Metaphysics and Facts

 Noticed in F.H. Bradley's Ethical Studies, in the chapter "My Station and Its Duties":

If, then, apart from metaphysic, one looks at the history and present practice of society, these would not appear to establish the 'fact' that the individual is the one reality, and communities mere collections. 'For all that', we shall be told, 'it is the truth.' True that is, I suppose, not as fact but as metaphysic; and this is what one finds too often with those who deride metaphysic and talk most of facts. Their minds, so far as such a thing may be, are not seldom mere 'collective unities' of metaphysical dogmas. They decry any real metaphysic, because they dimly feel that their own will not stand criticism; and they appeal to facts because, while their metaphysic stands, they feel they need not be afraid of them.

Something To Chew On

 In a review of the latest Matrix movie, Manohla Dargis wrote of the series that

It also provided grist for reams of articles, dissertations and scholarly books ("The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real"), taking its place as one of contemporary pop culture's supreme interpretive chew toys.

This brought to mind a passage from one of Henry Adams's letters, written to Hugh Blair Grigsby on October 9, 1877:

Dear old Jefferson! Never was there a more delightful ground for people to argue about! We discuss him here by the day together, just as though he were alive. We can fight about him as ardently as ever. He is supremely useful still (he and Hamilton) as a sort of bone for students of history to mumble, preparatory to getting their teeth.

 Well, Lin-Manuel Miranda has brought Hamilton back for pop culture interpretation, with I suppose Jefferson tagging along.

The Beginning of Knowledge

 Reading The Beginning of Knowledge by Hans-Georg Gadamer led to a number of reflections:

First, that though it is most interesting, still it is a bit odd to read essays on the Pre-Socratics when I know no more about them than I do. (Heraclitus mostly through Guy Davenport's translations in Seven Greeks; what I remember Plato and Aristotle saying about him and the others.) I should make the time to read what is available of the Pre-Socratics before I read this book again.

Second, that the notion of quoting Greek in the Latin alphabet is just odd. It offers no advantage to those who know no Greek. It must slightly delay and irritate those who know Greek well, unless they have the Pre-Socratics all but memorized. And those who know a little Greek it simply teases and annoys. I suppose that it saves on production costs.

 Third, that it speaks well for Collin County Community College that Rod Coltman, the translator of The Beginning of Knowledge, teaches or has taught there. The school does not have a faculty list that I could find on its website--considering that it has four campuses and must depend heavily on adjuncts, this does not surprise me. But a "review-my-professor" website shows Mr. Coltman teaching there as recently as 2017. That the reviews tended to be either terrible--all memorization and quotation--or superlative--the sort of course I came here to take--is not surprising either.

Fourth, that any translation leaves one wishing to have the original available for comparison. At least for a translation from any language one knows a little, there is always the desire to make sure that something hasn't been dropped out or oddly phrased.

Deduction, Induction, Abduction

 In 2020, I read a certain amount by the American philosopher C.S. Peirce. Some pages of what Peirce had to say turned on induction. Now, inductive proofs were familiar from a finite math class taken long ago. But the text for the course gave it much less space than Peirce and his moderns editor did.

Eventually I remembered or misremembered a passage from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, in which Connie Sachs reports a disagreement with Percy Alleline.  In the book, it runs as follows:

Accused me of unscientific deduction. 'Whose expression is that?' I said to him. 'It's not deduction at all,' he says, 'it's induction.' 'My dear Percy, wherever have you been learning words like that; you sound just like a beastly doctor or someone.'

Certainly her inference about the Soviet spy was induction--but why that should be disqualifying, or how induction amounts to unscientific deduction is not clear. One infers on Alleline's part a mixture of feigned and real annoyance covering a weak case.

A search for more Peirce at Second Story Books turned up the monograph You Know My Method: A Juxtaposition of Charles S. Peirce and Sherlock Holmes. I have a notion, probably not uncommon among those who have read little Holmes, that Dr. Watson is forever congratulating Holmes on brilliant deductions; though the few cases that I remember seemed not to turn on deduction at all. But Holmes himself does speak of deductions, whether or not the inferences so named really are deductive.

The book cites Holmes as disclaiming guessing (The Sign of the Four). On the other hand, it documents Peirce's interest in a "singular guessing instinct", "more commonly referred to by Peirce as Abduction or Retroduction." It also gives the story of a case in which Peirce used such guessing to recover property stolen from him in the summer of 1879. (It is possible that the details of the recovery--in his disregard for the privacy of a residence--will impress or shock the modern reader as much as his acumen in identifying the thief and recovering the goods.)

 You Know My Method is part of a "Sherlock Holmes Monograph Series". It was published by Gaslight Publication of Bloomington, Indiana, in 1980. I suppose that the intended audience is one that is fascinated by Sherlock Holmes yet prepared to read about C.S. Peirce: the overlap of those fascinated by Holmes and those wishing to read Peirce must be pretty small.

Smiling

 In the section on the 1948 election in Great Expectations: The United States, 1945 - 1974, James T. Patterson writes of Thomas Dewey's lack of charisma that

Even smiling seemed to come with difficulty. A photographer once said, "Smile, governor." "I thought I was," he responded.

 I sympathize. I think that I do smile a fair bit, that my moods tend to be on the cheerful side. But anyone who wishes me to look glum can just point a camera at me. The photographs suggest that I am attempting to smile through discomfort or moderate pain. I don't know why, I have never looked back through old photographs to see whether this was always so, but it is so now. It's well I'm in a trade that does not put a premium on smiling.

Judith and Holofernes, Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi.

 Last Sunday we made it to the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, mostly to see the exhibition "Caravaggio and Artemisia: The Challenge of Judith; Violence and Seduction in 16th and 17th Century Painting". Since the Judith in question was Judith of Bethulia, and the violence the beheading of Holofernes, we got to see quite a few paintings of decapitations. There was the occasional change, when pictures instead showed Judith and her servant bringing the head back home, but I remember only a couple of those.

Caravaggio's painting seemed to me distinctly the best of them. It struck me that his Judith's expression combines distaste with a concentration on doing the work properly, while her servant appears simply revolted. Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith is simply intent on the work, and her servant, much younger than in Caravaggio's picture, shows only concentration.