Aristoteles ve Kant’ın şöhreti Perşembe, Nov 13 2008

Aristoteles ve Immanuel Kant’ın neden bu kadar ünlü olduğuyla ilgili kısa bir (ingilizce) alıntı:

Aristoteles:

Magee: Perhaps the best way to start is by your quickly drawing a sketch-map for us of the ground covered by Aristotle’s output as a whole.

Nussbaum: We have here a philosophical achievement of tremendous range and complexity. We have fundamental work in logic and all the sciences of his day, including especially the science of biology, where his contribution was unmatched for a thousand years. Then work on the general foundations of scientific explanation; work in general philosophy of nature; work in metaphysics, including the questions of substance, identity, and continuity; work on life and the mental faculties. And finally we have terrific work in ethics and political theory, and work in rhetoric and the theory of literature.

It is an amazing fact that over this incomparable range he was regarded as the authority for hundreds of years during the Middle Ages. In fact the greatest philosopher of the late Medieval Ages, Thomas Aquinas, used to refer to him simply as ‘the philosopher’.

Immanuel Kant

Magee: I referred at the beginning to the fact that [Immanuel Kant] is widely regarded by serious students of philosophy as the greatest philosopher since the ancient Greeks. Why does his reputation stand at quite such a pinnacle?

Warnock: I think I would mention chiefly two qualities as entitling him to his pinnacle of fame. I think he was quite exceptionally penetrating, in the sense that he was able to see an intellectual problem in something which had previously been taken for granted as not worth much attention. He had an extraordinary capacity to see where the problems were – and that’s one of the greatest, most fundamental philosophical gifts – to be able to see that there is a problem where everybody else is going along quite happily, not thinking about it much. Then I think the other thing – and this connects perhaps with his academic professionalism – is that he was extremely good at seeing how the whole compass of his arguments fitted together – how what he says on this topic or that might repercuss, so to speak, on what he’s said somewhere else or in some other connection. He was very self-conscious, and professionally methodical, in that sort of way; there was absolutely nothing piecemeal, or makeshift, or hand-to-mouth about his way of going to work. One has the feeling that the whole huge enterprise is firmly under control. He does, I must say, make writers like Locke and Berkeley, and indeed Hume, excellent though they are, look to me rather like amateurs.

Bryan Magee. 1987. The Great Philosophers. oxford university press (2000)

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One God Further Cuma, Jul 13 2007

 

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in (like ancient greek gods). Some of us just go one god further.“

Richard Dawkins

 

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Spirit Perşembe, Jul 12 2007

Spirit

Allen Wheelis

Excerpt from On Not Knowing How to Live, 1975

We come into being as a slight thickening at the end of a long thread. Cells proliferate, become an excrescence, assume the shape of a man. The end of the thread now lies buried within, shielded, inviolate. Our task is to bear it forward, pass it on. We flourish for a moment, achieve a bit of singing and dancing, a few memories we would carve in stone, then we wither, twist out of shape. The end of the thread lies now in our children, extends back through us, unbroken, unfathomably into the past. Numberless thickenings have appeared on it, have flourished and have fallen away as we now fall away. Nothing remains but the germ-line. What changes to produce new structures as life evolves is not the momentary excrescence but the hereditary arrangements within the thread.

We are carriers of spirit. We know not how nor why nor where. On our shoulders, in our eyes, in anguished hands through unclear realm, into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation, we bear its full weight. Depends it on us utterly, yet we know it not. We inch it forward with each beat of heart, give to it the work of hand, of mind. We falter, pass it on to our children, lay out our bones, fall away, are lost, forgotten. Spirit passes on, enlarged, enriched, more strange, complex.

We are being used. Should not we know in whose service? To whom, to what, give we unwitting loyalty? What is this quest? Beyond that which we have what could we want? What is spirit?

A river or a rock, writes Jacques Monod, “we know, or believe, to have been molded by the free play of physical forces to which we cannot attribute any design, any ‘project’ or purpose. Not, that is, if we accept the basic premise of the scientific method, to wit, that nature is objective and not projective.”

That basic premise carries a powerful appeal. For we remember a time, no more than a few generations ago, when the opposite seemed manifest, when the rock wanted to fall, the river to sing or to rage. Willful spirits roved the universe, used nature with whim. And we know what gains in understanding and in control have come to us from the adoption of a point of view which holds that natural objects and events are without goal or intention. The rock doesn’t want anything, the volcano pursues no purpose, river quests not the sea, wind seeks no destination.

But there is another view. The animism of the primitive is not the only alternative to scientific objectivity. This objectivity may be valid for the time spans in which we are accustomed to reckon, yet untrue for spans of enormously greater duration. The proposition that light travels in a straight line, unaffected by adjacent masses, serves us well in surveying our farm, yet makes for error in the mapping of distant galaxies. Likewise, the proposition that nature, what is just “out there,” is without purpose, serves us well as we deal with nature in days or years or lifetimes, yet may mislead us on the plains of eternity.

