Category Archives: Collingwood

Concerning the philosopher R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943). Many if not most of my posts concern Collingwood somehow, so this category may not be of much use. See Articles on Collingwood for some articles by other persons

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

Continue reading →

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

Taksim in Limbo

December 10, 2014 – 5:03 pm

This is a personal report on the current condition of Taksim square. I visited Taksim recently (early December, 2014) on a rare sunny day.

Continue reading →

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

The Istanbul Seaside

December 3, 2014 – 11:00 am

The original purpose of this article was to display and explain two photographs by me: one of a seaside park, the other of an abandoned car. I do this, and I talk about the stresses and compensations of the big city. I continue with the theme of Freedom from an earlier article of that name.

It is now early December in Istanbul, 2014. We have hardly seen the sun for weeks. Some rain falls almost every day. One has to learn to go out when one can. Last Saturday was cloudy, but dry, so we walked down to the Tophane-i Amire—the “Cannon Foundry Imperial.” The name is romantic, because it dates from Ottoman times, and because, like Koh-i-Noor, it is in a Persian grammatical form that is obsolete in Turkish. Today’s name of the cannon foundry would be Amire Tophane.
Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Bosphorus, Causation, Gezi, History, Istanbul, Nature, Philosophy, Pirsig, Psychology, Tophane, Tourism, Turkey | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (4)

Uniformity

November 21, 2014 – 5:22 pm

For certain reasons, this is something of a follow-up to an earlier article, Interconnectness, in which I quoted myself from December of 1987 as saying,

I came to think that if one understood the law of contradiction, there would be nothing left to understand.

I am going to quote now the person I quote the most, Collingwood, from the fourth paragraph from the end of Religion and Philosophy:

Uniformity, in a word, is relative to our needs; and to suggest that a game of cricket, for instance, would be impossible if we supposed that the ball might suddenly decide to fly to the moon, is no less and no more sensible than to suggest that it is impossible because the bowler might put it in his pocket and walk off the field. We know that the friend we trust is abstractly capable, if he wished, of betraying us, but that does not prevent our trusting him. It may be that our faith in the uniformity of matter is less removed from such a trust than we sometimes imagine. Whether we describe it as faith in matter or faith in God makes, after all we have said, little difference.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Causation, Contradiction, Mathematics, Philosophy | Tagged | Comments (2)

Freedom

August 4, 2014 – 12:31 pm

How do our thoughts age?

Having written recently that natural science was not history of nature, I looked back at Collingwood’s posthumous Principles of History for his arguments about this. I read his discussion of freedom as what distinguishes history from natural science. I recalled that his earlier writing was more concerned with removing distinctions than drawing them.

This is something that I investigate here. I occasionally encounter denials that we have “free will.” I find such denials bizarre; but evidently some people believe them, or at least believe they are worthy of consideration. I find Collingwood’s own account of freedom to be worthy of consideration. But then, considering this along with the rest of his œuvre, I have to conclude that everything is free. This conclusion is not really new to me; I drew such a conclusion as an adolescent. It may be a common thought. Wordsworth seems to have had such a thought, according to his Ode:

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Education, Facebook, Freedom, History, Nature, New Leviathan, overlap of classes, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Pirsig, Plato, Principles of Art, Science | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (13)

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.

Continue reading →

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

Interconnectedness

June 30, 2014 – 1:19 pm

Note added January 13, 2019. This essay concerns a letter I once wrote about

  • teaching;
  • the infinitely large and small, as contemplated by Pascal in that one of the Pensées headed Disproportion de l’homme;
  • Zen Buddhism.

Since the ideas of Collingwood often dominate this blog, one may ask why they influence me. My old letter provides some evidence, since I wrote it before I had read anything by Collingwood but The Principles of Art.

The present essay has the first of this blog’s several mentions of the slogan

Verba volant scripta manent,

which may not mean what we tend to think today.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in “God is a circle …”, Contradiction, Education, overlap of classes, Philosophy, Principles of Art, West Virginia | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (7)

NL VIII: “Hunger and Love”

June 30, 2014 – 11:57 am

Index to this series

§1

Collingwood recognizes the two kinds of appetites named in the title of the chapter.
Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in New Leviathan, Philosophy, Plato, Psychology | Tagged , , , , | Comments (8)

NL VII: “Appetite”

May 5, 2014 – 3:18 pm

Index to this series

How can we compare two states of mind? This is the question of Chapter VII of The New Leviathan. The answer is contained in the chapter’s title. “Appetite” is a name, both for the chapter and for the fundamental instance of comparing a here-and-now feeling with a “there-and-then” feeling. We compare these two feelings because we are unsatisfied with the former, but prefer the latter.

It would seem then that appetite is at the root of memory. Thus we are among the ideas of the opening verses of The Waste Land of T. S. Eliot, who attended Collingwood’s lectures on Aristotle’s De Anima at Oxford (and was just a year older):

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Logic, Midgley, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Pirsig, T. S. Eliot, West Virginia | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (12)

NL VI: “Language,” again

March 31, 2014 – 11:33 am

Index to this series

This is about language: language the concept, and “Language,” the sixth chapter of Collingwood’s New Leviathan. We shall consider language in a very basic way, not as a means of communicating what we know, but as the way we come to know things in the first place.
Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Homer, Language, New Leviathan, overlap of classes, Philosophy, Pirsig, Principles of Art, Science | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (2)