Culture, speaking, choice

[davewitley]

Thank you, Rita, for the Martin Gardner quote.  I will try to look 
out the website in a quiet(!) moment.  On culture, though, I do want 
to take issue with:

> Surely *real* Humanities types would be psychoanalyzing the author 
from the work, explaining how the novel is a model of class warfare 
or patriarchy, unravelling little strings of the text that can be 
proclaimed as influences from past literature or current pop 
culture... 

I believe not.  I think this type of activity belongs either to 
science types lost in the humanities world and grasping at straws, or 
humanities types suffering from science-envy and trying to make their 
field 'scientific'.  Concepts like class warfare and patriarchy can 
be very useful tools for understanding things, but allowed to become 
the defining principle of all analysis they are worse than nothing.

No, I was thinking of good old-fashioned literary criticism.  I had 
originally said:

>As scientists here, we are guests in the natural territory of the 
artists/humanitarians, and sometimes struggle to cope with the habits 
of thought assumed natural.

and Tabouli asked the question I was dreading:

>What are these habits of thought assumed natural?

This I find very difficult to specify.  One of the things that 
sparked my comments was a post by Pippin about Lupin, Snape and 
Sirius.  I'm offline as I write this, but I think she said something 
along the lines of Sirius' needing to have something about his 
character that makes it impossible for him to step into the role of 
Harry's father, because Harry himself has to do this.  She went on to 
say that each had to face their inner something I can't quite 
remember, and then their story would be over.  Also Heidi said 
something offlist about it being 'obvious' that JKR intends us to 
think that Neville is under a memory charm.

In the first case, I was left baffled because, while Pippin's 
comments made perfect sense, I could not discern the pathway by which 
she had arrived there.  While I don't want to detract from Pippin's 
obvious intelligence (at the risk of alienating various moderators, I 
have to say that one of the more arcane pleasures of HPFGU is 
watching Pippin run rings round anyone who dares to cross pens with 
her), I felt there was probably a learned approach to literature at 
work here too.  Looking at fictional characters, one discerns the 
story for that character.  It's just a way of unpicking the text that 
doesn't come naturally to me.  It's seen more from the author's point 
of view, I guess.  What is Lupin for?  How can Sirius be kept at a 
distance form Harry, and what purpose does this serve?  I don't 
pretend to aspire to the insights of an Elkins or a Pippin, but I 
reckon that with a few years of reading books while immersing myself 
in questions of that sort, and discussing them with others undergoing 
the same process, and I would be much more in tune with this sort of 
post.

In the second case, it just wasn't obvious to me until Heidi pointed 
it out.  I think that's because I don't ask myself what the author 
intends when I read something, while I think that that is something 
humanities students are encouraged to ask.  Funnily enough, like 
psychologists, I'm not sure if lawyers place easily in this 
dichotomy.  I suppose it relates to their views on natural versus 
positive law.

And finally:
> Catherine, who was taught lit crit the Leavisian way originally, 
and has never recovered

Do tell!  What is the Leavisian way?

On speaking in public:

Mike's crisis was all over long before I read about it, but he quoted 
Amy:

>Amy Z, who's had all too many nightmares about just that happening, 
reckoned she

>> 'd probably rather break a leg than have to stand up in front of a 
crowd to say something wise sans notes.

I think there's something exhilerating about being up in front of the 
many-headed, expected to say something to hold them.  This happened 
just once to me: at my wedding.  In England the speeches are: Bride's 
father, Groom, Best Man.  I had written notes of what I wanted to say 
(I knew there were things I wanted to say), and gone to my Best Man's 
flat with them.  There I got changed into my penguin suit, *leaving 
the notes in my other suit* and went on to the church, and thence to 
the hotel where the reception was held.

Now a wedding is a good-natured occasion, so I could have got away 
with anything, I'm sure.  But being without my notes if anything made 
it easier.  I was free to look at the guests (about 100) while making 
my points.  I loved it.

Generally, once I get into my stride, I enjoy presentations at 
conferences and the like.  It is easier than a sermon (I have done 
that, too), because of the slides, but there is something about 
establishing a rapport with your audience which is unlike anything 
else in life.  Questions and answers are the best of all.

Choice:

Thank you to Mike, Rita, Tabouli, Amy.  Just a few thoughts.  It was 
gratifying and disappointing to find nobody much better off than me.  
C'mon chaps, can't we just crack this one before lunchtime?

At one time I had to research mathematical theories of war causation 
(chief finding: they're not worth the paper they're printed on), and 
came across a bunch of academics (Michigan, I think) who gather more 
data than you could shake a stick at about all sorts of stuff in the 
world, and try to correlate it with the incidence of conflict, in the 
hope of identifying causes.  I mention this now because it made me 
realise that the concept of causation is pretty slippery too.  These 
guys thought that if they could line A up with B, they were getting 
to causes. The aim was to do a statistical model, and predict war.  
Since causation underlies many forms of determinism, I'm not sure 
that determinists have any better basis for their world view.  (And 
if they replace causation with the decretive will of God, then they 
are lumbered with choice again - his.)

As for randomness, defining what precisely is meant by that is one of 
the few things which causes (oops!) mathematicians to disagree and 
divide into schools (go on, admit it, you didn't think that was 
possible in maths): subjectivists (or Bayesians) and frequentists.

Finally, nobody has yet mentioned that modern physics ascribes a 
central role to the observer.  At the quantum level, I don't believe 
anybody is sure if anything would happen if someone wasn't there to 
watch it.  This is not the same as choice but it's getting close.  
Drieux?

David, wondering if Mrs Norris formerly belonged to Erwin Schrödinger