Jotting down a few quotations

Last academic year's Student Handbook & Academic Planner included quotations in the top right-hand corner of each week. I've been skeptical of the value of these types of quotations, only because I relied too heavily on short, pithy, wise sayings for a long season of my life. Maybe the value resides in a both/and approach: short, pithy, wise sayings are both helpful and limited. So before I throw away the academic planner, I thought I would keep some of the quotations I found inside:

"It is our choices ... that show what we are, far more than our abilities." -- JK Rowling

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized." -- Sun Tzu

"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten." -- BF Skinner

"Character is like a tree and reputation is like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing." -- Abe Lincoln

"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions -- it only guarantees equality of opportunity." -- Irving Kristol

"Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things." -- Noam Chomsky

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance." -- Will Durant

"Soft words are hard arguments." -- Thomas Fuller

"It's plain hard work that does it." -- Thomas Edison

"Experience teaches only the teachable." -- Aldous Huxley

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens." -- Jimi Hendrix

"The one exclusive sign of a thorough knowledge is the power of teaching." -- Aristotle

"All men by nature desire knowledge." -- Aristotle

"Our greatest weariness comes from work not done." -- Eric Hoffer

"Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself." -- Chinese proverb

"That which is used develops. That which is not used wastes away." -- Hippocrates

"Life itself remains a very effective therapist." -- Dr. Karen Horney

OK, then, back to the hard work of life!

Postmodernism-Postsecularism: a cursory report

Initial notes (I'm just beginning to understand this, I think):

Modernism or modernity was premised on the pretense of objective knowledge. Part of modernism's fuel was the scientific method and the quest for certainties about the natural world.

This placed religious narratives and myths outside the realm of fact, and fact became more important than value.

However, as postmodernism and postsecularism would insist, there is no purely objective reason or objective rationality within human beings.

We might be able to gather accurate data, but inevitably, that data is interpreted within a web of beliefs and values.

A big-picture story underlies every point of view.

Therefore, while the likes of Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins in the modernist camp have been able to say, in so many words, "We do not have enough objective knowledge to say that religious story is historically factual," the likes of John Milbank and others in postmodern and postsecular camp have been able to say, "We do not have enough objective knowledge to say that religious story is a myth."

This is more than merely turning the tables on modernity. It's a realization that beliefs and values cannot be trumped by facts, because facts are always understood within the context of beliefs and values.

While we function with some sense of foundational knowledge by which we make other decisions and judgments about the world around us, at some point, foundational knowledge is taken on faith.

If there is a foundational point of view within some of the theological postsecularists, it would be that there is a God who has all the objective knowledge, and we don't have it.


Clarifications? Better explanations? Denunciations? Additions? Please comment.

My sources for the above comments include this article:

"God's Own Knowledge," by J. Sharlet in Killing the Buddha

And these books:

Books I'm reviewing for real publications

I'm reviewing The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (And How to do Them), by NPR's Peter Sagal, for DoubleThink, the quarterly magazine published by America's Future Foundation in D.C. The review should appear in the Winter 2008 edition. You can visit the magazine's Web page at http://www.affdoublethink.com/. AFF also has an online-only publication called Brainwash, which you can find at http://www.affbrainwash.com/.

I'm also reviewing a slightly denser book: Brain, Mind, and Human Behavior in Contemporary Cognitive Science: Critical Assessments of the Philosophy of Psychology, by Jeff Coulter and Wes Sharrock. This review will appear in the March 2008 edition of Appraisal: The Journal of the Society for Post-Critical and Personalist Studies. You can visit the SPCPS Web site at http://www.spcps.org.uk/.

Meanwhile, at LiturgicalCredo.com, I will soon post a book review of Praying with Beads: Daily Prayers for the Christian Year by Nan Lewis Doerr and Virginia Stem Owens.

The Year of the Books About Stoics, or the Continuing Stoic Revival

A new book on ancient Stoicism is due in September.

At least three books about ancient Stoicism have been re-released in paperback this year.

Several more books about Stoicism or the thought of individual Stoics have been released in the past few years.

Why are people into the Stoics these days? I'm trying to answer that question for an upcoming article in LiturgicalCredo.com, but for the moment, I'll give a broad-brush backgrounder and then get back to this year's books.

Founded in ancient Greece by Zeno of Citium in Cypress (344-262 B.C.), this philosophical school lived about 600 years through Roman Imperial times. The writings of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor who lived 121-180 A.D., are considered key texts for Stoicism as we know it today.

Due in September is Stoicism and Emotion (University of Chicago Press, 2007) by Margaret R. Graver.

The book "shows that they did not simply advocate an across-the-board suppression of feeling, as stoicism implies in today’s English, but instead conducted a searching examination of these powerful psychological responses, seeking to understand what attitude toward them expresses the deepest respect for human potential," according to the description at Amazon.com.

The three books re-released in paperback this year, suggesting an ongoing interest in the subject matter, are:

Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind (Oxford University Press, 2005, 2007), by Nancy Sherman

The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties, & Fate (Oxford University Press, 2005, 2007), by Tad Brennan

The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995; HarperOne, 2007), which was co-authored by Epictetus, an ancient Stoic, and Sharon Lebell, a writer and musician who lives, in our time, in Northern California.

Note that two of the three paperback re-releases were published just two years ago.

