La merde in literary theory
Jorn Barger
loaned Mary Neiland's 1994 "'St Antoine' and Flaubert's Fiction:
a creative dynamic" which is based on her thesis at King's
College, London.
This is supposed to be 'genetic criticism' which is my own
specialty in my Joyce research, so perhaps my expectations
were too high, but I really feel like throwing the book
across the room.
The first paragraph starts with the jargon "This topos"
and ends with a citation of Bakhtine: Rabelais's
scenes of meals "in the tradition and spirit of the
carnival, undermine established authority."
The problem is that Flaubert's motives are utterly lost
in this desperate rush to ally her analysis with
Bakhtine... and this continues every step of the way.
Her conclusion states "The detailed investigation of the
texts and 'avant-textes' of selected topoi and figures,
both in the different versions of _La Tentation_ and
across the rest of Flaubert's fiction, has revealed a
mass of intimate connections between the different
works... The 'imaginary' discourse of the 'I' might be
said to be consistently subverted by the 'true'
discourse of the 'it'..."
I've seen exactly the same crap in recent Joyce-grads,
so I have to worry whether intellectual honesty has
been hounded out of academia, altogether...?
David J. Loftus
> Trying to get a handle on Flaubert's 'St Antoine' I interlibrary
> loaned Mary Neiland's 1994 "'St Antoine' and Flaubert's Fiction:
> a creative dynamic"
Shouldn't that be "interlibrary borrowed"...?
Rich Clancey
+ The first paragraph starts with the jargon "This topos"
+ and ends with a citation of Bakhtine: Rabelais's
+ scenes of meals "in the tradition and spirit of the
+ carnival, undermine established authority."
Speaking of caca, I bought Bakhtine's book, and was
astounded to see how pompous a person could get over an
author who would have hated his pretentious guts if he'd
known him. You either laugh with Rabelais, or you just
don't get it and should go away.
+ Her conclusion states "The detailed investigation of the
+ texts and 'avant-textes' of selected topoi and figures,
Clearly the government needs to step in. I propose a
regulation which will force the publishers to post the "topoi"
count on the cover of a book, to alert the reader how deep
into sewage he can expect to wade.
--
rich clancey r...@world.std.com
smw
At least, in the academy, irrational dislike for a perfectly useful
and perfectly innocuous word like 'topos' cannot masquerade as
institutional criticism.
s
Jorn Barger
news:<8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com>:
> At least, in the academy, irrational dislike for a perfectly useful
> and perfectly innocuous word like 'topos' cannot masquerade as
> institutional criticism.
Its predominant use is as a badge of membership in an elite,
*not* for making communication clearer.
smw
Bullshit. It's a semi-technical term. The fact that none of my
students had ever heard, much less used, the word "metonymy" doesn't
mean it's a "badge of membership in an elite." It's merely a tool of
the trade. Now, "realist theory," I grant you.
s
Jorn Barger
news:<8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com>...
> > Its predominant use is as a badge of membership in an elite,
> > *not* for making communication clearer.
>
So find me a Google thread where it's introduced to bring greater
clarity (rather than less).
smw
> news:<8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com>...
> > > Its predominant use is as a badge of membership in an elite,
> > > *not* for making communication clearer.
> >
> > students had ever heard, much less used, the word "metonymy" doesn't
> > mean it's a "badge of membership in an elite." It's merely a tool of
> > the trade. Now, "realist theory," I grant you.
> So find me a Google thread where it's introduced to bring greater
> clarity (rather than less).
Huh? Find my a Google thread where "metonymy" is introduced to bring
greater clarity. What is it about this one word that bothers you?
Which synonym would you prefer?
francis muir
8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com, "smw" <sm...@ameritech.net>
wrote:
Let's make things real easy for Jorn. here's a def. from 89 years ago in
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913):
Metonymy \Me*ton"y*my\ (?; 277), n. [L. metonymia, Gr. ?; ?,
indicating change + ?, for ? a name: cf. F. m['e]tonymie. See
Name.] (Rhet.)
A trope in which one word is put for another that suggests
it; as, we say, a man keeps a good table instead of good
provisions; we read Virgil, that is, his poems; a man has a
warm heart, that is, warm affections.
More modish:
"Substituting an attribute or feature for the name of the thing itself"
Richard Harter
<francis...@balliol.org> wrote:
>On 10/4/02 5:43 AM, in article
>8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com, "smw" <sm...@ameritech.net>
>wrote:
>
>> jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger) wrote in message
>> news:<16e613ec.02100...@posting.google.com>...
>>> smw <sm...@ameritech.net> wrote, re 'topos', in
>>> news:<8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com>...
>>>>> Its predominant use is as a badge of membership in an elite,
>>>>> *not* for making communication clearer.
>>>>
>>>> Bullshit. It's a semi-technical term. The fact that none of my
>>>> students had ever heard, much less used, the word "metonymy" doesn't
>>>> mean it's a "badge of membership in an elite." It's merely a tool of
>>>> the trade. Now, "realist theory," I grant you.
>>
>>> So find me a Google thread where it's introduced to bring greater
>>> clarity (rather than less).
>>
>> Huh? Find my a Google thread where "metonymy" is introduced to bring
>> greater clarity. What is it about this one word that bothers you?
>> Which synonym would you prefer?
The referent for "it" in Jorn's posting ("So find me a ...") almost
certainly was meant to be "topos", and, sans intent, should be taken
as "topos".
>Let's make things real easy for Jorn. here's a def. from 89 years ago in
>Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913):
>
>Metonymy \Me*ton"y*my\ (?; 277), n. [L. metonymia, Gr. ?; ?,
> indicating change + ?, for ? a name: cf. F. m['e]tonymie. See
> Name.] (Rhet.)
> A trope in which one word is put for another that suggests
> it; as, we say, a man keeps a good table instead of good
> provisions; we read Virgil, that is, his poems; a man has a
> warm heart, that is, warm affections.
>
>More modish:
>
> "Substituting an attribute or feature for the name of the thing itself"
And what "google thread" would that have been found in besides this
one - ignoring for the moment that he was asking about "topos" rather
than "metonymy"?
I did a google search on google threads [sic] for topos and gave up -
the word is used in too many places with too many different meanings
to locate usages in the lit theory sense.
According to google the word has turned up about a dozen times on
rec.arts.books where a handful of people used it rather casually. I
see little evidence to support Jorn's charge that it is used as a
badge of the elite - it is used casually by people who are accustomed
to using the word. On the other hand it doesn't seem to be a useful
word in ordinary discourse; why not use "theme" or "motif" instead.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net,
http://home.tiac.net/~cri, http://www.varinoma.com
The axes of usenet are ground interminably and are ground exceedingly
fine. Sometimes nothing remains but axe handles and steel filings!
Jorn Barger
> According to google the word has turned up about a dozen times on
> rec.arts.books where a handful of people used it rather casually.
Thanks, that's useful-- I hadn't gotten around to looking:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=group%3A*books%20topos
> I see little evidence to support Jorn's charge that it is used as a
> badge of the elite - it is used casually by people who are accustomed
> to using the word.
In some cases, maybe. In MZ's especially, no.
> On the other hand it doesn't seem to be a useful
> word in ordinary discourse; why not use "theme" or "motif" instead.
That's why I phrased my request to Silke as I did-- it's just
a pretentious synonym, not a usefully distinct technical term.
--
"There's no better reader on the Internet than Jorn Barger"
--The Register: http://www.theregus.com/content/archive/25780.html
Robot Wisdom Weblog: http://www.robotwisdom.com/
francis muir
Harter" <c...@tiac.net> wrote:
"category" might be closer.
I believe that my post on topoi & toposes covered the required ground. I am
certain that the meta-mathematicians introduced the word in its modern,
intellectual context, and there has been for some time a close link between
linguistics and meta-math. Topologists have the last laugh or rather the
penultimate laugh since the last must be reserved for classics scholars who
always understood what topos meant both in its aboriginal and derived
senses. Remember that the inaugural meeting of Oulipo in 1960 proposed,
among other things, a technology transfer between Mathematicians and
Writers.
Jorn Barger
> I am certain that the meta-mathematicians introduced the word in
> its modern, intellectual context,
Where 'modern, intellectual' = metamathematical, not literary.
> and there has been for some time a close link between
> linguistics and meta-math.
(A neat example of a poser flummoxed by the unhappy coincidence of
disparate jargons.)
> Topologists have the last laugh or rather the
> penultimate laugh since the last must be reserved for classics scholars
> who always understood what topos meant both in its aboriginal and derived
> senses.
Neither of which can be the modern, intellectual sense _introduced_
by the metamathematicians, then?
> Remember that the inaugural meeting of Oulipo in 1960 proposed,
> among other things, a technology transfer between Mathematicians and
> Writers.
Approximately as deep as Cage on the Wake (art as random-numbers).
Ron Hardin
> Huh? Find me a Google thread where "metonymy" is introduced to bring
> greater clarity. What is it about this one word that bothers you?
> Which synonym would you prefer?
I wish somebody would explain the difference between synecdoche and
metonymy.
``If you fling your dinner napkin at a rhetorician instead of a
cast iron pot, it's metaphor. But if you fling the matching
cloth pot-holder, it's metonymy. That's simple enough.
``But if you gaze at the distant blue hills, is the bluing of
the hills in the watercolor of what you see, a metaphor for
distance, or metonymy? What perspectival trope alters the
hikers far below into bug-sized dots? ...''
John Hollander _Raritan I:2 Fall 1981 p.16
--
Ron Hardin
rhha...@mindspring.com
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.
Lewis Mammel
Richard Harter wrote:
> I did a google search on google threads [sic] for topos and gave up -
> the word is used in too many places with too many different meanings
> to locate usages in the lit theory sense.
