacks, but very few have materialized. Either the police are doing a better job than we know, or there are fewer supporters of these Islamic fundamentalists that we might have expected, or both.
^ There’s truth in that version, but it’s not the whole story. It’s been years since I read up on Vietnam, but I remember Ellen J. Hammer, “The Struggle for IndoChina”, and Kahin and Lewis, “The United States in Vietnam” as interesting and informative. Much more is now known, especially following the publication of the Pentagon Papers.
Just one quick question – Why would the US have wanted to help France in Vietnam anyway? Well, one more – What was France doing in Vietnam in the first place?
Did McVeigh and the Texas IRS attack pilot howl at a cross??
RESPECTING other faiths, while not necessarily accepting their teachings, is a part of Buddhist philosophy. Why DO ALL the Old Testament bible religions hate each other, and everyone else? Even Quakers, who try to accept others, are condemned- weird dude. LIberal means thinking, and accepting facts, reason, and reality-
Viet Nam by the way had timber, latex, oil, mineral resources, and huge rice-growing capacity. That is why France wanted the colony, and why we backed them, instead of the Vietnamese. They helped us remove the Japanese, and we allowed the French back in- twice more. The highest producing Conoco oil well in the world, is off the coast of Viet Nam– pretty well sums up why we were there. (The forests have been pretty well creamed off by the way by Japanese and Australian companies since the war ended.)
Viet Nam = Political division. France had a huge investment in Viet Nam’s rubber industry and other natural resources. Ho Chi Minh revolted against the French. He asked for help from the U.S. which was refused. He found help in the USSR and so became a communist. After the French were defeated at Dien bin Phu, the French left and the country was divided into North and South. Ho wanted the rich rice growing regions of the South and started his subversive warfare in the South. The French who were still governing the rubber plantations asked the U.S. for help which President Eisenhower promptly gave in the form of advisors and also to get American citizens out of the area. He wished to stop the spread of Communism also. By the time President Kennedy took office, we had several thousand troops in South Viet Nam. After a period of increasing troop strength Kennedy decided to withdraw, but before that could be accomplished, he was killed. We all know of the escalation after that at the encouragement of the military who knew they could accomplish what the French could not. (Nutshell History based on eyewitness accounts from before our big involvement and during)
Holy cow, Scott, just casually passing by and noticed your post, which consists almost totally of name-calling, and “I’m always correct!” self-RIGHTeousness. If that’s your idea of discourse, no wonder you get deleted. (Go ahead, infer that I’m a “leftist” if that makes you feel better.)
This particular cartoon would get an “F” grade in a liberal arts class taught by a socialist professor. For the fact that the so called “lone wolf” is facing towards the Islamic crescent moon howling his fanatical rants to kill non Muslims. Criticize and condemn Christians but don’t you dare say anything bad about Muslims.
I don’t think we should indiscriminately condemn whole groups (except perhaps for the whole human race). It’s not “Muslims” or “Christians”, but certain Muslims and certain Christians (and certain people who are neither). There are lots and lots of good Christians, and they should not be condemned for the crimes of evil Christians, and there are lots and lots of good Muslims, and they should not be condemned for the crimes of evil Muslims.
change – this is probably not the right place for a lengthy discussion the history of the War in Vietnam. It’s a long and complicated story. But since you brought up the French connection, I was just trying to pose a couple of questions that seem relevant. After WWII there was some commitment on the part of some of Western colonial powers to give independence to some of the colonies. But the French were unwilling to give up Vietnam. Why? How did that turn into the US involvement? Once the French were defeated and left, why did the US step in? What was the process? Which presidents did what and why?
By the way, my own position is that the Democrats were fully implicated in a disastrous policy. Johnson gets a very large share of the blame. Although I’m a left/liberal, I don’t think that Democrats are always right.
Islam is an inherently “evil” religion, lonecat, attempting to convert mass populations by force. Christianity, Biblical Christianity, is an evangelical call to the individual. They just aren’t in the same boat….
Mohammed is to Christ what fields of opium poppies are to fields of wheat.
^ I’m not religious, so I don’t really care to judge among religions. Since I don’t believe in God I don’t worry a lot about theology. I do read history. There has been good in Islam, there has been bad in Christianity, as well as bad in Islam and good in Christianity. What I don’t like to do is to judge people before I know what they’ve done. As it happens, I have a number of Muslim friends, and they are hardly evil, at least so far as I can tell. So I’m unwilling to condemn all Muslims. I am, however, suspicious of fundamentalism of any sort, because I think it often leads to intolerance and even violence.
DrC – here’s my standard of judgment – Which religions inspire the best poetry? Christianity is third, slightly ahead of Islam, with Hinduism in second, and ancient paganism out in front.
Kind of curious which poets from Hinduism are better than John Donne, John Milton, Dante’s Inferno, or the allegories of Bunyan, but you are entitled to your opinion.
On the lone wolf issue: How many bank robbers, or 7/11 holdup artists operating on their own, and with NO previous record of any criminal activity, are arrested BEFORE they commit their first crime? Groups or individuals with records, are much easier to track and catch before they act. Just like the 9/11 dudes should have been stopped based on available data, the Times Square bomber, and the Texas IRS suicide guy, are much harder to catch.
As to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all call on the “dudes” from the Old Testament, who were ALL basically homicidal sociopaths- using “God” as their crutch, weapon, and excuse—‘nough said.
