Category Archives: Language

Mood

March 10, 2020 – 5:53 pm

Executive summary. The English grammatical moods—indicative, imperative, subjunctive—were not understood till the nineteenth century, according to an 1882 doctoral dissertation, On the Use of the Subjunctive Mood in Anglo-Saxon. Considering illustrative passages that happen to be from Plato, Alfred Douglas, Evelyn Waugh, and especially John Donne; looking ultimately at John McWhorter’s 2015 essay, “English is not normal”; I review the subjunctive mood, grammar in general, and my own lack of understanding till I was in college.

Copyright page and table of contents, side by side, of Concise Oxford Dictionary Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Grammar, Plato, Poetry, Strunk and White | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

On Translation

October 6, 2019 – 8:28 am

Achilles is found singing to a lyre, in a passage of Book IX of the Iliad. Homer sets the scene in five dactylic hexameters; George Chapman translates them into four couplets of fourteeners.

I wrote a post about each book of the Iliad, in Chapman’s version of 1611. As I said at the end, I look forward to reading Emily Wilson’s version. Meanwhile, here I examine the vignette of the lyre in several existing English translations, as well as in the original.

Three books mentioned in the text Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Homer, Plato | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XVIII

September 20, 2019 – 9:02 am

I analyze Book XVIII of the Iliad into seven scenes.

Branches against sky

  1. Achilles receives from Antilochus the news of Patroclus’s death, and Thetis receives the news from Achilles. She tells him not to fight till she has brought new arms from Mulciber (Chapman’s lines 1–136).

    2. Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Grammar, Homer, Mathematics, Principles of Art | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

Math, Maugham, and Man

September 1, 2019 – 7:49 am

A human being was once a man. A female of the species was a wife; a male, a were. The latter appeared in werewolf, but also were-eld, which became our world. Our woman comes from wife-man.

That is roughly the history, which I shall review later in a bit more detail. It would be a fallacy to think the history told us how we must use the words “woman” and “man” today. The history does suggest what may happen again: in a world dominated by men, a word like “person,” intended for any human being, may come to have its own meaning dominated by men. Yet again, this is no reason not to try to make our language better.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Mathematics, Maugham, Plato | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Piety

March 14, 2019 – 9:33 pm

The post below is a way to record a passage in the Euthyphro where Socrates say something true and important about mathematics. The passage is on a list of Platonic passages that I recently found, having written it in a notebook on May 23, 2018. The other passages are in the Republic; Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Homer, Mathematics, Nesin Mathematics Village, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Plato, Strunk and White | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)

NL XLV: The Germans

February 21, 2019 – 9:14 am

Index to this series

At the end of Collingwood’s New Leviathan (1942), we reach a chapter whose theme is that of my more recent articles on grammar.

By August Macke – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, Link

As history, Collingwood’s last chapter is difficult, for the reasons that trouble Herbert Read at the beginning of his Concise History of Modern Painting (revised 1968, augmented 1974). Read opens his first chapter with a passage from Collingwood’s Speculum Mentis (1924):

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Education, Grammar, New Leviathan | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

NL XLIII: The Second Barbarism: The ‘Albigensian Heresy’

October 13, 2018 – 7:01 am

Index to this series

Summary. Suppose your society has certain rites and customs, perceived as essential to its functioning. When some persons among you reject those rites and customs, what are you going to do? Persecution would be the normal response of a society that aimed to preserve itself. In the example to be considered here, the society is medieval Christendom, where

  • buildings called churches were customarily the abode of friendly spirits, and
  • the rite of swearing an oath was a sign of special commitment.

Oaths and churches were rejected by persons called Paulicians, or Bogomils, or Albigensians. Their beliefs were Manichaean. These persons were persecuted so successfully that we do not understand them very well. Therefore we must leave open the question of whether they were barbarists.

Here I am going to review, among other things,

  • what it means to fight barbarism;
  • the response to German bombardment described in Goodbye, Mr. Chips;
  • what Jesus Christ says about swearing;
  • how the United States accommodates various beliefs (as by allowing affirming instead of swearing, or allowing Muslims to swear on a Quran);
  • the threat of a lying President;
  • the threat of ignoring climate change;
  • the etymology of heresy;
  • the discussion of mythos and logos in Pirsig.

Fire temple, Yazd, Iran, September 2012. See “Duty to Nature”

Continue reading →
By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, New Leviathan, Pacifism, Philosophy, Pirsig, Plato | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (6)

NL XXXVIII: Civilization and Wealth

September 21, 2018 – 6:08 pm

Index to this series

To be richer than another person is to have economic power over that person (38. 61). The rich can force the poor to sell their labor for a lower price (38. 64) than if the poor were free (38. 65) of the emotional strain of poverty (38. 66).

Rembrandt, Esau Selling His Birthright, c. 1640–1, British Museum

Continue reading →
By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Fowler, New Leviathan, Philosophy | Tagged | Comments (0)

NL XXXIV: What Civilization Means Generically

September 14, 2018 – 6:56 pm

Index to this series

Turning now to Part III of Collingwood’s New Leviathan (1942), we take up civilization, a topic of utmost importance, featuring as it does, for example, in the controversial hypothesis of the “Clash of Civilizations,” and generally being something that reactionaries say they want to defend.

Civilization is something that happens to a community (34. 4). We studied communities as such in Part II, and their members individually in Part I.

Civilization is a “process of approximation to an ideal state” (34. 5). That is the gist of Chapter XXXIV, “What ‘Civilization’ Means: Generically.” There will be a lot to spell out.


We have returned to Istanbul. Below are
sunset photos from our last night on the Aegean coast

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Principles of Art | Tagged , , , , | Comments (4)

Writing Rules

July 15, 2018 – 7:35 pm

Executive summary (added July 16, 2018): I have had enough of misrepresentation by experts of what other experts have to say about grammar.

An ongoing concern of this blog is the subject taught in school called grammar. See for example

  • the previous post, “Writing and Inversion,” about how a supposed rule against the passive voice might be better understood as a rule to avoid certain inversions of order (namely those inversions that add words and torpor);

  • the post before that, “A New Kind of Science,” presenting a theory that grammar is properly neither prescriptive nor descriptive, but “criteriological,” because it examines the criteria that we apply to our own speaking and writing;

  • an early expression (from six years ago) of some of those ideas: “Strunk and White.”

Grammar causes anxiety. Every aspect of school would seem to cause anxiety in somebody. Decades after they have left school, how many persons have nightmares of missing an examination? My mother and her brother were such a persons, as I learned when growing up. I seem not to be such a person, though I once dreamt of missing a plane.

How much support of current US President Donald Trump is due to memories of belittlement by teachers at school? Similar questions may be raised about

  • UK government minister Michael Gove’s saying, “people in this country have had enough of experts …”;

  • the rise in Turkey of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has perceived a special threat from the Peace Academics.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Education, Fowler, Grammar, Strunk and White | Tagged , , , | Comments (10)