This reminded me of a story told to me by my AP English IV teacher in high school about a peer student who, the day before graduation, renounced his learning, renounced his faith, and left the seminary of Houston Baptist University. I was always struck by this story, about that point on the circle where you loop back around the other way to wherever you started’s anti-pole. To hear of the theme repeated, by a missionary no less, was a yarn I could not ignore.

“Don’t Sleep…” tracks Everett’s travel to the Pirahã village. The opening act covers the culture shock aspects of missionary work. He describes the hardships of life on the Amazon: malaria, caimans (carniverous reptiles who like some human flesh), anacondas, and a riverside-dwelling people who had, in the early stages, little compunction about killing him and his family when he threatened their access to the sugary liquor used as payment by riverside traders.

I classify this as travelogue. It’s fascinating, interesting, and ultimately paints the picture of a happy, clever, naughty, and loving people whose adaptation to their environment is a marvel to learn about.

An important finding in his study is that Everett discovers that Pirahã have an immediate experience bias. Simply, the Pirahã don’t talk about that which they have not experienced or which someone they know has not experienced. This extends into their language in fascinating directions: they don’t have terms for extended ancestors or those individuals’ beliefs, nor do they credit third-party knowledge. This bias as a taboo has completely shaped their world-view such that there is an immediacy to all utterance.

A simple point whereby to grasp the pervasivness of this taboo is that the Pirahã do not use relative clauses or indirect discourse (related linguistic concepts).

Consider: “Julia thinks he is happy” or in Latin, “Julia putat eum beatum esse,” or Dutch “Julia denkt dat hij gelukkig is.” In each of these languages something happens in that “what Julia thinks” bit. Latin changes the “He” to become “him” (“is / he” -> “eum / him”). Dutch inverts the regular verb order to push the verb to the end (“is” / “is”). In each of these cases something that cannot be directly interfaced with is encapsulated by Julia’s reckoning of it. This does not happen in Pirahã. The immediacy bias prevents utterances such as this.

Yet the Pirahã say: “He is happy. This is thought. Julia thinks this.” Come to think of it, maybe Hemingway was a Pirahã. There is an immediacy to each of these simple assertions where veracity can be ascertained. This kinda blew my mind. A language without indirection or subordination.

The extent of this bias is also shown in a different context, the Pirahã report things as either things experienced (I saw Bob in a boat fishing), hearsay (The women say Bob is fishing), or deduction (Bob, his bow and arrow, and his boat are gone, I bet he’s fishing).

Everett spends the second half of the book exploring how his research of Pirahã language fits against his profession as a linguist in academia.

I found the most fascinating chapter to be the chapter on recursion (I’m a programmer, what can I say) in the second half and how it was assumed to exist in all languages and to be a primary component of them (per Chomsky, undermined by Pirahã, contends Everett).

But what of what drew me to the story, the missionary converted? In some ways, it’s the logical conclusion of having worked with the Pirahã for thirty years enmeshed in a world with this experiential bias and the language that favors and advances it.

Dan’s translation of his encounter of Jesus is neither direct experience nor deduction, ergo it is would be in the hearsay register (Strike 1). Neither Dan nor his father had seen Jesus (Strike 2). The offer of the missionary was that Jesus was there to make them happy, but they already were happy (Strike 3).

Oh, and the night after they were told about Jesus, he appeared in their settlement, with a three-foot penis and proceeded to menace their women for sex (while they require “immediacy” dreams as well as supernatural beings do have a “real” place in their world! Think about the ramifications of that!). Needless to say the, to use a coined phrase, “come to Jesus” speech was not going the way the missionary planned.

The relevance of religion was absurd to them. Nature had been there, been good to them, as long as anyone could remember. The Pirahã don’t worry (didn’t even have a word for it!), they don’t fret, they don’t fear death, and seem to be completely happy with their lots and their culture where they talk about fishing, trysts, the river, and generally take care of one another.

I’m not about to propose some Rousseauan / Thoreauean paean to the noble savage, but unfettered by fear about a fate which no one has seen they seem very happy, healthy, and free from the decadent forks of ennui and malaise which seem to constantly drive the occidental to Paxil, Reality TV, and church.

This story is in the book. The book written by Dan Everett. This book opens the mind. The mind of Steven. The very one. Steven recommends the book. The book is by Dan Everett. The book is called “Don’t Sleep, there are Snakes.”

