Monday, February 27, 2012
Two snippets
After something of a gap, started reading McBride on 18th century Ireland again, thinking it best to go back to the beginning. Even reading the preface and introduction this time. But it still seems a reasonably balanced book; less need to bash the Brits at all points than there might have been 20 or 30 years ago. Maybe the hatchets really are rusting away, if not altogether buried, after nearly 100 years of independence. Presumably in 2023 or so there will be some monster celebrations, assuming that is that their public finances have recovered by then.
But I share a snippet of a different sort. It seems that the educated Irish were keen to be fully part of the Enlightenment Era, very strong across the water, to the point where they were lampooned in 'Gulliver's Travels' for their interest in the extraction of sunbeams from cucumbers. There was also a chap called Molyneux who invented a very important puzzle which went like this. Suppose you taught a chap who had been blind from birth all about spheres and cubes. To the point where he could readily distinguish them by touch. Suppose then that there was a miracle (this is Ireland) and said chap could suddenly see. Would he be able to distinguish a sphere from a cube without touching them?
An interesting problem which, it seems, continues to vex the educated to this day. But I don't think the question admits of a simple answer, yes or no. I think it would all depend, both on the chap concerned and the way in which the experiment was conducted. The problem being compounded by not being able to repeat an experiment as the subject of the experiment would be damaged, perhaps changed would be a kinder word, by the experiment. I am reminded of the debates about nature and nurture. One used to have very noisy arguments about this, with some people taking what seem now like quite extreme positions - but I don't think that this question admits of a simple answer either. Generally speaking, both nature and nurture have their part in the final product, or perhaps just some feature of interest in the final product, but I am not sure at all that it makes much sense to say that one part is bigger than another. Parts may well not be commensurate enough to make such comparisons valid.
Interesting stuff, unlike recent issues of the TLS in which I have not found a great deal of interest. The latest, however, did bring me my second snippet in an article by one Ari Kelman, a Californian historian, about perceptions of the American Civil War, nominally a review of four books about the same. I had not really thought before what a tricky subject this was. Partly because, at least until the 60's, many in the south got very dewy eyed about the gallant confederates, with very little regard for their slaves and the lack of progress made on that front despite and since emancipation. So, for example, the South Carolina chapter of the Civil War Centennial Commission saw fit to do some of its business in a segregated hotel in Charleston. Kelman also claims that the Woodrow Wilson of the 14 points, someone whom many nationalists from small countries in Europe got very dewy eyed about in the aftermath of the First World War, was a stalwart segregationist.
But I share a snippet of a different sort. It seems that the educated Irish were keen to be fully part of the Enlightenment Era, very strong across the water, to the point where they were lampooned in 'Gulliver's Travels' for their interest in the extraction of sunbeams from cucumbers. There was also a chap called Molyneux who invented a very important puzzle which went like this. Suppose you taught a chap who had been blind from birth all about spheres and cubes. To the point where he could readily distinguish them by touch. Suppose then that there was a miracle (this is Ireland) and said chap could suddenly see. Would he be able to distinguish a sphere from a cube without touching them?
An interesting problem which, it seems, continues to vex the educated to this day. But I don't think the question admits of a simple answer, yes or no. I think it would all depend, both on the chap concerned and the way in which the experiment was conducted. The problem being compounded by not being able to repeat an experiment as the subject of the experiment would be damaged, perhaps changed would be a kinder word, by the experiment. I am reminded of the debates about nature and nurture. One used to have very noisy arguments about this, with some people taking what seem now like quite extreme positions - but I don't think that this question admits of a simple answer either. Generally speaking, both nature and nurture have their part in the final product, or perhaps just some feature of interest in the final product, but I am not sure at all that it makes much sense to say that one part is bigger than another. Parts may well not be commensurate enough to make such comparisons valid.
Interesting stuff, unlike recent issues of the TLS in which I have not found a great deal of interest. The latest, however, did bring me my second snippet in an article by one Ari Kelman, a Californian historian, about perceptions of the American Civil War, nominally a review of four books about the same. I had not really thought before what a tricky subject this was. Partly because, at least until the 60's, many in the south got very dewy eyed about the gallant confederates, with very little regard for their slaves and the lack of progress made on that front despite and since emancipation. So, for example, the South Carolina chapter of the Civil War Centennial Commission saw fit to do some of its business in a segregated hotel in Charleston. Kelman also claims that the Woodrow Wilson of the 14 points, someone whom many nationalists from small countries in Europe got very dewy eyed about in the aftermath of the First World War, was a stalwart segregationist.
# posted by Jim @ 2:50 AM 
