“In collage, juxtaposition is everything.”
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Wednesday March 30, 2005
Logocentric Theology
“Logic is all about the entertaining of possibilities.”
— Colin McGinn,
Mindsight: Image, Dream, Meaning,
Harvard U. Press (See yesterday’s entry.)
“God is the sum of all possibilities.”
— Isaac Bashevis Singer, according to
the Associated Press “Today in History“
feature for today, March 30, 2005
“A probability space is a measure space with total measure one.”
— Gregory F. Lawler, Probability Notes
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
For other illustrations of logocentric theology, see
Matrix of the Death God (May 25, 2003),
Transcendental Meditation (July 30, 2003),
and, for Warren Beatty’s birthday today,
Graphical Password (April 27, 2003).
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Tuesday March 29, 2005
continued
The stranglehold of the Wiener Kreis on Harvard philosophy may at last be breaking:
"… imagination and belief are related…. belief presupposes imagination…."
"To negate the actual is to move imaginatively into the realm of modality. Logic is all about the entertaining of possibilities."
"… imagination is central to an account of linguistic understanding. To understand a sentence is to imaginatively grasp the possibility it represents."
— Colin McGinn, excerpt (pdf) from Mindsight: Image, Dream, Meaning, published by Harvard University Press on November 22, 2004
From November 22, 2004:
From Four Quartets:
And the pool was filled
with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light…
Monday, March 28, 2005
Monday March 28, 2005
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Sunday, March 27, 2005
Sunday March 27, 2005
Sunday March 27, 2005
From
The Mother Ship
The Mother Ship
Camille Paglia, The Magic of Images:
“Young people today are flooded with disconnected images but lack a sympathetic instrument to analyze them as well as a historical frame of reference in which to situate them…. The new generation, raised on TV and the personal computer but deprived of a solid primary education, has become unmoored from the mother ship of culture.”
Sunday March 27, 2005
Quarter to Three,
continued
continued
A Google search on plato cave jesus tomb yields the following:
Parched with thirst am I, and dying.
Nay, drink of Me, the ever-flowing Spring….— Ancient tomb prayer
Those with opinions on the Schiavo case may interpret these words as they please. See also the previous entry.
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Saturday, March 26, 2005
Saturday March 26, 2005
Harrowing
Click on picture for details.
Added at 1:11 PM Saturday:
| From a discussion of gnostic heresies in today’s Tennessean.com:
Gnostic way a backlash against
lackluster sermons, worship ”Jesus is not a teacher in the conventional sense, according to the Gospel of Thomas, because people must come to knowledge themselves,” writes Marvin Meyer in The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus, the latest book to collect these hidden gospels and secret sayings of Jesus. ”Jesus was more like a bartender, in that he serves the intoxicating drink of knowledge, but people must drink for themselves.” |
“It’s quarter to three…”
See also
The Twelve Steps of Christmas
from Sinatra’s birthday last year.
Friday, March 25, 2005
Friday March 25, 2005
Sermon
Related material:
Click on the “spider“
symbol below.
Questions or comments on the sermon:
webweaver@genetics.med.harvard.edu
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Wednesday March 23, 2005
Spy Wednesday
Nature morte à l’échiquier, (les cinq sens)
vers 1655 ?, une narration
à valeur symbolique…
Huile sur bois, 73 x 55 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Tuesday March 22, 2005
The God Factor
"Kids who may never get out of their town will be able to see the world through books. But I'm talking about my passion. What's yours?"
"There is the God factor…."
— NickyJett, Xanga comment
"'What is this Stone?' Chloe asked….
'…It is told that, when the Merciful One
made the worlds, first of all He created
that Stone and gave it to the Divine One
whom the Jews call Shekinah,
and as she gazed upon it
the universes arose and had being.'"
— Many Dimensions,
by Charles Williams, 1931
For more on this theme
appropriate to Passion Week —
Jews playing God — see
appropriate to Passion Week —
Jews playing God — see
Rebecca Goldstein
in conversation with
Bob Osserman
of the
Mathematical Sciences Research Institute
at the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco,
Tuesday, March 22. Wine and cheese
reception at 5:15 PM (San Francisco time).