The concept of ‘groups of thugs’, ‘members of gangs’ or ‘bullies’ attacking the helpless was originally created by “Fernando and his wife Marian”. This is one of their many methods they used to destroy the humans they created in their humanities; other methods are: described in Queens song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’; the concept of defacing humans so that they appear bizarre and cannot function as normal; and the concept of taking humans and placing them on planets which do not sustain life .
There are nuts out there. That particular nut just happened to be muslim and live in a time where it’s a fad for muslims of his kind (the nutty kind) to throw bombs around.
Ok, DrC, I agree, Pooh is technically a prosimetrum.
Of course I was being provocative, but I’m also kind of serious. As serious as I get, which isn’t very.
If you look at the human race from the point of view of the Universe (which which I am intimately familiar), most of what we do can just as well be done by any old animal. Eat, drink, defecate, sleep, reproduce – heck, dogs and cats can do that, and they’re prettier than we are, for the most part. If that’s all there is, then the Universe could get rid of us (as it will, someday) without a regret.
But then there’s that little bit extra that people can do – we can write poems, we can compose fugues and sonatas, and we can paint pretty pictures. If there’s any point to people at all, that must be it.
I can put it in fancier terms (German Romantic style), but the point is the same. If you want to maximize your humanness, go write a poem. If you just want to be an animal, have a burger, take a snooze. Hmm, seems like a good idea. See you later.
Sooky Rottweiler says;
Hey, I can draw cartoons, and I’m a dog! Plus we have this super-cool thing called fur…no need for shopping! Never goes out of style and It’s free!
DrC – by the way, I think the poem you quoted isn’t from Winne-the-Pooh. Maybe it’s from Milne’s book of religious poetry, Now We are Sikhs.
I already mentioned painting; I can agree about philosophy and science, but those are just specialized forms of poetry, anyway, at least in the Greek tradition, which is my home base. The principle is the same, just differences of detail. Language just exists so we can write poems, teleologically speaking.
^ It’s a long story, and I have just a sense of the outlines, anyway. As you know, I’m no philosopher. But here’s two elements:
First, Hesiod to Parmenides – philosophic poetry to poetic philosophy. Karl Popper’s book on Parmenides is interesting, though repetitive.
Second, neither philosophy nor science is simply a collection of true propositions. A proposition (if I understand this properly) isn’t true in isolation, but only as part of a larger group of propositions. That larger group of propositions amounts, I believe, to a vision of reality, and what is myth except a vision of reality? What is a vision of reality except a myth? That doesn’t mean that all visions are equal. As you said when you started this train of thought on its tracks, we judge all the time; there are better poems and worse poems, better philosophies and worse philosophies, better sciences and worse sciences, but they are all visions.
If science is a sub-class of poetry, then the great scientists can be great poets, but it doesn’t follow that the great poets are necessarily great scientists – if I get my Venn diagrams right.
I am soooo out of my league here. But it’s fun. When you test a proposition in science, you’re testing it within a theory. Outside a theory, it doesn’t mean anything (if I have understood this properly). It’s the larger theory that’s the poem, not the particular proposition to be tested.
When I read about the great scientists and the great theories, I am struck by their imagination and insights, which is in addition to and often prior to the testing. Science has its mechanical aspect (as does poetry), but it is more than mechanical. I think that’s part of what Darwin is getting at in end of The Origin of Species.
First, tthis may be covered by markedness theory, which comes out of Prague School linguistics. The idea is that in any binary opposition, one of the terms may be given a wider extension than the other; the wider term may even express the narrower term, to which it seems to be opposed.
For example, in the binary opposition “man” and “woman”, the two terms may seem to be mutually exclusive. But as we all know, in certain situations, the term “man” includes the term “woman” – as in book titles such as “Man’s Place in Nature”, which probably includes women, while a title such as “Woman’s Place in Nature” certainly would not include men. This usage has changed since I was a lad, for good reasons, but the phenomenon is common. For instance, long and short may seem to be opposites, and yet we ask “How long is it?” even when we are talking about short things, but only in special circumstances do we ask “How short is it?”, and never when we are talking about long things (unless they are too short for the function, in which case they are short). Likewise, we ask of a baby “How old is it”, but we don’t ordinarily ask of an old person “How young are you” (unless we are Bob Barker on a game show in the 1950s). The term of wider extension is called the unmarked term and the term of narrower extension is called the marked term. So part of what I am suggesting is that “Poem” can be the unmarked term and “Science” can be the marked term.
Second, there is a historical process by which a large area named X gets carved up into two areas, which are called X and Y, and Y is seen to be different from the new X in a way which wouldn’t have mattered for the old X. If that makes any sense. And his process can repeat in the descendant terms.
I take an example from Gregory Nagy, Pindar’s Homer (pp. 29ff.): He begins with a distinction of SONG and SPEECH, where SONG is defined as special speech. That is, he already assumes (though he doesn’t quite say so) that SONG is SPEECH, but it becomes marked as special. Then within SONG there is a further distinction of SONG vs. POEM. And again, though he doesn’t quite say so here, POEM can be divided into VERSE vs. PROSE.
In a similar way, MYTH originally covered a broad area which was different from EPOS (here I’m following Richard Martin, The Language of Heroes, though he needs to be supplemented by Matthew Clark’s “Was Telemachus Rude to His Mother”). Epos was unmarked speech, while muthos was authoritative speech; but epos was unmarked and could be used to cover muthos. At this point, say in Hesiod, muthos could mean what we call “myth” and also something closer to “philosophy”, though philosophy had not yet been distinguished from myth. Then muthos eventually became differentiated from myth, probably by Plato (see Luc Brisson on this differentiation). And then philosophy became further differentiated into philosophy and natural philosophy, and natural philosophy became identified as science, which is no longer a subcategory of philosophy. But they were all myth at the beginning, and only through a long process of differentiation did they come to be seen as different and even mutually exclusive.
fennec, DrC – you guys have an advantage, which is that you actually know something about science. I just stand on the sidelines and cheer.
