Forest Fire!

A pleasant enough day in August on the hot and sleepy Caltech campus. You can almost watch the tumble-weeds blowing by, tossed around in the wake of the various carts and aspiring cars that propel people around the entirely-flat and less-than-a-square-mile-large campus.



But, let's take a little bit of a closer look: what have we got here? That's right, a major forest fire in the Angeles National Forest. I guess no hiking for Old Ken this weekend!

Experimental Idol

Continuing in my occasional series on fairly random things that just deserve greater attention, I offer the following gem from Thomas Sprat's 1667 "History of the Royal Society of London". So, Sprat is in the middle of defending the innovations of the "new science" of experimentation as practiced among London's philosophers and he comes up with this beauty by way (I guess?) of explanation:

"There are two principal Ways of preserving the Names of those, that are pass’d: The one, by Pictures; the other, by Children: The Pictures may be so made that they may far neerly resemble the Original, then Children do their Parents: and yet all Mankind choose rather to keep themselves alive by Children, then by the other. It is best for the Philosophers of this Age to imitate the Antients as their Children; to have their blood deriv’d down to them; but to add a new Complexion, and Life of their own: While those, that indeavour to come neer them in every Line, and Feature, may rather be call’d their dead Pictures, or Statues, then their Genuine Off-Spring." (51)

This opening bit - - that pictures are a leading means of preserving the memory of the departed - - is a familiar trope of Renaissance image-hagiography. Leon Battista Alberti, for example, opens his second book of "De Pictura" (1434-6) with a famous passage in praise of painting in which he identifies its ability to make absent people present as one of the art's most important powers. Yet, Sprat turns this conceit around. Instead of utilizing the fidelity, truthfulness-to-nature or other typical talk attributed to painting as models for philosophy, Sprat reads these alleged properties as exactly the wrong kind of behavior.



Philosophy should not be imitative or even (using a central tenet of the artistic theory promulgated by Sir Joshua Reynolds almost exactly one hundred years after Sprat) emulative. It should be erotic, procreative and, following the gesture to "a new Complexion", exogamous.



The implication of these statements certainly seems to be that those philosophers who "indeavour to come neer [the Ancients] in every Line, and Feature" are committing idolatry. By worshiping Aristotle, Galen and other Classical authorities as exemplars who demand endless, meticulous replication, those philosophers become "their dead Pictures, or Statues": idolators in their thought. And if the passage doesn't quite allow us to say that such slavish devotion to tradition is also incestuous, they certainly are sterile bastards. Nice!

Momus' Door

In one of his dialogues, the Greek satirist Lucian narrates an exchange between Lycinus (who occupies the Socratic position) and a confident patsy, Hermotimus. The topic of their conversation is how to choose a school of philosophy.

A number of options are consulted: should you be democratic about it and just espouse the most popular views? Perhaps the style and the personal charisma of the philosophical teachers themselves should be taken as proof of philosophical excellence?

As Lycinus systematically exposes the untenability of these various views, he recounts a fable to Hermotimus. It is as follows:

"There was once a trial of skill ... between Minerva, Neptune, and Vulcan, which should produce the most complete work. Neptune made a bull, Minerva a horse, and Vulcan a man. When they came to Momus, whom they had chosen umpire, after a careful examination of every performance, he found greatest fault with Vulcan ... , for not making a door in his man’s breast, to open and let us know what he willed, and thought, and whether he spoke the truth of not."

Momus's folly, Lyncinus explains, lies in a kind of category error: he tries to submit to visual analysis what can only really be judged by other criteria. Willed intentions have no visibility in or on the organs of the body, but need to be assessed by reason. "Momus," so Lyncinus says teasingly to Hermotinus, "was so dull he could not see into these things; but you, with more than the lynx’s sharpness, can see into the breast of every man, and not only can tell what he wills, and what he thinks, but whether he is better or worse than any body else."



What Momus really wanted was a lie detector!

(I can't give a good reason for why I'm sharing this. Time to go outside.)

Lions in the Street

"Lions in the street and roaming ..."



"... dogs in heat rabid foaming ... "



" ... a beast caged in the heart of the city."

How better than a little Jim Morrison to get the old story off and on its way? What we're looking at here are some pictures of Athens by the light of the full moon taken last night. Apparently, it is a long-standing custom here that, on such evening, the lights that normally illuminate the Parthenon are turned off and all comers are let up on the Acropolis for free.

Although the images don't really register the fact here, we were told that in the moonlight the marble of the Parthenon "glows." What I like about this photo are the silhouettes of the visitors in the foreground; indeed, in the moonlight, the mingling of shadows cast by people and fragments of the temple itself made the whole expanse look like a kind of gorgon's garden filled with the petrified handiwork of some sinister Medusa.

Such a poetic mood was clearly not taking in all of the visitors. One snatch of overheard conversation went as follows, between a Dutch tourist (speaking in English) and a local guard:

"Why are all the lights turned off?"

"This is done every full moon so that people can visit the temple."

"But I can't shoot my video!"

"Well, why don't you just enjoy being here and seeing the site for yourself?"

"But I can't shoot my VIDEO!"

The mind boggles! To recover from that nonsense and to reclaim the poetic mood, let's get back to Jim Morrison:



" ... one morning he awoke in a strange hotel, with the strange creature groaning beside him."



Okay, this was a strange hotel where I found myself waking up and sitting on the toilet. More disturbingly, I was trying to read this "sanskrit" on the back of the door. (Obviously, the worms who did this lovely eating didn't really know sanskrit, but that cut little ice in my dream-state).



I'm not sure what the problem was: maybe the room was too hot in this B & B in Dorset and I should have turned down the temperature on my Dimplex!



Or maybe it was the excessively loud ticking of this carriage clock on the mantle. A family heirloom, you say? Perhaps a retirement gift? Surely, too nice to just leave a fine clock like this in a guestroom in a B & B?



Or then again, maybe not! I picked up this P.O.S. expecting it to weigh five pounds or something and my hand nearly shot through the ceiling. What a piece of crap!



But, good times were had and dear friend Catherine was very kind to put us all up. Fun!