Category Archives: Science

NL XVIII: Theoretical Reason

February 17, 2017 – 4:55 am

Index to this series

Reason is primarily practical: it explains why we do what we do. Secondarily, reason explains why others do what they do (18. 1): this makes reason theoretical, though not entirely so, since questions about others arise from, and are answered by, our relations with those others (18. 11). The experimental method involves such relations: we do something to the world, to see how it will respond (18. 12).

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, New Leviathan, Philosophy | Tagged , , | Comments (7)

NL XIII: “Choice”

February 12, 2017 – 8:41 am

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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”:

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, History, Istanbul, Language, Nature, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Principles of Art, Psychology | Tagged , | Comments (17)

Happiness

November 3, 2016 – 9:07 am

If only tangentially sometimes, this is about living in Turkey, especially under the ongoing official state of emergency.

Aristotle, Marx & Engels, and Collingwood

Aristotle, Marx & Engels, and Collingwood

A blog article on Medium recently struck me for its treatment of science. Dated October 3, the article is called “The Purpose Of Life Is Not Happiness: It’s Usefulness,” and its opening section is as follows.

For the longest time, I believed that there’s only purpose of life: And that is to be happy. Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Causation, Collingwood, Education, History, Istanbul, Mathematics, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Principles of Art, Turkey | Tagged , | Comments (2)

Beykoz, Istanbul

August 16, 2016 – 4:22 pm

After five years in Istanbul, we continue to learn how much there is still to discover here. Now we have been to the Asian borough of Beykoz. Much of what we saw there was rural, and the topography and flora reminded me of Appalachia. I have nothing to say about the poverty and ignorance that might be suggested by this term; for me, Appalachia was always a locus for holidays, mostly at my late uncle’s place in West Virginia, but also in the form of bicycle tours. Travelling now to Beykoz, Country roads, I could think, take me home, to the place I belong! We got there by public bus from our European borough of Şişli.

Polonezköy, Beykoz, 2016.08.14

Polonezköy, Beykoz, 2016.08.14

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By David Pierce | Also posted in History, Istanbul, Nature, Philosophy, Pirsig, Tourism, West Virginia | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Early Tulips

March 14, 2016 – 5:49 pm

Emirgan Korusu, 2016.03.12

Ayşe was still in Ankara, but I had seen rumors on Twitter that tulips were already blooming in Emirgan Korusu. The bulbs were being dowsed with ice water, lest the flowers be overblown for the Tulip Festival in April. Anyway, I wanted to get away from the crowds of Şişli and Beyoğlu. The morning was mostly sunny. Thus on Saturday, March 12, 2016, I headed out to Emirgan, repeating the trip that we had made the previous April.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Bosphorus, History, Istanbul, Nature, Tourism, Turkey, Visual Art | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

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, Principles of Art | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Equality Is Not Identity

January 26, 2015 – 3:20 pm

I want to record here an account by Collingwood of Aristotle’s theory of knowledge. The passages quoted below are relevant, both to something I have learned from reading Euclid with students, and to the considerations of consciousness that led to my recent article “Body and Mind.”

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Aristotle, Collingwood, Euclid, Mathematics, Nature, Philosophy, Plato | Tagged , | Comments (2)

Body and Mind

January 20, 2015 – 1:33 pm

Does consciousness have a “physical basis” or “material basis”? I am provoked by the suggestion that it does; for the question itself is misleading, if not simply meaningless.

In the September, 2014, issue of Harper’s magazine, Edward O. Wilson begins an essay called “On Free Will” with the following paragraph.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Freedom, Harper’s, History, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Pirsig, Plato | Tagged , , , , | Comments (4)

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, Principles of Art | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (11)

NL VI: “Language,” again

March 31, 2014 – 11:33 am

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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, Principles of Art | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (2)