5.0060 Responses: Gatling Gun; Philosophy (3/64)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Wed, 15 May 91 21:07:23 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0060. Wednesday, 15 May 1991.
(1) Date: Wed, 15 May 91 10:11:01 +0200 (22 lines)
From: Timothy.Reuter@MGH.BADW-MUENCHEN.DBP.DE
Subject: 5.0054 Gatling Gun
(2) Date: Wed, 15 May 91 10:38:55 EDT (17 lines)
From: Stephen Spangehl <SDSPAN01@ULKYVM>
Subject: 5.0054 Qs: Gatlin Gun
(3) Date: Tue, 14 May 91 07:02 CDT (25 lines)
From: Robin Smith <RSMITH@KSUVM.KSU.EDU>
Subject: Kessler's comments on philosophy
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 May 91 10:11:01 +0200
From: Timothy.Reuter@MGH.BADW-MUENCHEN.DBP.DE
Subject: 5.0054 Gatling Gun
The poem wanted is not by Kipling but by Henry Newbolt, and has a rather
different moral. The lines are (quoting from memory, though it's awful
to confess that this stuff has stuck in the memory since school 25
years ago!)
The sands of the desert are sodden red
Red with the blood of a broken square
...
And the Gatling's jammed, and the colonel's dead
[possibly another line here ]
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
"Play up! Play up! and play the game!"
thus applying what he had learned on the cricket field at school to the
Egyptian/Sudanese campaigns of the 1880s and 1890s. Evidently the Right
Stuff was more important than High Tech, even then.
Timothy Reuter
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------23----
Date: Wed, 15 May 91 10:38:55 EDT
From: Stephen Spangehl <SDSPAN01@ULKYVM>
Subject: 5.0054 Qs: Gatlin Gun
Re: Gatlin Gun
It is the Gatling gun, invented by Richard J. Gatling (1818-1903), an
American.
With its many barrels and ability to fire repeatedly, it must have given
the British an overwhelming advantage. Incidentally, the gangster term
<gat> comes from Gatling's name also.
Stephen D. Spangehl +---------------+
University of Louisville | SDSPAN01 @ |
Louisville, Kentucky 40292 | ULKYVM.BITNET |
(502) 588-7289 or (502) 245-0319 +---------------+
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------32----
Date: Tue, 14 May 91 07:02 CDT
From: Robin Smith <RSMITH@KSUVM.KSU.EDU>
Subject: Kessler's comments on philosophy
Though I am sympathetic with Kessler's complaints about excessive profes-
sionalization among academic humanists, his picture of philosophy at his
own institution (or in the US generally) is unrecognizably deformed. At
almost any school in the US, the basic undergraduate degree in
philosophy includes some sort of requirement for a course in ancient
Greek philosophy and a course in modern (i.e. 17th-18th century)
philosophy; usually, this is the largest single required component of
the degree. The same is true at the level of Ph. D. general exams
(history of philosophy is often 40% of the whole). And Kessler might
like to find out what Marilyn Adams, Robert Adams, and Monty Furth at
his own institution do for a living. Some would say that the one thing
that unifies the very diverse collection of people who identify
themselves as academic philosophers is the notion that what they do is
continuous in some way with what Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz,
Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant (or some such list) did. I doubt this
will change Kessler's opinion, but some of the rest of you might wnat to
know that it's not to be trusted.
Robin Smith
Philosophy (what else?)
Kansas State U.