Log24

Saturday, December 16, 2017

Dagger Definitions (Review)

Filed under: G-Notes,General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 11:30 am

The previous post suggests a review of
the philosophical concept of universals —

A part of the above-mentioned 2011 "Saturday evening's post" that is
relevant to the illustration at the end of today's previous post —

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110101-Singer377abridged.jpg

Note the whatness of Singer's  dagger definitions —

Sunday, October 14, 2018

Logos

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 10:00 am

New and old AMS logos —

I prefer the old.  Related material —

For an old Crosswicks curse, see that phrase in this journal.

For a new curse, see . . .

    "Unsheathe your dagger definitions." — James Joyce.

Monday, June 4, 2018

The Trinity Stone Defined

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 8:56 pm

“Unsheathe your dagger definitions.” — James Joyce, Ulysses

The “triple cross” link in the previous post referenced the eightfold cube
as a structure that might be called the trinity stone .

An Approach to Symmetric Generation of the Simple Group of Order 168

Some small Galois spaces (the Cullinane models)

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Unpleasantly Discursive

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:12 pm

Background for the remarks of Koen Thas in the previous post —
Schumacher and Westmoreland, "Modal Quantum Theory" (2010).

Related material —

" There is a pleasantly discursive treatment 
of Pontius Pilate’s unanswered question
‘What is truth?’ "

— Coxeter, 1987, introduction to Trudeau’s
     The Non-Euclidean Revolution

The whole  truth may require an unpleasantly  discursive treatment.

Example —

1. The reported death on Friday, Jan. 5, 2018, of a dancer
     closely associated with George Balanchine

2. This journal on Friday, Jan. 5, 2018:

3. Illustration from a search related to the above dancer:

4. "Per Mare Per Terras" — Clan slogan above, illustrated with
     what looks like a cross-dagger.

    "Unsheathe your dagger definitions." — James Joyce.

5. Discursive remarks on quantum theory by the above
    Schumacher and Westmoreland:

6. "How much story do you want?" — George Balanchine

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Double Cross

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:00 pm

Cross of Gold:

"I would tell them about Rhiannon,
and about my treasured gold cross…."
Stevie Nicks

Dagger Cross:

See Dagger Definitions, by James Joyce:

"Hold to the now, the here, through which
all future plunges to the past."

A Jew's View:

Monday, November 12, 2012

Quine’s Dagger

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:31 am

This post was suggested by other weblogs' 
posts on Owen Barfield* quoted here recently, by
the Apollo Guidance Computer (see below and
MIT Technology Review), and by James Joyce:

"Unsheathe your dagger definitions." — Ulysses

* See The Appearances (Sept. 20, 2009), for
   a correction of Quine by Barfield.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Graduation

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:01 pm

Today is commencement day at College of the Desert.

Without Graduation
(from a poem by Jorie Graham)

IMAGE- Description of crow from page 178 of 'Dream of the Unified Field,' a book by Jorie Graham

With  Graduation

IMAGE- From 'Ulysses,' 1922 first edition, page 178-- 'dagger definitions'

Click either passage above for some commentary.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Mysteries of Faith

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:00 pm

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120113-StCatherinesHeader.jpg

Wiener on Paley

… he was already recognised as the ablest of the group of young English mathematicians who have been inspired by the genius of G H Hardy and J E Littlewood. In a group notable for its brilliant technique, no one had developed this technique to a higher degree than Paley. Nevertheless he should not be though of primarily as a technician, for with this ability he combined creative power of the first order. As he himself was wont to say, technique without 'rugger tactics' will not get one far, and these rugger tactics he practised to a degree that was characteristic of his forthright and vigorous nature.

The Telegraph  today on British mystery author Reginald Hill—

"After National Service between 1955 and 1957,
he went up on a scholarship to St Catherine’s College, Oxford,
where he played rugby…."

Further details—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120113-DaggerAwards.jpg

"Unsheathe your dagger definitions." — James Joyce

Some context— St. Catherine in this journal and her feast day last year.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Horseness

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:00 am

"Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences."

— A character clearly talking nonsense, from the National Library section of James Joyce's Ulysses

"Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse."