For the meaning of the diamond,
see the previous entry.
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Tuesday March 22, 2005
Make a Différance
From Frida Saal's
Lacan 
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. For that reason their respective works become totally non-superposable and at the same time they were built with an awareness, or at least a partial awareness, of each other. What prevails between both of them is the différance, the Derridean signifier that will become one of the main issues in this presentation."
From a Contemporary Literary Theory website:
"Différance is that which all signs have, what constitutes them as signs, as signs are not that to which they refer: i) they differ, and hence open a space from that which they represent, and ii) they defer, and hence open up a temporal chain, or, participate in temporality. As well, following de Sassure's famous argument, signs 'mean' by differing from other signs. The coined word 'différance' refers to at once the differing and the deferring of signs. Taken to the ontological level†, the differing and deferring of signs from what they mean, means that every sign repeats the creation of space and time; and ultimately, that différance is the ultimate phenomenon in the universe, an operation that is not an operation, both active and passive, that which enables and results from Being itself."
From a text purchased on
Make a Difference Day, Oct. 23, 1999:
Though it may be true, as the president of Harvard recently surmised, that women are inherently inferior to men at abstract thought — in particular, pure mathematics* — they may in other respects be quite superior to men:
† For the diamond symbol at "the ontological level," see Modal Theology, Feb. 21, 2005. See also Socrates on the immortality of the soul in Plato's Meno, source of the above Basic Geometry diamond.
Make a Difference Day, Oct. 23, 1999:
 22. Without using the Pythagorean Theorem prove that the hypotenuse of an isosceles right triangle will have the length  if the equal legs have the length 1. Suggestion: Consider the similar triangles in Fig. 39.23. The ancient Greeks regarded the Pythagorean Theorem as involving areas, and they proved it by means of areas. We cannot do so now because we have not yet considered the idea of area. Assuming for the moment, however, the idea of the area of a square, use this idea instead of similar triangles and proportion in Ex. 22 above to show that x = .
— Page 98 of Basic Geometry, by George David Birkhoff, Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University, and Ralph Beatley, Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University (Scott, Foresman 1941) |
Though it may be true, as the president of Harvard recently surmised, that women are inherently inferior to men at abstract thought — in particular, pure mathematics* — they may in other respects be quite superior to men:
The above is from October 1999.
See also Naturalized Epistemology,
from Women's History Month, 2001.
* See the remarks of Frida Saal above and of Barbara Johnson on mathematics (The Shining of May 29, cited in Readings for St. Patrick's Day).
† For the diamond symbol at "the ontological level," see Modal Theology, Feb. 21, 2005. See also Socrates on the immortality of the soul in Plato's Meno, source of the above Basic Geometry diamond.
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Tuesday March 22, 2005
The Enemy
See Remembering Jacques Derrida.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game,
Tor paperback reprint, 1994, p. 262
Tor paperback reprint, 1994, p. 262
"Différance is, for Derrida, the key concept
in order to understand what is here at stake."
— Lacan Derrida, by Frida Saal
The following entries from October 2004
are related to the death of Jacques Derrida.
| Saturday, October 9, 2004 6:40 PM
Derrida Dead "Jacques Derrida, the Algerian-born, French intellectual who became one of the most celebrated and unfathomable philosophers of the late 20th century, died Friday at a Paris hospital, the French president's office announced. He was 74." — Jonathan Kandell, New York Times "There is no teacher but the enemy." — Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game, Saturday, October 9, 2004 2:22 AM Belief KERRY: "I'm going to be a president who believes in science." KERRY: "I'm a Catholic – raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life, helped lead me through a war, leads me today." BUSH: "Trying to decipher that." Friday, October 8, 2004 5:07 PM Behush the Bush
"There's where. First. "… we all gain an appreciation of how each of us can provide readings that others are blind to and how each of us is temporarily blind to other feasible readings. Reading the text becomes a communal act of discovery…. No one has much to say, for now, about the grass reference…." — Reading Finnegans Wake (1986) The phrase "snake in the grass" seems relevant, as does the opening of Finnegans Wake:
Related material: and, for Matt Damon, |
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Sunday, March 20, 2005
Sunday March 20, 2005
Twinkle, Twinkle
(continued)
Background:
for Aug. 19, 2004, and the entries
ending at midnight, Sept. 29-30, 2004.