Graver's books and those paperbacks are priced within a range one might expect to pay for a book.

However, if you really wanted to dig deep into this subject matter, you could buy one of these expensive academic books, released this year:

The Corinthian Dissenters and the Stoics (Studies in Biblical Literature) (Peter Lang Publishing, 2007) by Albert V. Garcilazo for $71.95 at Amazon.com, or

Spinoza and the Stoics: Power, Politics and the Passions (Continuum Studies in Philosophy) (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007) by Firmin Debrabander for $120 at Amazon.com.

The priceless online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an entry on Stoicism here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/ .

-Colin Burch

Structure, creativity, and the brain

The human brain apparently integrates structure and creativity in much of what it does, the left hemisphere lending a hand to the work of the right hemisphere, and vice versa. In ancient Greek thought, apparently, the roles of structure and creativity were considered a bit more mutually exclusive. Let me introduce a quote with two brief, simplified definitions.

Lógos: For Greeks, encompassed reasoning and language

Mûthos: For Greeks, encompassed words, speech, stories, poems, fictions, and fables

"Recent neurological research indicates that, by and large, the hemispheres of the human brain have distinct functions [stay with me, it gets better]: in the left (for most people) is the proposenity for language, mathematics, and linear reasoning, in the right the propensity for visual, spatial, intuitive, and analogical skills, the hemispheres working together through their neural links. This discovery has prompted a re-examination of the roles and relationships of lógos and mûthos, suggesting that they may be partners rather than rivals. If this is so, creative thought may require both linear left and holistic right. In linguistic terms, logic is as likely in verse as in prose, and analogy and metaphor are as much the tools of philosophers and scientists as of bards and mystics." -The Oxford Companion to the English Language

For example, if I attempt to write a sonnet, the imposed structure forces me to be creative in solving the problems of tailoring topic and language. However, I think the point in the Oxford Companion might point to something more foundational, deeply rooted in the brain. In communicating a mystical fable, one must stick to grammatical norms, and the vision of the teller can inspire certain structural choices.

Polanyi and the Art of Knowing

My review of Mark T. Mitchell's book Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing appears in the new issue of Appraisal, the journal of the Society for Post-Critical and Personalist Studies in the U.K.

Mitchell writes, "Polanyi points a way out of the dark forest of rational scepticism and systematic doubt. He shows us how we might once again speak meaningfully of the good, the true and the beautiful. And he shows us how we might recover an understanding of the importance of the places we inhabit and the persons with whom we live."

To read the review, click the following link for a PDF of the book review section, and then scroll down to the mid-point of page 6: http://www.spcps.org.uk/3-10%20Reviews.pdf .

-Colin Burch

Ancient thoughts on developing craft and skill

"Don't worry that no one recognizes you;
seek to be worthy of recognition."
- Confucius, Analects 4.14

"Do you see a man skilled in his work?
He will serve before kings;
He will not serve before obscure men."
- author unknown*, Proverbs 22.29


*In the book of Proverbs, "The third collection (22.17-24.22), entitled 'the words of the wise,' is a compilation of thirty instructions probably modeled on an Egyptian source, the Instruction of Amen-em-ope, probably dated ca. 1000 BCE." -- The Oxford Companion to the Bible

Biological research v. ancient philosophy & religion

I recently read an article in The American Scholar online about the way literary theory has tried to kill-off the love of good stories.

The article, available at http://www.theamericanscholar.org/gettingitallwrong-boyd.html, spend most of its time making a biological and evolutionary argument against the assumptions of (what is alleged to be) the dominant literary-theory ideas in university English departments.

I loved the challenge against theory, and the way it was done, yet I struggled with the reductively biological view of humans that supported the challenge.

I emailed the link to a group of friends, and after some of them had a chance to read it, I offered them these thoughts:

I'm actually still holding out some hope for metaphysics to make a qualified comeback. The article's author gave reasons why we have customs -- so our species can keep its signals clear. Confucius would have said that the Tao was pre-existing and transcendent, and we are at our best (keeping our signals clearest) when we correspond to it via proper customs.

The Stoics were similar, with Logos (universal reason) in place of the Tao, and proper reasoning as the expression of the presence of Logos instead of customs. Before the Stoics, Socrates seemed to think we could dialectically get to something that was true and pre-existing (maybe similar to Logos), and sought to trim away the unclear signals (artifices) of the species, and died for it.

Jesus presented the Law and the Prophets as the transcendent standards, and then added a human-relationship element to them -- hate is murder; love; forgive -- and died for it. I'm unfamiliar with the Hindu and Buhddist teachings.

But the point being, in light of these ancients, it's hard for me, just being the thing that I am, to reduce the transcendent points of reference of these ancients to the outcomes of biological trial-and-error over a kijillion years. One book I read actually mapped the commonality in moral and ethical teachings across Norse, Babylonian, Confucian, Judaic, Greek, Christian, Egyptian, Roman, Hindu and Anglo-Saxon cultures -- a real skewer in the "local" of theory, huh?! To what do we assign this unity among diverse cultures?

Well, I readily acknowledge that the strictly biological view, which one might call reductive in light of the ancients, is exactly where the expertise is, where the cutting-edge thinking and research is happening, and it is very compelling. We just keep peeling away at the brain through scientific advances. People still read these ancients, yet research constantly recasts them, constantly fosters new questions. So I remain,
puzzled,
Colin Burch