"The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits." G.K. Chesterton

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Zeno's Apology

We know that the ancient Greeks loved their wine. So must have Zeno, the Greek philosopher who among other things is known for devising numerous paradoxes intended to endorse the views of Parmenides.
One of those paradoxes, called "The Dichotomy" claimed that you could never traverse a finite stretch of space, for in order to get to the destination one would have to first get to the half-way point, but before that one would have to reach the quarter-way point, and so on. So since traversing a finite stretch of space entailed performing an infinite number of tasks, reaching the destination, Zeno argued was impossible. 
We could rephrase this paradox in a way to claim that finishing a goblet of wine is impossible. For before one drinks the whole lot, one need's to drink half first etc. 
Now, either Zeno was also a very unusual Greek insofar as he abstained from wine - which is very doubtful, and would surely be insulting to even assume - or when it came to wine drinking he could perform the impossible! 
I'd take that as a valid defense, if Zeno chose to use it.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Much Ado About Nothing

AN EXERCISE IN INTUITION
Suppose we have two physical vessels of varying size, U and u, and suppose further that they're both empty (in the usual sense - we've run out of wine). Should we consider the degree of their emptiness as the same (i.e. even talk of such degrees is nonsense!), or can we say in a meaningful way that their degrees of emptiness differ?

AN ARGUMENT
Consider two urns in a marble shop. The shopkeeper labelled them in the following way - urn 1 holds only (and can only hold) white marbles, whereas urn 2 can hold both white and black marbles.

Now consider a new assistant that has just been offered an apprenticeship in the shop of his dreams (he loves playing marbles), and is not as yet familiar with the arcana of the labeling system, i.e. he hasn't as yet been told by the shopkeeper what the restrictions on the contents of the urns are.

Now consider the statements 'urn 1 contains no white marbles' and 'urn 2 contains no white marbles' - they entail different things, depending who is exposed to that information - the shopkeeper or the assistant. In particular, to the shopkeeper it means that 'urn 1 is empty'.

On a more technical side, we can substitute the terms 'has no white marbles' and 'is empty' interchangeably salva veritate 
in the context of urn 1 (charity permitted, for naturally one could generate oddly sounding sentences). This cannot however be done in the context of urn 2.

The above argument, and exercise in intuition do not exactly express the same ideas, but overlap on what is essentially the general idea.

Saturday, April 6, 2013

A Sneeze


"It might be an interesting literary exercise to try to describe a sneeze. And all the feelings that precede it." - Oliver Sacks.
Challenge accepted. 
With a latent and barely perceptible tickle of the sinus, comes the announcement of this explosive fanfare of the face. As this initially innocent phantom tingling spreads and overwhelms us with its intensity, pushing tears aside in its tyrannical claim to our nasal cavity, an inner revolt brews.  This somatic protest elevates rapidly, as we tense up and inhale spasmodically liters of air, only to expel them all again, extraditing the unbearable intruder in a convulsive wave of euphoria.

Friday, April 5, 2013

What is your calling?

We make shit up. That's all we ever do, at best. At worst we just repeat the shit made up by others. We need the shit others made up, mind you, in order to make up our own. This is not to be confused with stirring shit up - that's an altogether distinct, and somewhat conditional activity - for in order to do any shit stirring, there already needs to be some shit around - shit that has already been made up, naturally. There are ways out of ever having to do anything with making shit up, or shit stirring. Those who have adopted the two most common evasive strategies, either don't do shit, or don't give a shit.

Breeding Unicorns

It is illegal to breed unicorns - illogical even, or ill founded according to some. It's safe to conclude that breeding unicorns is an ill activity.