I tried [ topos literary ] and hit a gold mine.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
smw
> On Fri, 04 Oct 2002 12:59:55 GMT, francis muir
> <francis...@balliol.org> wrote:
>
> >On 10/4/02 5:43 AM, in article
> >8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com, "smw" <sm...@ameritech.net>
> >wrote:
> >
> >> jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger) wrote in message
> >> news:<16e613ec.02100...@posting.google.com>...
> >>> smw <sm...@ameritech.net> wrote, re 'topos', in
> >>> news:<8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com>...
> >>>>> Its predominant use is as a badge of membership in an elite,
> >>>>> *not* for making communication clearer.
> >>>>
> >>>> Bullshit. It's a semi-technical term. The fact that none of my
> >>>> students had ever heard, much less used, the word "metonymy" doesn't
> >>>> mean it's a "badge of membership in an elite." It's merely a tool of
> >>>> the trade. Now, "realist theory," I grant you.
>
> >>> So find me a Google thread where it's introduced to bring greater
> >>> clarity (rather than less).
> >>
> >> Huh? Find my a Google thread where "metonymy" is introduced to bring
> >> greater clarity. What is it about this one word that bothers you?
> >> Which synonym would you prefer?
>
> The referent for "it" in Jorn's posting ("So find me a ...") almost
> certainly was meant to be "topos", and, sans intent, should be taken
> as "topos".
And so it was. I suggested that this request was at best unproductive
and at worst absurd by suggesting an analogous search for "metonymy,"
another technical term in literary studies which, I assume, he doesn't
hate.
s
smw
> > According to google the word has turned up about a dozen times on
> > rec.arts.books where a handful of people used it rather casually.
>
> Thanks, that's useful-- I hadn't gotten around to looking:
> http://groups.google.com/groups?q=group%3A*books%20topos
>
> > I see little evidence to support Jorn's charge that it is used as a
> > badge of the elite - it is used casually by people who are accustomed
> > to using the word.
>
> In some cases, maybe. In MZ's especially, no.
>
> > On the other hand it doesn't seem to be a useful
> > word in ordinary discourse; why not use "theme" or "motif" instead.
>
> That's why I phrased my request to Silke as I did-- it's just
> a pretentious synonym, not a usefully distinct technical term.
Richard is telling you what I've told you -- that it's far too common
to be pretentious. It's useful chiefly because of its resonances with
u- and dystopias.
s
Richard Harter
I see. Alas, although your original text supports your intended
reading (particularly if it were footnoted by your delightfully clear
explanation) it also supports any number of other readings; you could
just as well have said, "Find my [sic] a bucket of moonbeams."
Be that as it may, Francis was continuing the metonymy diversion just
as though Jorn had gone along with the quest for metonymy.
Jorn Barger
> [...] I suggested that this request was at best unproductive
> and at worst absurd by suggesting an analogous search for "metonymy,"
> another technical term in literary studies which, I assume, he doesn't
> hate.
I do hate it, actually, because it's jargon that requires extra
effort to teach/learn, since (like 'topos') it wasn't chosen to
be at all self-explanatory. And certainly there was a period in
lit-crit when it was overused in exactly the same way as a badge
of special training.
From an artificial-intelligence/natural-language-processing
perspective, it's a really stupid, poorly defined rhetorical
form, as well:
http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/eolustropes.html
smw <sm...@ameritech.net> wrote (of 'topos') in
news:<8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com>:
> Richard is telling you what I've told you -- that it's far too common
> to be pretentious.
As an academic, your perspective is wildly distorted.
> It's useful chiefly because of its resonances with u- and dystopias.
<Jorn tears hair in frustration>
Aristotle's use, which led to the modern litcrit use, meant
'commonplace', never physical place. So if those are the best
'resonances' you can come up with, they're complete non-starters.
(If this thread continues, it will no doubt eventually become
necessary for me to point out that _I_ didn't single out the
word 'topos' except via the coincidence of it being the first
indication, in Neiland's book on 'St Antoine', that she was
allowed/encouraged to substitute cant for insight. Such
problems can't begin to be addressed so long as they're being
denied.)
francis muir
> Richard Harter:
>> I see little evidence to support Jorn's charge that it is used as a
>> badge of the elite - it is used casually by people who are accustomed
>> to using the word.
>
> In some cases, maybe. In MZ's especially, no.
If by MZ you mean the slightly passé but always amusing Wall St guru Marty
Zweig then you are probably right, but Michael Zëleny? Come off it Jorn.
Surely you know that "topos" is a commonplace in logic and that our Mikey is
co-editor of *Logic, meaning, and computation : essays in memory of Alonzo
Church*. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.
Jorn Barger
news:<B9C6CEB5.2CFF%francis...@balliol.org>:
> >> I see little evidence to support Jorn's charge that it is used as a
> >> badge of the elite - it is used casually by people who are accustomed
> >> to using the word.
> > In some cases, maybe. In MZ's especially, no.
>
> Zweig then you are probably right, but Michael Zëleny? Come off it Jorn.
> Surely you know that "topos" is a commonplace in logic and that our Mikey is
> co-editor of *Logic, meaning, and computation : essays in memory of Alonzo
> Church*. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.
'Topos' is a technical term in metamathematics.
MZ _does_ use 'topos' in its metamathematical sense on the sci.*
groups,
but in rab it's always the pretentious, pseudo-technical literary
sense:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=group:*books+topos+author:zeleny
Silke wants to further confuse it with the literal Greek for 'place'
in utopia and dystopia, but all this pathetically mediocre thinking
just confirms my longstanding dismissal of rab as a land of null
logic (with academia-in-general apparently plummeting headlong toward
that same dismal 'topos'...)
Sayan Bhattacharyya
>sm...@ameritech.net (smw) wrote in message
>> [...] I suggested that this request was at best unproductive
>> and at worst absurd by suggesting an analogous search for "metonymy,"
>> another technical term in literary studies which, I assume, he doesn't
>> hate.
>
>I do hate it, actually, because it's jargon that requires extra
>effort to teach/learn, since (like 'topos') it wasn't chosen to
>be at all self-explanatory.
Well, "metonymy" *is* self-explanatory if you think about the etymology
of "metonymy" (not hard to do, even if one has not had formal
training in greek).
Jorn Barger
news:<ansfff$ahb$2...@news2.engin.umich.edu>:
> Well, "metonymy" *is* self-explanatory if you think about the
> etymology of "metonymy" (not hard to do, even if one has not
> had formal training in greek).
<Jorn bites tongue>
meta = change
nym = name
How many trillions of readings of 'name change' (or even 'meta-name')
would fail to qualify as metonymy?
francis muir
16e613ec.02100...@posting.google.com, "Jorn Barger"
<jo...@enteract.com> wrote:
> francis muir <francis...@balliol.org> wrote in
> news:<B9C6CEB5.2CFF%francis...@balliol.org>:
>>>> I see little evidence to support Jorn's charge that it is used as a
>>>> badge of the elite - it is used casually by people who are accustomed
>>>> to using the word.
>>> In some cases, maybe. In MZ's especially, no.
>>
>> If by MZ you mean the slightly passé but always amusing Wall St guru Marty
>> Zweig then you are probably right, but Michael Zëleny? Come off it Jorn.
>> Surely you know that "topos" is a commonplace in logic and that our Mikey is
>> co-editor of *Logic, meaning, and computation : essays in memory of Alonzo
>> Church*. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.
>
> 'Topos' is a technical term in metamathematics.
Sure it is. Also a technical term in Lit. OED finds its first use - in any
context - in 1948. So, the concept is an old one but the word is quite
recent.
> MZ _does_ use 'topos' in its metamathematical sense on the sci.*
> groups,
> but in rab it's always the pretentious, pseudo-technical literary
> sense:
> http://groups.google.com/groups?q=group:*books+topos+author:zeleny
Let's get this straight. Zëleny says in the subject post:
<<< Solzhenitsyn spins his narrative around the familiar topos
of "The jew is underneath the lot"...>>>
and the OED defines "topos":
<<< A traditional motif or theme (in a literary composition);
a rhetorical commonplace, a literary convention or formula. >>>
seems OK to me. What are you steamed up about? My choice might have been
"cliché", but I'll not quarrel too hard over "topos". Interestingly OED
dates it's first use to 1948. When I think "topos" I think "locus amoenus"
and Spencer's "Bower of Bliss". OED, always straining to keep the Two
Cultures apart, will not give the math meaning but it is really quite close.
> Silke wants to further confuse it with the literal Greek for 'place'
> in utopia and dystopia, but all this pathetically mediocre thinking
> just confirms my longstanding dismissal of rab as a land of null
> logic (with academia-in-general apparently plummeting headlong toward
> that same dismal 'topos'...)
To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,
The unfeeling for his own.
Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more:-where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise!
For God's Sake, Jorn, More was writing - in Latin by the way - about a place
in the mind and expected, correctly, everyone to understand this who was not
a compleat dunderhead. SMW is being, as almost always, quite
straight-forward.
There's a joke somewhere here involving "commonplace" but i think I'll leave
it alone.
Jorn Barger
> > 'Topos' is a technical term in metamathematics.
>
> Sure it is. Also a technical term in Lit.
Thus you utterly _blur_ the difference between a precisely-defined
math term and a vague commonsense synonym.
> OED finds its first use - in any
> context - in 1948. So, the concept is an old one but the word is quite
> recent.
(And why exactly did ...who? in 1948 need a less-intuitive synonym
for motif-theme-commonplace?)
> > MZ _does_ use 'topos' in its metamathematical sense on the sci.*
> > groups, but in rab it's always the pretentious, pseudo-technical
> > literary sense:
> > http://groups.google.com/groups?q=group:*books+topos+author:zeleny
>
> Let's get this straight. Zėleny says in the subject post:
> <<< Solzhenitsyn spins his narrative around the familiar topos
> of "The jew is underneath the lot"...>>>
> and the OED defines "topos":
> <<< A traditional motif or theme (in a literary composition);
> a rhetorical commonplace, a literary convention or formula. >>>
> seems OK to me. What are you steamed up about?
