Insights, Snippets, Quotes, Epiphanies & All That Sort of Things

[Ten thumbs]

Variation in A minor on a theme by Wordsworth. 

Excellent!

That makes sense. It is an introduction to a poem and sometimes for such she quotes other poets directly, in which case she provides acknowledgement.

Here is a quote that is, I think, all her own:

Silence is love's own peculiar eloquence of bliss.

[Wakefield]

I recalled this fragment by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (an old "signature" of mine!!!  ):

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake — Aye! and what then?
--"Anima Poetæ : From the Unpublished Note-books of Samuel Taylor Coleridge" (1895) edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, p. 282.

[Florestan]

I recalled this fragment by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (an old "signature" of mine!!!  ):

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake — Aye! and what then?
--"Anima Poetæ : From the Unpublished Note-books of Samuel Taylor Coleridge" (1895) edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, p. 282.

That´s exactly what I had in mind. My bad for mistaking Wordsworth for Coleridge.

[NikF]

You ask what this freedom is? It means not fearing either men or gods; it means not craving wickedness or excess; it means possessing supreme power over oneself and it is a priceless good to be master of oneself. - Seneca

[Wakefield]

"The battle of Marathon, even as an event in English history, is more important than the battle of Hastings. If the issue of that day had been different, the Britons and the Saxons might still have been wandering in the woods."

-- John Stuart Mill: "Early History Grecian Legend" review on History of Greece by Grote, The Edimburg Review, October 1846.

[Wakefield]

"Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases — though not often."

-- Samuel Butler: The Note-Books, I, xiii

[Jo498]

    "The battle of Marathon, even as an event in English history, is more important than the battle of Hastings. If the issue of that day had been different, the Britons and the Saxons might still have been wandering in the woods."

-- John Stuart Mill: "Early History Grecian Legend" review on History of Greece by Grote, The Edimburg Review, October 1846.

I still kind of grew up with the narrative that the Athenians defended European "democracy and freedom" against the totalitarian Persians (there was still cold war in the 1980s...). Be that as it may, I do not quite follow Mill.
Even if the Persians had gone on to conquer quite a bit of Europe (which is doubtful, they probably lost in Greece because they were already logistically and politically spread too thin) there were 1500 years between Marathon and Hastings and A LOT could and would have happened in that time even if Greece hat become a Persian Satrapy for a couple of hundred years or more.
And the Persians were not barbarians (in our sense as uncivilized hordes). Why should not have a Persian Empire brought "civilization" to the Germanic hordes of Northern Europe 1000 years later?

[Wakefield]

I still kind of grew up with the narrative that the Athenians defended European "democracy and freedom" against the totalitarian Persians (there was still cold war in the 1980s...). Be that as it may, I do not quite follow Mill.
Even if the Persians had gone on to conquer quite a bit of Europe (which is doubtful, they probably lost in Greece because they were already logistically and politically spread too thin) there were 1500 years between Marathon and Hastings and A LOT could and would have happened in that time even if Greece hat become a Persian Satrapy for a couple of hundred years or more.
And the Persians were not barbarians (in our sense as uncivilized hordes). Why should not have a Persian Empire brought "civilization" to the Germanic hordes of Northern Europe 1000 years later?

From a logical standpoint, you're right. I think this is a sort of boutade.

In addition, our current image of the Athenian democracy is quite less idealized than during the XIXth Century; and we read things like the Pericles' Funeral Oration more skeptically than Mill. Even if we believe, like me, that our Western culture is essentially an assortment of Jewish beliefs subordinated to Plato and Aristotle. 

[28Orot]

From a logical standpoint, you're right. I think this is a sort of boutade.

Even if we believe, like me, that our Western culture is essentially an assortment of Jewish beliefs subordinated to Plato and Aristotle. 

Well Maimonides claims that Greek Philosophy was really rooted in Judaism, so the question is how the Greeks got their hands on it?

This is been answered here:

Judaism then is based on a particular philosophy. Maimonides (GP 1.71) takes this to mean that before Plato and Aristotle introduced science and philosophy to the Greeks, the patriarchs introduced it to Israel. To someone who asks why we have no explicit record of their philosophy, Maimonides answers that any record of such teaching was destroyed when Israel went into exile and suffered persecution. So despite the appearance of a split between Jerusalem and Athens, Maimonides thinks there is only one tradition worth preserving: that which affirms the truth.