— A thought of Stephen Dedalus in the same Ulysses  section

For a representation of horseness related to Singer's dagger definitions in Saturday evening's post, see Generating the Octad Generator and Art Wars: Geometry as Conceptual Art.

More seriously, Joyce's "horseness" is related to the problem of universals. For an illuminating approach to universals from a psychological point of view, see James Hillman's Re-Visioning Psychology  (Harper Collins, 1977). (See particularly pages 154-157.)

Saturday, January 1, 2011

For a Dead Philosopher —

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:06 pm

Dagger Definitions

Part I

From 'Ulysses,' 1922 first edition, page 178-- 'dagger definitions'

Click for some background.

Part II

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110101-Singer377abridged.jpg

Click for some background.

Update of Jan. 2, 2011

Singer goes on to say that "A finite projective plane, PG (2, p), defined in this way is Pascalian and Desarguesian ; it exists for every prime and positive integer , and there is only one such PG (2, p) for a given p  and n …."

His definitions therefore deliberately exclude non -Desarguesian finite projective planes, which were known to exist at the time he wrote.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

A Generation Lost in Space

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:29 am

or, Deja Vu All Over Again

Top two obituaries in this morning's NY Times list–

David Simons, Who Flew High
on Eve of Space Age, Dies at 87

Dr. Simons, a physician turned Air Force officer, had sent animals aloft for several years before his record-breaking flight.

James Aubrey, who Portrayed the Hero
in ‘Lord of the Flies’, Is Dead at 62

Mr. Aubrey portrayed Ralph in the film version of the William Golding novel and had a busy career on stage and television in England.

Simons reportedly died on April 5,
Aubrey on April 6.

This journal on those dates–

April 5 —

Monday, April 5, 2010

Space Cowboys

Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 12:00 PM Edit This

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10/100405-Eastwood.jpg

Google News, 11:32 AM ET today–

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10/100405-SpaceCowboysSm.jpg

Related material:

Yesterday's Easter message,
film notes from March 13,
and Dagger Definitions.

April 6 —

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Clue

Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 12:00 PM Edit This

Excerpt from 'Cosmic Trigger'
 by Robert Anton Wilson

See also Leary on Cuernavaca,
John O'Hara's fleeting reference
to Cuernavaca in Hope of Heaven,
and Cuernavaca in this journal.

Team Daedalus

Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 9:00 AM Edit This

"Concept (scholastics' verbum mentis)– theological analogy of Son's procession as Verbum Patris, 111-12" –Index to Joyce and Aquinas, by William T. Noon, Society of Jesus, Yale University Press 1957, second printing 1963, page 162

"Back in 1958… [four] Air Force pilots were Team Daedalus, the best of the best." –Summary of the film "Space Cowboys"

"Man is nothing if not labyrinthine." –The Vicar in Trevanian's The Loo Sanction\

 

Commentary by T.S. Eliot

"At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: 'on whatever sphere of being
The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death'—that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward."

 

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Ander’s Game

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:32 am

"Unsheathe your dagger definitions." –James Joyce, Ulysses

See also David Shields and Ander Monson.

Related material: God's Dice.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Space Cowboys

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10/100405-Eastwood.jpg

Google News, 11:32 AM ET today–

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10/100405-SpaceCowboysSm.jpg

Related material:

Yesterday's Easter message,
film notes from March 13,
and Dagger Definitions.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Sunday October 11, 2009

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 7:00 pm
Concepts of Space

Today I revised the illustrations
in Finite Geometry of the
Square and Cube

for consistency in labeling
the eightfold cube.

Related material:

Inside the White Cube:
The Ideology of
the Gallery Space

Dagger Definitions

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Saturday July 25, 2009

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 am

Icon

Icon for the weblog 'Red Kite Prayer'-- Red triangular half-square in the upper left half of a white square

Unsheathe your dagger definitions.

— James Joyce, Ulysses

The entry of 12:06 PM Thursday, July 23, contained a link to the journal Red Kite Prayer. The “red kite” is the red flag posted near the end of the Tour de France.

Thanks for a definition are due to the journal Flahute. A quotation from that journal:

“There’s only one shot that’s in harmony with the field. The home of your authentic swing. That flag… and all that you are.”

The Legend of Bagger Vance

See also yesterday’s Log24 post.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Saturday June 20, 2009

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:00 am
A Symbol
of the Self

Turn the page.

