[lit-ideas] Re: Ruth Barcan Marcus 1921-2012
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2012 11:07:10 -0400 (EDT)
Adriano Palma wrote:
Geary commented:
"I took only one college course in logic."
We are discussing the rather 'sexist' commentary by Neale in the obituary
of the NYT (it was a telephone interview, and some of the sexism belongs to
the actual writer of the obit):
From the link provided by R. Paul:
"Ruth Barcan Marcus, a philosopher esteemed for her advances in logic, a
traditionally male-dominated subset of a traditionally male-dominated field,
died."
"Because of its affinities with mathematics and the hard sciences —
disciplines historically unwelcoming to women — logic had long been one of
philosophy’s most swaggering strains. For a woman of Professor Marcus’s
generation to elbow her way into the field, ...was almost unheard of. “The rest
of
philosophy became less male dominated, less macho, more quickly than logic,”
Stephen Neale, ... said in a telephone interview.
--- but cfr. -- from wiki:
Hipparchia wrote some philosophical treatises, and some letters addressed
to Theodorus the Atheist.
None of these have survived. There are some accounts of her encounters with
Theodorus:
When she went into a symposium with Crates, she tested Theodoros the
atheist by proposing a
sophism
like this:
"That which if Theodoros did, he would not be said to do wrong, neither
should Hipparchia be said to do wrong if she does it. Theodoros hitting
himself does not do wrong, nor does Hipparchia do wrong hitting Theodoros." He
did not reply to what she said, but pulled up her garment.
We are told she was neither offended nor ashamed by this "as most women
would have been."
We are also told that when Theodorus (quoting a line from The Bacchae of
Euripides) said to her: "Who is the woman who has left behind the shuttles of
the loom?" she replied
I, Theodorus, am that person, but do I appear to you to have come to a
wrong decision, if I devote that time to philosophy, which I otherwise should
have spent at the loom?"
Many other anecdotes existed about Hipparchia, but they have been mostly
lost."
---- One is a formalisation of the Barcan formula in Greek characters that
Geary displays on the greenboard in his seminars as the Metaphysical
Ministry. "Hipparchia is like Ruth Barcan Marcus, but without substitutional
quantification," he chuckles. "Who gets the cigar ... I mean, chalk?".
From wiki:
"We know also that Crates taught Zeno of Citium; it is impossible to say
what influence Hipparchia had on Zeno in his development of Stoicism, but
Zeno's own radical views on love and sex (as evidenced in his Republic) may
have been influenced by the relationship of Hipparchia and Crates."
Hipparchia's sophism defies the formalisation by Goedel, but Margalit Fox
should know.
Margalit Fox is a writer for the New York Times. She attended Stony Brook
University and received a master's degree from the Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism. She has worked at the New York Times as a book
reviewer and obituary reporter. Bibliography
Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind , Simon &
Schuster (2007) ISBN 978-0743247122. Margalit Fox is a New York Times
journalist
originally trained as a linguist. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees
in linguistics from Stony Brook University and a master’s degree from the
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. ..."
Cheers,
Speranza
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