Category Archives: Principles of Art

Nicole at the Golden Horn

October 7, 2015 – 3:47 pm

The setting was gorgeous. We were atop a hotel (and former convent) opposite the compound of the Italian Consulate—the Italian Embassy, in Ottoman times, before Mustafa Kemal founded the Turkish Republic and moved the capital to Ankara. We looked out over old trees. The street just below us was closed to cars; off to the right it became a stairway and a narrow passage up to İstiklâl Caddesi. Beyond the trees of the Consulate were the Golden Horn and Seraglio Point, with the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara beyond. As night fell, electric lights illuminated the Seraglio itself—Topkapı Palace—along with the Hagia Sophia.
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By David Pierce | Also posted in Bosphorus, Collingwood, Istanbul, Plato, Science | 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 Collingwood, Education, Euclid, History, Homer, Istanbul, Language, Mathematics, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, 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, Psychology, Tourism, Turkey, Turkish | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (7)

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:

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Education, Facebook, Freedom, History, Nature, New Leviathan, overlap of classes, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Pirsig, Plato, Science | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (14)

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.

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

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

NL VI: “Language”

February 27, 2014 – 3:37 pm

Index to this series

This is about the first section of Chapter VI, “Language,” of The New Leviathan. The whole chapter can be ana­lyzed into five sections, with §N consisting of those paragraphs numbered 6. N or 6. NX. I summarize the sections as follows:

  1. Language is an abstraction from discourse. Discourse is an activity together with what is meant by it. (¶¶6. 1–19)
  2. Through language, we become conscious of our feelings. Becoming conscious of our language is another step, which is taken by artists. (¶¶6. 2–29)
  3. A feeling is not “mediated” by the language we use for it. (¶¶6. 3–36)
  4. Hobbes discovered that language is prior to knowledge. (¶¶6. 4–47)
  5. Those who dispute this finding over­look that not all language is rational. (¶¶6. 5–59)

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Education, Istanbul, Language, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Plato, question and answer | Tagged , | Comments (4)

NL V: “The Ambiguity of Feeling”

February 17, 2014 – 4:48 pm

Index to this series

Feeling differs from thought. Thought is founded in feeling; thought is erected on feeling; thought needs feeling. Thought needs feelings that are strong enough to support it. But thought itself is not strong (or weak); it has (or can have) other properties, like precision and definiteness. Thought can be remembered and shared in a way that feeling cannot.

The New Leviathan is a work of thought. One might say that a work of thought cannot properly explain feeling. Collingwood himself says this, more or less, in Chapter V, even in its very title: “The Ambiguity of Feeling.” Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Aristotle, Collingwood, Descartes, Fowler, Grammar, History, Logic, Mathematics, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Plato, Psychology, Science, T. S. Eliot | Tagged , , , , | Comments (7)

NL IV: “Feeling”

February 3, 2014 – 11:44 am

Index to this series

Contents of this article:

  • The Fallacy of Misplaced Argument. Do not argue about what is immediately given to consciousness
  • Feeling and Thought. An analysis of feeling is not immediately given to consciousness
  • Summary of the chapter, as analyzed into nine parts

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    • By David Pierce | Also posted in absolute presuppositions, Collingwood, History, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Plato, Science | Tagged , , , , | Comments (11)

    NL III: “Body As Mind”

    January 25, 2014 – 7:17 am

    Index to this series

    In Chapter I of The New Leviathan, we stipulated that natural science, the “science of body,” must be free to pursue its own aims. But we ourselves are doing science of mind, and:

    1. 85. The sciences of mind, unless they preach error or confuse the issue by dishonest or involuntary obscurity, can tell us nothing but what each can verify for himself by reflecting on his own mind.

    All of us can be scientists of mind, if only we are capable of reflection: Continue reading →

    By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Conic Sections, Descartes, Education, Euclid, History, Mathematics, New Leviathan, overlap of classes, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Plato, Psychology, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (7)