On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book IV

September 2, 2017 – 10:35 am

Index | Text

The gods confer. The humans can make war or peace; which shall it be? Juno insists on war, so that Troy can be punished. When Jove objects, Juno offers up her most beloved Greek cities in return. Mycenae, Argos, and Sparta: let Jove destroy them at will, if only Pallas be sent to induce one of the Trojans to break the truce.

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By David Pierce | Posted in Books, Homer | Comments (2)

NL XIX: Two Senses of the Word “Society”

September 1, 2017 – 4:15 am

Index to this series

After a break of half a year, I return to reading Collingwood’s New Leviathan. Being on holiday at an Aegean beach gives me the opportunity. While here, I may also return to Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad. Last winter I finished Part I of the New Leviathan, the part called “Man.” Here I continue with the first chapter of “Society.” I have reason to look at what Mary Midgley and Albert Einstein say about science. Collingwood’s investigation suggests a way of thinking about prejudice and discrimination.

Part II of the New Leviathan is “Society,” and the first two chapters of this, XIX and XX, concern the distinction between society proper and two more general notions. In Chapter XX, the more general notion will be community. In Chapter XIX, the more general notion has not got its own proper name, and so Collingwood denotes it by writing “society,” in quotation marks.

A “society” of chairs at the beach (Altınova 2017.08.31)

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By David Pierce | Posted in Art, Collingwood, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Science | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Ahtamar Island

August 30, 2017 – 5:05 am

During a mathematics conference, I visit the ruins of a monastery on a remote island in an inland sea. I am moved to consider the relation between introversion and, if not mathematics, then monasticism. On the origins of Christian monasticism, I look at several sources, notably Gibbon (see the References); and Maugham, on a hermit on an island of the Torres Strait. Since the monastery on the island was Armenian, in what is now Turkey, one should consider also the treatment of minority populations in Turkey. I acknowledge the issue only here, suggesting Wikipedia pages (linked to presently) as a starting point for research. Old books on my shelves are not much help; my own experience, not much more, at least not in a way that lends itself to being written of here, though I know for example that Turkish politicians will openly treat imputations of their own Armenian ancestry as an insult.

We visited Ahtamar Island for a second time on Wednesday, August 23, 2017. Thus we saw again the remains of the Church of the Holy Cross. This Armenian church was consecrated in 921 and presumably desecrated in 1915, if not earlier; now, since our last visit, though officially a museum, the church would seem to have been reconsecrated, to judge by the new altarpiece, featuring an icon of the Madonna and Child.


Altarpiece, Church of the Holy Cross, Ahtamar Island

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By David Pierce | Posted in Books, History, Travel, Turkey | Tagged , , , | Comments (3)

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 | Posted in Archeology, Art, Books, Collingwood, Education, Language, Mathematics, Philosophy, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

War and Talk

June 18, 2017 – 7:41 pm

This is a foray into the mystery of how things happen, based the 164th of the 361 chapters of War and Peace. This chapter contains, in a one-sentence paragraph, a summary of Tolstoy’s theory of history:

Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.

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By David Pierce | Posted in Books, Collingwood, History, Istanbul, Philosophy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book III

June 5, 2017 – 8:39 am

Index | Text

The Iliad is about the feud between Achilles and Agamemnon, a feud that occurs during the Trojan War. Book III of the Iliad has nothing to do with Achilles, a little to do with Agamemnon, and everything to do with why the whole war is happening at all.

Photo of the tower of books used for this article

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By David Pierce | Posted in Books, Homer | Comments (3)

The Private, Unskilled One

May 19, 2017 – 5:55 am

I went into Istanbul’s Pandora Bookshop a month ago, looking for an English translation of War and Peace, since the Garnett translation I had read at college was falling apart. I was told the Oxford World’s Classics edition (with the Maude translation) was coming the next week, and it did come.

Elif Batuman, The Idiot, in Nesin Matematik Köyü, Kayser Dağı Mevkii, Şirince, Selçuk, İzmir, Turkey, 2017.05.18

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By David Pierce | Posted in Books | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Edirne

May 6, 2017 – 6:35 am

This is about a May Day trip to the second Ottoman capital from the third. In the latter, the government has been suppressing May Day demonstrations in Taksim Square since 2013. That year, the suppression may have helped provoke the Gezi Park protests, as I suggested in “May Day One Month Late.” I reported on the following year’s suppression in “Madness, Stupidity, or Evil?” This year (2017), labor unions held a legal May Day demonstration in Bakırköy, further west in European Istanbul, as reported by the Anadolu Agency (which as far as I know is owned by the Turkish state). My wife and I just got out of town.

Selimiye Mosque, 2017.04.30

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By David Pierce | Posted in Art, History, Travel, Turkey | Tagged | Comments (0)

On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book II

April 24, 2017 – 8:14 am

Index | Text

Even gods must sleep; but under the weight of his responsibility to Thetis, Zeus cannot. As Achilles pointed out in Book I, “dreams are often sent from Jove”; now we shall have a case in point.

All ways cast, this counsel serv’d his mind
With most allowance; to despatch a harmful Dream to greet
The king of men, and gave this charge: ‘Go to the Achive fleet,
Pernicious Dream…’
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By David Pierce | Posted in Books, Homer | Comments (0)

Thinking in the age of cyborgs

April 19, 2017 – 6:00 pm

I am reblogging this article because I like it, and because it may help amplify or refine (or correct?) some ideas I tried to express in “The point of teaching mathematics.” Mathematics should teach both the possibility of peaceful cooperation and the power of our own thought.

Junaid Mubeen, PhD

We have our clearest indication yet that the cyborgs are coming.Elon Musk has formally accepted his invitation to the AI party the only way he knows how: by founding a company. Neuralink will create brain-enhancing digital implants; the first step on the road to merging humans with software. Musk has taken on the mantel of preserving the human race, and he believes the only way to counter the threat of AI’s rapid ascent is by meshing together biological and digital forms of intelligence.

To date, cyborgs have been the preserve of Sci-Fi. But Musk has form for bringing outlandish fantasies to bear. In fact, to Musk the cyborg is no fantasy at all. He recently argued that humans have already merged with technology. Musk is not the first to make the point: over half a century has passed since Marshall McLuhan declared technology “the extensions of man”

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By David Pierce | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)