Comments on: Philosophical Romances

By: Glenn Condell

Glenn Condell — Wed, 06 Aug 2003 08:38:14 +0000

Henry don’t expect too much from Philosophical Investigation – it’s a thriller and I found the attempt to weave Witgenstein thru it unconvincing, but he’s always a good read. Berlin Noir is engrossing stuff. I’ve just finished Michel Houellebecq’s Platform. It has a philosophy of sorts and a romance of sorts, but it’s seven hundred years and a million miles from The Name of the Rose.

By: Neel Krishnaswami

Neel Krishnaswami — Mon, 04 Aug 2003 20:43:53 +0000

dsquared: In 1936, Gerhard Gentzen proved that arithmetic was correct using transfinite induction. Ted Chiang unfairly but amusingly described this in “Division by Zero” as “assuming the implausible in order to prove the obvious”.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Mon, 04 Aug 2003 20:12:01 +0000

My understanding is that it’s precisely because (a formal system with enough representational power to specify the theorems of) elementary number theory is consistent, that it’s incomplete. And in any case, even if “arithmetic couldn’t guarantee itself to be consistent”, a larger formal system which contained arithmetic as a subset could guarantee that arithmetic was consistent.

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Mon, 04 Aug 2003 17:16:15 +0000

Well, I asked my friend who’s formally (heh) studied Godel’s theorem about arithmetic and he couldn’t answer it offhand although he’s inclined to say that arithemetic is consistent (in his defense, I woke him up to ask the question and he was a little groggy and probably irritable). And I’m pretty sure of it. Godel uses Russell and Whitehead’s PM to generate his proof. PM is, as is widely known, formalized arithmetic. Furthermore, Godel relies upon simple arithmetic to tokenize his statements. I think that PM (and arithmetic) would need to be known to be consistent in order for his proof to work. As a matter of fact, the Godel Statement would be false were PM (and probably arithmetic) inconsistent. So, I think the above assertion about arithmetic is another example of a popular misunderstanding of Godel. (But, not having actually worked through Godel’s proof, I probably know no more about it than the people I’m implicitly criticizing.)

By: dsquared

dsquared — Mon, 04 Aug 2003 13:19:35 +0000

>>which Godel suggests is entirely possible; arithmetic cannot guarantee that it will not produce such contradictions Not sure of this at all …

By: Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Patrick Nielsen Hayden — Mon, 04 Aug 2003 03:16:27 +0000

Neel Kraishnaswami gets at exactly what I like in the stories of Ted Chiang. Second the recommendation for The Years of Rice and Salt, a book I’m currently in the middle of and don’t want to leave.

By: Neel Krishnaswami

Neel Krishnaswami — Sun, 03 Aug 2003 14:08:51 +0000

Chun: I found Teranesia to be nearly unreadable. Greg Egan is just too hostile to large parts of human experience (in particular religion) to be objective about them. Characteristic of this tendency is making the protagonists’ parents members of the Indian Rationalist’s Association. It felt to me this was an example of Greg Egan simply being unwilling to think about religion and culture, rather than being a natural part of the story. And I say this as an atheist who is strongly opposed to the mores of traditional Hinduism! Ted Chiang strikes me as a rationalist, too, but he’s able to write write about religious worldviews with sympathy—consider his stories “Tower of Babylon” and “Hell is the Absence of God”. Both of these stories are in the collection Henry named, but the far and away best story in the collection was “Story of Your Life”. I’d never have thought that the calculus of variations and epistemology could be genuinely emotionally powerful! (“Division by Zero”, on the other hand, didn’t impress me as much. But then, I’m a computer scientist, and for me meta-mathematical concepts like logical soundness are engineering problems rather than philosophy.)

By: Nicholas Weininger

Nicholas Weininger — Sun, 03 Aug 2003 13:43:18 +0000

While we’re on the subject of Eco, what about Baudolino? Plenty of philosophy of science and knowledge in there. And I thought it beautifully done, with much better plot flow and characterization than either Foucault’s Pendulum or Island (though I liked FP very much and didn’t dislike Island).

By: J. Ellenberg

J. Ellenberg — Sat, 02 Aug 2003 20:27:58 +0000

Let’s keep in mind, too, that when we talk about “beautiful prose” we are not necessarily talking about the ornate and that which shouts about itself. We’re talking about Hemingway and Munro, not just Fitzgerald and Nabokov. For what it’s worth, Henry, I thought the first quote from Harrison was pretty good, and the second not so good: e.g. “is one of the most haunting features of” just lies there on the page (screen?) without any of the nice casual music of “’I mean,’ I asked.” I didn’t read the whole long excerpt, but I thought it looked good. The Myers essay? Not so good, I thought. I, too, dislike some of his targets—but he didn’t convince me he’d done anything more than exalt his personal taste to the status of a value judgment.

