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As Numerous as the Stars

2012-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm—a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute, and as numerous as the stars in heaven.

(Charles Darwin, The Variation in Animals and Plants under Domestication, John Murray, London, 1868, Vol. 2, p. 404).

Time and Truth

2012-03-23T00:25:00+00:00

In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, hangs Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Time Unveiling Truth, painted sometime between 1745 and 1750. The catalogue card describes the painting as follows:

This complex allegory displays Tiepolo's facility for depicting abstract concepts through personification. Truth is depicted as a proud young woman whose fair, voluptuous beauty is revealed by the dark, gnarled figure of Father Time. Time's chariot and his scythe symbolize death; Cupid, whose quiver of arrows remains on the ground, represents earthly love rendered powerless by Time. The parrot and the mirror represent Truth's enemies: sensuousness, vanity, and deceit. Truth's emblem, the sun, shines above, while all earthly things, symbolized by the globe, lie subject beneath her foot.

Well, time is certainly doing something to truth—but “unveiling” and “revealing” are rather euphemistic ways to put it.

Therefore, Strange were my Travels

2012-02-16T22:39:00+00:00

So Much for the Whole and the Part

2012-02-08T23:48:00+00:00

Let us imagine, with your permission, a little worm, living in the blood, able to distinguish by sight the particles of blood, lymph, &c., and to reflect on the manner in which each particle, on meeting with another particle, either is repulsed, or communicates a portion of its own motion. This little worm would live in the blood, in the same way as we live in a part of the universe, and would consider each particle of blood, not as a part, but as a whole. He would be unable to determine, how all the parts are modified by the general nature of blood, and are compelled by it to adapt themselves, so as to stand in a fixed relation to one another. For, if we imagine that there are no causes external to the blood, which could communicate fresh movements to it, nor any space beyond the blood, nor any bodies whereto the particles of blood could communicate their motion, it is certain that the blood would always remain in the same state, and its particles would undergo no modifications, save those which may be conceived as arising from the relations of motion existing between the lymph, the chyle, &c. The blood would then always have to be considered as a whole, not as a part. But, as there exist, as a matter of fact, very many causes which modify, in a given manner, the nature of the blood, and are, in turn, modified thereby, it follows that other motions and other relations arise in the blood, springing not from the mutual relations of its parts only, but from the mutual relations between the blood as a whole and external causes. Thus the blood comes to be regarded as a part, not as a whole. So much for the whole and the part.

(Spinoza to Oldenburg, Correspondence, Letter XV (XXXII)).

The Know It All

2011-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

The theory’s explaining everything will mean, at least, that the theory is probabilistically relevant to every statement about the world—like the know-it-all, such a theory says something about everything.

(Sherrilyn Roush. 2004. “Testability and the Unity of Science”, in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 101, No. 11, p. 556).

When Need Arises

2011-02-25T19:11:55+00:00

Meanwhile, as they read, they should have notebooks at hand, in which they may copy out the more elegant phrases and sentences; or let them have some blank pages bound in at the end of the books they read, and on them they may note down the number of the page in question and the heading of some remarkable topic. Then, when need arises, they will be able to make reference to it.

(Caspar Barlaeus, “Methodus Studiorum”, in Hugo Grotius et al., Dissertationes de studiis instituendis, Apud Ludovicum Elzevirium, Amsterdam, 1645, p. 353).

Not Sufficiently Removed

2011-02-25T14:59:41+00:00

And therefore as in the cognitive faculties reason, so in the motive curiositie, are the markes that part ye bounds of man's nature from that of beastes. Which makes mee, when I heare a man, upon the discovery of any new and ingenious knowledge or invention, aske gravely, that is to say, scornefully, what 'tis good for, meaning what monie it will bring in, (when he knows as little, to one that hath sufficient what that overplus of monie is good for), to esteeme that man not sufficiently removed from brutalitie.

(Thomas Hobbes, “To the Marquis of Newcastle,” in Sir William Molesworth (Ed), The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, London, 1839-1845, Vol. 7, pp. 467–468).

It Manifests Itself Like a Stream

2010-12-11T21:36:36+00:00

In the early 1920s, Erik Satie came to briefly dominate the pages of Vanity Fair, with articles either by or about him appearing in most issues published in 1921–1922¹. Here follows his “Igor Stravinsky: A Tribute to the Great Russian Composer by an Eminent French Confrère”, in Vanity Fair, February 1923, p. 39, 88². Click on the images for larger versions.