As I stated in my original post, I fear that intellectual honesty
is being driven out of academia, in favor of fashionable crap.
The word 'topos' is one small symptom, perfectly continuous with
500 years of elitist obscurantism, but in the past there usually
had to be some real knowledge hidden under the jargon-- nowadays
it seems the jargon by itself is considered self-justifying.
One would think that the academics of rab could acknowledge, at
least in the abstract, the problem of jargon serving as a badge
of elitism, but instead I'm getting denial after denial.
One would also think that the academics of rab ought to be able
to read simple sentences and grasp their content, and distinguish
logical counterarguments from confused rhetorical mush... alas.
> My choice might have been
> "cliché", but I'll not quarrel too hard over "topos".
But you'll apparently deny to the death that his choice might
conceivably have been based on ego/elitism.
> Interestingly OED dates it's first use to 1948.
(Repetition; no apostrophe.)
> When I think "topos" I think "locus amoenus" and Spencer's "Bower of
> Bliss".
And of course you deny any elitist impulse in posting those
citations?
> OED, always straining to keep the Two Cultures apart, will not
> give the math meaning but it is really quite close.
According to Baez, a topos is a category with an initial object,
a terminal object, binary coproducts, binary products, equalizers,
and coequalizers such that for any objects x and y, there is an
object yx, called an "exponential", which acts like "the set of
functions from x to y", and there is an object called the
"subobject classifier" Omega, which acts like {0,1}, in that
functions from any set x into {0,1} are secretly the same as
subsets of x. And a category consists of a set of objects and a
set of morphisms, where every morphism has a source object and
a target object.
Really. Quite. Close.
> > Silke wants to further confuse it with the literal Greek for 'place'
> > in utopia and dystopia, but all this pathetically mediocre thinking
> > just confirms my longstanding dismissal of rab as a land of null
> > logic (with academia-in-general apparently plummeting headlong toward
> > that same dismal 'topos'...)
> [...]
> For God's Sake, Jorn, More was writing - in Latin by the way - about a
> place in the mind and expected, correctly, everyone to understand this who
> was not a compleat dunderhead. SMW is being, as almost always, quite
> straight-forward.
So the gymnastics you demand are:
topos -> place -> place in mind -> commonplace -> cliche -> motif ?
And you pretend this is so self-evident that you dismiss with perfect
contempt my complaint that it's an unnatural jargon normally used for
ego-display?
tejas
"francis muir" <francis....@balliol.org> wrote in message
news:B9C71AF0.5726%francis....@balliol.org...
> On 10/7/02 8:46 AM, in article
place
> in the mind and expected, correctly, everyone to understand this who was
not
> a compleat dunderhead. SMW is being, as almost always, quite
> straight-forward.
>
> There's a joke somewhere here involving "commonplace" but i think I'll
leave
> it alone.
>
We aren't talking about quad sheets, are we?
"sometimes you know the plaice;
sometimes the plaice knows you..."
Davy Jones.
--
Ted Samsel
tbsa...@infi.net
http://home.infi.net/~tbsamsel
tejas
"Jorn Barger" <jo...@enteract.com> wrote in message
news:16e613ec.02100...@posting.google.com...
> As an academic, your perspective is wildly distorted.
Quick, Watson, the kettle blacking!!
Lewis Mammel
Jorn Barger wrote:
>
> francis muir <francis....@balliol.org> wrote in
> news:<B9C71AF0.5726%francis....@balliol.org>:
> > > 'Topos' is a technical term in metamathematics.
> >
> > Sure it is. Also a technical term in Lit.
>
> Thus you utterly _blur_ the difference between a precisely-defined
> math term and a vague commonsense synonym.
Call it a term of art then. Maybe I shouldn't, but I find it kind
of strange that a Joyce freak like you should be so anal about
such a simple question of usage. It's jargon, sure, but jargon is
cool, isn't it? Jargon is a font of language. It represents a sort
of social genius corresponding to the personal genius that you
admire so in Joyce, if I may go out on a limb here. Language is
a social phenomenon after all. If the lit crowd says "topos" then
they say "topos". Dig it.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
francis muir
> Jorn Barger:
>>
>> francis muir:
>>>
>>> Jorn Barger:
>>>>
>>>> 'Topos' is a technical term in metamathematics.
>>>
>>> Sure it is. Also a technical term in Lit.
>>
>> Thus you utterly _blur_ the difference between a precisely-defined
>> math term and a vague commonsense synonym.
>
> Call it a term of art then. Maybe I shouldn't, but I find it kind
> of strange that a Joyce freak like you should be so anal about
> such a simple question of usage. It's jargon, sure, but jargon is
> cool, isn't it? Jargon is a font of language. It represents a sort
> of social genius corresponding to the personal genius that you
> admire so in Joyce, if I may go out on a limb here. Language is
> a social phenomenon after all. If the lit crowd says "topos" then
> they say "topos". Dig it.
A clue to Barger's position may be found in Lynette Hunter's Preface
to her edition of other persons and her own essays entitled *Towards
a Definition of Topos* wherein:
"The strategies of 'argumentation' are only a part of rhetoric,
but they are now commonly perceived as the whole. Such a
perception lies at the root of popular criticisms that rhetoric
persuades by hiding, omitting, and unfairly manipulating. Yet
considering its efficiency we can perhaps understand James
Joyce's distaste for this kind of formal rhetoric and his savage
joy at destabilizing its argumentative power. In the process,
of course, he enacts other aspects of rhetoric and these form
the basis of Alan Roughley's study, 'Commonplace and Cliché
Elements in the Textual Topoi of *Ulysses* and *Finnegans
Wake*'."
Imagine a LitCrittur named "Roughley". Such imprecision.
Jorn Barger
> [...] I find it kind
> of strange that a Joyce freak like you should be so anal about
> such a simple question of usage. It's jargon, sure, but jargon is
> cool, isn't it?
Joyce chose a difficult style so that readers would value his
message(s) more. (It's always worth the effort.)
Traditional academics have often chosen a difficult style to
make their work seem more profound than it is. (It's
sometimes worth the effort.)
Modern academics seem to substitute the difficult style for
any message at all... like those spider males that give the
famales a fancy-looking package that's really empty. (It's
not worth the effort.)
Jorn Barger
> Well, "metonymy" *is* self-explanatory if you think about the etymology
> of "metonymy" (not hard to do, even if one has not had formal
> training in greek).
Congratulations, you said the secret _Idee Recue_ and Gustave Flaubert
owes you $100: http://www.robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bouvard/idees.html
"ETYMOLOGY The easiest thing in the world with the help of Latin
and a little ingenuity."
francis muir
The very idea! I'd prefer to see an aperçu or two.
Michael Zeleny
>>>>> I see little evidence to support Jorn's charge that it is used
>>>>> as a badge of the elite - it is used casually by people who are
>>>>> accustomed to using the word.
>>>> In some cases, maybe. In MZ's especially, no.
>>> If by MZ you mean the slightly passé but always amusing Wall St
>>> guru Marty Zweig then you are probably right, but Michael Zëleny?
You might want to shift that ersatz diaeresis eastward.
>>> Come off it Jorn. Surely you know that "topos" is a commonplace
>>> in logic and that our Mikey is co-editor of *Logic, meaning, and
>>> computation : essays in memory of Alonzo Church*. Kluwer Academic
>>> Publishers, 2001.
>> 'Topos' is a technical term in metamathematics.
>Sure it is. Also a technical term in Lit. OED finds its first use -
>in any context - in 1948. So, the concept is an old one but the word
>is quite recent.
I think I first heard it from Carlo Ginzburg.
>> MZ _does_ use 'topos' in its metamathematical sense on the sci.*
>> groups,
>> but in rab it's always the pretentious, pseudo-technical literary
>> sense:
>> http://groups.google.com/groups?q=group:*books+topos+author:zeleny
>Let's get this straight. Zëleny says in the subject post:
>
> <<< Solzhenitsyn spins his narrative around the familiar topos
> of "The jew is underneath the lot"...>>>
>
>and the OED defines "topos":
>
> <<< A traditional motif or theme (in a literary composition);
> a rhetorical commonplace, a literary convention or formula. >>>
>
>seems OK to me. What are you steamed up about? My choice might have been
>"cliché", but I'll not quarrel too hard over "topos". Interestingly OED
>dates it's first use to 1948. When I think "topos" I think "locus amoenus"
>and Spencer's "Bower of Bliss". OED, always straining to keep the Two
>Cultures apart, will not give the math meaning but it is really quite close.
A cliché is a pithy and canonical verbal expression of a topos. Thus
the notion that the jew is underneath the lot is a topos, whereas the
T.S. Eliot verse that captures it, does not quite attain the status of
a cliché enjoyed in the same context by the term "the Elders of Zion",
for want of popular currency. Spencer's "Bower of Bliss" is indeed a
locus amoenus, or a topos of an idealized bucolic setting. But as the
OED definition attests, literary topoi are nowise limited to ideas of
places or settings.
>> Silke wants to further confuse it with the literal Greek for 'place'
>> in utopia and dystopia, but all this pathetically mediocre thinking
>> just confirms my longstanding dismissal of rab as a land of null
>> logic (with academia-in-general apparently plummeting headlong toward
>> that same dismal 'topos'...)
>To each his sufferings: all are men,
>Condemned alike to groan;
>The tender for another's pain,
>The unfeeling for his own.
>Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,
>Since sorrow never comes too late,
>And happiness too swiftly flies?
>Thought would destroy their paradise.
>No more:-where ignorance is bliss,
>'Tis folly to be wise!
>
>For God's Sake, Jorn, More was writing - in Latin by the way - about
>a place in the mind and expected, correctly, everyone to understand
>this who was not a compleat dunderhead. SMW is being, as almost
>always, quite straight-forward.
>
>There's a joke somewhere here involving "commonplace" but i think
>I'll leave it alone.
