* See that title in this journal.
Monday, September 2, 2019
For Fans of the “Story Theory of Truth”*
Comments Off on For Fans of the “Story Theory of Truth”*
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Monday, August 8, 2011
Diamond Theory vs. Story Theory (continued)
Richard J. Trudeau, a mathematics professor and Unitarian minister, published in 1987 a book, The Non-Euclidean Revolution , that opposes what he calls the Story Theory of truth [i.e., Quine, nominalism, postmodernism] to what he calls the traditional Diamond Theory of truth [i.e., Plato, realism, the Roman Catholic Church]. This opposition goes back to the medieval "problem of universals" debated by scholastic philosophers.
(Trudeau may never have heard of, and at any rate did not mention, an earlier 1976 monograph on geometry, "Diamond Theory," whose subject and title are relevant.)
From yesterday's Sunday morning New York Times—
"Stories were the primary way our ancestors transmitted knowledge and values. Today we seek movies, novels and 'news stories' that put the events of the day in a form that our brains evolved to find compelling and memorable. Children crave bedtime stories…."
— Drew Westen, professor at Emory University
From May 22, 2009—
|
The above ad is by
Diamond from last night’s
|
|
For further details, see Saturday's correspondences |
Comments Off on Diamond Theory vs. Story Theory (continued)
Thursday, May 27, 2010
A Gathering for Gardner
"You ain't been blue; no, no, no.
You ain't been blue,
Till you've had that mood indigo."
— Song lyrics, authorship disputed
Indigo (web color) (#4B0082)
"Pigment indigo (web color indigo) represents
the way the color indigo was always reproduced
in pigments, paints, or colored pencils in the 1950s."
Related mythology:
Indigo Children and the classic
1964 film Children of the Damned
Related non-mythology:
Comments Off on A Gathering for Gardner
Friday, September 4, 2009
Friday September 4, 2009
Closing the Circle
Continued from Monday
“This is a chapel
of mischance;
ill luck betide it, ’tis
the cursedest kirk
that ever I came in!”
Philip Kennicott on
Kirk Varnedoe in
The Washington Post:
“Varnedoe’s lectures were
ultimately about faith,
about his faith in
the power of abstraction,
and abstraction as a kind of
anti-religious faith in itself….”
Kennicott’s remarks were
on Sunday, May 18, 2003.
They were subtitled
“Closing the Circle
on Abstract Art.”
Also on Sunday, May 18, 2003:
“Will the circle be unbroken?
As if some southern congregation
is praying we will come to understand.”
Princeton University Press:
See also
Parmiggiani’s
Giordano Bruno —
Dürer’s Melencolia I —
and Log24 entries
of May 19-22, 2009,
ending with
“Steiner System” —
George Steiner on chess
(see yesterday morning):
“There are siren moments when quite normal creatures otherwise engaged, men such as Lenin and myself, feel like giving up everything– marriage, mortgages, careers, the Russian Revolution– in order to spend their days and nights moving little carved objects up and down a quadrate board.”
“Allegoric associations of death with chess are perennial….”
Yes, they are.
April is Math Awareness Month.
This year’s theme is “mathematics and art.”
Cf. both of yesterday’s entries.
Comments Off on Friday September 4, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Friday May 22, 2009
Steiner System
New York Times
banner this morning:
Related material from
July 11, 2008:
|
The HSBC Logo Designer — Henry Steiner
Born in Austria and raised in New York, Steiner was educated at Yale under Paul Rand and attended the Sorbonne as a Fulbright Fellow. He is a past President of Alliance Graphique Internationale. Other professional affiliations include the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Chartered Society of Designers, Design Austria, and the New York Art Directors' Club. His Cross-Cultural Design: Communicating in the Global Marketplace was published by Thames and Hudson (1995). |
He is an internationally recognized corporate identity consultant. Based in Hong Kong, his work for clients such as HongkongBank, IBM and Unilever is a major influence in Pacific Rim design.
|
Charles Taylor,
"Epiphanies of Modernism," Chapter 24 of Sources of the Self (Cambridge U. Press, 1989, p. 477):
"… the object sets up
See also Talking of Michelangelo.
|
Related material suggested by
an ad last night on
ABC's Ugly Betty season finale:
Diamond from last night's
Log24 entry, with
four colored pencils from
Diane Robertson Design:
See also
A Four-Color Theorem.
