The Saunterer

Thomas Kuhn on differences between science and art

    Could the greater differences between science and art be caused by the simple difference that “science is objective and art is subjective”? At any rate, Thomas Kuhn said:

Just because the success of one artistic tradition does not render another wrong or mistaken, art can support, far more readily than science, a number of simultaneous incompatible traditions of schools. For the same reason, when traditions do change, the accompanying controversies are usually resolved far more rapidly in science than in art.

    (Quoted from page 135 of Design History: Understanding Theory and Method, by Kjetil Fallan. Berg Publishing, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Thomas Kuhn, click here. For images of or relating to Thomas Kuhn, click here. For information about Kjetil Fallan, click here.

E. M. Forster on our deeper personality

    E. M. Forster’s words invite reflection:   

Just as words have two functions - information and creation - so each human mind has two personalities, one on the surface, one deeper down. The upper personality has a name. It is called S. T. Coleridge, or William Shakespeare, or Mrs. Humphry Ward. It is conscious and alert, it does things like dining out, answering letters, etc., and it differs vividly and amusingly from other personalities. The lower personality is a very queer affair. In many ways it is a perfect fool, but without it there is no literature, because, unless a man dips a bucket down into it occasionally he cannot produce first-class work. There is something general about it. Although it is inside S. T. Coleridge, it cannot be labeled with his name. It has something in common with all other deeper personalities. . . .

    (Quoted from "Anonymity: An Inquiry," by E. M. Forster. The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 136, 1925.)
    For a brief biography of E. M. Forster, click here. For images of and relating to E. M. Forster, click here.

Clive Bell on valuing things as ends in themselves

    Next time you stand before the aesthetics of a museum painting or a wild Sierra stream or the Milky Way, think first of Clive Bell’s words:

Be they artists or lovers of art, mystics or mathematicians, those who achieve ecstasy are those who have freed themselves from the arrogance of humanity. He who would feel the significance of art must make himself humble before it. Those who find the chief importance of art or of philosophy in its relation to conduct or its practical utility - those who cannot value things as ends in themselves or, at any rate, as direct means to emotion - will never get from anything the best that it can give. Whatever the world of aesthetic contemplation may be, it is not the world of human business and passion; in it the chatter and tumult of material existence is unheard, or heard only as the echo of some more ultimate harmony.

    (Quoted from page 55 of Art, by Clive Bell. Capricorn Books, 1958; originally published in 1914.)
    For a brief biography of Clive Bell, click here. For images of or relating to Clive Bell, click here.

God is a male chauvinist

    That is what the Catholic Church is saying.  Because, a male chauvinist, according to one published definition, “is a male who patronizes, disparages, or otherwise denigrates females in the belief that they are inferior to males and thus deserving of less than equal treatment or benefit.”

    With this in mind, my Saunterings the other day led me to the front page of the Friday 16, 2010, issue of The New York Times, and this:

    VATICAN CITY - The Vatican issued revisions to its internal laws on Thursday making it easier to discipline sex-abuser priests, but caused confusion by also stating that ordaining women as priests was as grave an offense as pedophilia. . . . “It is very irritating that they put the increased severity in punishment for abuse and women’s ordination at the same level,” said Christian Weisner, spokesman for ‘We Are Church’. . . . It tells us that the church still understands itself as an environment dominated by men.”

    Added Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington:

The Catholic Church through its long and constant teaching holds that ordination has been, from the beginning, reserved to men, a fact which cannot be changed despite changing times.

    So, the Pope is a male chauvinist, as are all in the Church below him. Furthermore, the Pope is God ("The Pope and God are the same, so he has all power in Heaven and earth." Pope Pius V, quoted in Barclay, Chapter XXVII, p. 218, "Cities Petrus Bertanous.")

    Therefore - either God is the supreme male chauvinist of the universe - or, if the Pope is falsely claiming to be God, and God isn’t a male chauvinist, then the Pope is slandering God - or, there is no God, and the whole God business was invented by male chauvinists calling themselves the Church.

    And what does it mean that the Church “cannot” change the terms of ordination to allow women? “Cannot” is used for impossible things, like “we cannot toss Mt. Everest over a fence.” The Church confuses “cannot” with “will not.” The Pope could easily change the terms of ordination, but he refuses.

    Catholicism is just one of the world’s religions that were invented by male chauvinists, and have been long since run by them. And to think, this is the year 2010.

Gerald Postema on maintaining one’s own sense of self

    If some others do not understand what is essential to human life, Gerald Postema does:

To cut oneself off from others is to cut oneself off from oneself, for it is only in the mirror of the souls of others that one finds one’s own self, one’s character. The pleasures and satisfactions of conversation and intercourse are essential to human life, because they are essential to a sense of one’s continuity through a constantly changing external and internal world. . . . Thus, a truly successful strategy of deception effectively cuts oneself off from the community in which alone one can find the confirmation essential to one’s own sense of self.