A more topical joke involves second order wannabe ambition glomming
onto artificial intelligence through shared lack of accomplishment.
--
cordially, -- Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu
7576 Willow Glen Rd, Hollywood, CA 90046 323-876-8234 323-363-1860
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better. -- Samuel Beckett
smw
> news:<ansfff$ahb$2...@news2.engin.umich.edu>:
> > Well, "metonymy" *is* self-explanatory if you think about the
> > etymology of "metonymy" (not hard to do, even if one has not
> > had formal training in greek).
>
> <Jorn bites tongue>
>
> meta = change
???????
smw
> > [...] I suggested that this request was at best unproductive
> > and at worst absurd by suggesting an analogous search for "metonymy,"
> > another technical term in literary studies which, I assume, he doesn't
> > hate.
>
> I do hate it, actually, because it's jargon that requires extra
> effort to teach/learn, since (like 'topos') it wasn't chosen to
> be at all self-explanatory.
Technical terms ought not to be self-explanatory.
And certainly there was a period in
> lit-crit when it was overused in exactly the same way as a badge
> of special training.
Nah. On the contrary, it's used chiefly by those who did _not_ have
elite training in rhetorical analysis. You have it exactly backwards.
> From an artificial-intelligence/natural-language-processing
> perspective, it's a really stupid, poorly defined rhetorical
> form, as well:
> http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/eolustropes.html
Why should terms of literary or discourse analysis answer to the
standards of an AI perspective? You're being more absurd by the
minute.
>
> smw <sm...@ameritech.net> wrote (of 'topos') in
> news:<8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com>:
> > Richard is telling you what I've told you -- that it's far too common
> > to be pretentious.
>
> As an academic, your perspective is wildly distorted.
Since we're talking about a term within an academic discipline, my
perspective is the most plausible one.
> > It's useful chiefly because of its resonances with u- and dystopias.
>
> <Jorn tears hair in frustration>
>
> Aristotle's use, which led to the modern litcrit use, meant
> 'commonplace', never physical place. So if those are the best
> 'resonances' you can come up with, they're complete non-starters.
Does it ever strike you that _you_ are the poseur in this debate? In
Greek, "topos" simply means place. "Topos" as a term for a specific
kind of motif or theme is already a metaphor.
> (If this thread continues, it will no doubt eventually become
> necessary for me to point out that _I_ didn't single out the
> word 'topos' except via the coincidence of it being the first
> indication, in Neiland's book on 'St Antoine', that she was
> allowed/encouraged to substitute cant for insight. Such
> problems can't begin to be addressed so long as they're being
> denied.)
Or perhaps you're simply wrong about this, as rabsters with usually
wildly divergent ideological perspectives have suggested. Doesn't the
fact that Richard, Lew, Francis, and I all seem to be saying roughly
the same thing mean anything to you?
s
smw
Quite possibly. Only that "topos" isn't a difficult word whose usage
carries no prestige whatsoever.
s
Dylan Bryan-Dolman
> Spenser's "Bower of Bliss"
> is indeed a locus amoenus, or a topos of an idealized
> bucolic setting.
Not really. Spenser takes some trouble to complicate his topoi (good
theory-speak? no?) in this episode, emphasizing the artificiality of the
ideal thus:
A place pickt out by choyce of best alyve,
That nature's work by art can imitate
and...
Mantled with greene, and goodly beautified
With all the ornaments of Florae's pride,
Wherewith her mother Art, as halfe in scorne
Of niggard Nature, like a pompous bride
Did deck her, and too lavishly adorn.
and here...
So fashioned a porch with rare device
Archt over head with an embracing vine,
Whose bounches downe seemed to entice
All passers by to taste their lushious wine
...
And them amongst some were of burnisht gold
So made by art to beautify the rest
Which did themselves amongst the leaves enfold
As lurking from the view of covetous guest
And then of course the Knight of Temperance wrecks it because it's all an
evil snare, but you can argue for an ironic reading of that (but the
introduction of such a basic irony still causes trouble for any attempt at
idealism, so you're back where you started.)
(How weird that this came up just when I've been reading it).
Dylan
=dbd=
Arindam Banerjee
What about "chiaroscuro" as a replacement for "topos"? Won't that be
more impressive? At least, it will be arty.
Arindam Banerjee.
Jeff Inman
Maybe the girl spiders know that it's going to be empty, but
they just dig the art of the packaging? You know, like a
conversation that doesn't actually have to produce a rhetorical
conclusion in order to achieve its object.
Or an origami swan. It couldn't contain what it contains
if it wasn't empty.
Whatever. I agree "topoi" is scary. But so is Joyce scary,
and for what seems to me to be some of the same reasons. You
have to learn a lot just to know what you're reading. Joyce
would be a little emptier, to me, if I became convinced that
the style(s) was(were) chosen in order to make me "value his
message". Sounds so deliberate. I'd rather think that the
style is the result of conversations with a muse, walks along
a river bank maybe, or sitting in a cafe watching people and
wondering. Or maybe you mean that under all that is a drive
to deliver a valuable message. Hmmm, yeah, that would work.
So, you call that authentic, and call "topoi" some sort of
obfuscation. But you seem to be disparaging it for having
that same drive behind it.
ObCommercial: Some hotel chain. Guy's arm, pronate, over the
edge of the bed; a book lying open, face down, on the floor
... "and beds that won't let you get past page two". If you
focus quickly on the spine of the book, before the scene cut,
you'll see that it is: _Ulysses_ I think the implication
is that this is a hotel for those who don't have patience for
fancy rhetoric. Bastards!
Jeff
Jorn Barger
> Technical terms ought not to be self-explanatory.
Elitists artificially steepen the learning curve. I oppose this.
> And certainly there was a period in
> > lit-crit when it was overused in exactly the same way as a badge
> > of special training.
>
> Nah. On the contrary, it's used chiefly by those who did _not_ have
> elite training in rhetorical analysis. You have it exactly backwards.
My def of 'elite' is way broader than yours.
> > From an artificial-intelligence/natural-language-processing
> > perspective, it's a really stupid, poorly defined rhetorical
> > form, as well:
> > http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/eolustropes.html
>
> Why should terms of literary or discourse analysis answer to the
> standards of an AI perspective? You're being more absurd by the
> minute.
Ah! Once again a rabbist accidentally asks a splendid question!
I will start a new thread to answer at length.
> > > Richard is telling you what I've told you -- that it's far too
> > > common to be pretentious.
> > As an academic, your perspective is wildly distorted.
> Since we're talking about a term within an academic discipline, my
> perspective is the most plausible one.
Regarding how common it is, I read plenty of popular litcrit and _tons_
of book reviews, and I never see it.
> > > It's useful chiefly because of its resonances with u- and dystopias.
> > <Jorn tears hair in frustration>
> > Aristotle's use, which led to the modern litcrit use, meant
> > 'commonplace', never physical place. So if those are the best
> > 'resonances' you can come up with, they're complete non-starters.
> [...]
> In Greek, "topos" simply means place. "Topos" as a term for a specific
> kind of motif or theme is already a metaphor.
If, in fact, there is a technical definition of 'topos' that
limits it to _place-related_ themes/motifs, then the resonances
with utopia-etc would indeed be useful. I don't believe you
can find me such a definition, and I'm confident that if you
do, it will be _later_ the wider/more-general non-place-related
definition, which undermines your resonances-justification.
> Or perhaps you're simply wrong about this, as rabsters with usually
> wildly divergent ideological perspectives have suggested. Doesn't the
> fact that Richard, Lew, Francis, and I all seem to be saying roughly
> the same thing mean anything to you?
Nope... skewed sample.
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> I think the implication is that this is a hotel for those who don't
> have patience for fancy rhetoric. Bastards!
Maybe they're replacing the Gideon Bibles/Books of Mormon.
smw
> > > perspective, it's a really stupid, poorly defined rhetorical
> > > form, as well:
> > > http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/eolustropes.html
> >
> > Why should terms of literary or discourse analysis answer to the
> > standards of an AI perspective? You're being more absurd by the
> > minute.
>
> Ah! Once again a rabbist accidentally asks a splendid question!
> I will start a new thread to answer at length.
Rather answer it in this context -- why would the specialized language
of one discipline be "elitist" but not the specialized language of
another one?
> > > > Richard is telling you what I've told you -- that it's far too
> > > > common to be pretentious.
> > > As an academic, your perspective is wildly distorted.
> > Since we're talking about a term within an academic discipline, my
> > perspective is the most plausible one.
>
> Regarding how common it is, I read plenty of popular litcrit and _tons_
> of book reviews, and I never see it.
Google counts roughly 140 000 usages. A bit high for an elite term.
Phallogocentrism, by contrast, has less than 600.
> > > > It's useful chiefly because of its resonances with u- and dystopias.
> > > <Jorn tears hair in frustration>
> > > Aristotle's use, which led to the modern litcrit use, meant
> > > 'commonplace', never physical place. So if those are the best
> > > 'resonances' you can come up with, they're complete non-starters.
> > [...]
> > In Greek, "topos" simply means place. "Topos" as a term for a specific
> > kind of motif or theme is already a metaphor.
>
> If, in fact, there is a technical definition of 'topos' that
> limits it to _place-related_ themes/motifs,
What in "is a metaphor" gives you trouble?
then the resonances
> with utopia-etc would indeed be useful.
how so, seeing that utopias aren't necessarily or even predominantly
spatial?
I don't believe you
> can find me such a definition, and I'm confident that if you
> do, it will be _later_ the wider/more-general non-place-related
> definition, which undermines your resonances-justification.
Neither topos (as a term in discourse analysis) nor utopia/dystopia
are restricted to the spatial; you're not making any sense.
> > Or perhaps you're simply wrong about this, as rabsters with usually
> > wildly divergent ideological perspectives have suggested. Doesn't the
> > fact that Richard, Lew, Francis, and I all seem to be saying roughly
> > the same thing mean anything to you?
