Log24

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Philosophy Painted Black

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:51 pm

From a New York Times  obituary today . . .

"Armed with his work on the German phenomenologist Edmund Husserl,
in his late 20s and early 30s Mr. Hountondji undertook to confront head-on
'Bantu Philosophy,' a book by a Belgian missionary priest, Placide Tempels…."

Monday, August 16, 2021

The Space of Possibilities

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 3:57 am

The title is from "Federico Ardila on Math, Music and
the Space of Possibilities
," a podcast from Steven Strogatz's
Quanta Magazine  series. The transcript is dated March 29, 2021.

Ardila: … in a nutshell, what combinatorics is about is just
the study of possibilities and how do you organize them,
given that there’s too many of them to list them.

Strogatz:  So, I love it. Combinatorics is not just
the art of the possible, but the enumeration of the possible,
the counting of the possible and the organizing of the possible.

Strogatz:  It’s such a poetic image, actually: the space of possibilities.

This  journal on the podcast date, March 29, 2021 —

A more precise approach to the space of possibilities:

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Another View of Point Omega

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:14 pm

Not  by Don DeLillo —

Those apt to be seduced by language, either secular or religious,
might note that the author of the Point Omega book above is also
the author of  Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power

Hemingway fans might note as well a website whose background
image memorializes the Catholic fallen of the Spanish Civil War:

Saturday, April 3, 2021

Kickstarter

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:58 pm

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮  “I get no kick from champagne . . .”

An example of Seduction by Language, this post was
suggested
by the Joycean phrase cama suitra .

Monday, March 29, 2021

Graduate School

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 5:37 pm

Also on 18 November 2010 —

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Thursday February 16, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm
Monolith
In memory of
Rabbi Yehuda Chitrik, storyteller

From James A. Michener‘s The Source:

“Trouble started in a quarter that neither Uriel nor Zadok could have foreseen.  For many generations the wiser men of Zadok’s clan had worshipped El-Shaddai with the understanding that whereas Canaanites and Egyptians could see their gods directly, El-Shaddai was invisible and inhabited no specific place.  Unequivocally the Hebrew patriarchs had preached this concept and the sager men of the clans accepted it, but to the average Hebrew who was not a philosopher the theory of a god who lived nowhere, who did not even exist in corporeal form, was not easy to comprehend.  Such people were willing to agree with Zadok that their god did not live on this mountain– the one directly ahead– but they suspected that he did live on some mountain nearby, and when they said this they pictured an elderly man with a white beard who lived in a proper tent and whom they might one day see and touch.  If questioned, they would have said that they expected El-Shaddai to look much like their father Zadok, but with a longer beard, a stronger voice, and more penetrating eyes.

Now, as these simpler-minded Hebrews settled down outside the walls of Makor, they began to see Canaanite processions leave the main gate and climb the mountain to the north, seeking the high place where Baal lived, and they witnessed the joy which men experienced when visiting their god, and the Hebrews began in subtle ways and easy steps to evolve the idea that Baal, who obviously lived in a mountain, and El-Shaddai, who was reported to do so, must have much in common.  Furtively at first, and then openly, they began to climb the footpath to the place of Baal, where they found a monolith rising from the highest point of rock.  Here was a tangible thing they could comprehend, and after much searching along the face of the mountain, a group of Hebrew men found a straight rock of size equal to the one accorded Baal, and with much effort they dragged it one starless night to the mountain top, where they installed it not far from the home of Baal….”

Rabbi Chitrik died on
Valentine’s Day, 2006,
having had a heart attack
on Feb. 8, 2006–

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Grammy Night.

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The above monolith is perhaps more
closely related to El-Shaddai than to
Madonna, Grammy Night, and Baal.
It reflects my own interests
(Mathematics and Narrative)
and those of Martin Buber
(Jews on Fiction):
 

“Among Buber’s early philosophical influences were Kant’s Prolegomena, which he read at the age of fourteen, and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.  Whereas Kant had a calming influence on the young mind troubled by the aporia of infinite versus finite time, Nietzsche’s doctrine of ‘the eternal recurrence of the same’ constituted a powerful negative seduction.  By the time Buber graduated from Gymnasium he felt he had overcome this seduction, but Nietzsche’s prophetic tone and aphoristic style are evident in Buber’s subsequent writings.”

 

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Rabbi Chitrik

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