Log24

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Derrida at Villanova

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:00 pm

"As Derrida said at Villanova,
"We wait for something we would not like to wait for.
That is another name for death."

— Brian D. Ingraffia, "Is the Postmodern Post-Secular?,"
p. 50 in Postmodern Philosophy and Christian Thought ,
ed. by Merold Westphal, Indiana University Press, 1999, pp. 44-68

See also Derrida at Villanova in this journal.

The link to Ingraffia's remarks was suggested by
this evening's New York Times  obituaries—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120114-NYTobits-642PM.jpg

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Philosophy and Architecture

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 pm

An originally French-Canadian professor of mathematics
at Villanova University reportedly died at 91 on Dec. 28, 2015.

See a eulogy from Legacy.com.

See also The French Mathematician  and the following image,
related to the architectural philosophy of Christopher Alexander,
from this journal on the above date.

Related material:

Remarks on philosophy and architecture at Villanova.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Villanueva

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 am

The previous post honored Maurice, one of yesterday's
saints. A note on another —

See Log24 searches for Villanova and Villanueva.
The latter search leads to a link to some posts tagged 922
from St. Thomas of Villanova's feast day, Sept. 22.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Saints of the Day

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:00 pm

St. Thomas of Villanova, Sts. Maurice and Companions.

See CatholicCulture.org.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Manning and Khora

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:26 am

A weblog post from Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012—

"Today is the 120th anniversary of Cardinal Henry Edward Manning's death."

A Reluctant Sinner  (Thanks to Andrew Cusack for the link.)

If Manning is a saint, then Saturday was his feast day.

Some background— Manning in this journal.

See also Saturday's Derrida at Villanova. The link there to
previous posts on that topic leads to a post on Derrida's promotion
of his neologism différance as a version of Plato's khôra.

I prefer Manning's discussion of a closely related concept,
the scholastic philosophers' materia prima .

See Hugh R. King's 1956 paper sneering at the scholastics'
concept, and Heisenberg's much better-informed remarks
on the related concept of potentia

IMAGE- Excerpt from 'The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas' by John F. Wippel

For a related fictional account of a religious quest for "possibilities"
and "excluded middles" between "zeroes and ones," see
Ingraffia on The Crying of Lot 49 .

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Entertainment Break

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 am

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120115-ViperRoom.jpg

Related material– Saturday night's Derrida at Villanova and Villanueva.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Brightness at Noon, continued

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

"What exactly was Point Omega?"

This is Robert Wright in Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny.

Wright is discussing not the novel Point Omega  by Don DeLillo,
but rather a (related) concept of  the Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

My own idiosyncratic version of a personal "point omega"—

Image- Josefine Lyche work (with 1986 figures by Cullinane) in a 2009 exhibition in Oslo

Click for further details.

The circular sculpture in the foreground
is called by the artist "The Omega Point."
This has been described as
"a portal that leads in or out of time and space."

For some other sorts of points, see the drawings
on the wall and Geometry Simplified

Image-- The trivial two-point affine space and the trivial one-point projective space, visualized

The two points of the trivial affine space are represented by squares,
and the one point of the trivial projective space is represented by
a line segment separating the affine-space squares.

For related darkness  at noon, see Derrida on différance
as a version of Plato's khôra

(Click to enlarge.)

Image-- Fordham University Press on Derrida, differance, and khora

The above excerpts are from a work on and by Derrida
published in 1997 by Fordham University,
a Jesuit institutionDeconstruction in a Nutshell

Image-- A Catholic view of Derrida

For an alternative to the Villanova view of Derrida,
see Angels in the Architecture.

