Category Archives: History

Samatya Tour, July 2018

July 5, 2018 – 7:40 am

This is about a solo walking tour on Sunday, July 1, 2018. I was mostly around the Seventh Hill of the old walled city of Constantinople, ultimately in the quarter called Ψαμάθεια in Greek, and in Turkish Samatya.

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

Çarşamba Tour, April 2018

July 2, 2018 – 5:12 pm

Ayşe and I toured the northern part of the old walled city of Istanbul – including the religiously conservative district of Çarşamba – with our student Abdullah and his brother Yusuf on Sunday, April 8, 2018. At another site I documented a similar tour in March, 2015. Now I do not try to be so thorough. I did not try to document the whole trip photographically, but here is a selection of pictures that I did take. We saw Byzantine and Ottoman structures. For the former, I have since found a comprehensive reference: The Byzantine Legacy.

Kalendarhane

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Istanbul, Tourism | Tagged | Comments (1)

Re-enactment

June 4, 2018 – 6:05 am

Two whiteboards, one above the other, with geometrical diagrams and equations
My whiteboards from Tuesday, November 3, 2015,
concerning Pappus of Alexandria,
in the course “Geometriler”

Executive summary (added October 6, 2018). Historian Niall Ferguson praises Collingwood as a philosopher of history, while showing no sign of understanding Collingwood’s actual philosophy. This provokes me. My comments are in the following sections.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Leo Strauss, Midgley, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Principles of Art, T. S. Eliot | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (22)

On Knowing Ourselves

March 3, 2018 – 4:47 am

In a 2012 post in this blog, I criticized a 2009 essay called “50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.” The putative advice was that of Strunk and White. However, what these two had written was not the elements of grammar, but The Elements of Style. They gave style advice by precept and example. The advice is good, if well understood. The critic should recognize that, as I wrote, “Rules of style are supposed to induce thinking, not obedience.”

View between two hotel buildings from one mountainside to another, with a bit of the sea beyond
All photos taken in Delphi, July 12–14, 2017

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Archeology, Collingwood, Leo Strauss, Nesin Mathematics Village, Philosophy, Pirsig, Plato, Principles of Art, Strunk and White, Turkey, West Virginia | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (26)

Fascism As Abetted by Realism

October 10, 2017 – 10:07 am

Fascism is class warfare waged on behalf of the capitalists. This should be realized by anybody who is attracted to accidental features of Fascism such as nationalism, racism, or militarism. The Fascists are not on your side, even if they share your nationality or “race” or fascination with weaponry and military discipline.

The illustrations are explained near the end of the text. This one, the cover of Cruisin’ 1964, shows a young bearded man, holding Report of the Warren Commission against a law dictionary, saying to another, “Luthor … how come you never make it to the free speech rallies anymore?” Luthor has a cigarette, closed eyes, and a guitar

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Philosophy, Philosophy of History | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (6)

Romance

October 8, 2017 – 2:14 pm

At the end of Shakespeare’s romance called The Tempest, Prospero plans to retire to Milan, where “Every third thought shall be my grave.” I remember these words from reading the play in school and college. I also have thoughts of my grave, and their frequency may increase as the years pass. However, for each of those thoughts, I seem to have more thoughts that are based on memories of youth and childhood.


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By David Pierce | Also posted in Maugham, Nesin Mathematics Village, Tourism | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (5)

Ahtamar Island

August 30, 2017 – 5:05 am

During a mathematics conference, I visit the ruins of a monastery on a remote island in an inland sea. This moves me to consider the relation between introversion and, if not mathematics, then monasticism. On the origins of Christian monasticism, I look at several sources, notably Gibbon (see the References); also Maugham, who writes of a hermit on an island of the Torres Strait. Since the monastery on the island was Armenian, in what is now Turkey, one should consider also the treatment of minority populations here. I only acknowledge the issue, suggesting Wikipedia pages (linked to presently) as a starting point for research. On this subject, old books on my shelves are not much help; my own experience is not much more help, at least not in a way that lends itself to being written of here. I do know that Turkish politicians will treat imputations of their own Armenian ancestry as an insult.

We visited Ahtamar Island for a second time on Wednesday, August 23, 2017. Thus we saw again the remains of the Church of the Holy Cross. This Armenian church was consecrated in 921 and presumably desecrated in 1915, if not earlier; now, since our last visit, though officially a museum, the church would seem to have been reconsecrated, to judge by the new altarpiece, featuring an icon of the Madonna and Child.

Madonna and child
Altarpiece, Church of the Holy Cross, Ahtamar Island

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Harper’s, Tourism, Turkey | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (7)

Hypomnesis

July 30, 2017 – 6:35 pm

When is a help a hindrance? The Muses have provoked this question. They did this through their agents, the cicadas, who sang around the European Cultural Center of Delphi, during the 11th Panhellenic Logic Symposium, July 12–5, 2017.

     Cicada, European Cultural Center of Delphi, 2017.07.15     

Cicada, European Cultural Center of Delphi, 2017.07.15

My question has two particular instances.

  1. At a mathematical conference, can theorems “speak for themselves,” or should their presenters be at pains to help the listener appreciate the results?

  2. When the conference is in Greece, even at one of the country’s greatest archeological sites, does this enhance the reading of ancient Greek texts, or is it only a distraction?

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Archeology, Archimedes, Art, Collingwood, Education, G. H. Hardy, Language, Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy, Plato, Principles of Art, Tourism, West Virginia | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (18)

War and Talk

June 18, 2017 – 7:41 pm

This is a foray into the mystery of how things happen, based the 164th of the 361 chapters of War and Peace. This chapter contains, in a one-sentence paragraph, a summary of Tolstoy’s theory of history:

Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Aristotle, Causation, Collingwood, Criteriological Science, Harper’s, Istanbul, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Plato, Principles of Art | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (13)

Edirne

May 6, 2017 – 6:35 am

This is about a May Day trip from the third Ottoman capital to the second. In the former, the government has been suppressing May Day demonstrations in Taksim Square since 2013. That year, the suppression may have helped provoke the Gezi Park protests, as I suggested in “May Day One Month Late.” I reported on the following year’s suppression in “Madness, Stupidity, or Evil?” This year (2017), labor unions held a legal May Day demonstration in Bakırköy, further west in European Istanbul, as reported by the Anadolu Agency (which as far as I know is owned by the Turkish state). My wife and I just got out of town.


Selimiye Mosque, 2017.04.30

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Nesin Mathematics Village, Tourism, Turkey | Tagged , , , | Comments (4)