[Wittrs] Re: Readings in Martian Math (2010.8.26)
- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2010 10:46:46 -0700
[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:
>
>
Other related posts:
