Yes, it is fun.
You said:
'I've got to prepare for 6 hours of classes tomorrow but I can use a lot of this exchange because we are exploring 'interpretation' of text in "The Incredible Lightness of Being".'
And I have to make a postscript file of the first Cycle of my high school economics course. That will be compressed into an executable rar file to send by E-Mail to a young lady who will begin teaching 4 classes of senior economics tomorrow and will need the stuff printed on Monday, so she can start the Cycle Tuesday.
Thus does reality intrude into our lofty thoughts.
But, back to business.
You added a reference to "disciple" in your note. I'll add this to "religious", "ad hoc" and "dogma". Incidentally, many of your posts contain bits of Wittgenstein, or comments on Wittgenstein, or glowing appraisals of Wittgenstein.
I don't recall any criticism of Wittgenstein. Does this make you a disciple? (Someone who believes and helps to spread the doctrine of another.)
If you have a critique of Wittgenstein, I would love to see it.
Now, the only time I mentioned George was in a little potted biography I did of myself back in January - where I detailed how I came across him and found him extremely useful, but nevertheless fought him all the way - and lost.
The two Assumptions appear in Progress and Poverty some 165 pages apart as odd remarks - about obvious human behavior, but otherwise not particularly significant.
You asked me if I had read George Orwell's essays at that time. The answer is probably yes, but I cannot remember them - which probably means that I agreed with them (or thought them too lightweight to bother with).
I did find George worth bothering with. I was a free trader. George wrote what is probably the best book ever written on free trade, then showed that the benefits of free trade do not find their way into the hands of marginal workers at the bottom of the heap - except in transitory fashion.
He also said things so well. It is certain that Progress and Poverty has been used in many literature classes in University - but very few economics classes. You would find him interesting and a fine writer, even if you disagreed with everything he said.
I did enjoy Burke
Marilyn Waring merely reiterated the same old stuff.
Russell Banks' was OK.
Schiller again is saying the same things
I enjoyed the piece from Mary Rose O'Reilley's book "The Peaceable Classroom" but she was describing chaos rather than order. "It is dangerous to stand in a classroom with literature in our hands. What do we do with those awful moments in Virginia Woolf when her meaning becomes unmistakable: there is no possibility of human beings understanding each other, no hope at all."
Grossman was good.
I thought that Wittgenstein's remark about the Oracle was fun, but not particularly wise. Science tests its hypotheses. When the Oracle appears to be wrong, we seek reasons for our failure to understand. When physics appears to be wrong, we test it.
If physics says there is gravity and the Oracle says there isn't, one simply tests it by stepping off a cliff. It's not an experiment you can repeat but it probably provides a clear answer.
So we come to: "We turn not older with years; but newer every day"
I suppose that the TV commercial "I'm not growing older, I'm growing better" isn't in the same class. Now, I know I'm a Philistine, but while I like her poem, I am unwilling to place a deep significance on it. But, I also know you may. So be it.
I don't have a lot of old left, which may affect my viewpoint.
As I read your various excerpts, I experienced deja vu. It seemed to me I had read these things before. That's a problem with being around a long while.
As to being a "disciple" (because I work for one of the many schools all around the world named after Henry George) I must say I think the man was great. But, I brought his remarks about exertion to the front of my economics course and called them Basic Assumptions. He had them both in the text far apart from each other and treated them as self evident truths, not worth spending many words on.
I changed his basic concepts, the very essence of his arguments - while keeping the same names (which I might also change). I changed a number of conclusions, because I thought they were inadequate. I'm not much of a disciple.
What have you denied in Wittgenstein?
Now to the less consequential. You told me that I said:
"There is an order in the universe."
I said:
I didn't say there was an order in the universe.
Oh yes you did Harry, I pasted it into the very beginning of the thread that prompted this response. Check your sources Harry.
You think you actually pasted your own paste.
It's often useful to excerpt - but a careful cut and past can change the meaning.
I don't think that I ever said "There was an order in the universe."
I said that two Basic Assumptions precede every science. - and I quoted them.
You took one line of the quote and gave it to me, .
You also suggested that I "claim to discover" this order.
I have claimed nothing. I merely noted the Assumptions that precede every science.
You also said we impose a system on nature. We can't. We can only find an order which will allow us to understand more fully.
It's obvious that I have failed to get over to you self-evident truths - which is all the assumptions are. Now. that's real failure!
Perhaps you should reverse the scientific assumptions.
"There is chaos in the universe."
"We are unable to discover that chaos"
Has a certain ring to it!
Harry
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Harry Pollard
Henry George School of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
Tel: (818) 352-4141
Fax: (818) 353-2242
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