Update: Changed “things” to “thinks” per comment by Dev.

“Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.” — Alexander Pope

A recent Wikipedia article of the day sent along notice that the anniversary of the publication of Newton’s “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica” had just past. I thought I would take a look at the original text and see what my substantial investment in Latin education seine me of it. Google Books has a fine scan with the Le Seur commentaries.

I was taking a look at De Mundi Systematae: Liber Tertius and saw several small postulates that were exceedingly brief and nowhere as complicated as the language in the rest of the text.

In philosophia experimentali, propositiones ex phænomenis per inductionem collectæ, non obstantibus contrariis hypothesibus, pro veris aut accurate aut quamproxime haberi debent, donec alia occurrerint phænomena, per quae aut accuratiores reddantur aut exceptionibus obnoxiæ.

My basic 4-semesters-of-Latin Translation

In experimental philosophy, propositions collected from phenomena through an observational process must be held either as true, or as close to it as possible — existing contrary hypotheses notwithstanding — until such time as other phenomena occur by which they [the propositions] may be more accurately given or be found erroneous.

— Regula IV: Regulae Philosophandi: Isaac Newton

The modern might casually assert “No duh,” but this is to give too-short a shrift to the intellectual milieu of the era.

Consider that Newton’s fairly erudite audience — they could read Newtonian Latin, mind you, and that was a relatively small, educated population — lacked sufficient default orientation toward this foundation of scientific reasoning. They lacked it to the extent that Newton had to teach the reader to think scientifically before he could expect him to even consider the revolutionary theories of physics contained earlier in the book. It’s almost like when someone makes a highly contentious blog post and then, to head off the trolls, tries to help the trolls orient themselves so as to minimize unnecessary, follow-up correspondence.

Wikipedia has a translation of Newton’s propositions as well.

Newton was urging us to eschew magical thinking, at least in the realm of natural philosophy. We should have no allegiance to any model any longer than until the data contravenes the model’s existence. But as a deist, or perhaps a latent alchemist, Newton realized that his laws of motion left him open to procedural complaints from Galiean neo-Platonist critique as well as rationalist ontological complaints from the Scholastics. Curiously, he had to defy both ends of the spectrum and find a middle way that both required the non-visible and non-mechanistic, but which also embraced a neo-Platonic / Galilean model of law forming science.

On top of all that he had the humility to say he was a standing on the shoulders of giants!

The notable attributes of Hancock are that he is:

• Homeless
• Surly
• Prone to intoxication

I thought this was a bit of a predictable gag, the Juno-fication of the myth of the superhero. Instead of doing the right thing ( or, freaking the-hell-out when teenage daughter is pregnant ), witticisms will abound and the surly pregnant-teen ( or, superhero ) will grow on you. The Jason Bateman factor seemed all but to ensure this.

But the other day I listened to the “In Our Time (Radio 4)” podcast with Melvyn Bragg on Kierkergaard and was reminded of the sheer terror and weight underlying the “Fear and Trembling” thesis and I thought: “How would you respond to the proposition if you were a superhero, that is, if you were objectively better than everyone else?

Coloring this thought is the masterful “Superman Scene” from the noir “Kill Bill II”.

As you know, I’m quite keen on comic books. Especially the ones about superheroes. I find the whole mythology surrounding superheroes fascinating.

Take my favorite superhero, Superman. Not a great comic book. Not particularly well-drawn. But the mythology… The mythology is not only great, it’s unique.

Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there’s the superhero and there’s the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he’s Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone.

Superman didn’t become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he’s Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red “S” - that’s the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit - that’s the costume. That’s the costume Superman wears to blend in with us.

Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He’s weak… He’s unsure of himself… He’s a coward.

Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race.

If you were objectively stronger, faster, smarter, and in Hancock’s case, “Fresher” than the entire population of this pathetic planet of small-minded monkeys, how could you act with anything but contempt?

What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape. —Friederich Nietzche ( Kaufmann Transl. )

Just as Robinson Crusoe style adventurers come to accept the presence of the lesser creatures ( a helper-monkey, a parrot, etc. ), so the solitary superhero must accept the piddling company of sub-species companions against the deafening loneliness of being the last / the only / etc.

Wilson, a sub-species of companion

I should suppose the only rational emotions would be contempt for them and yourself, and as an emollient for the latter only copious amounts of booze would suffice.