See Mary E. Davis, Classic Chic: Music, Fashion, and Modernism, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2006, pp. 145–152. For facsimile copies of a selection of these articles, see here.↩
Reprinted in Ornella Volta (Ed), Antony Melville (Trans), A Mammal's Notebook: Collected Writings of Erik Satie, Atlas Arkhive Documents of the Avant-Garde, Atlas Press, 1996.↩

Philosophers Falling and Fearing Falling

2010-11-05T00:14:48+00:00

Socrates.
Why, take the case of Thales, Theodorus. While he was studying the stars and looking upwards, he fell into a pit, and a neat, witty Thracian servant girl jeered at him, they say, because he was so eager to know the things in the sky that he could not see what was there before him at his very feet. The same jest applies to all who pass their lives in philosophy. For really such a man pays no attention to his next door neighbour; he is not only ignorant of what he is doing, but he hardly knows whether he is a human being or some other kind of a creature; but what a human being is and what is proper for such a nature to do or bear different from any other, this he inquires and exerts himself to find out. Do you understand, Theodorus, or not?

Theodorus.
Yes, I do; you are right.

(Plato, Theaetetus, in Loeb Classical Library, Plato II, Translated by H. N. Fowler, p. 121).

Now, pray tell me, what wisdom is there in this hankering after conjectural speculations? What proof is afforded to us, notwithstanding the strong confidence of its assertions, by the useless affectation of a scrupulous curiosity, which is tricked out with an artful show of language? It therefore served Thales of Miletus quite right, when, star-gazing as he walked with all the eyes he had, he had the mortification of falling into a well, and was unmercifully twitted by an Egyptian, who said to him, “Is it because you found nothing on earth to look at, that you think you ought to confine your gaze to the sky?” His fall, therefore, is a figurative picture of the philosophers; of those, I mean, who persist in applying their studies to a vain purpose, since they indulge a stupid curiosity on natural objects, which they ought rather (intelligently to direct) to their Creator and Governor.

(Tertullian, Ad Nationes, Book II, Chapter IV).

When he is threatened by a blow nothing can stop a man closing his eyes, or trembling if you set him on the edge of a precipice, just like a child.

(Montaigne, Essays, Translated by M. A. Screech).

Put the world’s greatest philosopher on a plank that is wider than need be: if there is a precipice below, although his reason may convince him that he is safe, his imagination will prevail. Many could not even stand the thought of it without going pale and breaking into a sweat.

(Pascal, Pensées, Translated by A. J. Krailsheimer, Penguin, Baltimore, 1966, Section 44)¹.

I often became quite absorbed, and once, whilst returning to school on the summit of the old fortifications round Shrewsbury, which had been converted into a public foot-path with no parapet on one side, I walked off and fell to the ground, but the height was only seven or eight feet. Nevertheless the number of thoughts which passed through my mind during this very short, but sudden and wholly unexpected fall, was astonishing, and seem hardly compatible with what physiologists have, I believe, proved about each thought requiring quite an appreciable amount of time.

(Charles Darwin, in Barlow, Nora (Ed), The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, Collins, London, 1958, p. 25).

From Saul Traiger, “Reason Unhinged: Passion and Precipice from Montaigne to Hume”, in Joyce Jenkins, Jennifer Whiting and Christopher Williams (Eds), Persons and Passions: Essays in Honor of Annette Baier, University of Notre Dame Press, 2005, pp. 100–115. [PDF]↩

Redback Spiders and the Meaning of Life

2010-08-26T00:18:29+00:00

After copulation, male redback spiders (Latrodectushasselti; relatives of the “black widow” spider), often somersault into the female’s mouthparts and are eaten (Figure 11.3A). This suicidal behavior might be adaptive, because males seldom have the opportunity to mate more than once, and it is possible that a cannibalized male fathers more offspring. Maydianne Andrade (1996)¹ tested this hypothesis by presenting females with two males in succession, recording the duration of copulation, and using genetic markers to determine the paternity of the females’ offspring. She found that females that ate the first male with whom they copulated were less likely to mate a second time, so these cannibalized males fertilized all the eggs. Furthermore, among females that did mate with both males, the percentage of offspring that were fathered by the second male was greater if he was eaten than if he survived. (Figure 11.3B). Both outcomes support the hypothesis that sexual suicide enhances reproductive success. This example suggests that prolonged survival is not necessarily advantageous, and illustrates how hypotheses of adaptation may be formulated and tested. Figure 11.3 (A) The small male redback spider somersaults into the large female’s mouthparts after copulation. (B) The proportion of eggs fertilized by the second male that copulated with a female was correlated with the duration of his copulation. On average, copulation by cannibalized males lasted longer than that by noncannibalized males. (A after Forster 1992²; B after Andrade 1996.)

(From Futuyma, Douglas J. 2009. Evolution, 2nd edition. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland MA, pp. 281–282).

Maydianne C. B. Andrade, “Sexual Selection for Male Sacrifice in the Australian Redback Spider”, in Science, 5 January 1996, Vol. 271, No. 5245, pp. 70–72. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.271.5245.70 ↩
L. M. Forster, “The Stereotyped Behavior of Sexual Cannibalism in Latrodectus-Hasselti Thorell (Araneae, Theridiidae), the Australian Redback Spider”, in Australian Journal of Zoology, Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 1–11. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/ZO9920001 ↩