Category Archives: Language

Boolean Arithmetic

May 5, 2018 – 7:38 am

Mathematics can be highly abstract, though remaining applicable to daily life. I want to show this with the mathematics behind logic puzzles, such as how to derive a conclusion using all of the following premisses:

  1. Babies are illogical.
  2. Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile.
  3. Illogical persons are despised.

The example, from Terence Tao’s blog, is attributed to Lewis Carroll. By the first and third premisses, babies are despised; by the second premiss then, babies cannot manage crocodiles.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

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

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Archeology, Art, Books, Collingwood, Education, Mathematics, Philosophy, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (4)

NL XIII: “Choice”

February 12, 2017 – 8:41 am

Index to this series

Adolph Gottlieb, “Centrifugal,” gouache on paperboard, 1961 (National Gallery of Art, Washington; gift of the Woodward Foundation)

Adolph Gottlieb, “Centrifugal,” 1961 (National Gallery of Art, Washington; gift of the Woodward Foundation)

The key idea of Chapter XIII of New Leviathan is the correct statement of the “problem of free will”: Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Books, Collingwood, History, Istanbul, Nature, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Psychology, Science | Comments (9)

Attribution of Fascism

December 11, 2016 – 8:46 am

I began writing this article on Saturday, December 10, 2016; I finished the next morning, Istanbul time. I wrote the first three paragraphs last. The planned breakfast did take place, quite pleasantly. The death toll in the bombing rose to 39. No matter how much I read drafts of my articles, I usually want to make changes after they are published. Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, History | Tagged | Comments (7)

Thinking & Feeling

July 20, 2016 – 2:16 pm

This essay is written as a distraction from current events, though I make some reference to them. I am prompted by questions of analogy provoked by

  1. the similes of Homer, and
  2. a recent theater review in Harper’s that mentions the parables of Jesus.

DSC06654 (2)
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By David Pierce | Also posted in Archeology, Art, Books, Collingwood, Education, History, Homer, Mathematics, Nature, Philosophy | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

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 Books, Collingwood, Education, History, Philosophy | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

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.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Art, Books, Collingwood, Education, History, Istanbul, Mathematics, Nature, Philosophy, Psychology, Turkey | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Mîna Urgan on alphabets & Atatürk

December 9, 2014 – 3:33 pm

mina-urgan-paragraf

In the news in Turkey lately (December 2014) is the vow or threat of the President to make lessons in Ottoman Turkish compulsory for Turkish schoolchildren. How realistic the threat is, I do not know. There is the Constitutional question of what the President’s powers actually are. There is also the practical question of whether it is even possible for most Turkish students to learn Ottoman. Foreign language education in Turkey is not generally very good; and as far as I can tell, Ottoman Turkish is practically a foreign language now. Two paragraphs from Geoffrey Lewis’s Turkish Grammar (Oxford, 1967, pages xx–xxi) are very interesting in this regard:

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Books, Education, History, Istanbul, Turkey | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

Graffiti grammar

September 15, 2014 – 1:32 pm

I happened to notice the words in the photograph below, written on a sidewalk box near the Özel Fransız Lape Hastanesi (the private Hôpital de la Paix), which has apparently been run by the Sisters of St Vincent de Paul since 1858. These must be the Sisters whom I occasionally see on the street.

It seems Gomidas was a patient at the Peace Hospital after his breakdown: a breakdown resulting from his deportation from Istanbul with other Armenian intellectuals in 1915. Gomidas was saved in body, not in spirit. Such is the history of the streets I walk daily.

Are the clouds descending on us?

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The words in the photo:

Buraya Gri Boya Gelecek → Geliyor → Gelemedi

To here grey color will come → is coming → could not come

It could only come so far!

By David Pierce | Also posted in History, Istanbul | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Cogito ne demek?

April 11, 2014 – 1:40 pm

Why the late Geoffrey Lewis’s Turkish Grammar (2d ed., Oxford, 2000) is exceptional:

At the beginning of a clause demek, demek ki, or demek oluyor ki (‘it becomes to say’) signifies ‘that is to say’: düşünüyorum, demek ki varım ‘I am thinking, which means I exist.’ (This Turkish translation of Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum is right—‘I am thinking’—and the usual English version—‘I think’—is wrong.)

I sent the foregoing to Facebook this morning, but this was not the best medium for the typographical features of boldface, italics, directional quotation marks, and indented quotations.

I had been aware that Lewis had died, Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Facebook, Philosophy | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (1)