I’m not sure Kuhn’s paradigm shifts are quite the same as the process I’m describing. A paradigm shift overthrows the previous paradigm, while the process I’m describing is more a division within a field which then establishes a new field. Maybe. How would you describe (for example) the moment when psychology moved out of philosophy to become an independent science? Is that a paradigm shift? Or something else?
As working scientists, do you find Kuhn’s model persuasive? Have you seen paradigm shifts in your own fields in your working lifetimes? Or has it been developments within normal science?
I heard Kuhn in person back in 1965 at Princeton when I was just a pup. He was pretty impressive.
But my real point is that good science is creative. Just for instance, devising a really good experiment requires a certain imaginative artistry – or so I’ve been led to believe by my friends in the sciences. Comments?
Well, DrC, I’m just making it all up as I go, so it’s probably moonshine.
But let’s try this. Can you see science proceeding from philosophy? Can you see philosophy proceeding from myth? Can you see myth proceeding from poetry?
One more point about science. Not only does it take a kind of creativity to think up good experiments, but also it takes a kind of creativity to make a theory out of a bunch of observations. Especially since the theory sometimes precedes the observations. Maybe not exactly poetry, but still imagination.
Okay, I see your points. In particular, I am happy to say that poetry proceeds from myth. But I think philosophy also proceeds from myth – at least historically, and probably essentially. So if I’m right there would be two lines of descent from myth, one towards poetry (and then to other literary forms) and one towards philosophy (and then towards science).
But what we begin with is undifferentiated, and the differentiations only occur as a gradual process. (As I write this, I realize that I am repeating the creation story that goes back to Hesiod and can also be found at the beginning of Ovid’s Metamorphosis.)
Just to take things historically, Hesiod’s creation myth can easily be taken as a physical allegory, and indeed it was taken that way. The Ionian pre-Socratics are clearly in contention with Homer and Hesiod. When Thales says that everything derives from water, he’s not that much different from Homer’s claim that Ocean is the origin of all. Parmenides, who may be the first person to state the principle of non-contradiction, presents his philosophy in the form of a mythological poem.
Plato is the great opponent of myth, but his relation to myth is very close, and when he runs out of logical argumentation, he turns to story telling.
There’s a not bad book on the topic, Myth and Philosophy, by Hattab.
Just as myth and history seemed to be fundamentally opposed, but then turned out to be linked, so the seeming opposition between myth and philosophy conceals a deeper and more complex relationship. On the one hand, myth and philosophy are simply different kinds of mental activity: myth is a collection of fabulous stories, while philosophy aspires to be a system of true statements. But on the other hand, philosophy in a sense grows out of myth, or at least comes into being in the context of myth. Hesiod, in particular, presents pre-philosophic speculation about the nature of the cosmos, while some of the pre-Socratic philosophers present their ideas in a somewhat mythical guise. But philosophy gradually became a distinct way of thought partly by working to deny its origins in myth.
Myths could be saved, however, through allegory, in which the gods and events of myth were understood symbolically, or by rationalization, in which the divine or magical elements are removed and the stories are interpreted as misunderstandings of the events or history or of everyday life. Rationalization saves the myths by reducing their imaginative quality, while allegory saves them by extending the imagination beyond the literal events of the stories.
At times, however, myth was used as a basis for philosophic thought, as in the preSocratic philosophers Parmenides, Prodicus, and Protagoras. Plato is famous for his hostility to myth and the poets who told the mythic stories, but he mentions myth frequently, and many of his dialogues include stories with a mythic quality. Moreover, he is perhaps the only philosopher who invented a story that has a claim to true mythic status – the myth of Atlantis.
The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, by Martianus Capella (fl. 410-429 AD):
“This single encyclopedic work, De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (“On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury”), sometimes called De septem disciplinis (“On the seven disciplines”) or the Satyricon[2] , is an elaborate didactic allegory written in a mixture of prose and elaborately allusive verse, a mixture of forms in the manner of the Menippean satires of Varro. The style is wordy and involved, loaded with metaphor and bizarre expressions. The book was of great importance in defining the standard formula of academic learning from the Christianized Roman Empire of the fifth century until the Renaissance of the 12th century. This formula included a medieval love for allegory (in particular personifications) as a means of presenting knowledge, and a structuring of that learning around the seven Liberal Arts.
Hmm, reading “psychology”, or “philosophy” texts, I often have trouble reading the folks, because their writings usually lack flow, rhythm, or any “melody”. Their words are like constantly stubbing your toe on rocks while walking down a path. This hardly seems to come from poetic forms. They are also loaded with “jargon”.
While the “sciences” do have their own jargon, there is a flow from cause to effect that is smoother, and less convoluted.
Philosophy, and religions, do seem to stem from myths. (Or of course maybe they CREATE the myths?) Science seems to stem from those components of philosophy based on facts and logic.
^^ Thanks, trout, for good additions to the conversation. There are some philosophers who write very well, I think. Willard von Orman Quine (when he’s not writing logical formulas), Richard Rorty, Robert Nozick, Ian Hacking, J. L. Austin, Gilbert Ryle – and of course Bertrand Russell, among others. I don’t read psychologists so much, so I can’t say much about how they write. I’d be interested to hear what DrC says about this.
