Thursday, August 18, 2011

to wit

"Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference which is an elegant name for ignorance."   

GK Chesterton

9 comments:

sally said...

my adviser in graduate school
thought it was disingenuous
for scientists to write
in the third person, passive voice
in order to give some false aura
of impartiality
as if to deny
that the science is conducted
by human beings

jh said...

i've often felt that the best scientists are those who have an interest in poetry

rachel carson
wes jackson

pure objectivity is an abstraction of the enlightenment

i guess heisenberg put an end to that
hopefully for good

didn't i send you orthodoxy by chesterton
if not
i must

i'm reading a buddhist critique of modern scientific thinking

i like it

sally said...

i don't think you sent me
anything by chesterton
but i could be wrong
was it a book or an article?
a hard copy or an email attachment?

i'd also be interested
to know the title of
the buddhist book you are reading

i am facing today a decision
which i cannot postpone much longer
competing agendas for labor day weekend
should i go to hear
thich nhat han
(i can never remember
how to spell his name)
or go backpacking with david imel?
i had sort of made up my mind
to go backpacking
(david is planning on it)
but this morning
i am reconsidering

maybe david would consider
a two-day trip
sunday and monday
so that i could
go to the talk on saturday

why are decisions so hard for me?

pray for me bro

J said...

When Chesterton writes in the 3rd person, he's not merely summoning the authority of Science...but most likely God Hisself--now, that's an imprimitur.
He's nearly amusing at times, in spite of his Britishness.

The idealist hints of modern physics are interesting--yet for all the spooky and/or Spinozaistic aspects of Einstein, Heisenberg and the quantum gang, the Golden Gate still stands. The cat doesn't levitate or walk through a wall.

Really one might argue that quantum indeterminacy (and pop-new agey quantum mystics) did not help the cause of the religious very much--order being preferable to dis-order, it would seem (even from a godly POV). Another reason not to reject Newtonian mechanics, however quaint.

Hi S.

jh said...

i'm not sure where the quote emerges in the chesterton oeuvre
but you can be assured he wasn't talking in the third person randomly he always had a target in mind

he was skeptical of scientific presumption he questioned the sense of "evolution" but he himself to use the 3rd person was a journalist and a poet

yo

jh

J said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
J said...

This is slightly offtopic but I'm interested in what you think of this epistle, penned by Fr. Beckwith, a catholic at Baylor U:Mormonism and natural law


you can probably guess my reaction (thumbs down)--and I say that as one who has some respect for "nat.law", at least as part of the occidental museum

{Hola S}

jh said...

j
i think beckwith is a mormom

it is evident that the writer
defends a sort of wierd idea

natural law is hard to work with in basic politics
i wish more people would try
but it just doesn't work
man cannot abide too much reality
(to paraphrase eliot)

in catholic metaphysics
(a word i could hardly lend to mormonism)
it is unimaginable to think of a god who is bound by anything

we say
he is the author of natural law
he could change it

i don't know the writing of this linker chap
but it would seem to me he's
pointing in the right direction

nice that the catholics offer a friendly bow and some writing space to a mormon -- most hospitable

to know mormons is to know they do follow a moral code...it is largely healthy...family easy on the intoxicants social involvement

they are generally not appreciative of higher intellectual pursuit

i don't believe i've ever heard of a mormon philosopher
or a mormon poet
or a mormon literary historian

not that they don't exist
i've just never heard of it

jh

J said...

i think beckwith is a mormom


He was a conservative evangelical--he posted at an old site "Right Reason" for a while (GOP types who thought BushCo was too soft), and then converted to the RCC, like a year or so ago.

The theology chat is somewhat interesting--it's fairly evident that Smith's original visions had little or nothing to do with Christianity (cat. or evang.), and/or Reason. Ive posted a few things about mormonism and Romney on my blog (not so positive). Some of them are pleasant and hardworking--and sober --though the ordinary LDS folks are not...the Elders, and the modern LDS is not that of 100 years ago.

My view on the matter is not per Aquinas or Kant or a quantum physicist--but Sam Clemens, who was not too impressed with King Brigham. As Huck Finn said, you cain't pray a lie.