20.436 where we are

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 20, No. 436.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
  www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/cch/research/publications/humanist.html
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         Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2007 10:12:40 +0000
         From: lachance_at_origin.chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
         Subject: Re: 20.431 where we are

Willard

Why not take your cue from the subject line you provided?

Where we are

> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>
>
Are there really two cultures "where we are"?

We whoever "we" may encompass can deny a global success in explaining
the natural world without denying a
lot of regional successes in explanation. And in so doing we don't
have to be bound to a dual set of
trajectories. We have truck with _events_.

Recently (Jan 30, 2007 to be more exact) Italian philosopher Giani
Vattimo spoke at U of Toronto on the
myth of "Unity". He broached the topic by way of Foucault's
"ontologie de l'actualite". his trip took him
to Heidegger. Englishing the phrase one get the "ontology of current
events" apt to describe the currents
that flow from an event and in a sense an ontology inflected towards
emanations.

Unity with a capital U points the logical symbol for union; stood on
its head, it is the symbol for
intersection. It becomes possible to think unity in terms of
connectedness and not merely as dominion.
There is a way via Pierce to recoup the Thomastic transcendentals
(Unity, Beauty, Goodness) of Being for a
practice mindful of place and situation and co-federation.

For Success read Unity. Take two-sidedness and fold again:

> Perhaps "trajectory" is the wrong metaphor, though it does seem to
> have much to recommend it, esp if the thing on it has humans aboard.
> What I wanted to suggest was that we have a genuine question of our
> own to consider: given the parting of the intellectual ways in these
> two divergent trajectories, where are we? Williams regarded it as a
> profound error for defenders of the humanities to go about their
> business by denying the success of the sciences in explaining the
> natural world, and so putting them and the humanities in the same
> boat. To do so is only to flip the coin whose other side has the
> humanities trying to become "scientific". Far better to leave
> two-sidedness alone, I'd think.

Just how do you propose to leave recto/verso when the leaf of
booklore maps so nicely to the before and
later of a time series. We speack similar languages. It just takes a
wee bit of imagination to effect the
translations.

-- 
Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance
Everyone is a little bit crazy; everyone at some time has a learning
disability;
No one is ever a little bit positive.