This has been a great conversation. I hope it can show how people on the list can engage in en effort to understand each other. I’ve certainly benefited from having to explain and refine my position under detailed critique. I’ve been corrected, and I’ve accepted some correction, but I have also felt that my points were being examined fairly. And it all started with a sort of a joke. Anyway, it’s been fun.
Moonshine? lonecat, just curious…have you ever indulged?
I recently tried some blackberry shine from eastern Carolina and found it to be very palatable. Remarkably, the blackberrys were as large as ping pong balls!
The conversation y’all have taken part in has been a pleasure to follow. Truly pithy and legitimately verbose, the sharing of thought and wonder and documented facts is and shall always be fresh air!
Cowabunga! I’m too late to this party, but want to add a small note as a psychologist: early cognitive scientists explicitly rejected the study of emotions to make it more convenient; this has changed. It is very much a behaviorist approach at the core, though it is maturing. (I’m a personality psychologist with deep expertise in implicit - emotional - motivation, so I’m a little skeptical of the usefulness of a theory that ignores the substrate of the consciousness!)
But, more generally, the point is right. I’m not wholly convinced by Kuhn’s idea of paradigms anymore. One writer commented that Einstein simply swallowed Newton whole, as Newton did Galileo. This seems to be the case for physical science.
Zeke – indulged in moonshine? Only metaphorically. I’m a beer drinker by preference. I can be silly with no excuse at all.
Motive – very interesting, but it’s too late for me to take it in – I’ll have to read it again tomorrow. I’m also not wholly convinced by Kuhn, but I’m not in a position to really give it a critique. Maybe it works for the revolution from the Ptolemaic system to the Copernican (and Kuhn did write a book about that specifically) but that doesn’t mean it works all the time. And then there’s Foucault – but who wants to open up that can of worms.
Just to show that I’m not some lonewolf nutcase, here’s a couple of passages from Lawrence Hatab, Myth and Philosophy:
“Hesiod’s *Theogony remains in most respects a mythical work, but certain elements of the poem clearly anticipate later philosophical aims and assumptions. For one thing, mythical pluralism is counteracted by Hesiod’s underlying interest in the wholeness of reality. Rather than simply presenting the sacred meaning of various events or the origins of particular cultural phenomena, Hesiod seeks the origin and structure of the world order as a whole through his account of the primal beginning of the divine constellation.” pp. 160-61
“…the notion of related opposites in the Theogony together with the idea of regionalized placement in an overall configuration anticipates a prevalent theme in later Greek philosophy – justice as an ordered balance of differences.” p. 161
“Although philosophy represented a departure from mythical disclosure, the relationship between early philosophy and myth is far from black and whtie. As we have seen, many philosophical developments grew out of a mythical background; the mythical tradition itself gradually cultivated images and themes that clearly had mythical origins. In fact, as we shall see, some philosophers simply conceptualized certain fundamental themes of Greek mythical culture.” p. 164
And so on. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m right, but at least I’m not alone in my delusions.
Hahaha! Boil your erudite conclusions down to verifiable facts and I might be more interested…Until then; it’s just pompous wannabes exercising their BS skills. Chan Lowe ain’t one of my reg’lar stops…
kennethcwarren64 almost 14 years ago
Well should we give up more of our freedoms, and spend more billions to “keep us safe from terrorist?” Or accept the fact that we stopped this one, but can’t stop them all, with the reminder that, in reality, there are far greater threats to us then a few crazed bomber, after all how many of them has there been since 9/11 as compared with how many of us have been killed by good, old Americans with guns?
donbeco almost 14 years ago
andy,as always, just doesn’t understand but ,as always, likes to label and insult.
Kevin Roth Premium Member almost 14 years ago
Those who are willing to sacrifice their basic liberties to assure their security deserve neither.
Look it up ANandy - Dick can rot in hell, while I quote Benjamin Franklin. The patriot act didn’t prevent a bleeep thing. Sharp eyed individuals (That actually SERVED in Vietnam) stopped the wanton destruction and loss of life.
zev.farkas almost 14 years ago
Ken Warren said, about 7 hours ago - “…we stopped this one…”
WE? We didn’t stop anything - the only thing that kept Times Square from becoming another Oklahoma City was that the klutz didn’t know how to put a bomb together correctly… (forgetting the keys to his getaway car and home in the ignition of the car bomb probably didn’t help his cause much, either…)
@rikoshayrabbit -
does he delete his comments, or does gocomics do the job for him?
lonecat almost 14 years ago
Just as a speculation – assuming that they have caught the right guy (keeping in mind that he’s innocent until proven guilty) – he seems kind of pathetic. I bet there’s some kind of psychological breakdown here. I’m not excusing anyone. But it almost feels as if he wanted to fail and wanted to get caught. I guess we don’t yet know what contacts he had, and perhaps he was a lone wolf, but extremist groups can prey on the unhinged to do the dirty work.
The most amazing part of the whole story, I think, is that there have been relatively few attacks of this sort. Right after 9/11 I expected a wave of attacks, but very few have materialized. Either the police are doing a better job than we know, or there are fewer supporters of these Islamic fundamentalists that we might have expected, or both.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
^ There’s truth in that version, but it’s not the whole story. It’s been years since I read up on Vietnam, but I remember Ellen J. Hammer, “The Struggle for IndoChina”, and Kahin and Lewis, “The United States in Vietnam” as interesting and informative. Much more is now known, especially following the publication of the Pentagon Papers.
Just one quick question – Why would the US have wanted to help France in Vietnam anyway? Well, one more – What was France doing in Vietnam in the first place?