Google Book Search on Marlowe and Stone

“Unsheathe your
dagger definitions.”
Ulysses 

Dagger on cover of  'The Fraternity of the Stone'

Monday, February 23, 2009

Monday February 23, 2009

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:22 pm
Another Manic Monday
McGee and Smee 

Project MUSE —

and interpretations, “any of the
Zingari shoolerim [gypsy schoolchildren]
may pick a peck of kindlings yet from the
sack of auld hensyne” (FW 112.4-8).

— Patrick McGee, “Reading Authority:
Feminism and Joyce,” MFS: Modern
Fiction Studies
— Volume 35, Number 3,
Fall 1989, pp. 421-436, The Johns Hopkins
University Press

McGee Thanks the Academy:

“The ulterior motive behind this essay [“Reading Authority,” above], the purpose for which I seize this occasion, concerns the question or problem of authority. I stress at the outset my understanding of authority as the constructed repository of value or foundation of a system of values, the final effect of fetishism– in this case, literary fetishism. [Cf. Marx, Das Kapital] Reading– as in the phrase ‘reading authority’– should be grasped as the institutionally determined act of constructing authority….”

Wikipedia:

“[In Peter Pan] Smee is Captain Hook’s right-hand man… Barrie describes him as ‘Irish’ and ‘a man who stabbed without offence‘….”

Background: In yesterday’s morning entry, James Joyce as Jesuit, with “Dagger Definitions.”

A different Smee appears as an art critic in yesterday’s afternoon entry “Design Theory.”–

Smee Stabs Without Offence:

“Brock, who has a brisk mind, is a man on a mission. He read mathematical economics and political philosophy at Princeton (he has five degrees in all) and is the founder and president of Strategic Economic Decisions Inc., a think tank specializing in applying the economics of uncertainty to forecasting and risk assessment.

But phooey to all that; Brock has deeper things to think about. He believes he has cracked the secret of beautiful design. He even has equations and graphs to prove it.”

A Jesuit in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

“When may we expect to have something from you on the esthetic question?”

Beckett Bethicketted:

“Our entanglement in the wilderness of Finnegans Wake is exemplified by the neologism ‘Bethicket.’ This word condenses a range of possible meanings and reinforces a diversity of possible syntactic interpretations. Joyce seems to allude to Beckett, creating a portmanteau word that melds ‘Beckett’ with ‘thicket’ (continuing the undergrowth metaphor), ‘thick’ (adding mental density to floral density)…. As a single word ‘Bethicket’ contains the confusion that its context suggests. On the one hand, ‘Bethicket me for a stump of a beech’ has the sound of a proverbial expletive that might mean something like ‘I’ll be damned’ or ‘Well, I’ll be a son of a gun.’….”

Stephen Dilks

Winslet, Penn, and Cruz at the Oscars, 2009

At the Oscars, 2009

Related material:

Frame Tales and Dickung

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Sunday February 22, 2009

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:00 am

Design at Harvard:
Natural or Unnatural?

Logo of Harvard Graduate School of Design compared to the 'natural' sign

From the Harvard Graduate School of Design–

Call for Entries: The Space of Representation

DEADLINE FEBRUARY 27, 2009 8PM EST

"According to Henri Lefebvre, the social production of space has three components: spatial practice, the representation of space, and the space of representation. The latter two are integral to both design and the review process."

Also according to Henri Lefebvre:

An 'epoch-making event' from Lefebvre, 'The Production of Space'

This is clearly nonsense.
It is also, like much else at Harvard,
damned Marxist  nonsense.