I hope that this idea is explored in the movie.

Aside: Does anyone know what group this is, who took the photo, what it’s about? I think it’s the Bantam edition.

I then proceeded to check the book out and I honestly can say I didn’t understand Mersault ( does anyone? ) and having read the book at least twice more and once in its native language, I’m still completely baffled by Mersault, his motivations, his identity. Mersault’s wedding plan, Mersault’s bliss over tablets of chocolate and cigarettes, his deadly flat attitude towards marriage, and ultimately his dispassionate choices standing on the sand.

As far as existential icons I prefer the doctor from The Plauge or Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment but there’s something about Mersault that haunts me - and it may be something to do with this cover.

“The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.”

But we live in bold times, and bold times call for bold titles.

Recently I read about a “Most Influential Books” list via Daniel Miessler’s post “Episteme”. I commented that it was a bit presumptuous to believe that the reader of the 100 list would be able to get anything out of some of the selections without other key concepts and items discussed in the previous authors’ work. For example, to make sense of Hume or Berkeley, you really need to know Aristotle’s Categories and Descartes’ Meditations. The former is not singled out and the latter didn’t make the list ( cogito ergo sum doesn’t rate? ).

I gave some thought as to how I could give a rough sketch of Western intellectual development in a broad-strokes sense that worked visually. Enter FreeMind. FreeMind is a mind-mapping software ( Free! ) that exports to PDF.

So I took an attempt at producing a PDF that gives context for these books.

Here’s a sample

Full PDF Here

Where possible, I have put a number entry, which corresponds to that book’s entry in the 100 list.

For Updates / Suggestions:

• Leave comments here
  • I will make changes for errors ( Merleau-Ponty never said “changing it changes”! ) or typos
  • Splitting hairs on which school / thought line ( X was born in Romania, why listed as a German? ). Large errors, OK, but keep in mind I’m trying to frame whole books, not write the definitive history of Western Philo
  • Ditto dates. Yes Wittgenstein lived before WWII, but he also lived after. Again, I’m grouping by broad similarity, not hair-splitting difference

I hope this gets some of you reading! If you want two great Anthologies * Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy, From Thales to Aristotle. Cohen, Curd, Reeve eds. Hackett press. * The Continental Philosophy Reader. Edited by Kearney and Rainwater. Routledge Press.

To my great sadness, he has left this world. I left a comment over at Austinist with some surface recollections.

I had the pleasure of taking 18th Century German Idealism ( Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, gateway to Nietzsche ) and his legendary Existentialism class while at the University. I knew his reputation was good, but I didn’t realize what an amazing teacher he was. I had dropped the 2nd symbolic logic class ( not to my taste ) and was looking for a lecture that could take another add / dropper. That was 18th century. I was behind about 2 weeks in the reading so I took to reading the material with a fine grained comb. When I came to his office hours with a laundry list of the finer points about Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason he assured me that such depth wasn’t necessary, but that it was important to understand that the Kantian / Newtonian / Mechanical world view was about to be challenged: by both Hegel and the looming French Revolution / Terror.

His cadence, his eyes, the moustache, I suppose it all made him a bit larger than life. But he never was unapproachable and he would take the opinions or quotidian questions of the undergraduate with the same absorbed in thought consideration that he accorded the learnéd.

But as I said, he seems to have changed the younger me so substantially, that I can’t think of how some of my best and favorite conversations would have happened without the background he taught me. I recall being at a party with Alfredo Garcia and remarking off-handedly that the philosophy project was effectively over after Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: if all argumentation is just fodder for that system, and that system can absorb all critique, what’s the point?

And to hear Solomon wax on the topic of love from an existential point of view, God that was pure Nietzschean poetry. Existentialism is rooted in a challenge: God’s eye is watching you with all of His furious intensity ( Kierkergaard ) or life is arbitrary and undefined and absurd ( Camus ) or there is only Being against not-Being ( Sartre / Heidegger ). In spite of these forces which could grind your little heart and soul to dust, why be moral, or even, why be at all? Existentialism says that the doing, the effect, the passion, the purity, the impeccability wherewith you act is all you very well may have, so do it, do it well, and display the beautiful fire that is your being, your soul, your you-ness.

