The Challenge of Affluence

Tractatus 1. The world is everything that is the case.

Sorry, that was wrong. Richard Burton, The Book of the Sword: “The history of the sword is the history of humanity.”

David Lewis, Counterfactuals:

`If kangaroos had no tails, they would topple over‘ seems to me to mean something like this: in any possible state of affairs in which kangaroos have no tails, and which resembles our actual state of affairs as much as kangaroos having no tails permits it to, the kangaroos topple over. I shall give a general analysis of counterfactual conditionals along these lines.

“Happy are those ages when the starry sky is the map of all possible paths–ages whose paths are illuminated by the light of the stars. Everything in such ages is new and yet familiar, full of adventure and yet their own. The world is wide and yet it is like a home…”

“A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.”

BTW, I didn’t realise that Rumsfeld was channeling Karl on “old Europe”.

A great discovery solves a great problem but there is a grain of discovery in the solution of any problem. Your problem may be modest; but if it challenges your curiosity and brings into play your inventive faculties, and if you solve it by your own means, you may experience the tension and enjoy the triumph of discovery. Such experiences at a susceptible age may create a taste for mental work and leave their imprint on mind and character for a lifetime.

From the Preface to the First Printing of How to Solve It, G. Polya.

Offner’s paragraph would be even better without the second sentence.

“Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive. But, beyond doubt, wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding. The poor man has always a precise view of his problem and its remedy: he hasn’t enough and he needs more. The rich man can assume or imagine a much greater variety of ills and he will be correspondingly less certain of their remedy.” (From Galbraith’s The Affluent Society)

Pity he wasn’t patient enough to add the two extra commas that the para needs.

The commas are my fault – will fix.

Isn’t he kind of rehashing the work of, say, Buddha, among others?

jon h — if Buddha wrote an economic history of the postwar UK and US…. I think he regard himself as providing illumination (rather than rehashing) of that thesis, and he’s quite aware that its not completely original to him….

“Supposing truth is a woman—what then?”

Nietzsche’s preface in Beyond Good and Evil

Great. Now on to page 13 great paragraphs.

Endings: doesn`t 1984 finish with that charming sentence about the jackboot on the face?

I was once told about a number theory textbook which started with a mathematical definition of its own page numbers (and presumably also the equation numbers, etc.) However, I never saw the book msyelf and the explanation was given to me by a physics lecturer, so probably wasn`t true.

All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.

Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980a21-25.

beware, i don’t think the rest of the book proves the first paragraph but i’ll wait to see what harry thinks

To the happy few, maybe Walt, if he is reading:

As the night sky, mathematics has two hemispheres: the archimedean hemisphere and the non-archimedean hemisphere. For some reasons, the latter hemisphere is usually under the horizon of our world, and the study of it is historically always behind the study of the former.

Kazuya Kato, Lectures on the approach to Iwasawa theory for Hasse-Weil L functions via BdR

“When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness that joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child. Every event, every deed was defined in given and expressive forms and was in accord with the solemnity of marriage, death – by virtue of the sacraments, basked in the radiance of the divine mystery. But even the lesser events – a journey, labor, a visit – were accompanied by a multitude of blessings, ceremonies, sayings, and conventions.”

J. Huizinga, Autumn of the Middle Ages

‘This book is about solipsistic fear; that is, the fear that the external world of trees, tables, bricks and mortar may not exist at all. Solipsism as a settled system of belief is quite properly regarded as something absurd, or even comic; no one but a philosopher – no a lunatic philosopher – could believe that. But it sometimes happens that an idea which is in the strictest sense of the word incredible can prove a fertile source of disquiet (indeed, one of the ways of dealing with solipsistic fear is to stop flinching from the thought and try believing it instead).’ – A.D. Nuttall, A Common Sky.

From a man rarely accused of writing well: the first paragraph of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason:

“Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.”

It still gives me shivers.

Not exactly academic, but I’ve always been partial to Maistre’s opening in On God and Society:

“One of the greatest errors of a century which professed them all was to believe that a political constitution could be created and written a priori…”

Hey, did we try to do something like that in Iraq??

“I believe it was the sight of that old fool Gladstone, standing in the pouring rain holding his special constable’s truncheon as if it were a bunch of lilies, and looking even more like an unemployed undertaker’s mute than usual, that made me think seriously about going into politics. God knows I’m no Tory, and I never set eyes on a Whig yet without feeling the need of a bath, but I remember thinking as I looked at Gladstone that day: ‘Well, if that’s one of the bright particular stars of English public life, Flashy my boy, you ought to be at Westminster yourself.'”

From “Flash for Freedom”, George MacDonald Fraser. It’s not so much the dripping scorn that does it for me, as the promise of horror to come.

