Month: January 2012
-
On education as ‘going along with the flow’; on choice as the offspring of distrust
1 One of my fondest college memories is of proving Euclidean theorems all the way up to the precipice: the Parallel Postulate. Until one arrives at the Parallel Postulate, one can derive Euclidean geometry from 5 scintillatingly simple axioms. Each theorem can be clearly formulated, each proof can be neatly arranged according to the steps…
-
Meow
The following is an excerpt from an email exchange that took place between one conversation partner–I guess I’ve renamed her “S.”–and me from this past weekend. I pick up the thread about education in Tuesday’s post. Till then, A. — Dear S., There’s a rock on my desk. (A fine opening line!). It’s black. Away…
-
On making amends: Scenes from Forster’s A Room with a View
The following are two excerpts from E.M. Forster’s novel A Room with a View (1908). Midway through the novel Cecil asks Lucy if she will marry him. She says yes. In the first scene, Cecil and Lucy, recently engaged, are walking home through the woods; they come upon the Sacred Lake. In the second scene, Lucy is…
-
On first words, last lines, and final thoughts
It was while lying in bed beneath the flowered sheets that I’d read to her the opening line of Mrs. Dalloway and we’d loved. “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” And it was while lying on the grass beside the northern spring lake that she’d read, less enthusiastically, the opening lines of To…
-
A picture of a philosophical way of life followed by a medium-length rant
An anecdote: Yesterday, while strolling through the grocery store, I heard a young mother say the following to her young son: “Honey, you just have to be happy with the music they play for you. Bon Jovi’s OK.” — Human Anthropology 1. Human beings are thoroughgoing social animals. I.e., social life is ‘metaphysically prior’ to…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 