tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post6078157899452350161..comments2024-03-28T19:56:32.848-05:00Comments on Anecdotal Evidence: `We Look at Nature With New Eyes'Patrick Kurphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08436175583386298032noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-71269825015091279542010-10-02T00:24:18.884-05:002010-10-02T00:24:18.884-05:00Bill,
Thanks for the comment on the comment. As ...Bill, <br /><br />Thanks for the comment on the comment. As I should have expected, your eloquence and bottomless knowledge of literature bring my argument alive far better than I could. <br /><br />I'm certain that my lifelong loves of poetry and science arise from the same emotional source: the daily need to be dazzled, a need Tony Hiss calls 'wonderlust' in an essay with that title in the most recent issue of The American Scholar.jeffnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-51037536207865943702010-10-01T18:53:50.749-05:002010-10-01T18:53:50.749-05:00Jeff,
Exquisite point about the Nazis--the mud on...Jeff,<br /><br />Exquisite point about the Nazis--the mud on the German Romantics is not their own. You're right, it's not science itself but the power of science as a weapon in man's hands that has done the bloody deed (along with a healthy dollop of faith in science - usually by non-scientists - to solve any problems). But scientists in particular are not to blame--where would we be without the conscience of a Pythagoras, a Curie, an Einstein? As a recent example nobody is more upset than scientists about how corexit has changed the gulf stream current, nor more concerned about that will affect the delicate balance of nature. And nobody is working harder than scientists to find ways to put the planet through detox.<br /><br />So many humble apologies there. I also agree with what nature writer Diane Ackerman (another October birth) says:<br /><br />"People sometimes ask me about all of the science in my work, thinking it odd to mix science and art ... We live in a world where amino acids, viruses, airfoils, and such are common ingredients in our daily sense of Nature. Not to write about Nature in its widest sense, because quasars or corpuscles are not 'the proper realm of poetry,'as a critic once said to me, is not only irresponsible and philistine, it bankrupts the experience of living, it ignores much of life's fascination and variety."WAShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10403669322174979974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-92006191483363879372010-10-01T01:07:28.662-05:002010-10-01T01:07:28.662-05:00Bill,
Has science made a hash of things, or has m...Bill,<br /><br />Has science made a hash of things, or has man? Science is simply a method for deriving a specific, limited kind of knowledge about the world. Like any other form of knowledge, science can be used constructively or destructively. Can we really blame the invention of the guillotine on Newton's theory of gravitational force? Or should we attribute it to man's uncanny knack for finding new ways to kill members of his own species, a knack whose traces can be found in the archaeological record extending back tens of thousands of years? Science, as a distinctive, codified way of looking at the world, is only 500 years old.<br /><br />Moreover, scientific knowledge is not the only product of human culture that can be perverted. The Nazis used the inventions of 19th-century German chemists to implement their ghastly schemes, but they also exploited the glories of German romanticism -- art, music, literature, architecture -- to cultivate the nationalistic fervor necessary for their aims.jeff mauvaisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-54288409317982677612010-09-30T05:38:56.218-05:002010-09-30T05:38:56.218-05:00An interesting post. "Where man is not, natur...An interesting post. "Where man is not, nature is barren," as William Blake wrote in “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” Scientists, on the other hand, ruined nature a <i>long</i> time ago, as anyone with eyes can see. Taxonomy is a pleasing enough diversion in our fallen state, but so is trying to expand human consciousness by communing with a tree’s glorious fall colors instead of reducing it to “dwindling chlorophyll” (as if <i>that</i> explained anything). <br /><br />One of Paul de Man’s contentions was that the Modern was simply an extension of the Romantic, a continuing linear journey into self-consciousness and individuation. We see that in our extreme hesitance to name things, for fear we have violated the essence of some spirit, namely our own. Mark Twain satirized this mindset in his lovely short-story “The Diary of Adam and Eve,” where Eve tries to get closer to Adam by taking “ all the work of naming things off his hands, and this has been a great relief to him,” while Adam blasts her reductive, apparently God-given rationality:<br /><br />“The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do. I had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty-- GARDEN OF EDEN. Privately, I continue to call it that, but not any longer publicly. The new creature says it is all woods and rocks and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden. Says it LOOKS like a park, and does not look like anything BUT a park. Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named NIAGARA FALLS PARK. This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me. And already there is a sign up:<br />KEEP OFF<br />THE GRASS<br />My life is not as happy as it was.”WAShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10403669322174979974noreply@blogger.com