>
> Nope... skewed sample.
A sample of people who hardly ever agree on anything related to the
academy and the humanities. Surely, you're not claiming that your work
on Joyce is the stuff of mass popularity.
s
Jorn Barger
news:<8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com>:
> [...] why would the specialized language
> of one discipline be "elitist" but not the specialized language
> of another one?
New terms are good if they make useful new distinctions.
They're best if they're chosen to suggest their own meaning,
rather than concealing it.
If they make no new distinction, and conceal their (old)
meaning, they're doubleplus bad. Almost always when this occurs,
it's because of an elitist impulse.
[re 'topos']
> > Regarding how common it is, I read plenty of popular litcrit
> > and _tons_ of book reviews, and I never see it.
>
> Google counts roughly 140 000 usages.
Not as a 'technical' literary term.
> > > In Greek, "topos" simply means place. "Topos" as a term for a
> > > specific kind of motif or theme is already a metaphor.
> > If, in fact, there is a technical definition of 'topos' that
> > limits it to _place-related_ themes/motifs,
>
> What in "is a metaphor" gives you trouble?
<fed-up-father voice> "What gives me trouble is your contrary
attitude, young lady!"
> > then the resonances with utopia-etc would indeed be useful.
>
> how so, seeing that utopias aren't necessarily or even predominantly
> spatial?
Meet me halfway, please.
'Topo' as a root meaning 'place' is reasonably familiar, so a
neologism referring in some way to places might benefit from that,
because it could thereby suggest its meaning.
Utopia and dystopia are certainly spatial, but not necessarily
in 'real' space. (An imaginary city is still place-like, it's
just a place seen thru the _modality_ of imagination.)
The literary term topos, according to Fido, originated in 1948
with no mention of places:
"A traditional motif or theme (in a literary composition);
a rhetorical commonplace, a literary convention or formula."
Aristotle's original 4thC-BC topoi were:
1. Opposites
2. Identical results and antecedents
3. Inflections
4. Altered choices
5. Correlative terms
6. Attributed motives
7. More and less
8. Incentives and deterrents
9. Time
10. Incredible occurences
11. Definition
12. Conflicting facts
13. Induction
14. Meeting slander
15. Existing decisions
16. Cause to effect
17. Turning the tables
18. Meaning of names
19. Part to whole
20. Actions compared
21. Simple consequences
22. Course of action
23. Criss-cross consequences
24. Previous mistakes
25. Inward thoughts, outward show
26. Division
27. Proportional results
28. Ambiguous terms
There's certainly a sense in which any of these can be seen as
metaphorically place-like, but they can just as well be seen as
metaphorically bicycle-like or sexual-intercourse-like.
> > I don't believe you
> > can find me such a definition, and I'm confident that if you
> > do, it will be _later_ the wider/more-general non-place-related
> > definition, which undermines your resonances-justification.
>
> Neither topos (as a term in discourse analysis) nor utopia/dystopia
> are restricted to the spatial; you're not making any sense.
Well I'm bending over backwards trying.
Places can be used as metaphors, as Fido seemed to be claiming of
Spencer, but, as Mikey le Zany clarified: "Spencer's 'Bower of Bliss'
is indeed a locus amoenus, or a topos of an idealized bucolic
setting. But as the OED definition attests, literary topoi are
nowise limited to ideas of places or settings."
If academics were to agree that literary topoi _should_ be limited
to ideas of places and settings, I would heartily approve,
because the root 'topo' would now intuitively suggest the new
distinction... which was my exact criterion for a good neologism,
above.
> [...] Surely, you're not claiming that your work
> on Joyce is the stuff of mass popularity.
In the words^Wglyphs of smw, "?????"
--
"There's no better reader on the Internet than Jorn Barger"
--The Register
Robot Wisdom Weblog: http://www.robotwisdom.com/
smw
> news:<8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com>:
> > [...] why would the specialized language
> > of one discipline be "elitist" but not the specialized language
> > of another one?
>
> New terms are good if they make useful new distinctions.
Topos is useful in that way; despite what people've said here, it is
not a synonym of "theme," "motif," "commmonplace," or "cliche." And
it's much shorter than anything that could serve as a paraphrase.
> They're best if they're chosen to suggest their own meaning,
> rather than concealing it.
I prefer precision to such "suggestions."
> If they make no new distinction, and conceal their (old)
> meaning, they're doubleplus bad. Almost always when this occurs,
> it's because of an elitist impulse.
You sound obsessed. And after your contributions re "meta" and
"topos," you're in no position to accuse others of "elistist
impulses." Holding forth on the meaning of Greek words after doing a
quickie Google search appears to be a rather severe symptom of the
attitude you seem to decry.
s
John Dawkins
sm...@ameritech.net (smw) wrote:
> jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger) wrote in message
> news:<16e613ec.02100...@posting.google.com>...
> > smw <sm...@ameritech.net> wrote in
> > news:<8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com>:
> > > [...] why would the specialized language
> > > of one discipline be "elitist" but not the specialized language
> > > of another one?
> >
> > New terms are good if they make useful new distinctions.
>
> Topos is useful in that way; despite what people've said here, it is
> not a synonym of "theme," "motif," "commmonplace," or "cliche."
Can someone provide a more accurate definition of the literary usage of
"topos"?
--
J.
Jorn Barger
>
> it's much shorter than anything that could serve as a paraphrase.
Ah, so you've intentionally been dragging out the debate by
withholding this essential info?
> > If they make no new distinction, and conceal their (old)
> > meaning, they're doubleplus bad. Almost always when this occurs,
> > it's because of an elitist impulse.
>
> You sound obsessed.
You sound in denial.
The best objective evidence for resolving this contradiction,
imho, is to look at our rhetoric-- who's doing all the work to
make communication happen, and who's holding her cards close
to her chest and taking poorly-aimed potshots?
> And after your contributions re "meta" and
> "topos," you're in no position to accuse others of "elistist
> impulses." Holding forth on the meaning of Greek words after doing a
> quickie Google search appears to be a rather severe symptom of the
> attitude you seem to decry.
I held forth for a prodigious _eleven-character_ filibuster on meta:
meta = change
You're welcome to offer alternative etymologies, but this is what
both standard sources I checked had, so I assume it's better-
grounded than the more familiar reading(s) of 'meta'.
My comments on topos have been entirely quotes, I'm pretty sure,
because it's not a term I ever run into.
(And how in the world do you see this as elitist?)
francis muir
8281d0b6.02100...@posting.google.com, "smw" <sm...@ameritech.net>
wrote:
I trundled down to the Green this morning and took a shufti at the Subject
tome. I guess we all here at rec.art.books know that Liddell, Student of the
House, was father to Alice, which was the Alice of Alice in Wonderland.
Scott was a Fellow of my old Coll de Ball. Anyway, between them they
constructed this great non-pareil. Went straight to "topos" and there, after
all the I, 1 through 9 where "topos" is, more or less, a place we come to II
and then to III where [roughly] "topos is a common-place; an element of
Rhetoric". And this is the Aristotelean topos. Before going much further one
should acquaint oneself with just what tyher Good L&S meant by
"common-place". There was a time when that word and the derived "cliché"
were not or were not only pejorative.
Stephen Hayes
John Dawkins wrote in a message to All:
> Topos is useful in that way; despite what people've said here, it is
> not a synonym of "theme," "motif," "commmonplace," or "cliche."
JD> Can someone provide a more accurate definition of the literary
JD> usage of "topos"?
The theological use is "shithouse".
Keep well
Steve Hayes
WWW: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/steve.htm
E-mail: haye...@yahoo.com
FamilyNet <> Internet Gated Mail
http://www.fmlynet.org
smw
www.perseus.tufts.edu gives pretty good dictionary.
> There was a time when that word and the derived "cliché"
> were not or were not only pejorative.
Exactly. It is the need for a word like that which created the current
usage of 'topos.'
s
smw
Seeing that I sent you the dictionary entry for 'meta,' this is pathetic.
Carry on.
s
Jorn Barger
news:<8281d0b6.02101...@posting.google.com>:
> Seeing that I sent you the dictionary entry for 'meta,'
> this is pathetic.
To review:
Sayan claimed 'metonymy' is etymologically self-explanatory
I looked up the etymology in two sources and found 'change
of name' in each, and posted that as contradicting Sayan.
(At this point I certainly could have listed all possible
alternate meanings for 'meta', which would have made Sayan's
claim even less plausible, but that seemed dishonest, as
it concealed the historically 'right' choice... which was
sufficient to make the point.)
Silke followed up with a row of questionmarks, presumably
because she's unaccustomed to 'meta' meaning 'change'
I emailed her the url for one etymology (the other was in
a book)
She replied by email with the long dictionary entry for
'meta', and still seems to imagine this constitutes some
kind of counterargument against me...???
In news:<8281d0b6.02101...@posting.google.com>,
smw wrote:
> > There was a time when that word and the derived "cliché"
> > were not or were not only pejorative.
>
> Exactly. It is the need for a word like that which created
> the current usage of 'topos.'
'Motif'?
francis muir
16e613ec.02101...@posting.google.com, "Jorn Barger"
<jo...@enteract.com> wrote:
Won't do. No element of commonality. Try:
"Stock theme". Being an old-fashioned guy who grew up before the modern
invention of "topos" I rather like "commonplace", but I know it is subject
to misinterpretation. I take it that we are always talking about "topos" in
its Aristotelian sense and it was used first in this sense in his Rhetoric
(according to Liddell & Scott).
As to "meta", or, rather, "meta-" that SuperNanny of all the Dics, the OED,
has this to say, inter alia:
1. a. The supposed analogy of METAPHYSICS (misapprehended as meaning Œthe
science of that which transcends the physical¹) has been followed in the
practice of prefixing meta- to the name of a science, to form a designation
for a higher science (actual or hypothetical) of the same nature but dealing
with ulterior and more fundamental problem
Which is precisely what I have always meant by metamathematics, although
there are math-heads who will argue that metamath is an unnecessary word
since math includes ita own analysis.
