Tag Archives: Parmenides

Just World

August 13, 2025 – 5:20 pm

In “Biological History,” I talk about some stories by Somerset Maugham. The theme is a confusion between biological (or generally physical) facts and historical (or personal) facts.

I originally made the post on January 9, 2023. I have returned to it a few times since. I did this most recently when a friend told me of purchasing, in Toronto, Ontario, a two-volume edition of Maugham’s complete short stories. Probably this was the same edition that I had bought in Hamilton, Ontario, a quarter-century earlier.

Working again through “Biological History,” I wanted to spell out a remark about what is either the just-world hypothesis or the just-world fallacy. I am going to do that here, using verses of Parmenides of Elea. Parmenides will lead me in turn to Dr Seuss and the fallacy of artificial intelligence.

Book and paraphernalia on a picnic table below a pine tree with crows on the bare lower branches

Where I read Parmenides
Erguvantepe, Sarıyer, Istanbul
July 19, 2025

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By David Pierce | Posted in Maugham | Also tagged | Comments (4)

NL XIX: Two Senses of the Word “Society”

September 1, 2017 – 4:15 am

Executive summary (below) | 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 absolute presuppositions, Collingwood, G. H. Hardy, Midgley, New Leviathan, overlap of classes, Philosophy, Plato, Principles of Art, Science | Also tagged , , | Comments (9)