Angels in the Architecture

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:12 am

"Things fall apart;
the centre cannot hold
"

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10A/100715-AugustineCenter.jpg

The above building is home to the Derridean leftists
of the Villanova philosophy department.

center loosens,
forms again elsewhere

"The most obvious problem with Derrida's argument in The Gift of Death is his misconception of Christianity. In his description of Christian mystery, the crucified figure of Jesus is strikingly absent, having been replaced by a mysterious 'infinite other.' In this respect, Derrida's understanding of Christianity is essentially gnostic; the humanity of Jesus is displaced by gnostic mystery. Although Derrida claims to describe historical Christianity, in fact, his argument is based on a serious distortion of Christian practice and theology. Although the title might seem an obvious reference to Christ's atoning death, Derrida's book can only be characterized as an overt and unacknowledged displacement of the Crucifixion and its central place in Christian worship."

 

— Peter Goldman, now at Westminster College in Salt Lake City

See also Highway 1 Revisited (August 1, 2006).

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Happy Bastille Day…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

To the leftist philosophers of Villanova

From "Make a Différance"
(Women's History Month, 2005)—

Frida Saal's 

Lacan The image 
“http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050322-Diamond.gif” cannot be displayed,
 because it contains errors. Derrida:

"Our proposal includes the lozenge (diamond) in between the names, because in the relationship / non-relationship that is established among them, a tension is created that implies simultaneously a union and a disjunction, in the perspective of a theoretical encounter that is at the same time necessary and impossible. That is the meaning of the lozenge that joins and separates the two proper names….  What prevails between both of them is the différance, the Derridean signifier that will become one of the main issues in this presentation."

Football-mandorla (vesica piscis) with link to 'Heaven Can 
Wait'

“He pointed at the football
  on his desk. ‘There it is.’”
Glory Road
    

Quodlibet* 

Compare and contrast
the diamond in the football
with the jewel in the lotus.

* "A scholastic argumentation upon a subject chosen at will, but almost always theological. These are generally the most elaborate and subtle of the works of the scholastic doctors." —Century Dictionary

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Quest for the Lost Origin…

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 6:12 pm

Project Management at Villanova

Image-- NY Times review of 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' with ad for Project Management Institute program at Villanova University

Yesterday's noon post, "Lying Forth," linked to a passage by Walter A. Brogan, Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University.

A related Brogan remark for Harrison Ford's birthday—

"The last few pages of the text 'Différance' [an essay by Derrida] are a refutation of the nostalgia and hope involved in Heidegger's ontology, a rejection of the quest for the lost origin and final word."

Walter A. Brogan, "The Original Difference," pp. 31-40 in Derrida and Différance, ed. by David C. Wood and Robert Bernasconi (Northwestern University Press, 1988), p. 32

See, too, "Make a Différance."

Saturday, July 10, 2010

A Manifold Showing

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:11 am

"Heidegger suggests that we experience the saying of language as a shining forth:

'It lets what is coming to presence shine forth, lets what is withdrawing into absence vanish.  The saying is by no means the supplemental linguistic expression of what shines forth; rather, all shining and fading depend on the saying that shows.' (pp. 413-414).

But what is the basis and origin of this possibility of saying?  The happening of saying in the clearing, its allowing things to shine forth, can also be called an 'owning.' Owning is the event of a thing’s coming into its own, of its showing itself as itself. Heidegger also calls it 'propriating,' 'en-owning,' or Ereignis:

'Propriation gathers the rift-design of the saying and unfolds it in such a way that it becomes the well-joined structure of a manifold showing. (p. 415)'"

— "Heidegger: On the Way to Language," by Paul Livingston

Page references are apparently to Heidegger's Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell, HarperCollins paperback, 1993.

See also Shining Forth.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Prime Directive

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 4:01 pm

Rigor

“317 is a prime, not because we think so,
or because our minds are shaped in one way
rather than another, but because it is so,
because mathematical reality is built that way.”

 – G. H. Hardy,
A Mathematician’s Apology

The Ratzinger brothers in Germany, Sept. 11, 2006

The above photo is taken from
a post in this journal dated
March 10, 2010.