Spirit rises, matter falls. Spirit reaches like a flame, a leap of dancer. Out of the void it creates form like a god, is god. Spirit was from the start, though even that beginning may have been an ending of some earlier start. If we look back far enough we arrive at a primal mist wherein spirit is but a restlessness of atoms, a trembling of something there that will not stay in stillness and in cold.

Matter would have the universe a uniform dispersion, motionless, complete. Spirit would have an earth, a heaven and a hell, whirl and conflict, an incandescent sun to drive away the dark, to illumine good and evil, would have though, memory, desire, would build a stairway of forms increasing in complexity, inclusiveness, to a heaven ever receding above, changing always in configuration, becoming when reached but the way to more distant heavens, the last… but there is no last, for spirit tends upward without end, wanders, spirals, dips, but tends ever upward, ruthlessly using lower forms to create higher forms, moving toward ever greater inwardness, consciousness, spontaneity, to an ever greater freedom.

Particles become animate. Spirit leaps aside from matter which tugs forever to pull it down, to make it still. Minute creatures writhe in warm oceans. Ever more complex become the tiny forms which bear for a moment a questing spirit. They come together, touch; spirit is beginning to create love. They touch, something passes. They die, die, die, endlessly. Who shall know the spawnings in the rivers of our past? Who shall count the waltzing grunion on the shores of ancient seas? Who shall hear the unheard poundings of that surf? Who will mourn the rabbits of the plains, the furry tides of lemmings? They die, die, die, but have touched, and something passes. Spirit leaps away, creates new bodies, endlessly, ever more complex vessels to bear spirit forward, pass it on enlarged to those who follow.

Virus becomes bacteria, becomes algae, becomes fern. Thrust of spirit cracks stone, drives up the Douglas fir. Amoeba reaches out soft blunt arms in ceaseless motion to find the world, to know it better, to bring it in, growing larger, questing further, ever more capacious of spirit. Anemone becomes squid, becomes fish; wiggling becomes swimming, becomes crawling; fish becomes slug, becomes lizard; crawling becomes walking, becomes running, becomes flying. Living things reach out to each other, spirit leaps between. Tropism becomes scent, becomes fascination, becomes lust, becomes love. Lizard to fox to monkey to man, in a look, in a world, we come together, touch, die, serve spirit without knowing, carry it forward, pass it on. Ever more winged this spirit, ever greater its leaps. We love someone far away, someone who dies long ago.

“Man is the vessel of the Spirit,” writes Erich Heller; “… Spirit is the voyager who, passing through the land of man, bids the human soul to follow it to the Spirit’s purely spiritual destination.”

Viewed closely, the path of spirit is seen to meander, is a glisten of snail’s way in night forest; but from a height minor turnings merge into steadiness of course. Man has reached a ledge from which to look back. For thousands of years the view is clear, and beyond, though a haze, for thousands more, we still see quite a bit. The horizon is millions of years behind us. Beyond the vagrant turnings of our last march stretches a shining path across that vast expanse running straight. Man did not begin it nor will he end it, but makes it now, finds the passes, cuts the channels. Whose way is it we so further? Not man’s; for there’s our first footprint. Not life’s; for there’s still the path when life was not yet.

Spirit is the traveller, passes now through the realm of man. We did not create spirit, do not possess it, cannot define it, are but the bearers. We take it up from unmourned and forgotten forms, carry it through our span, will pass it on, enlarged or diminished, to those who follow. Spirit is the voyager, man is the vessel.

Spirit creates and spirit destroys. Creation without destruction is not possible; destruction without creation feeds on past creation, reduces form to matter, tends toward stillness. Spirit creates more than it destroys (though not in every season, nor even every age, hence those meanderings, those turnings back, wherein the longing of matter for stillness triumphs in destruction) and this preponderance of creation makes for that overall steadiness of course.

From primal mist of matter to spiralled galaxies and clockwork solar systems, from molten rock to an earth of air and land and water, from heaviness to lightness to life, sensation to perception, memory to consciousness – man now holds a mirror, spirit sees itself. Within the river currents turn back, eddies whirl. The river itself falters, disappears, emerges, moves on. The general course is the growth of form, increasing awareness, matter to mind to consciousness. The harmony of man and nature is to be found in continuing this journey along its ancient course toward greater freedom and awareness.

Reflections

by Douglas Hofstadter

In these poetic passages, psychiatrist Allen Wheelis portrays the eerie, disorienting view that modern science has given us of our place in the scheme of things. Many scientists, not to mention humanists, find this a very difficult view to swallow and look for some kind of spiritual essence, perhaps intangible, that would distinguish living beings, particularly humans, from the inanimate rest of the universe. How does anima come from atoms?