Comments Off on Friday May 22, 2009
Saturday, January 11, 2003
Saturday January 11, 2003
METROPOLITAN ART WARS:
The First Days of Disco
Some cultural milestones, in the order I encountered them today:
From Dr. Mac’s Cultural Calendar:
- “On this day in 1963, Whiskey-A-Go-Go—believed to be the first discotheque in the world—opened on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles with extraordinary hype and fanfare.”
From websites on Whit Stillman’s film, “The Last Days of Disco”:
Scene: Manhattan in the very early 1980’s.
Alice and her friend Charlotte are regulars at a fashionable disco.
“Charlotte is forever giving poor Alice advice about what to say and how to behave; she says guys like it when a girl uses the word ‘sexy,’ and a few nights later, when a guy tells Alice he collects first editions of Scrooge McDuck comic books, she…”
“… looks deep into his eyes and purrs ‘I think Scrooge McDuck is sexy!’ It is a laugh-out-loud funny line and a shrewd parody, but is also an honest statement.”
(Actually, to be honest, I encountered Thomson first and Ebert later, but the narrative sequence demands that they be rearranged.)
The combination of these cultural landmarks suggested that I find out what Scrooge McDuck was doing during the first days of disco, in January 1963. Some research revealed that in issue #40 of “Uncle Scrooge,” with a publication date of January 1963, was a tale titled “Oddball Odyssey.” Plot summary: “A whisper of treasure draws Scrooge to Circe.”
Further research produced an illustration:
Desiring more literary depth, I sought more information on the story of Scrooge and Circe. It turns out that this was only one of a series of encounters between Scrooge and a character called Magica de Spell. The following is from a website titled
“Magica’s first appearance is in ‘The Midas Touch’ (US 36-01). She enters the Money Bin to buy a dime from Scrooge. Donald tells Scrooge that she is a sorceress, but Scrooge sells her a dime anyway. He sells her his first dime by accident, but gets it back. The fun starts when Scrooge tells her that it is the first dime he earned. She is going to make an amulet….”
with it. Her pursuit of the dime apparently lasts through a number of Scrooge episodes.
“…in Oddball Odyssey (US 40-02). Magica discovers Circe’s secret cave. Inside the cave is a magic wand that she uses to transform Huey, Dewey and Louie to pigs, Donald to a goat (later to a tortoise), and Scrooge to a donkey. This reminds us of the treatment Circe gave Ulysses and his men. Magica does not succeed in transforming Scrooge after stealing the Dime, and Scrooge manages to break the spell (de Spell) by smashing the magic wand.”
At this point I was reminded of the legendary (but true) appearance of Wallace Stevens’s wife on another historic dime. This was discussed by Charles Schulz in a cartoon of Sunday, May 27, 1990:
Here Sally is saying…
Who, me?… Yes, Ma’am, right here.
This is my report on dimes and pennies…
“Wallace Stevens was a famous poet…
His wife was named Elsie…”
“Most people do not know that Elsie was the model for the 1916 ‘Liberty Head’ dime.”
“Most people also don’t know that if I had a dime for every one of these stupid reports I’ve written, I’d be a rich person.”
Finally, sitting outside the principal’s office:
I never got to the part about who posed for the Lincoln penny.
I conclude this report on a note of synchronicity:
The above research was suggested in part by a New York Times article on Ovid’s Metamorphoses I read last night. After locating the Scrooge and Stevens items above, I went to the Times site this afternoon to remind myself of this article. At that point synchronicity kicked in; I encountered the following obituary of a Scrooge figure from 1963… the first days of disco:
|
The New York Times, January 12, 2003 (So dated at the website on Jan. 11) C. Douglas Dillon Dies at 93;
|
. Douglas Dillon, a versatile Wall Street financier who was named secretary of the Treasury by President Kennedy and ambassador to France under President Eisenhower, and was a longtime executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died Friday [Jan. 10, 2003] at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. Mr. Dillon, who lived with his wife on Jupiter Island in Hobe Sound, Fla., was 93.
Et cetera, et cetera, and so forth.
(See yesterday’s two entries, “Something Wonderful,” and “Story.”)
Two reflections suggest themselves:
“I need a photo opportunity.
I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
Ending up in a cartoon graveyard is indeed an unhappy fate; on the other hand…
It is nice to be called “sexy.”
Added at 1:50 AM Jan. 12, 2003:
Tonight’s site music, in honor of Mr. Dillon
and of Hepburn, Holden, and Bogart in “Sabrina” —
“Isn’t It Romantic?”
Comments Off on Saturday January 11, 2003