* Blogging Aquinas is a blog by Will Duquette that is devoted to blogging Aquinas (surprise!). Currently the author is blogging through the Compendium.
* Wisdom from the 42nd Page taste-tests books by blogging their forty-second page.
* Alexander Pruss discusses the fun proper to science.
* There is some excellent discussion at "Per Caritatem" of Boethius's Consolation, with particular focus on the ever-puzzling fact that it's in the form of a Menippean satire: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
* The Summer 2008 edition of The Alexandrian, the Journal of Catholic Culture in Canada, is out. Catherine Nolan's "The Age of Silence" is a short story variation on a Canticle-for-Leibowitz-type theme.
* David Corfield on Michael Polanyi and Personal Knowledge (in mathematics and science) at "The n-Category Café".
* I'm currently testing the reCAPTCHA system for Houyhnhnm Land; you could help greatly by leaving a comment on this post. It's a great system -- using it helps to scan Internet Archive books that are giving the computers a bit of trouble. But I'd like to test out its usability on several guinea pigs other than myself.
* Also, I am still looking for recommendations for the Houyhnhnm Land Bookshelf, which is a bibliography of recommended works. Currently I just have three samples up. I have a list of books and articles I eventually will get around to adding, but in the meantime recommendations from across the range of early modern thought -- philosophy, history, literature -- are very welcome.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Friday, July 04, 2008
The Cause of Justice, of Liberty, and of Human Nature
From John Witherspoon's The Dominion of Providence over the Passions (May 1776):
If your cause is just—you may look with confidence to the Lord and intreat him to plead it as his own. You are all my witnesses, that this is the first time of my introducing any political subject into the pulpit. At this season however, it is not only lawful but necessary, and I willingly embrace the opportunity of declaring my opinion without any hesitation, that the cause in which America is now in arms, is the cause of justice, of liberty, and of human nature. So far as we have hitherto proceeded, I am satisfied that the confederacy of the colonies, has not been the effect of pride, resentment, or sedition, but of a deep and general conviction, that our civil and religious liberties, and consequently in a great measure the temporal and eternal happiness of us and our posterity, depended on the issue. The knowledge of God and his truths have from the beginning of the world been chiefly, if not entirely, confined to those parts of the earth, where some degree of liberty and political justice were to be seen, and great were the difficulties with which they had to struggle from the imperfection of human society, and the unjust decisions of usurped authority. There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Healy's Raging Pique
Kieran Healy is considering a new custom whenever someone says 'Correlation is Not Causation':
I know the feeling. I would settle for asking "Why not?" because what it is that makes causation different from correlation is always swept under the rug; and although I'm pretty sure Hume's wrong, I think that if some common assumptions about causes were true Hume would have to be right (from which follows by modus tollens, etc.). In any case, uncritical complacency about a slogan is more than a bit annoying, even when the slogan is right.
But to do it properly you'd need to fling it repeatedly at the back of their head.
I grudgingly admit that it’s a plausible-sounding rule, and in the textbooks and stuff. But, to be honest, I read it too many times in various posts and comments threads the other day, and in my raging pique I found myself thinking that the next time it happened I would say, "That’s completely backwards: in fact, causation is just correlation" and fling a copy of Hume’s first Enquiry at their head. Or at the screen, I suppose, but that image is less satisfying, because now who’s the crank on the internet, etc.
I know the feeling. I would settle for asking "Why not?" because what it is that makes causation different from correlation is always swept under the rug; and although I'm pretty sure Hume's wrong, I think that if some common assumptions about causes were true Hume would have to be right (from which follows by modus tollens, etc.). In any case, uncritical complacency about a slogan is more than a bit annoying, even when the slogan is right.
But to do it properly you'd need to fling it repeatedly at the back of their head.
Two Poem Drafts
To Die
To die is but to reason on one's own
of things beyond the call of human thought,
experiments of fancy turned within
to deeper things than images of life.
To die is but to reason in the night
when lanterns all grow dim and greater lights
have faded in the sky's all-stealing void
and we are left to whistle in the dark
before the angel brings us to the seat
where reason bows to Word and death has died.
The Space Between My Words
The space between my words is formed of steel;
the silence in the sound is iron-wrought.