This was, as the Pope might say,
the dies natalis  of a master gameplayer–

New York Times, March 16, 2010–

Tim Holland, Backgammon Master,
Dies at 79

By DENNIS HEVESI

Tim Holland, who was widely considered the world’s greatest backgammon player during that ancient board game’s modern heyday, in the 1960s and ’70s, died on March 10 at his home in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 79. <<more>>

In Holland's honor, a post
from Columbus Day, 2004

Tuesday October 12, 2004

11:11 PM

 Time and Chance

Today’s winning lottery numbers
in Pennsylvania (State of Grace):

Midday: 373
Evening: 816.

New Yorker cartoon-- Heavenly chessboard-- Man peering over the edge sees backgammon board

A quote from Holland on backgammon–

"It’s the luck factor that seduces everyone
into believing that they are good,
that they can actually win,
but that’s just wishful thinking."

For those who are, like G.H. Hardy,
suspicious of wishful thinking,
here is a quote and a picture from
Holland's ordinary  birthday, March 3

"The die is cast." — Caesar

Group of 8 cube-face permutations generated by reflections in midplanes parallel to faces

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Sunday December 19, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:56 pm
Sunday Sermon
on Saturday’s Numbers

Today’s New York Times on a rabbi who died in Jerusalem on Sunday, Dec. 5:

“In the 1950’s, he was a vocal advocate for the relaxation of New York City’s blue laws, which forbade many kinds of commerce on Sundays but not on Saturdays. The laws were repealed in the 1970’s. Solomon Joseph Sharfman was born on Nov. 1, 1915, in Treblinka, Poland; his family immigrated to the United States five years later. His father, Rabbi Label Sharfman, worked as a shochet, or ritual slaughterer….”

Saturday’s lottery numbers from Pennsylvania, the State of Grace:

Saturday Midday:  144
Saturday Evening: 360

A Sunday Sermon:

“Once upon a time there was a sensible straight line who was hopelessly in love with a beautiful dot. But the dot, though perfect in every way, only had eyes for a wild and unkempt squiggle. All of the line’s romantic dreams were in vain, until he discovered . . . angles! Now, with newfound self-expression, he can be anything he wants to be–a square….”

Related material:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04B/041219-Line.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

(See Song in Red and Gray
and The Dot and the Line.)

Friday, October 15, 2004

Friday October 15, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:48 pm
The Eight and the Six
(See yesterday’s entry)

Today’s lottery numbers
in Pennsylvania
(State of Grace):

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04A/041015-PaLottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Nite and Day….

with an apology
to St. Cole Porter,
whose feast is today.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Tuesday October 12, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:11 pm
Time and Chance

Today's winning lottery numbers
in Pennsylvania (State of Grace):

Midday: 373
Evening: 816.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04A/041012-Backgammon.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Friday, September 24, 2004

Friday September 24, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:06 pm

Time and Chance

“Time and chance happeneth to them all.”

— Ecclesiastes 9-11

“With the passage of time, everyone participated in the ever-increasingly secret lottery.”

Summary of Borges’s Lottery

The winning evening lottery number for Sunday, September 19, 2004, and for Thursday, September 23, 2004, in the State of Grace (Kelly) was

408.

See a 9/20/04 story about 408

and a 1/4/03 story about Grace and jazz.

From the latter:

Now you has jazz.

— Cole Porter, lyric for “High Society,”
set in Newport, Rhode Island, 1956

Note that yesterday’s entries dealt with “the jazz church” and that Sunday, Sept. 19, 2004– the first of the “408” days above– was the date of death of Ellis Marsalis Sr., patriarch of a family of jazz musicians.  The second of the “408” days above– yesterday– was Ray Charles’s birthday.


In Ray We Trust
June 28, 2004 cover
by Eric Palma  

(See New Gold Standard: Cultural Capital)

Monday, September 20, 2004

Monday September 20, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Pi continued:

(see 9/15/04)

Above:

Renegade mathematician Max Cohen (Sean Gullette, left) and the leader of the Kabbalah sect, Lenny Meyer (Ben Shenkman) have a chance encounter on a Chinatown street corner.

