[lit-ideas] Re: Ruth Barcan Marcus 1921-2012

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