Tag Archives: Susan Cain

Paternity

April 11, 2024 – 5:18 am

According to the last three chapters of Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics:

  1. All friendship (φιλία) derives from that between
    • parent and child or
    • man and woman.
  2. The friendship of utility is unstable, because inevitably the principals believe they don’t get what they deserve.
  3. Fathers deserve all honor – the reward of the superior in any relationship.

Empty beercans and waterbottle stand on a concrete manhole cover next to a fence on which hangs a big bag for refuse
There’s a trashbag nearby, but the people who drank beer here (in small cans, but a high proportion of alcohol, 9%): I assume they are boys, and they are used to being cleaned up after by their mothers
Şalcıkır Parkı, Tarabya
Sunday, April 7, 2024

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By David Pierce | Posted in Aristotle | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (5)

Cavafy in Istanbul

September 10, 2023 – 10:03 am

The first part of this post concerns a poem by Constantine Cavafy on accepting one’s fate. There are three parts after that:

The Cavafy poem, “The God Abandons Antony,” is based on a passage in Plutarch’s life of that person. Susan Cain wrote about the poem in a newsletter. Her book Quiet gave me a new appreciation for my parents. It so happens that my parents had me by adoption. Unfortunately other people are not happy to be in that situation.

Some people are also not happy with their sex. Cavafy’s poem could have given courage to Ms Cain during a painful birth. Courage is literally manliness in Greek. Plutarch writes of a man’s imitation of a woman in labor. Roberto Calasso’s Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony led me to the story. I talk about all of that.

I have since learned of another good essay, “Personal Integrity in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy,” in Beshara Magazine, by Andrew Watson. A different Andrew Watson played football for Scotland in 1881, and The Guardian has an article, “‘We looked identical’: one man’s discovery of slavery, family and football” (24 December 2020), by Tusdiq Din, about Malik Al-Nasir, formerly Mark Watson, who discovered, through their physical resemblance, a family relation with Andrew.

When Ayşe and I moved from Fulya to Tarabya last October, we were coming nearer where C. P. Cavafy once lived along the Bosphorus.

Boxes packed for moving. Rolled-up carpets; bubble wrap around bookcases. Light comes from a window on the right and a glowing globe on the upper left. Two more spherical paper shades sit on boxes
Last evening in Fulya
Saturday, October 15, 2022

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By David Pierce | Posted in Istanbul, Poetry, Sex and Gender | Also tagged , , , | Comments (5)

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. This moves me 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); also Maugham, who writes of 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 here. I only acknowledge the issue, suggesting Wikipedia pages (linked to presently) as a starting point for research. On this subject, old books on my shelves are not much help; my own experience is not much more help, at least not in a way that lends itself to being written of here. I do know that Turkish politicians will 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.

Madonna and child
Altarpiece, Church of the Holy Cross, Ahtamar Island

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By David Pierce | Posted in Harper’s, History, Tourism, Turkey | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (7)

Learning mathematics

May 14, 2013 – 11:23 am

This is mostly reminiscences about high school. I also give some opinions about how mathematics ought to be learned. The post originally formed one piece with my last article, “Limits.”

I learned calculus, and the epsilon-delta definition of limit, in Washington D.C., in my last two years at St Albans School, in a course taught by a peculiar fellow named Donald J. Brown. The first of these two years was officially called Precalculus Honors, but some time in that year, we started in on calculus proper.

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By David Pierce | Posted in Archimedes, Calculus, Education, Euclid, G. H. Hardy, Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy of Mathematics, Strunk and White | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (5)