Fido
smw
> smw <sm...@ameritech.net> wrote in
> news:<8281d0b6.02101...@posting.google.com>:
> > Seeing that I sent you the dictionary entry for 'meta,'
> > this is pathetic.
>
> To review:
>
> Sayan claimed 'metonymy' is etymologically self-explanatory
>
> I looked up the etymology in two sources and found 'change
> of name' in each, and posted that as contradicting Sayan.
> (At this point I certainly could have listed all possible
> alternate meanings for 'meta', which would have made Sayan's
> claim even less plausible, but that seemed dishonest, as
> it concealed the historically 'right' choice... which was
> sufficient to make the point.)
>
> Silke followed up with a row of questionmarks, presumably
> because she's unaccustomed to 'meta' meaning 'change'
I'm accustomed to looking up the meaning of Greek words in
dictionaries; I'm also accustomed to the fact that prepositions and
prefixes usually don't have "a" meaning that translates into another
language one by one.
You're posturing in the very act of accusing others of being poseurs.
I find that distasteful.
> She replied by email with the long dictionary entry for
> 'meta', and still seems to imagine this constitutes some
> kind of counterargument against me...???
Yeah, I find a dictionary entry on "meta" sufficient refutation of the
asinine claim that "meta means change" indeed.
> In news:<8281d0b6.02101...@posting.google.com>,
> smw wrote:
> > > There was a time when that word and the derived "cliché"
> > > were not or were not only pejorative.
> >
> > Exactly. It is the need for a word like that which created
> > the current usage of 'topos.'
>
> 'Motif'?
No. Not all topoi are motifs, and not all motifs are topoi.
s
Jorn Barger
> > because she's unaccustomed to 'meta' meaning 'change'
>
> dictionaries; I'm also accustomed to the fact that prepositions and
> prefixes usually don't have "a" meaning that translates into another
> language one by one.
Again, multiple meanings for 'met-' would have strengthened my
case, not weakened it.
I don't have any idea where 'metonymy' originated, but presumably
some particular person in ancient or modern (or medieval) times
who knew Greek chose those forms with the intent of expressing
that idea. In coining words, there can be 'happy' ambiguities
and 'unhappy' ones. If you're saying that 'metonymy' exploits
a happy ambiguity, or that my sources erred in guessing 'change'
as the primary intent of the original coiner, I'd be delighted
to hear about that... but you're not telling!?
> You're posturing in the very act of accusing others of being
> poseurs.
My hypothesis that you're in denial should at least partially
explain why you're determined to nail me for imaginary
crimes.
> [...] Not all topoi are motifs, and not all motifs are topoi.
Yeah, well, wake me up if you ever get around to spilling what
you claim you know...
smw
John Dawkins wrote:
Topoi are usually constellations of motifs, themes, images, or arguments
that are common within the texts of a a specific age and place (say,
enlightenment, post-war Germany) or a specific discourse (say,
anti-feminism, neo-conservatism). They can but don't have to be cliches.
s
smw
Jorn Barger wrote:
> smw <sm...@ameritech.net> wrote in
> news:<8281d0b6.02101...@posting.google.com>:
>
>>>Silke followed up with a row of questionmarks, presumably
>>>because she's unaccustomed to 'meta' meaning 'change'
>>>
>>I'm accustomed to looking up the meaning of Greek words in
>>dictionaries; I'm also accustomed to the fact that prepositions and
>>prefixes usually don't have "a" meaning that translates into another
>>language one by one.
>>
>
> Again, multiple meanings for 'met-' would have strengthened my
> case, not weakened it.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that anyone agrees with Sayan;
of course, Sayan's contribution was sheer nonsense. I suspect he was
pulling your leg.
> I don't have any idea where 'metonymy' originated, but presumably
> some particular person in ancient or modern (or medieval) times
> who knew Greek chose those forms with the intent of expressing
> that idea. In coining words, there can be 'happy' ambiguities
> and 'unhappy' ones. If you're saying that 'metonymy' exploits
> a happy ambiguity, or that my sources erred in guessing 'change'
> as the primary intent of the original coiner, I'd be delighted
> to hear about that... but you're not telling!?
There's no happy ambiguity in metonymy. As you rightly point out, you
can't know what it means as a term of rhetorical analysis by knowing its
etymology. Same for topos.
>
>>You're posturing in the very act of accusing others of being
>>poseurs.
>>
>
> My hypothesis that you're in denial should at least partially
> explain why you're determined to nail me for imaginary
> crimes.
You don't see the posturing in claims to knowledge of Ancient Greek? You
don't see the posturing in critiquing the usage of a term the meaning of
which you're ignorant of, by your own admission?
>>[...] Not all topoi are motifs, and not all motifs are topoi.
>>
>
> Yeah, well, wake me up if you ever get around to spilling what
> you claim you know...
Done.
s
Arindam Banerjee
> 1. a. The supposed analogy of METAPHYSICS (misapprehended as meaning Œthe
> science of that which transcends the physical¹) has been followed in the
> practice of prefixing meta- to the name of a science, to form a designation
> for a higher science (actual or hypothetical) of the same nature but dealing
> with ulterior and more fundamental problem
I had thought of metaphysics as *beyond* physics - implying study of
the need for the happening of physical phenomena, and the proper
structuring of the human mind to comprehend the unknown.
> Which is precisely what I have always meant by metamathematics, although
> there are math-heads who will argue that metamath is an unnecessary word
> since math includes ita own analysis.
I won't agree with those math-heads. Let them explain exactly where
and how in maths can we really understand the meaning of the equation
a=b (how could two different sounds/letters/string of letters be the
same?) What is the significance of concepts such as zero and
infinity? The really, really basic stuff, I mean.
Arindam Banerjee.
>
> Fido
Lewis Mammel
Janice Miller wrote:
.
>
> A topos from 1970s popular culture that isn't seen much now, is "group of
> men (and women) who don't have any self-respect because the enterprise
> they work for is really a rich widow's tax write-off."
Speaking of the Enterprise, just saw a classic almostopos on a TNG
episode. A space creature was sucking energy from big E, and Gordie
and the - lady doctor engineering genius that he had a crush on and she
found out and was outraged but they had to cooperate - figured out together
that the baby creature might let go if they "soured the milk". Reasoning
that it would be tuned to the 21cm H-alpha line in space, they had to lower
the frequency from 20 downwards - delicately balancing the "souring"
effect so as to produce displeasure without punishing outrage, of which
they had had ample experience by this time.
So they're lowering the frequency ( which would be wavelength actually )
from 20 ... 18 etc. down to 1, and it's showing displeasure, and it's
ALMOST ready to let go so they need to just lower it a leeeeetle more
and they do and it lets go just in time before the big mamas and papas
arrive and everything is OK. Phew.
Notable for the utter lack of any kind of sense in the "souring" concept,
so that the scene is sustained by pure topolosity.
Never mind the baby and the milk - means nothing.
"It's technical"
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Jorn Barger
> You seem to be under the misapprehension that anyone agrees with Sayan;
No, yet again you have zero grounds for this assertion.
> You don't see the posturing in claims to knowledge of Ancient Greek?
Your insistence on _projecting_ these 'claims' begins to look
like a paranoid hallucination.
> You don't see the posturing in critiquing the usage of a term
> the meaning of which you're ignorant of, by your own admission?
If I'm reading a user's manual, and the author substitutes an
opaque synonym for a common term, then absolutely I have a right
to criticise.
You've begun to claim that 'topos' has a specialised technical
meaning for which no common synonym is adequate, but none of
the examples I've seen actually require such details-- the
term seems to be used instead _because_ it's vague.
Your own definition _appears_ to pile on heaps of specific
requirements:
"...constellations of motifs, themes, images, or arguments
that are common within the texts of a specific age and place
...or a specific discourse..."
but since everything is linked by "or"s the definition
effectively reduces to 'motifs'. (My Flaubert-book offered
'banquet' as a topos, though there's no specific age/place/
discourse implied.) ((And don't try to cheat by saying a
banquet is a place-- that's clearly not what your definition
meant.))
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> so that the scene is sustained by pure topolosity.
> Never mind the baby and the milk - means nothing.
Hey, I saw that episode! I'll have to think about topolosity the next
time it reruns around. I thought the lady engineer was a babe, wondered
why she didn't go go for Geordi.
Sayan Bhattacharyya
>
>Jorn Barger wrote:
>
>> Again, multiple meanings for 'met-' would have strengthened my
>> case, not weakened it.
>
>You seem to be under the misapprehension that anyone agrees with Sayan;
>of course, Sayan's contribution was sheer nonsense. I suspect he was
>pulling your leg.
Actually, no -- I wasn't pulling his leg. I guessed that metonymy
must, etymologically speaking, come from "meta" and "nymy", the
latter being roughly "the business of naming". So I figured that
"metonymy" has the same relationship to "naming", as "meta-level"
has to "level". Seeing that "metonyms" can reasonably
be thought of as "displaced names", this etymology made a whole
lot of sense to me. (I did not look up in a dictinary, I probably
should have).
ObNewWordThatILearnedYesterday : metastasis
Jorn Barger
mostly been on rec.arts.books. The Aristotle-part is all new
to me so I welcome corrections.]
I hope soon to go a little further into the concept-space of
Joyce's Eolus-tropes, but I took a day off to make a Frances
Yates page-- http://www.robotwisdom.com/jorn/yates.html
--in the hope her work on memory might offer a bridge between
Aristotle's 'topoi' (which charm me) and the modern variants
(which annoy me). Yates says:
"There can be no doubt that these topoi used by persons
with a trained memory must be mnemonic loci, and it is
indeed probable that the very word 'topics' as used
in dialectics arose through the places of mnemonics.