I recommend instead  
James Joyce on space —

Dagger Definitions

From 'Ulysses,' 1922 first edition, page 178-- 'dagger definitions'

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Thursday January 29, 2009

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:23 am
Dagger Definitions

From 'Ulysses,' 1922 first edition, page 178-- 'dagger definitions'
 
Midrash by a post-bac:

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

“Horseness is
the whatness of allhorse”:
Thingism vs. Thisness

By Amy Peterson

Jacques Derrida once asked the surly and self-revealing question, “Why is it the philosopher who is expected to be easier and not some scientist who is even more inaccessible?” As with philosophers generally, literary critics come with their own inaccessible argot, some terms of which are useful, but most of which are not and only add more loops to literary criticism’s spiraling abstraction. Take for example, James Wood’s neologism thisness (h/t: 3 Quarks Daily):

The project of modernity in Wood’s eyes is largely in revealing the contour and shape, the specific ‘feel’ of that essential mystery. He even borrows a concept from the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus, haecceitas or ‘thisness,’ to explain what he means: ‘By thisness, I mean any detail that draws abstraction toward itself and seems to kill that abstraction with a puff of palpability, any detail that centers our attention with its concretion.’ (my emphasis)

Wood is clearly taking his cue here from the new trend in literary criticism of referring to realism by its etymological meaning, thingism. Where thingism is meant to capture the materialism of late nineteenth and early 20th century Realist literature, thisness, it seems, is meant to capture the basic immaterialism of Modern realist literature. In this, it succeeds. Realism is no longer grounded in the thingism, or material aspect, of reality as it was during the Victorian era. In contemporary literature, it is a “puff of palpability” that hints at reality’s contours but does not disturb our essential understanding of existence as an impalpable mystery. So now we have this term that seems to encompass the Modern approach to reality, but is it useful as an accurate conception of reality (i.e. truth, human existence, and the like), and how are we to judge its accuracy?

I think that, as far as literature is concerned, the test of the term’s accuracy lies in the interpretation of the Modernist texts that Wood champions as truthful but largely abstract depictions of human experience:

‘Kafka’s ‘”Metamorphosis” and Hamsun’s “Hunger” and Beckett’s “Endgame” are not representations of likely or typical human activity but are nevertheless harrowingly truthful texts.’

For brevity’s sake, I’ll pick a passage from a different Modernist text that I think exemplifies the issues involved in the question of thingism and thisness’ reality. In James Joyce’s Ulysses, a pub discussionhttp://www.log24.com/images/asterisk8.gif of art’s purpose arises in which the writer Geoffrey Russell asserts that “Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences”; in his thoughts, Stephen Dedalus prepares to counter this:

Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through spaces smaller than red globules of man’s blood they creepy crawl after [William] Blake’s buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow. Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.

To give my best translation of Stephen-think: The physical being of the horse (“horseness”) grounds the over-arching, abstract idea of the horse (“allhorse”) in reality (“whatness”). God—the ultimate abstraction—is elusive and rarely manifests himself as a material reality (when listening to children playing earlier in the book, Stephen asserts that God is a “shout in the street”). Space—the material world—must be observed to make sense of abstract ideas (like God). Stephen’s opponents who believe that art must depict the abstract and the essential make claims about existence that have very little basis in material reality so that they can grasp at the divine through the work of such famously fantastic artists as William Blake, whose unrealistic poetry and paintings Stephen evidently holds in little esteem here, though he’s kinder to Blake elsewhere. Finally, the present makes concrete the abstract possibilities of the future by turning them into the realities of the past.

Ulysses elucidates the distinction between abstractly based and materially based realism because, while abstract to be sure, Joyce’s writing is deeply rooted in material existence, and it is this material existence which has given it its lasting meaning and influence. The larger point that I’m trying to make here is that material reality gives meaning to the abstract. (As a corollary, the abstract helps us to make sense of material reality.) There can be no truth without meaning, and there can be no meaning without a material form of existence against which to judge abstract ideas. To argue, as Wood does, that the abstract can produce concrete truths with little reference to material reality is to ignore the mutual nature of the relationship between material reality and truth. The more carefully we observe material reality, the more truth we gain from our abstractions of its phenomena, or, to state it in the vocabulary—though not the style—of literary criticism: thisness is a diluted form of thingism, which means that thisness is productive of fewer (and lesser) truths.

http://www.log24.com/images/asterisk8.gif “Space: what you
  damn well
     have to see.”

Amy Peterson
has failed to see
that the unsheathing
of dagger definitions
takes place not in
a pub, but in
The National Library
of Ireland
.

The Russell here is not
Geoffrey but rather
George William Russell,
also known as AE.

Related material:

Yesterday’s Log24 entry
for the Feast of
St. Thomas Aquinas,
Actual Being,”
and the four entries
that preceded it.

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