    (Quoted from page 72 of Person, Polis, Planet: Essays in Applied Philosophy, by David Schmidtz. Oxford University Press, 2008.)
    For a brief biography of Gerald Postema, click here. For images of and relating to Gerald Postema, click here. For David Schmidtz’s website, click here.

Paul Wade on the North Pacific right whales

    To the Saunterer’s way of thinking, a science journalist is wrong in using the phrase “an ecological tragedy.” Ecological tragedies come from humans skinning the Earth of its animals and plants. Better that journalists use the phrase for the root cause of ecological tragedies -- “the human tragedy” - our race’s ruinous constitution of greed and shortsightedness and lack of compassion for Earth's creatures.
    Consider that in the 19th century, U. S. whalers harpooned more than 23,000 North Pacific right whales. In 1949, the whales were given international protection, yet the Soviet Union illegally hunted them to near extinction. Today’s data suggest that between 30 and 54 right whales remain.

    Whale biologist Paul Wade says:

It is the world’s smallest whale population for which we have estimates.

    The report of the research, published in 30 June issue of Biology Letters (click here to see), concludes:

Their precarious status today (only tens of animals) is a sad legacy of the massive campaign of illegal whaling conducted by the USSR in the 1960s. Their situation presents us with a grim reminder that international fisheries and whaling agreements are largely worthless if unaccompanied by stringent international monitoring and regulation of catches.

    For information about Paul Wade, click here. For information and pictures about the North Pacific right whale, click here.

Dharma Master Cheng Yen on caring for the Earth

    Her words are more important today than ever before:

Human beings are nurtured by all kinds of things produced and grown on the Earth, so we must care for our natural resources with gratitude and allow the Earth to maintain its beauty.

    (Quoted from page 83 of Challenges: The Life & Teaching of Venerable Master Cheng Yen, by Gary Ho. Douglas & McIntyre Publishers. 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Master Cheng Yen, and for her philosophy of living, click here. For images of and relating to Master Cheng Yen, click here.

Romain Rolland on the rights of animals

    A hundred years ago Romain Rolland wrote on animal rights:

Even in the days when he had been happy he had always loved the beasts : he had never been able to bear cruelty towards them : he had always had a detestation of sport, which he had never dared to express for fear of ridicule : perhaps even he had never dared to admit it to himself : but his feeling of repulsion had been the secret cause of the apparently inexplicable feeling of dislike he had had for certain men : he had never been able to admit to his friendship a man who could kill an animal for pleasure. It was not sentimentality : no one knew better than he that life is based on suffering and infinite cruelty : no man can live without making others suffer. It is no use closing our eyes and fobbing ourselves off with words. It is no use either coming to the conclusion that we must renounce life and sniveling like children. No. We must kill to live, if, at the time, there is no other means of living. But the man who kills for the sake of killing is a miscreant. An unconscious miscreant, I know. But, all the same, a miscreant. The continual endeavor of man should be to lessen the sum of suffering and cruelty : that is the first duty of humanity.

    (Quoted from The Burning Bush, page 327 of Jean-Chirstophe, by Romain Rolland. Henry Holt and Company, 1913.)    
    For a brief biography of Romain Rolland, click here. For images of and relating to Romain Rolland, click here. For Romain Rolland’s sequence of novels published under the title Jean-Christophe, click here.

Kathleen Marie Higgins on the connection between beauty and political activism

    She says:

Beauty seems at odds with political activism because it is not a directly practical response to the world. It inspires contemplation, not storm and fury. But politically motivated artists, I submit, have much to gain from beauty. Beauty encourages a perspective from which our ordinary priorities are up for grabs. . . . In the first place, contemplation of beauty provides the receptive condition in which we can recognize our own moral insights. Beauty creates a space for spiritual openness.

    (Quoted from page 18 of The Aesthetics of Uncertainty, by Janet Wolff. Columbia University Press, 2008.)   
    For a brief biography of Kathleen Marie Higgins, click here. For images of and relating to Kathleen Marie Higgins, click here. For a brief biography of Janet Wolff, click here. For images of and relating to Janet Wolff, click here.

Martin Luther on women

    If you don’t think that Martin Luther was a nitwit, you will in a minute. For he wrote:

Women are created for no other purpose than to serve men and be their helpers. If women grow weary or even die while bearing children, that doesn’t harm anything. Let them bear children to death; they are created for that.
   
    Another of his nitwit-proving declarations:

It is commonly the nature of women to be timid and to be afraid of everything. This is why they busy themselves so much about witchcraft and superstition. One teaches the other, so that it is impossible to tell what kind of hocus-pocus they practice.

    (The first quote is from page17, the second from 252, of Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 3rd edition, by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks. Cambridge University Press. 2008.)
    For a brief biography of Martin Luther, click here. For a brief biography of Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, click here. For images of and relating to Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, click here.