Source: read 2. Fundamental Orientation

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maimonides/


But said all this, the Greeks must have added some new ideas that were foreign to Judaism, that is why Greek Philosophy can't be really Jewish. But you're unfortunately rite, today:s world is ran by some major Jewish ideals like the Ten Commandments and the Bible, but it has been hijacked by Greek Culture, sports, entertainments and secular pursuits have overshadowed on these Great Jewish Ideals and Teachings, and the world today is as it was in the time of Greece, captivated by the celebration of beauty and self erected so called *divine* entities. We pray and long that a day will come that this will be changed and humanity will be awakened to a greater reality of understanding and appreciating what is really important in life.

[Jo498]

I focussed on the political aspect because this was more explicit in the quotation. I am not sure if Persian overlords would have prevented all or most post-Socratic Greek philosophy. I simply don't know enough about the Persian Empire and its religion and culture. But a brief glance at the wikipedia article about the Ionian revolt that led to the Persian Wars shows that they usually were not at all totalitarian but happy enough collect tributes and let them otherwise keep their ways.

And of course Persian Expansion might have stopped somewhere on the Balkan even if they had crushed Athens and Sparta. So the Greek colonies in Sicily and Southern Italy might have remained. We might not have had Plato and Aristotle but some other Schools dominating, either the Empedokleans or the Eleates or whatever Pre-Socratic thought that was basically lost or at least marginalized by the dominance of Plato and the later Academy.

[Wakefield]

Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago. Isaac Newton, a posthumous child bom with no father on Christmas Day, 1642, was the last wonderchild to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage.

-- John Maynard Keynes, "Newton, the Man," Newton Tricentenary Celebration, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1947

Here there is a link to the whole thing:

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Keynes_Newton.html

[Jo498]

If you have some spare time read Richard Westfall's Newton biography (I think there are two versions, one shortened with more focus on life, the other including extensive reconstructions of his work and scientific development.) Keynes apparently was one of the first to look at the unpublished and posthumous papers that show that Newton spend almost as much (actually more in his later years) time on alchemy and theology (in a wide sense, including scriptural chronologies, he also was a (secret) Arian and denied the doctrine of trinity (despite working at Trinity College, Cambridge ) as on physics and maths.

I am far from an expert but the impression I got from reading a few more recent things in history of science is that the "textbook" narrative of the "scientific revolution" in the 17th century is as deeply flawed as the textbook narrative of the middle ages as an "age of unreason". It is far more complicated and there were plenty of lesser "magicians" around even in the 18th century.

[Florestan]

I am far from an expert but the impression I got from reading a few more recent things in history of science is that the "textbook" narrative of the "scientific revolution" in the 17th century is as deeply flawed as the textbook narrative of the middle ages as an "age of unreason". It is far more complicated and there were plenty of lesser "magicians" around even in the 18th century.

If you haven´t read this yet, you should.

[NikF]

Now there are short and simple exercises which tire the body rapidly, and so save our time; and time is something of which we ought to keep strict account. These exercises are running, brandishing weights, and jumping...But whatever you do, come back quickly from body to mind. –  Seneca, Epistle 15 [2]

[North Star]

"I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living."  ― Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

[Jaakko Keskinen]

"If anything is wrong with your nose, they send you to Paris: there, they say, is a European specialist who cures noses. If you go to Paris, he'll look at your nose; I can only cure your right nostril, he'll tell you, for I don't cure the left nostril, that's not my speciality, but go to Vienna, there there's a specialist who will cure your left nostril." 

Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

[Jaakko Keskinen]

"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."

Mark Twain

[Spineur]

If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine: its deadly
Paolo Coelho

[Karl Henning]

Beauty.

[Parsifal]

I'm reading "Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker" by Gary Giddins and wanted to share this quote with you.

"An elemental difference between popular and serious art is that the former gives society what it wants and the latter gives it what it must."

You're confident that Justin Bieber is not giving what he "must?"