Topics are the 'things' or subject matter of dialectic
which came to be known as topoi through the places in
which they were stored."
I quoted Aristotle's original 4thC-BC topoi in
News:<16e613ec.02100...@posting.google.com>:
This list bears a strong family resemblance to Roget's 1000
categories and a weaker one to Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations:
http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/prehistory.html
but it's vastly less disciplined (more Borges-like) than
either.
I don't think there's much agreement on what Aristotle intended
by them, and I'm not sure when I'll get around to checking, but
it can't hurt to try a preliminary round of guessing, using
AI-style analysis:
> 1. Opposites
We have to picture a 4thC Greek orator appealing to some sort
of argument-from-opposites. But this is so vague by
AI-standards that I think I'll skip it for now.
> 2. Identical results and antecedents
One interpretation here might be to argue that antecedents-A1
should also be held blameless if they led to the identical
results as clearly-blameless antecedents-A2.
> 3. Inflections
Tones of voice? Cf #25 below.
> 4. Altered choices
You make a choice, but circumstances change before your
choice is fulfilled, making the outcome less desirable,
so you modify.your original choice. (This sounds like
contract law, maybe.)
> 5. Correlative terms
No idea.
> 6. Attributed motives
Again very close to #25-- you assume person A has motive
M and you act based on that assumption, but it may well
prove false.
> 7. More and less
Maybe (eg) partial payment for partial delivery?
> 8. Incentives and deterrents
Carrot and/or stick.
> 9. Time
Too soon, too late, too fast, too slow, etc?
> 10. Incredible occurences
The dog ate my homework!
> 11. Definition
(This is way more 'meta' than the average topos here.)
> 12. Conflicting facts
Rashomon. (Facts don't conflict, reports do.)
> 13. Induction
General rule derived from multiple examples?
> 14. Meeting slander
This is pure Polti. Also cf #12 above.
> 15. Existing decisions
Cf 'altered choices'?
> 16. Cause to effect
I'd think reasoning backwards is more common.
> 17. Turning the tables
Accuser becomes accused?
> 18. Meaning of names
Sounds superstitious, unless it just means meanings of _words_
> 19. Part to whole
Bad apple?
> 20. Actions compared
Cf #2?
> 21. Simple consequences
Maybe simplifying a situation rhetorically, to argue more
clearly?
> 22. Course of action
Eg, before you alter your choice?
> 23. Criss-cross consequences
Not simple, probably unexpected?
> 24. Previous mistakes
Might exonerate, if someone is shown to be invincibly
ignorant, or increase guilt if they should have learned
by now.
> 25. Inward thoughts, outward show
This makes sense as a locus/topos for lawyers-- 'The
defendant looks innocent but consider what he's really
feeling'
> 26. Division
Very vague: Zeno's paradox, or Solomon's judgment, etc
etc etc?
> 27. Proportional results
F = ma
> 28. Ambiguous terms
Eg, 'topos'
Lewis Mammel
Jorn Barger wrote:
> I quoted Aristotle's original 4thC-BC topoi in
> News:<16e613ec.02100...@posting.google.com>:
[ ... ]
>
>
> I don't think there's much agreement on what Aristotle intended
> by them, and I'm not sure when I'll get around to checking, but
> it can't hurt to try a preliminary round of guessing, using
> AI-style analysis:
Believe it or not, Aristotle discusses all these terms in Book II
of the Rhetoric, albeit briefly.
e.g.
> > 9. Time
>
> Too soon, too late, too fast, too slow, etc?
He refers to ex post facto demands. If I had demanded
a reward for doing this, you would have acceded, so it's
only right that you should reward me even though no prior
agreement was made.
>
> > 10. Incredible occurences
>
> The dog ate my homework!
That if an incredible thing is believed, it must be because
it is true. Familiar to us as "You couldn't make that up."
> > 12. Conflicting facts
>
> Rashomon. (Facts don't conflict, reports do.)
Conflicting or inconsistent allegations. Meat and potatoes rhetoric.
>
> > 18. Meaning of names
>
> Sounds superstitious, unless it just means meanings of _words_
Hortatory - "Live up to your name."
>
> > 19. Part to whole
>
> Bad apple?
"taking separately the parts of a subject" ? e.g. "name one"
Later he cites as spurious "to assert of the whole what is
true of the parts"
e.g.
"One good thing cannot be made up of two bad things" (!)
> > 21. Simple consequences
>
> Maybe simplifying a situation rhetorically, to argue more
> clearly?
"any given thing usually has both good and bad consequences" - use it.
> > 23. Criss-cross consequences
>
> Not simple, probably unexpected?
Consider the good and bad consequences of two opposite courses
of action.
>
> > 25. Inward thoughts, outward show
>
> This makes sense as a locus/topos for lawyers-- 'The
> defendant looks innocent but consider what he's really
> feeling'
He does make a rather lawerly observation:
Another is this: the things people approve of openly are not
those which they approve secretly: openly, their chief praise
is given to justice and nobleness; but in their hearts they
prefer their own advantage. Try, in the face of this, to establish
the point of view that your opponent has not adopted. This is the
most effective of the forms of argument that contradict common opinion.
>
> > 26. Division
>
> Very vague: Zeno's paradox, or Solomon's judgment, etc
> etc etc?
Breakdown into cases. Sherlock Holmesian.
Lew Mammel, Jr.
Ron Hardin
> > 1. Opposites
>
> We have to picture a 4thC Greek orator appealing to some sort
> of argument-from-opposites. But this is so vague by
> AI-standards that I think I'll skip it for now.
Unlike modern orators.
--
Ron Hardin
rhha...@mindspring.com
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.
Jorn Barger
> Believe it or not, Aristotle discusses all these terms in Book II
> of the Rhetoric, albeit briefly.
Thanks (I think!). I've taken a first shot at linking them via
Perseus: http://www.robotwisdom.com/issues/topos.html
but I don't understand why the numbered list I found is so poorly
correlated with A's comments...?
On a first readthru, it looks like he often lumps dissimilar
arguments under one heading because of fairly superficial
overlaps (eg More-and-less). I can picture him writing his
examples on indexcards, and trying desperately to reduce them
to a manageable number of groups. I _can't_ imagine any
orator training himself to a clear-enough 'memory palace'
with these, that his public orations benefit from them.
His use of literary and historical allusions is charmingly
Polti-like.
I was remembering Joyce's comments in Ulysses "What useful
discovery did Socrates learn from [his shrewish wife] Xanthippe?
--Dialectic, Stephen answered" and "Even the allwisest Stagyrite
[Aristotle] was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love."
...and I wondered if you could fabricate a history of Aristotle's
debates with Phyllis-- http://sunsite.dk/cgfa/grien/p-grien9.htm
--using all 28 topoi applied to domestic disputes...?
joe green
John P David
"Jorn Barger" <jo...@enteract.com> wrote in message
news:16e613ec.02101...@posting.google.com...
| I don't think there's much agreement on what Aristotle intended
| by them, and I'm not sure when I'll get around to checking, but
| it can't hurt to try a preliminary round of guessing, using
| AI-style analysis:
|
| > 1. Opposites
You'd find, I think, that most students of Aristotle, few as they are
anymore, would agree that he meant for this list to be exhaustive such that
there was no possible topic of investigation, study or dialectic that would
not be covered by one of those headings. Kant went to further work on it to
boil them down to 8 or 12, I don't recall which, so that many of those which
appear in Aristotle's list may be subsumed into more general, abstract and
logically instrumental categories.
|
| We have to picture a 4thC Greek orator appealing to some sort
| of argument-from-opposites. But this is so vague by
| AI-standards that I think I'll skip it for now.
Since you are considering it from the standpoint of rationalizing it in
terms of Boolean computer logic and AI algorithms, this is, above all
Aristotelian topics, the most important as it represents an extension of the
one fundamental building block of his Logic, the *Principle of
Non-Contradiction*: "Nothing can, at once, both be and not be."
Okay that is the one axiomatic assumption upon which all Logic either stands
or falls. Reject it, and no logic can exist. Now as the dialectic moves
toward its first synthesis, one might put forth the antithesis that if this
were the case then there could exist, at once, no opposites. Now to resolve
that question, the concept of "opposites" must be defined.
Aristotle found that it is in the nature of some things to have their
opposites, and other things not to have them. This is a distinction of
extreme importance because it establishes a hierarchy of the things one will
encounter in nature and thought. Take one of Aristotle's favorite examples,
the equilateral triangle. Does it have an opposite?
No. Why? Because whether the perfect triangle exists in nature or not (and
of course it does in the crystals of many elements, biological structures of
both flora and fauna), or only in thought, as it may be clearly defined, it
is what may be called *ousia* or a Primary Substance. The word *primary*
means in one sense "unitary", while at the same time, as Ortega y Gasset
discusses this Aristotelian issue, it means "first or highest in order."
Now the essence of a primary substance may be *a priori* in the sense of
being both first and highest in order, or simply essential as a "necessary"
rather than accidental synthesis of opposites. In the first case, nothing
more can be said of a primary substance *a priori* since it is primary in
the sence of being simple, not dual, self-evident, self-defined, but in the
latter case, a substance may be primary as a unity which is a synthesis of
opposites which may be taken apart by reason in an analysis of the opposites
as the component essences may be deduced from it. It is nevertheless primary
in that it contains the opposition of essences that define it, as the
electron and proton are contained and made primary by the atom. And in the
triangle as line and space are brought into a synthesis of "point" and
"angle".
If triangle were not *ousia*, primary, it would not contain self-evidently,
analytically within itself its own essential components, and therefore its
definition. So opposites are never wholes in themselves, they are never
primary because clearly they are dual. You can look at a triangle and ask
concerning those things of which it is made. You might suggest that it is
made of three points and three lines. Now you might ask, "Is *point* the
opposite of *line*?" Someone will say, "Absolutely not! A line is made of
points." The other man will say, "Aha! Therefore point and line are the
same!" Man2 will say, "Precisely so, for it is clear that where lines meet,
a point occurs, and there is a point at the meeting and intersection of
every line."