(continued)
Background:
See log24 entries for Aug. 19, 2003,
for Aug. 19, 2004, and the entries
ending at midnight, Sept. 29-30, 2004.
What others say:
A Postmodern Twinkle
A Postmodern Diamond
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Thursday, March 17, 2005
Thursday March 17, 2005
“My sword I give to him
that shall succeed me….”
— John Bunyan,
The Pilgrim’s Progress
J.Y. Smith
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, March 18, 2005; Page A01
that shall succeed me….”
— John Bunyan,
The Pilgrim’s Progress
J.Y. Smith
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, March 18, 2005; Page A01
“George F. Kennan, a diplomat and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who formulated the basic foreign policy followed by the United States in the Cold War, died last night at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 101….”
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Thursday March 17, 2005
Readings for
St. Patrick's Day
Time of this entry: 12:00:36 PM.
Hence,
"Here the climax of the darkening is reached. The dark power at first held so high a place that it could wound all who were on the side of good and of the light. But in the end it perishes of its own darkness, for evil must itself fall at the very moment when it has wholly overcome the good, and thus consumed the energy to which it owed its duration."
- A commentary on "Darkening of the Light," the I Ching, Hexagram 36:
-
Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler
- Under Western Eyes, by Joseph Conrad
-
Narrativity: Theory and Practice, by Philip John Moore Sturgess
Sturgess's book deals with the narrative logic of the above novels by Koestler and Conrad, as well as some Irish material:
Narrativity: Theory and Practice Pt. I The Theory of Narrativity Introduction 3 1 Narrativity and its Definitions 5 2 A Logic of Narrativity 28 3 Narrativity and Double Logics 68 4 Narrativity and the Case against Contradiction 93 5 Narrativity, Structure, and Spatial Form 117 6 Narrativity and the French Perspective 139 Pt. II The Practice of Narrativity Introduction 161 7 The Logic of Duplicity and Design in Under Western Eyes 166 8 A Story of Narrativity in Ulysses 189 9 Narrative Despotism and Metafictional Mastery: The Case of Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds 235 10 A Double Logic and the Nightmare of Reason: Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon 260 Conclusion. A Reading of Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent 287 Bibliography and Further Reading 312 Index 317
These readings are in opposition to the works of Barbara Johnson published by Harvard University Press.
For some background, see The Shining of May 29 (JFK's birthday).
Discussion question:
In the previous entry, who represents the
Hexagram 36 "dark power"
Thursday March 17, 2005
Midnight Drums for Larry
The Harvard Crimson, March 16:
"Voting by secret ballot in a Faculty meeting at the Loeb Drama Center, 218 faculty members affirmed a motion put on the docket by Professor of Anthropology and of African and African American Studies J. Lorand Matory ’82, stating that 'the Faculty lacks confidence in the leadership of Lawrence H. Summers.' "
Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences:
Professor Matory is "a renowned expert on Brazil and on the Yoruba civilization of West Africa, which is world famous for its religious complexity and artistic creativity. He is equally noted for his study of such Latin American religions as Haitian 'Vodu,' Brazilian Candomblé, and Cuban Santería…."
The Harvard Crimson, January 7, 2005:
"I came here with the goal of dancing with Larry Summers, and I did it," Chinwe U. Nwosu ’08 said. "He’s a great dancer."
"Now I can say that 'Bootylicious' is our song," she added.
"Atabaque – a large tom-tom
that is used in Afro-Brazilian
religious celebrations"
— The Sounds of Samba
at Yale
— From Log24.net, Oct. 16, 2004:
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Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Tuesday March 15, 2005
Religion at Harvard
The Children’s Hour
Harvard Magazine,
Sept.-Oct. 2004:
“With the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts, Harvard couples were among those who took vows…. Lowell House master Diana Eck (left) and co-master Dorothy Austin tied the knot in Memorial Church on July 4, with Rev. Peter Gomes, Plummer professor of Christian morals, officiating.”