Solomon would often repeat that existentialism was a “bit of a downer” in popular conception, as he saw it, nothing could be further from the truth: Existentialism was a gauntlet thrown down to the apathetic to change the world for the better ( or, arguably, worse ) and to love fully. To ask the pretty / shy / too-cool girl at the record store for a date, to dare to kiss a beautiful girl you don’t know well, to converse, to drink, to be merry. To feel pleasure and virtue run through your veins, to feel knowledge enrich your life: this was life itself, the life worth living, the eudamonaic life Socrates searched for.

As Solomon told this story you could feel the 200 young faces light up with dreams and hopes and aspirations. It was the best sermon delivered to the Church of the Cyncial Doubters. It was the thing, I daresay, that led to the most hook-ups within the philosophy department undergraduate class too. How could you not want to be beautiful, and free, and in touch, and intimate with another soul after that, or to write a novel, or to dream? He didn’t deliver this lecture passionately, but as that door opened we came out an altered mass.

And what can you do for a man, who surely forgot your name and year as you washed into the tide of bodies and people. For someone who changed your world, but that you didn’t keep in contact with (for this is the strange situation of the professor )? His Nietzsche-scholar wife has requested donations to OxFam instead of flowers ( he was ever so charitable ). I will do this.

In the comments section at Austinist where I learned the news I saw this comment:

This is absolutely awful timing. As a philosophy minor at UT, I was finally signed up for Solomon’s Existentialism class this spring, and I’ve been looking forward to it for a few years now. The man is legendary in the UT philosophy department.

I then saw my chance to pay tribute: to share the stories of Solomon or by Solomon that I remember to those who will never have the chance to hear those great stories from the man himself. Here they are…

Posted at Austinist

Story 1: Philosophy as a life changer

Solomon told a wonderful story (other students feel free to correct my memory, it’s been a decade…) about how a young medical student in Michigan saw a flyer on campus for a brown-bag session about Nietzsche. The naive young man attended the session and heard things about love and passion and that fearsome sturm und drang that lay behind Nietzche’s writing. That afternoon the student changed his major to philosophy and thus would-be Dr. Solomon MD became the beloved Dr. Solomon who so changed my life, and so many others.

Story 2: Music as Philosophy

In the 18th c. German Idealism class the Enlightenment as zeitgeist and Kant are the groundwork for the Hegellian heart of the class. I’ll never forget the day Solomon came in with a small stereo and played a bit of Mozart (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik if I’m not mistaken). “This is Kant”, he intoned, continuing: “Order, reason, balance, control.” He stopped the sample. “And this…”, the Hand of Fate opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony filled the wide lecture room on the south end of Waggener Hall, “is Hegel: Passion, Spirit, the Napoleonic spirit.”

My heart shot up to my throat. I could see the march of the Napoleon through the remains of the Holy Roman Empire and understood just how very real art and philosophy both were. It was one of the most sublime moments of my education.

Story 3: Personal Anecdote: Job Interview

In October of 1999 I was invited to interview in Silicon Valley with my employer. I caught the last direct flight from Austin to SJ and lo, who was in 1st class, but the Dr. and his wife. He smiled as we recognized each other from class. I asked where he was off to, and it was Stanford ( I believe ) to lecture on the nature of Love. “You?”, he asked. I said I was to interview with a company in the valley. He smiled paternally, as I think, he blessed my choice of being a philosopher-businessperson headed to the (then) very go-go capitalist mecca of the universe. As a teacher of business ethics, I think he was glad that I was of the mindset to do things morally while doing great things. I daresay this is the Platonic philosopher-king of our age.

Story 4: Book sales

Solomon said that he felt a bit sketchy about making kids buy his books ( I said he was an ethicist ) and getting royalties. As a means to assuage this issue, a festivity was planned at the end of the semester where said royalties ( and I dare say a good bit of Solomon charity money ) were commingled for a bit of a festivity. I had only had one other teacher try to engage the unwashed masses of students outside of the classroom, and Solomon’s doing this was his trip to the agora, his way of staying close to his students’ hearts and minds.

These are the stories I remember, the changes I cherish, and the man I mourn.

College of Liberal Arts Obit

Austin American Statesman Obit

This Post Is Sticky

“Being inoffensive, and being offended, are now the twin addictions of the culture.”

—Martin Amis

“Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.”

— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Their creed could be defined as: “This world, and all life in it, is meaningful as it is,” translated as: “There is no need to posit ultimate significance elsewhere beyond the immediate experience of everyday life.” The goal in life of young people was happiness achieved primarily through the family.