Dtroutma almost 14 years ago
Did McVeigh and the Texas IRS attack pilot howl at a cross??
RESPECTING other faiths, while not necessarily accepting their teachings, is a part of Buddhist philosophy. Why DO ALL the Old Testament bible religions hate each other, and everyone else? Even Quakers, who try to accept others, are condemned- weird dude. LIberal means thinking, and accepting facts, reason, and reality-
Viet Nam by the way had timber, latex, oil, mineral resources, and huge rice-growing capacity. That is why France wanted the colony, and why we backed them, instead of the Vietnamese. They helped us remove the Japanese, and we allowed the French back in- twice more. The highest producing Conoco oil well in the world, is off the coast of Viet Nam– pretty well sums up why we were there. (The forests have been pretty well creamed off by the way by Japanese and Australian companies since the war ended.)
Justice22 almost 14 years ago
Viet Nam = Political division. France had a huge investment in Viet Nam’s rubber industry and other natural resources. Ho Chi Minh revolted against the French. He asked for help from the U.S. which was refused. He found help in the USSR and so became a communist. After the French were defeated at Dien bin Phu, the French left and the country was divided into North and South. Ho wanted the rich rice growing regions of the South and started his subversive warfare in the South. The French who were still governing the rubber plantations asked the U.S. for help which President Eisenhower promptly gave in the form of advisors and also to get American citizens out of the area. He wished to stop the spread of Communism also. By the time President Kennedy took office, we had several thousand troops in South Viet Nam. After a period of increasing troop strength Kennedy decided to withdraw, but before that could be accomplished, he was killed. We all know of the escalation after that at the encouragement of the military who knew they could accomplish what the French could not. (Nutshell History based on eyewitness accounts from before our big involvement and during)
Straytski almost 14 years ago
K. Warren:
1 - He wasn’t stopped, his bomb failed. 2 - Lots of people are killed by good, old criminals with illegal guns.And thankfully some otf those same criminals killed by REAL good , old Americans in self-defence.
jqmcd almost 14 years ago
^and LEGAL guns…
bradwilliams almost 14 years ago
I can’t believe Scott came back. He must have just emerged from his coma induced by the passage of the health care bill.
joe-b-cool almost 14 years ago
Holy cow, Scott, just casually passing by and noticed your post, which consists almost totally of name-calling, and “I’m always correct!” self-RIGHTeousness. If that’s your idea of discourse, no wonder you get deleted. (Go ahead, infer that I’m a “leftist” if that makes you feel better.)
zekedog55 almost 14 years ago
So harley, you’re saying scott has lost it altogether?
Seems so. Odds are at least 19 to 1 he’s bat guano crazy.
worldisacomic almost 14 years ago
This particular cartoon would get an “F” grade in a liberal arts class taught by a socialist professor. For the fact that the so called “lone wolf” is facing towards the Islamic crescent moon howling his fanatical rants to kill non Muslims. Criticize and condemn Christians but don’t you dare say anything bad about Muslims.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
I don’t think we should indiscriminately condemn whole groups (except perhaps for the whole human race). It’s not “Muslims” or “Christians”, but certain Muslims and certain Christians (and certain people who are neither). There are lots and lots of good Christians, and they should not be condemned for the crimes of evil Christians, and there are lots and lots of good Muslims, and they should not be condemned for the crimes of evil Muslims.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
change – this is probably not the right place for a lengthy discussion the history of the War in Vietnam. It’s a long and complicated story. But since you brought up the French connection, I was just trying to pose a couple of questions that seem relevant. After WWII there was some commitment on the part of some of Western colonial powers to give independence to some of the colonies. But the French were unwilling to give up Vietnam. Why? How did that turn into the US involvement? Once the French were defeated and left, why did the US step in? What was the process? Which presidents did what and why?
By the way, my own position is that the Democrats were fully implicated in a disastrous policy. Johnson gets a very large share of the blame. Although I’m a left/liberal, I don’t think that Democrats are always right.
HabaneroBuck almost 14 years ago
Islam is an inherently “evil” religion, lonecat, attempting to convert mass populations by force. Christianity, Biblical Christianity, is an evangelical call to the individual. They just aren’t in the same boat….
Mohammed is to Christ what fields of opium poppies are to fields of wheat.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
^ I’m not religious, so I don’t really care to judge among religions. Since I don’t believe in God I don’t worry a lot about theology. I do read history. There has been good in Islam, there has been bad in Christianity, as well as bad in Islam and good in Christianity. What I don’t like to do is to judge people before I know what they’ve done. As it happens, I have a number of Muslim friends, and they are hardly evil, at least so far as I can tell. So I’m unwilling to condemn all Muslims. I am, however, suspicious of fundamentalism of any sort, because I think it often leads to intolerance and even violence.
zekedog55 almost 14 years ago
I would surmise that the criteria for judging religion is…behavior?
Zealots of all shape and size would do well to listen to Austin Power’s admonition–“Oh, behave!”
lonecat almost 14 years ago
DrC – here’s my standard of judgment – Which religions inspire the best poetry? Christianity is third, slightly ahead of Islam, with Hinduism in second, and ancient paganism out in front.
HabaneroBuck almost 14 years ago
Kind of curious which poets from Hinduism are better than John Donne, John Milton, Dante’s Inferno, or the allegories of Bunyan, but you are entitled to your opinion.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
DrC – actually Pooh is prose, not poetry. It’s good, I admit, but I wouldn’t put it in the same class with the Ramayana or the Mahabharata.
zekedog55 almost 14 years ago
Dagnabbit Doc—you remind me of my school years and those caring professionals who challenged me to think.