“It was clear that the Grasshopper would not survive the winter, and his followers had gathered around him for what would no doubt be one of their last meetings. Most of them were reconciled to his approaching death, but a few were still outraged that such a thing could be allowed to happen. Prudence was one of the latter, and she approached the Grasshopper with a final plea. ‘Grasshopper,’ she said, ‘a few of us have agreed to give up a share of our food to tide you over till spring. Then next summer you can work to pay us back.’

“‘My dear child,’ responded the Grasshopper, ‘you still don’t understand. The fact is that I will not work to pay you back. I will not work at all. I made that perfectly clear, I thought, when the ant turned me away from his door. My going to him in the first place was, of course, a mistake. It was a weakness to which I shall not give in again.'”

The first two paragraphs of Bernard Suits’s The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, one of the loveliest philosophy books of the 20th century (and a special treat for Wittgenstein-haters).

Last paragraphs: from Darwin’s Origin of Species (here, only the first sentence):

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of different kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.

I first encountered this sentence at the entrance to main lecture hall of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg.

“In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period (A.D. 98-180) of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this, and of the two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire; and afterwards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall; a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth.” —Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Z: That is a great opening.

A profoundly humble first sentence and first paragraph given the importance to the world:

“We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest.”

A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid
J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick

The German destruction of the European Jews was a tour de force; the Jewish collapse under the German assault was a manifestation of failure. Both of these phenomena were the final product of an earlier age.

—Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (1985)

A dissertation I read last semester was dedicated to the student’s advisor and graduate department head, on the grounds that ‘were it not for the narrow-minded devotion to petty bureaucracy they demonstrated, this dissertation would have been completed six months earlier.’

I hesitate to include the cite since I figure that the student’s dedication page burned his bridges badly enough he doesn’t need me broadcasting it again.

To understand the South is to feel the pathos in its history. This aura of pathos is more than a delusion of historians, more than the vague sensation one gets when looking down an avenue of somber, moss-draped live oaks leading to stately ruins or to nothing at all. For southerners live in the shadow of a real tragedy; they know, better than most other Americans, that little ironies fill the history of mankind and that large disasters from time to time unexpectedly help to shape its course.

—Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (1956)

Another Wittgensteinian one, from “Culture and Value:”

We tend to take the speech of Chinese for inarticulate gurgling.

Jeff (62) –

It’s the opening of Virgil’s Aeneid:
Arma virumque cano.
Arms and the man I sing.

“A great many things keep happening, some of them good, some of them bad. The inhabitants of different countries keep quarreling fiercely with each other and kings go on losing their temper in the most furious way. Our churches are attacked by the heretics and then protected by the Catholics; the faith of Christ burns bright in many men, but it remains lukewarm in others; no sooner are the church-buildings endowed by the faithful than they are stripped bare again by those who have no faith. However, no writer has come to the fore who has been suffieienctly skilled in setting things down in an orderly fashion to be able to describe these events in prose or in verse. In fact, in the towns of Gaul the writing of literature has declined to the point where it has virtually disappeared altogether. Many people have complained about this, not once but time and time again. “What a poor period this is!” they have been heard to say. “If among all our people there is not one man to be found who can write a book about what is happening today, the pursuit of letters realy is dead in us!” I have often thought about these complaints and others like them. I have written this work to keep alive the memory of those dead and gone, and to bring them to the notice of future generations. My style is not very polished, and I have had to devote much of my space to the quarrels between the wicked and the righteous. All the same I have been greatly encouraged by certain kind remarks, which, to my no small surprise, I have often heard made by our folk, to the effect that few people understand a rhetorical speechifier, whereas many can follow a blunt speaker.”

-Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks

“I began with the desire to speak with the dead.

This desire is a familiar, if unvoiced, motive in literary studies, a motive organized, professionalized, buried beneath think layers of bureaucratic decorum: literature professors are salaried, middle-class shamans. If I never believed the dead could hear me, and if I knew that the dead could not speak, I was nonetheless certain that I could re-create a conversation with them…”

Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations.

The closing paragraph of William James’s “The Will to Believe” (1896):

“I began by a reference to Fitz James Stephen; let me end by a quotation from him. ‘What do you think of yourself? What do you think of the world?… These are questions with which all must deal as it seems good to them. They are riddles of the Sphinx, and in some way or other we must deal with them… In all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark… If we decide to leave the riddles unanswered, that is a choice; if we waver in our answer, that, too, is a choice: but whatever choice we make, we make it at our peril. If a man chooses to turn his back altogether on God and the future, no one can prevent him; no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that he is mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks, I do not see that any one can prove that he is mistaken. Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him. We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? ‘Be strong and of a good courage.’ Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. . . . If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.’ [Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 353, second edition. London, 1874.]”

These are all so wordy. Surely the very best writers can do much of the business with the title? I particularly like the chemistry book “Nonexistent Compounds”.

Here is my favorite, from Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus:

“There is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act.”

“Life is Difficult” from “The Road Less Travelled ” by M Scott Peck. This is the ultimate truth, the root of all that we do or believe in. In literature, the entire foreword of Ayn Rand’s ” The Fountainhead”.