The Magic Schmuck

"Confucius is said to have received only one inappropriate answer, i.e., hexagram 22, GRACE — a thoroughly aesthetic hexagram. This is reminiscent of the advice given to Socrates by his daemon — 'You ought to make more music' — whereupon Socrates took to playing the flute. Confucius and Socrates compete for first place as far as reasonableness and a pedagogic attitude to life are concerned; but it is unlikely that either of them occupied himself with 'lending grace to the beard on his chin,' as the second line of this hexagram advises. Unfortunately, reason and pedagogy often lack charm and grace, and so the oracle may not have been wrong after all."

— Carl Jung, Foreword to the I Ching 

Yesterday, class, in keeping with our morning German lesson, our evening (5:01:22 PM ET) entry was Hexagram 22, Pi (pronounced "bee"). The Chinese term pi may be translated in various ways… As ornament, as adornment, or as in a German web page:

I-Ching 22 Pi Der Schmuck

The Wilhelm translation of pi is "grace."  This suggests we examine yesterday's evening lottery number in the State of Grace, Pennsylvania:

408.

As kabbalists know, there are many ways of interpreting numbers.  In keeping with the viewpoint of Ecclesiastes — "time and chance happeneth" — let us interpret this instance of chance as an instance of time… namely, 4/08.  Striving for consistency in our meditations, let us examine the lessons for…

4/08 2003 — Death's Dream Kingdom

and 4/08 2004 — Triple Crown

From the former:

"When smashing monuments, save the pedestals; they always come in handy."

Stanislaw J. Lec

From the latter: 

"The tug of an art that unapologetically sees itself as on a par with science and religion is not to be underestimated…. Philosophical ambition and formal modesty still constitute Minimalism's bottom line."

Michael Kimmelman

In keeping with the above, from
this year's Log24.net
Rosh Hashanah service

A Minimalist
Pedestal:

 

For a poetic interpretation
of this symbol, see
Hexagram 20,
Contemplation (View).

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Wednesday September 15, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:59 pm

11:59 PM: The Last Minute

For the benefit of Grace (Paley, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute), here are the September 15 lottery numbers for Pennsylvania, the State of Grace (Kelly):

Midday: 053 Evening: 373.

For the significance of the evening number, 373, see Directions Out and Outside the World (both of 4/26/04).  In both of these entries, and others to which they are linked, the number 373 signifies eternity.

The two most obvious interpretations of the midday number, 53, are as follows:

  • As a famous number of tones in musical harmonic analysis (i.e., tuning theory), as opposed to mathematical harmonic analysis ( The Square Wheel, 9/14/04), and
  • as a reference to the year 1953– a good year for Grace Kelly and the year of the classic film From Here to Eternity (the latter being signified, as noted above, by yesterday’s evening lottery number in the State of Grace).

Time and chance
happeneth to them all.”
Ecclesiastes 9-11

Thursday, May 15, 2003

Thursday May 15, 2003

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 3:33 pm

The Only Pretty Ring Time

On May 14 five years ago, the night Sinatra died, the Pennsylvania (State of Grace) lottery evening number was 256:  see my note, Symmetries, of April 2, 2003.

On May 14 this year, the Pennsylvania lottery evening number was 147.  Having, through meditation, perhaps established some sort of minor covenant with whatever supernatural lottery powers may exist, this afternoon I sought the significance of this number in Q's 1939 edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse.  It is the number of "It was a Lover and his Lass," a song lyric by William Shakespeare.  The song includes the following lines:

In the spring time,
    the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing,
    Hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.

For the Sinatra connection, see
Metaphysics for Tina.

The selection of Q's book for consultation was suggested by the home page of Simon Nickerson at Jesus College, Cambridge University, and by the dedication page of Q's 1925 Oxford Book of English Prose, which names Nickerson's school.

Ian Lee on the communion of saints and the association of ideas:

"The association is the idea."

For translation of the Greek phrase in Q's 1925 dedication, see

Greek and Roman Grammarians
on Motion Verbs and Place Adverbials

Malcolm D. Hyman
Harvard University
January 4, 2003

Powered by WordPress