I’ll mull over specifics and return…for now I must go earn some filthy lucre.
Dtroutma almost 14 years ago
On the lone wolf issue: How many bank robbers, or 7/11 holdup artists operating on their own, and with NO previous record of any criminal activity, are arrested BEFORE they commit their first crime? Groups or individuals with records, are much easier to track and catch before they act. Just like the 9/11 dudes should have been stopped based on available data, the Times Square bomber, and the Texas IRS suicide guy, are much harder to catch.
As to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all call on the “dudes” from the Old Testament, who were ALL basically homicidal sociopaths- using “God” as their crutch, weapon, and excuse—‘nough said.
SherriannPederson almost 14 years ago
The concept of ‘groups of thugs’, ‘members of gangs’ or ‘bullies’ attacking the helpless was originally created by “Fernando and his wife Marian”. This is one of their many methods they used to destroy the humans they created in their humanities; other methods are: described in Queens song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’; the concept of defacing humans so that they appear bizarre and cannot function as normal; and the concept of taking humans and placing them on planets which do not sustain life .
CorosiveFrog Premium Member almost 14 years ago
There are nuts out there. That particular nut just happened to be muslim and live in a time where it’s a fad for muslims of his kind (the nutty kind) to throw bombs around.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
Ok, DrC, I agree, Pooh is technically a prosimetrum.
Of course I was being provocative, but I’m also kind of serious. As serious as I get, which isn’t very.
If you look at the human race from the point of view of the Universe (which which I am intimately familiar), most of what we do can just as well be done by any old animal. Eat, drink, defecate, sleep, reproduce – heck, dogs and cats can do that, and they’re prettier than we are, for the most part. If that’s all there is, then the Universe could get rid of us (as it will, someday) without a regret.
But then there’s that little bit extra that people can do – we can write poems, we can compose fugues and sonatas, and we can paint pretty pictures. If there’s any point to people at all, that must be it.
I can put it in fancier terms (German Romantic style), but the point is the same. If you want to maximize your humanness, go write a poem. If you just want to be an animal, have a burger, take a snooze. Hmm, seems like a good idea. See you later.
CorosiveFrog Premium Member almost 14 years ago
Sooky Rottweiler says; Hey, I can draw cartoons, and I’m a dog! Plus we have this super-cool thing called fur…no need for shopping! Never goes out of style and It’s free!
lonecat almost 14 years ago
DrC – by the way, I think the poem you quoted isn’t from Winne-the-Pooh. Maybe it’s from Milne’s book of religious poetry, Now We are Sikhs.
I already mentioned painting; I can agree about philosophy and science, but those are just specialized forms of poetry, anyway, at least in the Greek tradition, which is my home base. The principle is the same, just differences of detail. Language just exists so we can write poems, teleologically speaking.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
^ It’s a long story, and I have just a sense of the outlines, anyway. As you know, I’m no philosopher. But here’s two elements:
First, Hesiod to Parmenides – philosophic poetry to poetic philosophy. Karl Popper’s book on Parmenides is interesting, though repetitive.
Second, neither philosophy nor science is simply a collection of true propositions. A proposition (if I understand this properly) isn’t true in isolation, but only as part of a larger group of propositions. That larger group of propositions amounts, I believe, to a vision of reality, and what is myth except a vision of reality? What is a vision of reality except a myth? That doesn’t mean that all visions are equal. As you said when you started this train of thought on its tracks, we judge all the time; there are better poems and worse poems, better philosophies and worse philosophies, better sciences and worse sciences, but they are all visions.
I can go on…. as you know….
lonecat almost 14 years ago
If science is a sub-class of poetry, then the great scientists can be great poets, but it doesn’t follow that the great poets are necessarily great scientists – if I get my Venn diagrams right.
I am soooo out of my league here. But it’s fun. When you test a proposition in science, you’re testing it within a theory. Outside a theory, it doesn’t mean anything (if I have understood this properly). It’s the larger theory that’s the poem, not the particular proposition to be tested.
When I read about the great scientists and the great theories, I am struck by their imagination and insights, which is in addition to and often prior to the testing. Science has its mechanical aspect (as does poetry), but it is more than mechanical. I think that’s part of what Darwin is getting at in end of The Origin of Species.
fallacyside almost 14 years ago
Darwin wasn’t a scientist; we was a failed theologian without an audience or a congregation, so he went for a boat ride…
lonecat almost 14 years ago
Okay, Arkwright, moving right along….
Well, DrC, a couple of ways to think about this.
First, tthis may be covered by markedness theory, which comes out of Prague School linguistics. The idea is that in any binary opposition, one of the terms may be given a wider extension than the other; the wider term may even express the narrower term, to which it seems to be opposed.
For example, in the binary opposition “man” and “woman”, the two terms may seem to be mutually exclusive. But as we all know, in certain situations, the term “man” includes the term “woman” – as in book titles such as “Man’s Place in Nature”, which probably includes women, while a title such as “Woman’s Place in Nature” certainly would not include men. This usage has changed since I was a lad, for good reasons, but the phenomenon is common. For instance, long and short may seem to be opposites, and yet we ask “How long is it?” even when we are talking about short things, but only in special circumstances do we ask “How short is it?”, and never when we are talking about long things (unless they are too short for the function, in which case they are short). Likewise, we ask of a baby “How old is it”, but we don’t ordinarily ask of an old person “How young are you” (unless we are Bob Barker on a game show in the 1950s). The term of wider extension is called the unmarked term and the term of narrower extension is called the marked term. So part of what I am suggesting is that “Poem” can be the unmarked term and “Science” can be the marked term.
