Optics: the activity of an interpretation or the interpretation of an activity?

Problematic

Keeping a Record

Horace Vernet, Jeremiah on the ruins of Jerusalem (1844)

...will be the biggest telescope on Earth

 

Please click HERE.

A Philosophy of Spontaneous "Systems" Organization

I am currently reading Apollo 13 Owners' Workshop Manual: An engineering insight into how NASA saved the crew of the failed Moon mission by David Baker. The author goes into amazing detail describing the technology and the processes by which the Apollo 13 mission--crew, mission control, engineers--transitioned from a moon landing mission to an ad hoc rescue effort. Although there were contingency plans for technical failures that might occur at virtually every stage of the flight, the particular emergency Apollo 13 faced was not anticipated; the extraordinary conditions were met with an extraordinary response. At one level, the book provides amazing descriptions of Apollo technology, at another, the book describes an extensive and flexible institutional "apparatus" comprising thousands of engineers, managers, and technicians in NASA, industry, the military, and government. 

Compare, in a sense, Xenophon's descriptions in The Persian Wars of the 10,000 suddenly (and very cleverly) re-organizing after the murder of the Greek generals, and so on.

Plato and Aristotle, Two Key Distinctions

1 Theory of Forms                                                       

Plato: Everything in this world is a mere imitation of an ideal form that really exists in Eternity.                                                        

Aristotle: Form is a component of matter.                    

2 Eudemonia

Plato: We should seek eudemonia in the next life, in Eternity. This life and certainly this world impede our search for eudemonia.

Aristotle: We should seek eudemonia in this life as well as the next.

Raphael, The School of Athens (1511, detail)

 

 

 

 

Octo-Emanations reaches Nigeria

It has taken five months, but a copy of Octo-Emanations has finally reached poet Ebi Robert in Nigeria. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are yet waiting for a copy to reach India, and I have been advised that not much is getting in these days. Stay tuned.

Michael Butterworth, 2020

Michael Butterworth's website has been updated with information about his projects and activities in 2020. Octo-Emanations gets a mention. Please click HERE.

Michael Butterworth reading in Berlin

Utopian and Dystopian Literature

Utopian and Dystopian Literature

Utopian

Plato’s Republic (But is it utopian?)

St. Augustine, The City of God (413-426)

Sir Thomas Moore, Utopia (1516)

Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (1627)

James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656)          

Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (1888)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman Herland

H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (1905)     \

B.F. Skinner, Walden Two (1948)          

Dystopian

Plato’s Republic (But is it utopian? Or a warning against “justice” as a moral and political criterion—elsewhere in Plato, and keeping with Socrates, Aristotle, Locke and Jefferson, “eudemonia” is the moral and political criterion.)

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels Book III

Jack London, The Iron Heel (1907)

Karel Čapek, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots, 1920),  War with the Newts (1936)

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (1932)

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)

Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925)

George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)

George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (1945)

Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading (1938), Bend Sinister (1947)

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

 

Along the Shore of Emotional Belief

 

... there stood in division of conflict ...

The Rage of Achilles, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
(Athena prevents Achilles from killing Agamemnon)

 

 

            

What god was it then set them together in bitter collision?

Zeus’ son and Leto’s, Apollo, who in anger at the king drove 

the foul pestilence along the host, and the people perished...

            -- The Illiad Book I: 8-10

Looking Ahead (again) to Emanations 9

In early December I posted my thoughts concerning appropriate timing for a Submissions Call for Emanations 9 (please click HERE).

At this point, I should like to revise that estimate. 

Now, I cannot say for sure, but I envision a Call going out near the end of this April.  If things work out this way, the review of submissions would begin sometime in August. 

"Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus" by John William Waterhouse

Terrance Lindall reads from The Acrostic Paradise Lost

Please click below to view the book:

Locus of Values

 

Betelgeuse Dimming by Jean-Paul Garnier

Jean-Paul Garnier (see his short story "Birth of Fire" in Octo-Emanations) has just released a new book of science fiction poetry, Betelgeuse Dimming, which is available as a free audiobook version. It also comes in epub and pdf versions.  Please click HERE for the audiobook.

Fact-Checking Literature and Philosophy

"...where intellectual associations take place..."

Computer Zero

The Thirteenth Century is missing...

What's the problem?

The impending perspicuity.

Looking ahead to Emanations 9

Because of the public health situation and the chronophagous demands of teaching on-line, I am waiting to learn of my college's plan for Spring Term.  If the plan is to go on-line, the Call will have to be postponed until April.  If we are to be in the classroom, the Call should go out in January.  

Wizard Reading a Book by Mannepanne  SOURCE