Log24

Saturday, May 16, 2020

Annals of Intellectual History*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:32 pm

The date — Nov. 20, 2011 — of a post cited here last night
was suggested as follows.  It was the opening date of a
Broadway show, “Seminar,” that later starred Jeff Goldblum.

Jeff Goldblum in “Seminar

* See Intellectual History in this journal.

Sunday, July 16, 2023

D-Day Science Death

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:44 am

New York Times  obituary yesterday reported the 
June 6 death, at 91, of a Harvard professor who dealt with
the relations between science and society —

“ 'Everett was one of a new generation of social historians
of science who insisted that it was not enough to pay attention
to the internal intellectual story of science,' Anne Harrington,
the Franklin L. Ford professor of the history of science at Harvard,
said by email. 'The field needed to attend also to how science was
shaped by and also helped shape the conditions of the social world.' ”

Consider as well Scarlett Johansson on Alan Watts in "Her" (2013)
and Harrington on intellectual history in Cuernavaca . . .

By 1956, Fromm was dining at Suzuki’s part-time home in New York City, and talking with him about ways in which Zen could contribute to a wholesale reimagining of psychoanalytic therapeutics and theory (see Friedman and Schreiber 2013). By this time, also, Fromm was himself spending considerable periods of time at a new home in Cuernavaca, Mexico. At one point he suggested that Suzuki consider moving in with him permanently. When Suzuki politely declined, Fromm conceived instead a major conference based in Mexico that would try to take stock of the entire current state of the conversation between Zen and psychotherapy (see Friedman and Schreiber 2013). In 1957, some fifty psychotherapists—double the original expected number—participated in a week of presentations and discussions. Fromm later recalled the event as a magical time: what began as a traditional conference with the usual ‘over-emphasis on thoughts and words' changed over a few days, as people 'became more concentrated and more quiet.'

A search in this  journal for D-Day related material yields
posts tagged "Shadow Hacking."

"Please wait as your operating system is initiated."

Tuesday, May 16, 2023

The Cassirer in the Rye

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:01 am

From the American Mathematical Society today —

Robert Earl Tubbs (1954-2023)
May 15, 2023

"Tubbs, associate professor of mathematics at
the University of Colorado Boulder, died April 11, 2023,
at the age of 69. He received his PhD in 1981 from
Penn State University under the supervision of 
W. Dale Brownawell. His research interests included
number theory, especially transcendental number theory,
the intellectual history of mathematical ideas and mathematics,
and the humanities."

This  journal on the dies natalis  of Tubbs had the third of three
posts tagged "Space and Form."  Those posts dealt with European
cultural history related to Tubbs's interests. The "Space and Form"
posts, along with today's previous Log24 post, suggest a review of
the Nov. 10, 2021 post titled European Culture.  An image from that post —

Those who share Cassirer's enthusiasm for myth may regard the
above Josefine Lyche version of my work as a sort of "secret writing,"
to quote a phrase of Cassirer's I find very distasteful. But there is nothing
secret  about it, although there is some resemblance to written characters.

This  post's title was suggested by a Salinger quote in the European Culture post.

Update on the next day, May  17 —

Further reading in Cassirer's Mythical Thought  indicates that in the
passages above, on Schelling, he may be presenting a parody of
Schelling when he writes "a poem hidden behind a wonderful
secret writing."  Later, on page 10, he asks, sensibly, 

"… is there, perhaps, a means of retaining the question
put forward by Schelling's Philosophie der Mythologie
but of transferring it from the sphere of a philosophy of
the absolute to that of critical philosophy?"

There has reportedly been "an upsurge of interest" in Cassirer —

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

A Long Literary Tradition

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:38 pm

"There's a long literary tradition associating
certain kinds of geometry with horror."

— American Mathematical Society yesterday:

See also yesterday's Log24 post "Transylvania Revisited."

A related post —

Harvard Showbiz.