Second, there is a historical process by which a large area named X gets carved up into two areas, which are called X and Y, and Y is seen to be different from the new X in a way which wouldn’t have mattered for the old X. If that makes any sense. And his process can repeat in the descendant terms.
I take an example from Gregory Nagy, Pindar’s Homer (pp. 29ff.): He begins with a distinction of SONG and SPEECH, where SONG is defined as special speech. That is, he already assumes (though he doesn’t quite say so) that SONG is SPEECH, but it becomes marked as special. Then within SONG there is a further distinction of SONG vs. POEM. And again, though he doesn’t quite say so here, POEM can be divided into VERSE vs. PROSE.
In a similar way, MYTH originally covered a broad area which was different from EPOS (here I’m following Richard Martin, The Language of Heroes, though he needs to be supplemented by Matthew Clark’s “Was Telemachus Rude to His Mother”). Epos was unmarked speech, while muthos was authoritative speech; but epos was unmarked and could be used to cover muthos. At this point, say in Hesiod, muthos could mean what we call “myth” and also something closer to “philosophy”, though philosophy had not yet been distinguished from myth. Then muthos eventually became differentiated from myth, probably by Plato (see Luc Brisson on this differentiation). And then philosophy became further differentiated into philosophy and natural philosophy, and natural philosophy became identified as science, which is no longer a subcategory of philosophy. But they were all myth at the beginning, and only through a long process of differentiation did they come to be seen as different and even mutually exclusive.
Does this explain where I’m coming from?
fallacyside almost 14 years ago
^No.
Darwin: “This birdie looks a lot like that birdie…”
fallacyside almost 14 years ago
When an X is invalidated by a Y; It almost always means that Z has been watching it all happen.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
fennec, DrC – you guys have an advantage, which is that you actually know something about science. I just stand on the sidelines and cheer.
I’m not sure Kuhn’s paradigm shifts are quite the same as the process I’m describing. A paradigm shift overthrows the previous paradigm, while the process I’m describing is more a division within a field which then establishes a new field. Maybe. How would you describe (for example) the moment when psychology moved out of philosophy to become an independent science? Is that a paradigm shift? Or something else?
As working scientists, do you find Kuhn’s model persuasive? Have you seen paradigm shifts in your own fields in your working lifetimes? Or has it been developments within normal science?
I heard Kuhn in person back in 1965 at Princeton when I was just a pup. He was pretty impressive.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
But my real point is that good science is creative. Just for instance, devising a really good experiment requires a certain imaginative artistry – or so I’ve been led to believe by my friends in the sciences. Comments?
lonecat almost 14 years ago
Well, DrC, I’m just making it all up as I go, so it’s probably moonshine.
But let’s try this. Can you see science proceeding from philosophy? Can you see philosophy proceeding from myth? Can you see myth proceeding from poetry?
One more point about science. Not only does it take a kind of creativity to think up good experiments, but also it takes a kind of creativity to make a theory out of a bunch of observations. Especially since the theory sometimes precedes the observations. Maybe not exactly poetry, but still imagination.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
Okay, I see your points. In particular, I am happy to say that poetry proceeds from myth. But I think philosophy also proceeds from myth – at least historically, and probably essentially. So if I’m right there would be two lines of descent from myth, one towards poetry (and then to other literary forms) and one towards philosophy (and then towards science).
But what we begin with is undifferentiated, and the differentiations only occur as a gradual process. (As I write this, I realize that I am repeating the creation story that goes back to Hesiod and can also be found at the beginning of Ovid’s Metamorphosis.)
Just to take things historically, Hesiod’s creation myth can easily be taken as a physical allegory, and indeed it was taken that way. The Ionian pre-Socratics are clearly in contention with Homer and Hesiod. When Thales says that everything derives from water, he’s not that much different from Homer’s claim that Ocean is the origin of all. Parmenides, who may be the first person to state the principle of non-contradiction, presents his philosophy in the form of a mythological poem.
Plato is the great opponent of myth, but his relation to myth is very close, and when he runs out of logical argumentation, he turns to story telling.
There’s a not bad book on the topic, Myth and Philosophy, by Hattab.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
From a textbook on myth:
Just as myth and history seemed to be fundamentally opposed, but then turned out to be linked, so the seeming opposition between myth and philosophy conceals a deeper and more complex relationship. On the one hand, myth and philosophy are simply different kinds of mental activity: myth is a collection of fabulous stories, while philosophy aspires to be a system of true statements. But on the other hand, philosophy in a sense grows out of myth, or at least comes into being in the context of myth. Hesiod, in particular, presents pre-philosophic speculation about the nature of the cosmos, while some of the pre-Socratic philosophers present their ideas in a somewhat mythical guise. But philosophy gradually became a distinct way of thought partly by working to deny its origins in myth. Myths could be saved, however, through allegory, in which the gods and events of myth were understood symbolically, or by rationalization, in which the divine or magical elements are removed and the stories are interpreted as misunderstandings of the events or history or of everyday life. Rationalization saves the myths by reducing their imaginative quality, while allegory saves them by extending the imagination beyond the literal events of the stories. At times, however, myth was used as a basis for philosophic thought, as in the preSocratic philosophers Parmenides, Prodicus, and Protagoras. Plato is famous for his hostility to myth and the poets who told the mythic stories, but he mentions myth frequently, and many of his dialogues include stories with a mythic quality. Moreover, he is perhaps the only philosopher who invented a story that has a claim to true mythic status – the myth of Atlantis.
