You don't need the iffs & butts; just mentioning a philosopher's name is
enough to intimidate people, in my experience -- though 20th century folk
work better than the older ones. Heidegger always whips up a frisson.
P
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Frederick Pollack
> Sent: 06 November 2007 22:13
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: 1 poem
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "MC Ward" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 4:47 PM
> Subject: Re: 1 poem
>
>
> > Apologies to Kasper: as a fellow listee kindly bc'd me
> > to point out, the correct spelling is _hallelujah_.
> > Mea culpa.
> >
> > Fred: I love your 2-circles exercise; it reminded me
> > of a fascinating book called _Laws of Form_ (1969?) by
> > G. Spencer Brown, a mathematician and student of
> > Bertrand Russell's who went on to become an engineer
> > in Virginia. Do you know it? It's pretty hard to come
> > by outside large university libraries, but is well
> > worth chasing down. The point is how he uses the
> > circle as the basis of distinction in all sorts of
> > senses.
> >
> > Thanks again, guys!
> >
> > Candice
> >
> I actually read Brown's book in the early 70s. Intimidating to hear it
> mentioned again. I'd decided at that time, some five years out of school,
> that I would get serious - as serious as a dilletante can be - about
> philosophy, stop reading once-trendy existentialists and then-trendy
> structuralists (I never liked the later-trendy poststructuralists) and
> discipline myself: read Brits! Positivists and Linguistic Analysis types!
> Wittgenstein! And teach myself symbolic logic, so that I too could
> intimidate people with "iff"s and ": :"s and "p(~q)"s. Laws of Form
looked
> like just the thing. I got halfway through and there was one diagram and
> argument I simply didn't understand. Couldn't get past it. Same thing
> happened around the same time with Quine's short Introduction to Symbolic
> Logic. As I recall, I was defeated by Chapter 17. Now I just read
> philosophy the way it is read in Borges's Tlon (umlaut): as "a branch of
> fantastic literature."
|