By: David Duff

David Duff — Sat, 02 Aug 2003 19:07:50 +0000

Keith, Just about to set fire to the BBQ, the food and probably the house but I’ll post tomorrow and tell you why my original thoughts on the play changed as I dug into it – that’s why I would be interested in your opinions. David Duff

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Sat, 02 Aug 2003 19:01:42 +0000

David, Gosh…I wouldn’t really know where to begin, if that makes any sense. It’s been a while since I’ve articulated my thoughts about that play. It’s delightfully (not ponderously) self-referential, and that pleases me. A lot of my approach to the play centers on Bottom. But I really can’t say more than that. Not that I know anything about the stage, but I’d be afraid of directing that play—more than others of Shakespeare. Best regards to you.

By: David Duff

David Duff — Sat, 02 Aug 2003 18:48:07 +0000

Keith, I am fascinated by your statement that ‘The Dream’ is your favourite Shakespeare. I was all set to direct it this Autumn but unfortunately I was forced to withdraw so, apart from any other reason, I would like to ‘hear’ your reasons. If you can be bothered please post them here or send them directly to me. In the meantime I URGE EVERYONE TO READ MEYER’S ESSAY - just click on Pathos’s name up above. David Duff

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Sat, 02 Aug 2003 18:35:37 +0000

For someone with a so-called "Great Books" education, my everyday reading tastes are decidedly middle- or lowbrow. And so I find I generally agree with Mr. Duff. There's nothing that annoys me more than a writer who's calling attention to his/her own writerly cleverness. I've not read Joyce's novels. And I mention that because it seems to me that only in the hands of great artists does the display of technical bravado and flourish result in anything more than a momentary curisoity. And the great artists use such skill as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. Mere cleverness seems to me to be banal. And that's what I find in most self-conscious contemporary literature. Henry, I agree that Foucault's Pendulum wasn't nearly as satisfying and elegant as Name of the Rose, but it was a tour de force with a purpose, and I respected and enjoyed it for that. But Rose is by far the superior novel and is exemplary, I think, in regard to the rare quality in discussion here. It's a fine philosophical romance, erudite, dense, and yet paradoxically light as a feather and a joy to read. It calls attention to itself, again and again, only upon reflection, not while being read. I would say that my favorite Shakespeare, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, is a philosophical romance. It, too, is light as a feather yet dense with layered meaning and irony. Less successful, but still astonishing, is the book on my nightstand that I will begin reading again this evening: War and Peace. Tolstoy, I think, thought of it as grandly philosophical--and certainly romantic--though his philosophical monologues are the book's notable flaws. Nevertheless, I'd argue that his extraordinary wedding of the grandiose scope with the personal, and the descriptive with the psychological, is profoundly philosophical and succeeds in a way that makes his monologues superfluous. Since science fiction has been mentioned, I'll say that I just now finished Dan Simmons's new book, "Illium", which excited me for obvious reasons but which I found somewhat disapointing. I think he needs a stronger-willed editor.

By: Henry

Henry — Sat, 02 Aug 2003 16:33:27 +0000

Matt Insofar as Wolfe is interested in ideas, I suspect that his novels are theological rather than philosophical. And not theological in the sense of Thomas Aquinas (philosophy by other means), but in conveying a certain religious sensibility. He has an essay somewhere (Castle of the Otter?) about how he was inspired by the idea of Christ with a whip. Mieville’s books are wonderful too, and play with ideas, but I don’t think that they have the rigour of a philosophical novel, nor do they aspire to it. There are bits and pieces of Mieville’s Marxism scattered through his books (the dialectical nature of ‘crisis energy’ for example), and The Scar in particular borrows from some of the ideas of his Ph.D. dissertation (he’s interested in late-mercantile capitalism, and has an interesting chapter on the Law of the Sea), but what’s wonderful about Mieville’s work is his sociological inventiveness – Malarial Queendoms, the thanatocracy of High Cromlech, rather than a nuanced exploration of a set of philosophical ideas. Both these authors write superb novels, novels which furthermore riff off interesting ideas, but the ideas aren’t the point of them, I don’t think. And that’s the key imo to a philosophical novel.

By: David Duff

David Duff — Sat, 02 Aug 2003 12:19:35 +0000

Pathos, Thanks a million for the link to that Atlantic Monthly essay by Meyers. I haven’t even finished it yet but already it is saying everything elegantly that I was stumbling to say. I urge every one o this post to read it – you just click on Pathos’s name. All this education – my brain’s beginning to hurt! David Duff