Log24

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Misquoting Nietzsche

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

Jim Holt in tomorrow’s New York Times

“Allow me to quote Nietzsche
(although I know that will be considered
by some to be in bad taste):

‘As the circle of science grows larger,
it touches paradox at more places.'”

A possible source for this misquotation—
Harvard University Press

IMAGE- Hilary Putnam misquoting Nietzsche on 'the circle of science'

A more accurate quotation—

Anyone who has ever experienced the pleasure of Socratic insight and felt how, spreading in ever-widening circles, it seeks to embrace the whole world of appearances, will never again find any stimulus toward existence more violent than the craving to complete this conquest and to weave the net impenetrably tight. To one who feels that way, the Platonic Socrates will appear as the teacher of an altogether new form of “Greek cheerfulness” and blissful affirmation of existence that seeks to discharge itself in actions— most often in maieutic and educational influences on noble youths, with a view to eventually producing a genius.

But science, spurred by its powerful illusion, speeds irresistibly towards its limits where its optimism, concealed in the essence of logic, suffers shipwreck. For the periphery of the circle of science has an infinite number of points; and while there is no telling how this circle could ever be surveyed completely, noble and gifted men nevertheless reach, e’er half their time and inevitably, such boundary points on the periphery from which one gazes into what defies illumination. When they see to their horror how logic coils up at these boundaries and finally bites its own tail— suddenly the new form of insight breaks through, tragic insight  which, merely to be endured, needs art as a protection and remedy.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy , translated by Walter Kaufmann (Modern Library)

Friday, June 8, 2012

For Ravenna

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:59 pm

Click to enlarge:

IMAGE- NY Times June 8, 2012, on Bertrand Russell (Jim Holt discusses physicists' churlishness) and on Queen Ravenna (A.O. Scott, 'The Darker Side of the Story')

… And why is  a raven like a writing desk?

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Trinity Riddle

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:00 pm

IMAGE- Raven's Progressive Matrices problem, Bertrand Russell, the Mad Hatter, and the Hatter's riddle

Click image for some background.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Matrix Problem

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 7:20 pm

IMAGE- Charlize Theron as Ravenna with raven in poster for 'Snow White and the Huntsman'

Poster from Walpurgisnacht 2012

Raven’s Progressive Matrices problem:

IMAGE- Raven's Progressive Matrices problem based on triangular quarter- and half-diamonds

Click the problem for a related story.

For some related geometry, see Elements Diamond.
See also a post (Dream Time, May 3, 2010)
about geometry and an earlier Walpurgisnacht.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Dream Time

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 9:00 am

“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”

William Butler Yeats

From a document linked to here on April 30, Walpurgisnacht–

“…the Golden Age, or Dream Time, is remote only from the rational mind. It is not accessible to euclidean reason….”

“The utopia of the Grand Inquisitor ‘is the product of “the euclidean mind” (a phrase Dostoyevsky often used)….'”

“The purer, the more euclidean the reason that builds a utopia, the greater is its self-destructive capacity. I submit that our lack of faith in the benevolence of reason as the controlling power is well founded. We must test and trust our reason, but to have faith  in it is to elevate it to godhead.”

“Utopia has been euclidean, it has been European, and it has been masculine. I am trying to suggest, in an evasive, distrustful, untrustworthy fashion, and as obscurely as I can, that our final loss of faith in that radiant sandcastle may enable our eyes to adjust to a dimmer light and in it perceive another kind of utopia.”

“You will recall that the quality of static perfection is an essential element of the non-inhabitability of the euclidean utopia….”

“The euclidean utopia is mapped; it is geometrically organized, with the parts labeled….”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, “A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be”

San Francisco Chronicle  today

“A May Day rally in Santa Cruz erupted into chaos Saturday night….”

“Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest,
and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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