[Wittrs] Re: [C] Readings in Martian Math (2010.8.26) Hi, Kirby. Thanks for that. Fun stuff. How did you like Haack? I'm a fan of her "foundherentism." She's very hard on Rorty in a number of her papers and books, and particularly objects that he calls himself a pragmatist (like her hero, Peirce). Did Rorty ever reply to any of her critiques in your class? W ===== Greetings W -- I liked Haack a lot. I heard some grumble her lecture at the Schnitzer (our main theater on Broadway) was too simple and easy, unlike some of the more esoteric romps, but that's to her credit. She was talking about epistemology after all, and we have a lot of high schoolers in the audience, thanks to Mentor Graphics (corporation and foundation). Later she showed up at the Linus Pauling Campus for a more intense smaller meeting. We call ourselves Wanderers after some quote by Mandelbrot (the fractals guy) and sometimes gather when MVPs are in town. LPC / ISEPP produces a lecture series that has brought us some of the great thinkers and doers of our day: Jane Goodall, Jean-Michel Cousteau, Stephan J. Gould, Carl Sagan, Sir Roger Penrose (a few times), Stephen Hawking (also a few times)... I'm just scratching the surface here (see isepp.org for a more complete roster -- the series in ongoing). Terry Bristol, who produces these events, is an out-of-the- closet Pragmatist, though his training at London School of Economics or wherever it was seems to keep him quoting the ancient Greeks more than anyone, which tends to get on some peoples nerves. Haack was likewise aware that some of her books get dissed because they mostly quote dead people, and contemporaries, hungry for recognition in their own day, may feel miffed to not find their names in some index (a perennial dynamic in philosophy). I studied with Rorty back in the 1970s as an impressionable undergrad at Princeton U. I was also a student of Walter Kaufmann's, had some memorable office discussions, comparing notes, and on hearing WK's endorsement of Erhard's seminars, dived into that quirky world, upon emergence from which I was suddenly more aware of the Bucky Fuller corpus (RBF was still alive back then, and we did get to meet, both physically and metaphysically as he might have put it -- plus I got to meet and collaborate with some of his closest friends, including Kiyoshi Kuromiya and E.J. Applewhite -- more recently I finally got an hour long breakfast with his daughter Allegra when she was her for the opening of a popular play about her dad (we yakked about my Coffee Shops Network...)). Dr. Haack seemed to be registering concern that "analytic philosophy" was on life-support, with doctors poised to pull the plug on their comatose patient. We didn't get into the ethics of this. Her main focus is science as an independent search for truth, and as a puppet of moneyed interests that sometimes sells out, publishes a lot of corrupt stuff that a philosophy with background is of necessity vigilant against. Michael Crichton's 'State of Fear' is a similar analysis, especially if you read the Appendix, which starts getting more into Edwin Black territory more (as do I, in my high school level intro to SQL, in the same lineage as Hollerith technology). For example, one of our more recent speakers, a long time physicist of the Einstein generation who escaped the holocaust, went over the boat loads of bogus research that's come out to obfuscate the health and ecosystem effects of nuclear energy plants. This is of course in the Linus Pauling tradition, as the dangers of fallout and trace radioisotopes in the watershed (e.g. milk supply) was the kind of thing he warned against, long before the general public was being told anything about its guinea pig status. The other contributing factor is we here in Portland live down river from Hanford, site of the Manhattan Project, where the after-effects of nuclear bomb production have rendered the Columbia Gorge one of the more esoterically contaminated bodies of water on Earth. The salmon have dwindled to a pale shadow of their former selves (the dams play a role) plus all too many of them have two heads or whatever freakish features. Humans have likewise been affected (mentally as well as physically). I'm a few blocks away from LPC in what's called the Blue House (there's also a Pink House and maybe a few others). One of our services is to provide Free School to deserving exchange students on scholarship. Currently, we're hosting a brilliant musician with management training in computer science and information technology setting. She's getting her degree in community organizing and is naturally a candidate to join the Havana project I was yakking about in previous postings. Sometimes I get to chauffeur MVPs that also speak on the lecture series, though mostly that's Terry's job. There's also a 1947 wooden power boat in the picture, that takes selected guests out on our "glow in the dark" Columbia. Here's my write-up of Dr. Susan Haack's lecture and visit to the Pauling Campus. I've gotten to blog about a lot of these lectures -- part of what makes my columns a focal point among literati and digerati in this town (where I'm a respected geek and village elder), serves as a source of "glue language" for many a Silicon Forester (including "FOSS witches" and gypsies...). http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2009/02/pauling-house-meeting.html (that's a picture of Linus and Ava Helen over the mantel, click for much larger view, click on "a followup meet" in the first sentence for an informal write up of the formal lecture downtown). She talked quite a bit about her personal interactions with Rorty. They may have been at opposite poles on some issues, but that didn't keep them from having conversations. Kirby --- In WittrsC@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WittrsAMR/post?postID=n6PTpXdX1AnNY7fHZ34H0OicOtUPVI1mUFxiDo4Ywd132dLvo1Yu_VSQQw7yVyofPEsy8vFx6HP6n8bX06s>, kirby urner <wittrsamr@...> wrote: > > Sometimes I'll republish a posting of mine here > as a blog post. Case in point: > >