Category Archives: Art

Joan Baez in Istanbul

July 2, 2015 – 2:07 pm

While living in a group house in Washington in the 1990s, commuting by bicycle to the University of Maryland for my graduate studies in mathematics, I joined a discussion group of readers of the Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine. I suppose the group met as frequently as the magazine was published, though it could have been twice a month: I do not clearly recall. Neither do I recall just how I became involved with the group, though it must have been through a professor in my department who was a member.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in History, Istanbul, Music, Tourism | Tagged , , , | Comments (3)

Impressionism

June 17, 2015 – 3:10 pm

I went early to the office on Tuesday morning, June 17, 2015. On Harzemşah Sokağı in the Merkez (Center) Mahalle of Şişli, Istanbul, I paused to note a cafe decorated with the “Luncheon of the Boating Party.”

Reproduction of “Boating Party” on wall of an alcove; folded chairs below

That alcove from the street

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Education, Istanbul, Visual Art, West Virginia | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (8)

Visit to the Garbage Museum

March 23, 2015 – 12:35 pm

You have got till the Second of April (2015) to visit the Garbage Museum. Details are available on pieces of trash at the museum:

DSC03197
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By David Pierce | Also posted in Education, Istanbul, Nature, Turkey, Visual Art, West Virginia | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Art on the Bosphorus

March 9, 2015 – 4:28 pm

Here are photos from a Saturday (March 7, 2015) on the European side of the lower Bosphorus. I often go there, without a particular plan. Saturday was another cloudy day; but in Istanbul, in winter, one might wait weeks for a sunny day. No rain was forecast: that was enough reason to go out.

I first got the camera out at the Bezm-i Âlem Valide Sultan Camii, a.k.a. Dolmabahçe Mosque. The date at the door is 1851. Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Bosphorus, History, Istanbul, Tophane, Tourism, Visual Art | Tagged , , , | Comments (3)

Body and Mind

January 20, 2015 – 1:33 pm

Does consciousness have a “physical basis” or “material basis”? I am provoked by the suggestion that it does; for the question itself is misleading, if not simply meaningless.

In the September, 2014, issue of Harper’s magazine, Edward O. Wilson begins an essay called “On Free Will” with the following paragraph.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Freedom, Harper’s, History, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Pirsig, Plato, Science | Tagged , , , , | Comments (4)

The Peace of Liberal Education

January 13, 2015 – 1:33 pm
The wall of Dolmabahçe Sarayı, January 11, 2015

The wall of Dolmabahçe Sarayı, January 11, 2015

The occasion of this article is my discovery of a published Turkish translation of Collingwood’s Speculum Mentis or The Map of Knowledge (Oxford, 1924). Published as Speculum Mentis ya da Bilginin Haritası (Ankara: Doğu Batı, 2014), the translation is by Kubilay Aysevenler and Zerrin Eren. Near the end of the book, Collingwood writes the following paragraph about education, or what I would call more precisely liberal education. The main purpose of this article then is to offer the paragraph to any reader who happens to stop by.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Education, Euclid, History, Homer, Istanbul, Language, Mathematics, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Principles of Art, Turkish | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Bosphorus Sky

December 19, 2014 – 4:14 pm

This is about the morning of Thursday, December 18, 2014, a morning I spent by the Bosphorus, thinking mostly about poetry, and photographing the sky.

Seagulls against clouds and a brighter sea

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Archimedes, Bosphorus, Collingwood, Descartes, Education, History, Istanbul, Language, Mathematics, Nature, Nesin Mathematics Village, Philosophy, Poetry, Principles of Art, Psychology, Tourism, Turkey, Turkish | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (7)

Istanbul in the Sun

December 12, 2014 – 5:13 pm

The first Saturday in December promised to be cloudy, like every other day in recent weeks; but it would probably be rainless, so I spent it outside. Sunday was supposed to be rainy, so I planned on doing mental work indoors. In fact there were showers at dawn, but there was also orange light in the clouds. The clouds eventually cleared up, and I saw that I had better go out again. I returned to the seaside park where I had been the previous weekend; but this time I brought a proper camera.

I took some photos on the way to the park; these have now been incorporated in another article, ”Taksim in Limbo.” They serve to illustrate the previous article, “The Istanbul Seaside,” on that earlier park visit; so do the photos below.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in History, Istanbul, Nature, Tourism, Turkey, Visual Art | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Istanbul, August 1, 2014

August 1, 2014 – 11:52 am

This is my first full day in Istanbul for three weeks, and I have four observations, on the color of the sky, on the habits political rulers, on public treatment of space, and on the value of art. Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Istanbul, Nature, Turkey, Visual Art | Tagged | Comments (0)

Facts (NL IX, ‘Retrospect,’ first 6 paragraphs)

August 1, 2014 – 9:43 am

Index to this series

A certain person says,

I am not better than you or more virtuous than you. If you see me on the right path, help me. If you see me on the wrong path, advise me and halt me. And obey me as far as I obey God.

How should one hear these words: as an eminently reasonable expression of benevolent humility such as any of us might honorably make? Well, no matter how qualified, the command obey me might be a warning sign. The words are in fact from a recently published video, as quoted in the Guardian Weekly (Vol 190 No 5, 11–17 July 2014, p. 4). The speaker is the man whose nom de guerre is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on whose head the Department of State of the United States of America placed a ten-million-dollar bounty in 2011. He now styles himself Ibrahim, Caliph of the Islamic State, a new entity that is supposed to restore the lost Muslim glory of past centuries. This restoration is to be achieved through war. War requires military discipline, with punishments meted out for infractions like insubordination, not to mention the slaughter of those perceived as enemies. So al-Baghdadi’s request to be advised and halted if seen to be in the wrong must be interpreted rather carefully.

It is difficult to know how to interpret somebody’s words. With that I pass to the transitional chapter in the first part, “Man,” of Collingwood’s New Leviathan.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Aristotle, Categorical Thinking, Collingwood, Grammar, Mathematics, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Plato, Turkish, Visual Art | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (4)