Dtroutma almost 14 years ago
Hmm, x minus y = alimony??
lonecat almost 14 years ago
^ So when philosophy got a divorce from mythology, who paid alimony to whom?
lonecat almost 14 years ago
The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, by Martianus Capella (fl. 410-429 AD):
“This single encyclopedic work, De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (“On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury”), sometimes called De septem disciplinis (“On the seven disciplines”) or the Satyricon[2] , is an elaborate didactic allegory written in a mixture of prose and elaborately allusive verse, a mixture of forms in the manner of the Menippean satires of Varro. The style is wordy and involved, loaded with metaphor and bizarre expressions. The book was of great importance in defining the standard formula of academic learning from the Christianized Roman Empire of the fifth century until the Renaissance of the 12th century. This formula included a medieval love for allegory (in particular personifications) as a means of presenting knowledge, and a structuring of that learning around the seven Liberal Arts.
Dtroutma almost 14 years ago
Hmm, reading “psychology”, or “philosophy” texts, I often have trouble reading the folks, because their writings usually lack flow, rhythm, or any “melody”. Their words are like constantly stubbing your toe on rocks while walking down a path. This hardly seems to come from poetic forms. They are also loaded with “jargon”.
While the “sciences” do have their own jargon, there is a flow from cause to effect that is smoother, and less convoluted.
Philosophy, and religions, do seem to stem from myths. (Or of course maybe they CREATE the myths?) Science seems to stem from those components of philosophy based on facts and logic.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
^^ Thanks, trout, for good additions to the conversation. There are some philosophers who write very well, I think. Willard von Orman Quine (when he’s not writing logical formulas), Richard Rorty, Robert Nozick, Ian Hacking, J. L. Austin, Gilbert Ryle – and of course Bertrand Russell, among others. I don’t read psychologists so much, so I can’t say much about how they write. I’d be interested to hear what DrC says about this.
This has been a great conversation. I hope it can show how people on the list can engage in en effort to understand each other. I’ve certainly benefited from having to explain and refine my position under detailed critique. I’ve been corrected, and I’ve accepted some correction, but I have also felt that my points were being examined fairly. And it all started with a sort of a joke. Anyway, it’s been fun.
zekedog55 almost 14 years ago
Moonshine? lonecat, just curious…have you ever indulged?
I recently tried some blackberry shine from eastern Carolina and found it to be very palatable. Remarkably, the blackberrys were as large as ping pong balls!
The conversation y’all have taken part in has been a pleasure to follow. Truly pithy and legitimately verbose, the sharing of thought and wonder and documented facts is and shall always be fresh air!
Motivemagus almost 14 years ago
Cowabunga! I’m too late to this party, but want to add a small note as a psychologist: early cognitive scientists explicitly rejected the study of emotions to make it more convenient; this has changed. It is very much a behaviorist approach at the core, though it is maturing. (I’m a personality psychologist with deep expertise in implicit - emotional - motivation, so I’m a little skeptical of the usefulness of a theory that ignores the substrate of the consciousness!) But, more generally, the point is right. I’m not wholly convinced by Kuhn’s idea of paradigms anymore. One writer commented that Einstein simply swallowed Newton whole, as Newton did Galileo. This seems to be the case for physical science.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
Zeke – indulged in moonshine? Only metaphorically. I’m a beer drinker by preference. I can be silly with no excuse at all.
Motive – very interesting, but it’s too late for me to take it in – I’ll have to read it again tomorrow. I’m also not wholly convinced by Kuhn, but I’m not in a position to really give it a critique. Maybe it works for the revolution from the Ptolemaic system to the Copernican (and Kuhn did write a book about that specifically) but that doesn’t mean it works all the time. And then there’s Foucault – but who wants to open up that can of worms.
riley05 almost 14 years ago
Of all the countless identities that Puppy cowers behind, this self-chosen ID is the most descriptive of her:
“Errr..Ahhhh…Ummmm…”
Indeed!
What a good little christian.
lonecat almost 14 years ago
Just to show that I’m not some lonewolf nutcase, here’s a couple of passages from Lawrence Hatab, Myth and Philosophy:
“Hesiod’s *Theogony remains in most respects a mythical work, but certain elements of the poem clearly anticipate later philosophical aims and assumptions. For one thing, mythical pluralism is counteracted by Hesiod’s underlying interest in the wholeness of reality. Rather than simply presenting the sacred meaning of various events or the origins of particular cultural phenomena, Hesiod seeks the origin and structure of the world order as a whole through his account of the primal beginning of the divine constellation.” pp. 160-61
“…the notion of related opposites in the Theogony together with the idea of regionalized placement in an overall configuration anticipates a prevalent theme in later Greek philosophy – justice as an ordered balance of differences.” p. 161
“Although philosophy represented a departure from mythical disclosure, the relationship between early philosophy and myth is far from black and whtie. As we have seen, many philosophical developments grew out of a mythical background; the mythical tradition itself gradually cultivated images and themes that clearly had mythical origins. In fact, as we shall see, some philosophers simply conceptualized certain fundamental themes of Greek mythical culture.” p. 164
And so on. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m right, but at least I’m not alone in my delusions.
zekedog55 almost 14 years ago
I think the female pup has the hots for me and lusts for it “doggie style”!
lonecat almost 14 years ago
This stream seems to have played itself out. Bye-bye.
fallacyside almost 14 years ago
Hahaha! Boil your erudite conclusions down to verifiable facts and I might be more interested…Until then; it’s just pompous wannabes exercising their BS skills. Chan Lowe ain’t one of my reg’lar stops…