Wheelis’s concept of “spirit” is not that sort of essence. It is a way of describing the seemingly purposeful path of evolution as if there were one guiding force behind it. If there is, it is that which Richard Dawkins in the powerful selection that follows so clearly states: survival of stable replicators. In his preface Dawkins candidly writes: “We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known to us as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment. Though I have known it for years, I never seem to get fully used to it. One of my hopes is that I may have some success in astonishing others.”

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The Dispossessed Pazartesi, Dec 4 2006

Faydalı bir eser.

Ursula K. Leguin’in artık bir bilimkurgu klasiği haline gelmiş eserini yeni okudum. Türkçeye “Mülksüzler” olarak yıllar önce çevirilmiş.

Bilimkurgu (BK) klasiği olarak geçse de çoğu kişinin BK’dan beklediğinden kat kat fazlasını içeriyor. Olay özetleyeyim: Urras adlı bir gezegende (bildiğimiz anlamda) insan kültürüne çok yakın bir ortam var. Sisteme isyan eden bir grup insan (20 milyon kadar), gezegeni terkedip Urras’ın ayına yani Anarres’e yerleşiyorlar. Burda Odo isimli bir düşünürün öğretileri çerçevesinde yeni bir toplum kuruyorlar: temeli mülke ve güce değil birliğe, dayanışmaya dayanan anarşist bir toplum. Urras ve Anarres arasında kolonizasyondan sonra ilişkiler tamamen kesiliyor. Sadece çok sınırlı ticaret ilişkileri sürdürülüyor. Hikayenin başında Shevek isimli parlak fizikçimiz, kolonizasyondan sonra iki kültür arasındaki ilk teması sağlayarak Anarres’den kalkıp Urras’ta bir üniversiteye ziyarette bulunuyor. Bundan sonra hem Shevek’in doğumundan başlayarak Anarres’deki hayatını, hem de Urras’a ayak bastıktan sonra yaşadıklarını öğreniyoruz. İki dünyada da değişimin temellerini atmasına şahit oluyoruz.

Anarres’te geçen kısımlarda anarşizmi, mülksüzlüğü, dayanışmayı ve çok farklı bir toplum düzeninde aynı şekilde oldukça farklılaşan kadın-erkek ilişkilerini görüyoruz. Urras’ta Shevek’in yaşadıklarından ise güç ilişkilerini, kapitalizmi, sınıf ayrımını, bu düzenin kadınları nasıl bir duruma sokabileceğini ve bilimin nasıl amaç değil araç olabileceğini görüyoruz. Bunları görürken de insan doğasına, kadın-erkek ilişkilerine dair ilginç fikirlerle karşı karşıya kalıyoruz.

Kitap hakkında çok farklı yorumlar okudum, birkaç farklı okuması yapılabilir sanırım. Ben hep Urras’ı Dünya’nın gelebileceği bir noktayı tasvir ettiğini (distopya olduğunu) düşünmüştüm. Fakat daha sonra Dünya gezegeninin de adı geçiyor ve “İnsanlık” yakın çevredeki 3 uygarlıktan birisi olarak bahsediliyor. Hikaye boyunca “insanlar” hep arka planda ve bu bende bir merak uyandırdı haliyle: “Acaba bizim uygarlığımız bu resimde nerede?” diye düşünmüştüm. Urras haline gelen Dünya fikri bile yeterince kötüyken hikayenin sonunda Dünya’mızın ve insanlığın durumunu öğreniyoruz. Sonuç Urras’tan bile kötü.

Vurgulanan başka bir şey ise Urras’ın cennet gibi bir gezegen, Anarres’in ise çoğunlukla çöl olması. Anarres’te hayvan yok, ve sadece bir-iki tür bitki yetişiyor. Hayat zor. Urras’ta varlık içinde yokluk çeken sınıflar varken Anarres toplumu birlik içinde “yok”u “var”a çevirmeye çabalıyor.

Beğendiğim bir bölümü yazıyorum. Shevek oldukça sakin bir arkadaşımız olmasına rağmen bir partide ilk kez sarhoş oluyor (evet, Anarres’te alkol alınmıyor) ve kendi değerlerini küçük düşürücü bazı tepkiler aldıktan sonra gelen “Yahu bize Anarres’i anlat, sahiden o kadar müthiş mi?” sorusu karşısında patlamadan edemiyor:

“I don’t know. No. It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and feet, like me and the waiter there. But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, they are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull, and hard work. You can’t always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn’t enough. You Urrasti have enough. Enough air, enough rain, grass, oceans, food, music, buildings, factories, machines, books, clothes, history. You are rich, you own. We are poor, we lack. You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free – possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes – the wall, the wall!”

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