Are those men right or wrong to suggest that lines are made of points?
Let's consider it, since as we proceed we consider a different notion, that
"point" and "line" are decidedly not the same, and that point is a synthesis
of line and space. This is to say that line and space are prior to point,
are "essences" of point, and are, in other words, necessary for point to
have its essence.
But, if point and line are the same, sharing in one substance with point
being the more primary then in Aristotle's terms, it is a matter of mere
*accident* whether we shall be looking at a point or a line.
The word "essence" is essential to Aristotelian metaphysics. It refers to
that which is necessary for a thing to be the thing defined. We are
presented with a true set of opposites to view the distinction between the
essential and the accidental. That there should be three points or lines
essential to a triangle is one thing, while the length of lines is
accidental. But we shall now argue that a distinction between point and line
is not accidental pertaining only to length, but that there is an essential
difference, since point is a synthesis of more than line, merely and alone.
The concept of *essence* relates to the parts, whereas *substance* is to the
whole.
Like triangle, may we say that "point" is a substance? Only if we are right
to say that about triangle. If we are wrong, and "primary" is to be
construed most narrowly as *a priori*, first in order of cause, simple, not
made of parts, not a synthesis of opposites, then neither triangle nor point
are substances, but mere essences that are constituent wholes of lesser
essences.
The distinction between essence and substance left us by Aristotle and later
confused the more by Thomas, really leaves the matter up to question, and I
would be pleased to hear the opinions or the better information of others on
the matter.
What follows are a few ruminations on the matter, written somewhat earlier
when I was going on the assumption that there are two kinds of primary
substance as defined at the beginning . . .
Consider the pyramid, how it retains the image on every face, except the
base, of the triangle. So, then how can the triangle be a substance if it is
the constituent component of a pyramid?
Well, since the square is not a composite or i.e. dialectical opposite of
triangle leading by virtue of that opposition necessarily to the existence
of the pyramid, then the pyramid is not a perfect, simple expression of
composite opposites, and may not therefore be referred to as a substance in
the perfectly primary sense, as its existence tends toward the accidental
rather than the substantial. As we are about to see, the equilateral
triangle is such an expression of substance so far as it is constructed
entirely of opposites; opposite every line there is a central point, not
just a point, but a point that is a defining boundary between line and
space, as space and line are now defined as opposites . . .
Points may be seen to exist, in the abstract sense only where lines meet,
intersect, start or end. Where a line starts there is a point where space
exists. There is first space, then point, then line--on one side of point
is space, on the other side line. Space and line are opposites on separate
sides of a point. That point is defined by both space and line, and it
cannot exist by virtue of itself. No point exists by virtue of itself. The
point is a point on a line, or it is a the point where space becomes line;
it exists by virtue of two opposites, and so it has no substantial existence
of its own. The point is the line, and it is the space.
To say "point in space" is a misnomer because without lines to determine
that position it cannot exist. There is only a point on a line or where a
line begins from space. Point is a product of two opposites, space and line.
Now we have an hierarchy:
1. Triangle
2. Point
3. Line
4. Space
At first, wouldn't you think, according to the above considerations that 2
and 3 are reversed in order? We said that point depends on line and not the
other way round. It would have been better to draw a triangle where Point
is at the upper apex with Space and Line at opposite ends of the base, and
let the whole be Triangle. The hierarchy would thus be made dialectical,
not to be limited to a logic of mere linearity.
What is a triangle? It is a graphical representation of a point. A point
is not a dot. A triangle is a point. The triangle points, the dot does not.
We have seen that each level depends on that which is lower for its essence.
And the logic of that linear hierarchy is difficult to contemplate. Again,
we speak of *essence* rather than *existence* (sorry Jean Paul) since space
and points have no existence, no being, for they are mere logical and
geometrical abstractions, powerful rational tools of logic. But they don't
exist, they have no being. In other words, as elements of reality, they are
not "actual", they are defined rather as "possible", or entities of power
with potential to bring actualities into existence, yet they have no
existence or being of their own. Such power is not actual or acting, but
according to Aristotle's Metaphysics, the possible has the power to cause
other things having matter to act by a kind of implosion of negative force.
The *possible* is the Unmoved Mover of the universe.
As to the above hierarchy: there is a chain of necessity from one to the
next. The essence of the substance of triangle is point, and the essence of
the substance of point is line, and the essence of the substance of line is
space.
Point separates line from space.
A former suggestion made some number of paragraphs above is erroneous to say
that a triangle may be made of three points (with no lines), since the
presence of more than one contiguous point defines the structure of a line.
Line is therefore an essence of triangle such that it may not be logically
referred to interchangeably as "point". Lines are not made up of points.
Lines are lines, and points are mere places along a line, the beginning and
ends of lines. If there are two contiguous points then before those are
points, there is a line that has two points. In absence of line, again,
point may not be contemplated for it becomes a double abstraction. No point
in space may be defined without a line, but an infinite line can be
contemplated without consideration of a point.
Now, have we seen a pair of opposites? May we say "Space is the opposite of
line"?
We have seen that point may be made of space on the one side, the beginning
of a line on the other. We have seen the location of a point between space
and line. That point defines space and line as opposites. That point is
what Ortega y Gasset refers to as the boundary of a definition. Thus we
discover that the nature of opposites is not in opposition to the Principle
of Non-Contradiction. Opposites are the opposing forces, the negative and
positive aspects of the same thing, the electron and proton that produce by
opposition, the atom, male and female the child, and so of course they may
exist at once and at the same time. All primary substances are constructed
of a negative and positive element. Space surrounds line, at both ends and
along the sides, but it is space which gives the essence of point to any
location along that line, for the line is integral, it is not divided or it
would be no line, only space can touch it to define a point along it. The
line is not made up of points. First space and line have essence and only
then may there be point as a synthesis of space and line. No line, no point.
No space no point.
Consider point. It cannot exist except for the existence of both space and
line. Therefore, space and line are the opposite essences of which the
substance point is constructed. In order for point to exist those opposites
must exist at once and in the same space and time.
From this we find that the Principle of Non-Contradiction has to do with
something far more subtle than a mere contemplation of opposites. To say
that nothing can both be and not be at once is to speak toward a
contemplation of that which is true as opposed to what is false, that which
is possible as opposed to the actual, the real and the unreal.
--
JPDavid jpd...@hotmail.com
John's Joint:: http://jpdavid.freewebspace.com/
"It takes a long evolutionary process to arrive at objectivity, that is, to
acquire the faculty to see the world, nature, and other persons and oneself
as they are, and not distorted by desires and fears. The more man develops
this objectivity, the more he is in touch with reality, the more he matures,
the better can he be to create a human world in which he is at home." --
Erich Fromm in *The Sane Society*
"And it don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing." -- Irving Mills,
Duke Ellington.
Edward Casey
Xanthippe?..." was actually said by the character John Eglinton not Joyce
himself. It's good to distinguish between authors and their characters. Also
between character in books and in real life. For instance, there was a
Hamnet Shakespeare but he wasn't the same as Hamlet the dramatic persona.
Eduardus
Gary Stonum
"joe green" <yeoldw...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:5513471a.0210...@posting.google.com...
> If only Post Colonic theory had been taken seriously when I first
introduced it!
Hey, now, wait a min, JG. I got you Prime Time on the late and not widely
lamented Electronic College of
Theory, once and not in the future electronic venue of America's Only
Official Literary and Cultural Theory Organization, the society for critical
exchange.
G.
joe green
Louis Katorz
>I am immortal once again! Death where is
>thy ring a ding ding?
Hmm. I thought once immortal always immortal. What a bore to have to
renew one's immortality.
Bruce McGuffin
Petter Settli
Yeah, but don't blab the plans to the Parole Board.
--PS
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
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francis muir
"Petter Settli" <pet...@online.no> wrote:
> Bruce McGuffin wrote:
>>> che...@webtv.net (Louis Katorz) writes:
>>>
>>>> joe green wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I am immortal once again! Death where is
>>>>> thy ring a ding ding?
>>>>
>>>> Hmm. I thought once immortal always immortal. What a bore to have to
>>>> renew one's immortality.
>>>
>>> Not nearly as much fun as renewing your immorality.
>
> Yeah, but don't blab the plans to the Parole Board.
Ma parole!
francis muir
<mcgu...@ll.mit.edu> wrote:
Ol' Joe Wordy joined the Immortals with lines like:
Inside the palace
gowns with women bright as green hummingbirds
sing "Celeste Aida."
Their wings hurt.
A slash of ruby at their throats.
They hope that radio will be discovered soon.
Michael Zeleny
>Jorn Barger <jo...@enteract.com> wrote:
>+ The first paragraph starts with the jargon "This topos"
>+ and ends with a citation of Bakhtine: Rabelais's
>+ scenes of meals "in the tradition and spirit of the
>+ carnival, undermine established authority."
> Speaking of caca, I bought Bakhtine's book, and was
> astounded to see how pompous a person could get over an
> author who would have hated his pretentious guts if he'd
> known him. You either laugh with Rabelais, or you just
> don't get it and should go away.
Rabelais was an accomplished physician and one of the most learned
humanists of his time. His books are living compendia of Renaissance
knowledge. It is to his eternal credit that they should appeal to
readers unschooled in the sciences and bereft of classical culture.
>+ Her conclusion states "The detailed investigation of the
>+ texts and 'avant-textes' of selected topoi and figures,
> Clearly the government needs to step in. I propose a
> regulation which will force the publishers to post the "topoi"
> count on the cover of a book, to alert the reader how deep
> into sewage he can expect to wade.
Squeamishness goes hand in hand with subliteracy.
--
cordially, -- Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu
7576 Willow Glen Rd, Hollywood, CA 90046 323-876-8234 323-363-1860
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better. -- Samuel Beckett