Food For Thought

Happy Ash Wednesday! Is one supposed to say that? More Haldane:

I wish I had the voice of Homer
To sing of rectal carcinoma,
Which kills a lot more chaps, in fact,
Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked.

I seem to recall some congruent thoughts somewhere in J.G.Ballard’s semi-autobiographical writings, from his time as a medical student.

“Un homme ne peut se marier sans avoir étudié l’anatomie et disséqué une femme au moins.” (Balzac, Physiologie du Mariage, Part 1, V.)

Don’t know a huge amount about H.G. Wells, but that novel Babes in a Darkling Wood sounds quite awful (with the protagonist apparently deciding he has to join the Soviet army during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact, and then later deciding he has to fight the Nazis — the novel, with a pub date of 1940, was published before Hitler invaded the USSR, so I guess we have to give the protagonist credit for changing his mind, or something, or did the Soviets arrest him as a British spy — whatever). Anyway, putting the plot to one side, it sounds bad, based on a glance at your Wells blog.

Haldane parodying Aristotle?

“…It now remains to speak of animals and their Nature. So far as in us lies, we will not leave out any one of them, be it never so mean ; for though there are animals which have no attractiveness for the senses, yet for the eye of science, for the student
who is naturally of a philosophic spirit and can discern the causes of things, Nature which fashioned them provides joys which cannot be measured. If we study mere likenesses of these things and take pleasure in so doing, because then we are contemplating the
painter’s or the carver’s Art which fashioned them, and yet fail to delight much more in studying the works of Nature themselves, though we have the ability to discern the actual causes — that would be a strange absurdity indeed. Wherefore we must not betake
ourselves to the consideration of the meaner animals with a bad grace, as though we were children ; since in all natural things there is somewhat of the marvelous.

There is a story which tells how some visitors once wished to meet Heracleitus, and when
they entered and saw him in the kitchen, warming himself at the stove, they hesitated ; but Heracleitus said, ” Come in; don’t be afraid; there are gods even here.”

In like manner, we ought not to hesitate nor to be abashed, but boldly to enter upon our
researches concerning animals of every sort and kind, knowing that in not one of them is Nature or Beauty lacking.

I add “Beauty,” because in the works of Nature purpose and not accident is predominant; and the purpose or end for the sake of which those works have been constructed or formed has its place among what is beautiful. If, however, there is anyone who holds that the study of the animals is an unworthy pursuit, he ought to go further and hold the same opinion about the study of himself, for it is not possible without considerable disgust to look upon the blood, flesh, bones, blood-vessels, and suchlike parts of which the human body is constructed. ” (de Partibus Animalium I.v, A.L. Peck, trans.)

Aristotle: “bugs seem gross, but that’s because you’re focusing on the matter instead of the design that Nature makes with it. If you make that mistake, you’d think humans are gross, too. But humans are beautiful, not gross. So bugs are beautiful, too.”
Haldane: “meh, sometimes the matter is more beautiful than what Nature does with it.”

Banned commenter deleted

John and Belle –

For all your future Valentines: http://streetanatomy.com/

You’re welcome.

Derek Raymond/Robert Cook’s offbeat mystery “I Was Dora Suarez” also seemed to delight in gruesome sexuality. The nameless investigator even falls in love with her mutilated corpse and kneels down to lick it.

@ LFC 02.14.18 at 9:55 pm

First, as for the book, as far as I understand it, the communist protagonist doesn’t go to join the Soviet army, but to ‘find out the truth about Russia’, ‘witness the socialist future’ or something like that. He ends up witnessing the Winter War and becomes disillusioned with Soviet communism. Wells was not a communist but a vague socialist, and his attitude towards the USSR was generally rather nuanced, not firmly hostile but always somewhat distanced and sceptical.

Second, as for real life, being a Moscow-line communist meant believing that the USSR was the world’s only worker’s state and humanity’s main hope for a socialist future; and if one accepted that assumption, however debatable, it did make sense that one’s top priority would be to protect that state, not to fight fascism or any other form of capitalist regime at every possible moment. These people had something to strive towards, not just something to oppose. The Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was seen as a sly strategic move intended to protect the USSR, especially since the Western powers had previously rebuffed Stalin’s attempts to make common cause with them against Hitler (I’ve previously posted a link to this: https://www.webdepot.umontreal.ca/Usagers/carleym/MonDepotPublic/Carley%27s%20Web%20site/Carley_Dishonest.pdf). I don’t believe that this position was truly justified, but I do think it was understandable.