As temples formed of stone can only rise
within an empty space, as written words
will not be writ on any but blank page,
so thought itself, and voice, and deed, and life,
require a frame on which to build and rise,
an empty volume for a soaring spire,
a place to write, a silence for the song,
a frame of secret strength and empty space
without which all would fall and crash to dust.
Never need I fear my words will fall:
the space between my words is formed of steel,
supporting all my thought as it appears,
a buttress certain for the rising walls,
a silence, more than void, in which the sound
can grow into a voice to sing Amen.
To die is but to reason on one's own
of things beyond the call of human thought,
experiments of fancy turned within
to deeper things than images of life.
To die is but to reason in the night
when lanterns all grow dim and greater lights
have faded in the sky's all-stealing void
and we are left to whistle in the dark
before the angel brings us to the seat
where reason bows to Word and death has died.
The Space Between My Words
The space between my words is formed of steel;
the silence in the sound is iron-wrought.
As temples formed of stone can only rise
within an empty space, as written words
will not be writ on any but blank page,
so thought itself, and voice, and deed, and life,
require a frame on which to build and rise,
an empty volume for a soaring spire,
a place to write, a silence for the song,
a frame of secret strength and empty space
without which all would fall and crash to dust.
Never need I fear my words will fall:
the space between my words is formed of steel,
supporting all my thought as it appears,
a buttress certain for the rising walls,
a silence, more than void, in which the sound
can grow into a voice to sing Amen.
The Begetting of Wisdom
Desist from your wordly wisdom, my neighbors. Wisdom is begotten, not made. As Wisdom is begotten in God, so is it begotten on earth. Begotten wisdom creates, but is not created.
So, you braggarts brag about your intellect! What is your intellect except remembering many facts? And if you remember so much, how could you have forgotten the moments of the wondrous begetting of wisdom within you? Sometimes I hear you talking about great thoughts that were born to you unexpectedly without any effort. Who bore these thoughts to you, intellectuals? How were they begotten without a father, if you admit that you did not father them?
Truly I say to you: the father of these thoughts is the All-Holy Spirit, and their mother survives as the virgin corner of your soul, where the All-Holy Spirit still dares to enter.
Thus every wisdom in heaven and on earth is begotten of the Virgin and the All-Holy Spirit. The All-Holy Spirit hovered over the chastity of the first hypostasis, and the Ultimate Man, the Wisdom of God, was begotten.
What the chastity of the Father is in heaven, the virginity of the Mother is on earth. What the action of the Holy Spirit is in heaven, His action is on earth. What the begetting of wisdom is in heaven, the begetting of wisdom is on earth.
St. Nikolai Velimirovich, Prayers by the Lake, Prayer X
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
True North
Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian readers.
From my blogroll, Rebecca Stark celebrates Canada's beauty and Scott Gilbreath mourns its going astray.
O Canada! Terre de nos aïeux,
Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux!
Car ton bras sait porter l'épée,
Il sait porter la croix!
Ton histoire est une épopée
Des plus brillants exploits.
Et ta valeur, de foi trempée,
Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.
Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.
Sous l'oeil de Dieu, près du fleuve géant,
Le Canadien grandit en espérant,
Il est né d'une race fière,
Béni fut son berceau;
Le ciel a marqué sa carrière
Dans ce monde nouveau.
Toujours guidé par Sa lumière,
Il gardera l'honneur de son drapeau,
Il gardera l'honneur de son drapeau.
De son patron, précurseur du vrai Dieu,
Il porte au front l'auréole de feu;
Ennemi de la tyrannie,
Mais plein de loyauté,
Il veut garder dans l'harmonie
Sa fière liberté.
Et par l'effort de son génie,
Sur notre Sol asseoir la vérité,
Sur notre Sol asseoir la vérité!
Amour sacré du trône et de l'autel
Remplis nos coeurs de ton souffle immortel.
Parmi les races étrangères
Notre guide est la foi;
Sachons être un peuple de frères,
Sous le joug de la loi;
Et répétons comme nos pères
Le cri vainqueur: «Pour le Christ et le Roi»
Le cri vainqueur: «Pour le Christ et le Roi».
From my blogroll, Rebecca Stark celebrates Canada's beauty and Scott Gilbreath mourns its going astray.
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