Homo Rapiens

A 3 year old post from Dave Pollard, that I spotted on a cross-hit, probably due to the fact that he self-referenced in a more recent post. Entitled “The End of Philosophy” and inlcuding a reading list with a lot of common ground here. The particular post concerns a review of a book called “Straw Dogs” [no connection] by John Gray. Worth a look ?

He quotes Gray

Homo rapiens is only one of very many species, and not obviously worth preserving. Later or sooner, it will become extinct. When it is gone Earth will recover. Long after the last traces of the human animal have disappeared, many of the species it is bent on destroying will still be around, along with others that have yet to spring up. The Earth will forget mankind. The play of life will go on.

I think that’s true, so long as we don’t destroy the biosphere on our watch. David Deutsch has a more positive spin, that humans (and any other high intelligence life, we’ve not yet encountered) actually has tremedous power and influence on the path of evolution whilst we’re a part of it. Whatever we destroy, evolution will continue from what’s left. Be a pity if it had to start again from a pre-biological cosmos ?

I know where I want “us” to get, but I wouldn’t want to start from there šŸ˜‰

Lost in Space

There’s something about the image in this news story of the Mars Orbiter encountering Phobos – “Stunning” – the caption says it. The “real” thing, in all its simplicity – not one of those ubiquitous computer simulated graphics. You just get the sense that it is exactly what it is – a lump of rock hurtling through the darkness. The scarring of both new, fresh and old, abraided impacts tells its story.

Sweeping the Yard ?

Couldn’t help smiling and thinking of the “Loggin’s Spoof” on MoQ when I saw this news story.Ā  It’s mainly about the physical exercise aspects of the activity, rather than theĀ involvement inĀ the task itself, but who nows ? Many a true word.

Post Note 2020:
How Cleanliness Can Affect Your Mental Health

Newton Modified

Noticed this “news” story about MoND – “Modified Newtonian Dynamics” the same week as “In Our Time” had Newtons Laws of MotionĀ as its subject matter – no idea if there is any connection – I’ve not listened to the edition yet, but I’ve noticed several different plugs for it on different philosophical discussion fora.

[Post Note – this quote from Melvyn’s newsletter …]

One thing that still intrigues me is the idea that you can derive the laws of motion without experimental evidence.Ā  In this regard there was a lovely quotation from Descartes speaking of Galileo: “he builds without foundations”.Ā  Galileo, so I believe Raymond Flood said, declared that whatever causes gravity isnā€™t worth worrying about.Ā 

What matters is getting the measurements right and understanding how it works.Ā  As long as you get the measurements right, what happens happens.Ā 

Not unlike the American Indian idea of the Great Mystery in the sky.

Wisdom Research

Tickled me that this “Wisdom Research Network” initiative, associated with the Wisdom Research programme at Chicago University, is now in 2008 called the “Arete Initiative”.

Chicago >>Ā Arete
>> Pirsig >> Quality
>>Ā Values >> Maxwell >> Wisdom
>> Rayner >> Inclusionality >> Fluid >> Dynamic Quality …

… is it just my mind that works this way ?

[Post note. Apparently not …

I see Pirsig picked-up on the Chicago education thread (see comment referring to a RobertĀ BirnbaumĀ interview with story writer Joseph Epstein, Jew to Jew as it were.)

Bob refers to this quote :

Ā … like a lot of serious booksellers, he was a failed Ph.D. He was a failed Ph.D. in philosophy from Chicago. A student of guy named Richard McKeon who left corpses all over the city. Pascal would not have gotten his Ph.D. from McKeon. Aristotle wouldn’t have. Nobody. He was a miserable character and he made it so hard for everybody. It’s like you and I trying to get a Ph.D. from Martin Bormann.

Understandable given Bob’s legendary relationship with McKeon (see ’60 to ’63 in the Timeline). My favourite is in the next paragraph :

Ā … I have come to think that a good student is not that impressive a thing to be. A good student can tell you seven reasons for the Renaissance. Big fucking deal. [laughs] He can tell you that materialism is naturalism. Because in order to have naturalism you have to have three things that satisfy materialism and so on. I sensed, in my crude kid way, this really wasn’t where the action is.

How true. ActuallyĀ the interview isĀ a good read … much on the “church of reason” in education and on “education in culture”. Can see why Bob liked it. Wise words.

PS .. and Arete ?Ā  Bob uses this Greek term for “excellence” in his thought processes of arriving at his Metaphysics of Quality, andĀ his boat in the book Lila, he named “Arete”.]

Is Funding Scientific ?

News story with UK opposition bemoaning government “stranglehold” on science funding – “Return control of science funding to the scientists” calls Osborne.

[Post Note – the opinion that follows is in response to the implicit suggestion in the reporting of that quote that, because scientists are concerned with science, they are somehow specially qualified not just to be involved in science funding, but even in control of it.]

Science funding decisions are simply not scientific decisions. They depend on values and objectives. They are at least a philosophy of science issue, and depending how narrow or enlightened that is, a lot more philosophy besides – existence, knowledge and ethics too – wisdom for short.

This is Nick Maxwell’s agenda for Aim-Oriented-Empiricism and Wisdom-Enquiry.

I used to hate Schiphol

Until I experienced a few transit flights through Heathrow. Truly the worst airport experience ever. Like so much UK infrastructure it shows its age and the effect of NIMBY’s and anti-central-planning free-marketers.

This comparison is useful. Schiphol’s single integrated terminalĀ always seemed so vast and the distances so great, but in fact the total distance between connecting flights cannot be any greater, whereas the security checkingĀ and queuing in and out of transfers between secure and external areas makes the ordeal so much worse at LHR. Gimme Schiphol, or Atlanta, or HK, or Changi any day. Of course the (BA) plan to maximise connections that minimise inter-(separate)-terminal transfers helps those funding such airlines as can justify their own integrated terminal. Come on T5, get it together.

In an age of carbon-footprint-consciousness I guess it’s non-PC to complain about the pains of air-travel, but I am.

The Earliest Interweb-Thingy ?

Thanks to Dan GloverĀ for posting this Mundaneum link on MoQ-Discuss.
(And to Ron Kulp for this documentary link to the same subject.)

I’ve blogged several times previously on the similarity of blogging to the approach Pirsig used to organise his ideas, and how this is a generic metaphor for the interconnectivity rather than atomism of knowledge itself.

Pirsig, like this much earlier Mundaneum approach, involved gathering “useful facts” as simple index cards (a page, a post, in blogging terms), but the crucial thing is that these “atoms” contain links to other indexed atoms, and in fact some atoms are nothing butĀ links – meta-atoms, subject headings, organisational nodes, place-holders, what-have-you – little or no content of their own.

Partly this also mirrors the context and story-telling emphasis of modern knowledge management – recognising that sources (individual first-person people / conversations / anecdotes) are context that is at least as important as the content of “knowledge” in any objective sense.

Note – the original Mundaneum link is from the “Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society” web site, which itself is a blog and has some wonderful links in its side-bars. A new source of exploration for me.

Instruction is the scary word.

But I guess the key word here is “offer”.

I my time a faith-based-assembly was optional and conscientious objection wasĀ accepted, though few did. Quite rightly distinct from Religious Education. Trouble is who chooses to accept such an offer, child or guardian ?