Once in Love with Amy
“In the Dining Hall are portraits of President Lowell and his wife; his sister Amy Lowell (Pulitzer prize winning poet, and a lover of scandal…)….” |
Today’s Harvard Crimson: “Stone joined members of the Foundation for lunch yesterday in Lowell House before delivering her remarks at Memorial Church last night…” |
Hold That Thought
nothing – the word had sexual connotations, as a slang word referring to female sexual parts. Compare Hamlet:
HAMLET Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
[Lying down at OPHELIA’s feet]
OPHELIA No, my lord.
HAMLET I mean, my head upon your lap?
OPHELIA Ay, my lord.
HAMLET Do you think I meant country matters?
OPHELIA I think nothing, my lord.
HAMLET That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.
OPHELIA What is, my lord?
HAMLET Nothing.
— Hamlet, III.2
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Saturday March 12, 2005
Bomb
See The Meaning of 3:16 (2/28/05),
The Death of George Scott (March 9, 2005),
Is Nothing Sacred? (March 9, 2000), and
The Exorcist Revisited (July 2, 2004).
For the hidden spiritual meaning
of 3:16, see
March First, 2005
and the upcoming
Ides of March album,
Saturday March 12, 2005
Logos
For the religious significance of the
logo on the left, see Why Me?
For the religious significance of the
logo on the right, see Palgrave.com.
Related material:
previous entry and Style.
Saturday March 12, 2005
Three Eleanors
Continued from March 10:
Continued from March 10:
For some children…
It takes three Eleanors.
1 2 3
For Alice, a beautiful child
who died in London
on Tuesday
at 72:
Today’s New York Times says that
Alice, the author of Fairy Tale,
was a
“passionately traditional Catholic.”
For related material, see
Immortal Diamond:
O’Hara, Hopkins, and Joyce.
See also the conflict between Trudeau’s
“diamond theory” and
“story theory”
of truth,
and Suzanne Keen‘s article from the
Catholic publication Commonweal:
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Saturday March 12, 2005
From the Women’s History Month Soundtrack:
 |
The River’s Too Wide — Olivia Newton-John 3:16 For a sample of this vintage For more on 3:16, see the For more on Life on the |
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Saturday March 12, 2005
Women’s History Month, continued:
Friday, March 11, 2005
Friday March 11, 2005
See too:
Click on picture for details.
For some theological background
to this and the previous 8 entries,
see log24 Sept. 1-15, 2003,
which contains the following passage:
"I would like to say something more to you about cheerful serenity, the serenity of the stars and of the mind…. neither frivolity nor complacency; it is supreme insight and love, affirmation of all reality, alertness on the brink of all depths and abysses; it is a virtue of saints and of knights; it is indestructible and only increases with age and nearness to death. It is the secret of beauty and the real substance of all art."
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Friday March 11, 2005
To a Young Scholar
truth is truth, tautalogous and true; what beauty is, that’s the thing to know
Posted 11/16/2002 at 1:51 am by TheYoungScholar
To a young scholar:
Guqin
Go
Calligraphy
Painting
Posted 11/16/2002 at 8:16 am by m759
For truth and beauty combined, see
The Eight, an entry of 4/4/2003,
to which the following sketch refers.
The Eight, an entry of 4/4/2003,
to which the following sketch refers.
Friday March 11, 2005
|
Philadelphia Story
Friday, March 11, 2005 James Biddle, 75, died at his family's estate, Andalusia, near Philadelphia yesterday. From today's New York Times: "Mr. Biddle was born at Andalusia on July 8, 1929. He attended St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., and graduated from Princeton, where he studied art and archaeology. He served in an intelligence unit of the Army during the Korean War."
"Anybody invites you to a game of solitaire, you tell 'em sorry, buster, the ball game is over." |
|
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