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

The Central Myth

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:12 pm

Wikipedia on film producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura
(Harvard AB (1980) in Intellectual History*) —

“His tenure at Warner Bros. included discovering and
shepherding The Matrix  into production, and the
purchase of the rights to the Harry Potter  books by
J. K. Rowling.”

From the previous post

“But he enters into the central myth of
this book at another, higher level as well;
for he is an artist, a potter . . . .

— Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty on
Claude Lévi-Strauss, author of
The Jealous Potter

* See as well “What is Intellectual History?” and
Magic for Liars .

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Ready When You Are, C.B.

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm

This journal at 5:48 PM EST on Thursday, March 10, 2011—

Paradigms Lost

(Continued from February 19)

The cover of the April 1, 1970 second edition of
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
, by Thomas S. Kuhn—

IMAGE- Cover of second edition of Kuhn's 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions'

Note the quote on the cover—

"A landmark in intellectual history."— Science

This afternoon's online New York Times

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110420-TsunamiStone.jpg

Google today, asked to "define:landmark," yields—

  • A boundary line indicated by a stone, stake, etc.
    (Deu 19:14; Deu 27:17; Pro 22:28; Pro 23:10; Job 24:2).
    Landmarks could not be removed without incurring the severe displeasure of God.
    sacred-texts.com/bib/ebd/ebd223.htm

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Wednesday August 11, 2004

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 5:35 am

Battle of Gods and Giants,
Part II:

Wonders of the Invisible World

Yesterday at about 5 PM I added a section titled "Invariants" to the 3:01 PM entry Battle of Gods and Giants.  Within this added section was the sentence

"This sort of mathematics illustrates the invisible 'form' or 'idea' behind the visible two-color pattern."

Now, at about 5 AM, I see in today's New York Times a review of a book titled The Invisible Century, by Richard Panek.  The reviewer, David Gelernter, says the "invisible" of the title refers to

"science that is done not by studying what you can see…. but by repairing instead to the privacy of your own mind, with the shades drawn and the lights off: the inner sanctum of intellectual history."

The book concerns the research of Einstein and Freud.  Gelernter says

"As Mr. Panek usefully notes, Einstein himself first called his work an 'invariant theory,' not a 'relativity theory.' Einstein does not say 'everything is relative,' or anything remotely like it."

The reader who clicks on the word "invariants" in Battle of Gods and Giants will receive the same information.

Gelernter's conclusion:

"The Invisible Century is a complex book about a complex topic. Mr. Panek's own topic is not so much invisibility, it seems to me, as a different kind of visibility, centering on mind-pictures revealed by introspection, which are just as sharp and clear as (for example) the mind-music Beethoven heard when he was deaf.

Inner visibility is a fascinating topic…."

As is synchronicity, a topic in the work of a greater man than Freud– Carl Jung.  The above remarks may be viewed as "synchronicity made visible."

All of this was, of course, foreshadowed in my web page "A Mathematician's Aesthetics" of August 2000:

C. G. Jung on Archetypes
and Visible Reality:

"All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas, created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality. For it is the function of consciousness not only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses, but to translate into visible reality the world within us."

— Carl Gustav Jung, "The Structure of the Psyche" (1927), in Collected Works Vol. 8, Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, P. 342

Paul Klee on Visible Reality:

"Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible…. My aim is always to get hold of the magic of reality and to transfer this reality into painting– to make the invisible visible through reality. It may sound paradoxical, but it is, in fact, reality which forms the mystery of our existence."

— Paul Klee, "Creative Credo" from The Inward Vision: Watercolors, Drawings, Writings. Abrams, not dated; published c. 1958.

Wallace Stevens on
the Visibility of Archetypes:

"These forms are visible
     to the eye that needs,
Needs out of the whole
     necessity of sight."

— Wallace Stevens, "The Owl in the Sarcophagus," (first publ. 1950) in
Collected Poetry and Prose, Library of America, 1997

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