Magni Formica Laboris

Writing Assignment for 28 September, 2016 Summary of two articles September 28, 2016 The reading for this week consisted of two articles: Pamela Long’s “Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars ” [ 2 ] and Jim Bennett’s “Presidential Address: Knowing and doing in the sixteenth century” [ 1 ] . Long’s article is both well written and well organized. Her thesis is that political and military pressures of fifteenth century Italy and southern Germany led to increased patronage and authorship of the mechanical arts, in what she sees as an alliance between techne and praxis . Practitioners of military engineering, architecture, and sculpture wrote about their art and linked it back to ancient traditions, which subsequently gave these texts and their practitioners an elevated status. There are two related points to her thesis: one which she implies, and one which she clearly states herself. The first is that the kind of alliance she depicts did not

Writing Assignment for 21 September, 2016 On Medical Analogies in Book 2 of Aristotle's Physics September 21, 2016 In this brief paper, I will examine a set of medical analogies made by Aristotle in Book 2 of his Physics . Taken together, these analogies help to define Aristotle’s concept of nature, and connect it to his other concepts about the workings of the world. An important statement is from the eighth chapter, in which he defends his claim that there are purposes, or final causes, in nature: It is absurd to suppose that purpose is not present because we do not observe the agent deliberating. Art ( techn e ) does not deliberate. If the ship-building art were in the wood, it would produce the same results by nature. If, therefore, purpose is present in art, it is present also in nature. The best illustration is a doctor doctoring himself: nature is like that. (Aristotle, Physics 199b26-30) This is just

Writing Assignment for 12 October, 2016 On Galileo's Method in the Dialogue Galileo’s goal in the Fourth Day of the Dialogo [1], through the voice of Salviati, is to show how the earth’s mobility is required to adequately explain the phenomenon of tidal variation. One of his interlocutors, Simplicio, both denies the motion of the Earth and feels that the tides are already adequately explained. By the Fourth Day, Galileo feels he has already given ample evidence that the Earth moves, so much so that he makes it his chief assumption in explaining the tides. The Earth’s motion, however, is not all that Galileo requires. His account of what he calls the “primary and universal cause” of the tides depends upon an analogy with a moving barge, and from this analogy enters the requirement that the Earth’s motion causes an “uneven motion” on its surface that can explain the tides [1, pp. 444, 461]. Galileo’s arguments are complicated, and he does not foll

It is the cabbage which surpasses all other vegetables. It may be eaten either cooked or raw; if you eat it raw, dip it into vinegar. It promotes digestion marvelously and is an excellent laxative, and the urine is wholesome for everything. If you wish to drink deep at a banquet and to enjoy your dinner, eat as much raw cabbage as you wish, seasoned with vinegar, before dinner, and likewise after dinner eat some half a dozen leaves; it will make you feel as if you had not dined, and you can drink as much as you please. De Agricultura, 156

The great virtue of literature (of art in general) is that it does not truck with abstract data, such as the dates of battles or elections, the numbers of this or that, or the rules or laws of this or that. One could argue that such “data” are rarely real for us, in any experiential sense, and that the business of art is precisely to translate data and information into living circumstance, to turn fact into fiction. It may seem that such a procedure moves away from reality, but the opposite is true. Facts start to live when we see them as part of experience, even fictive experience. - Arnold Weinstein, in his guidebook to Classics of American Literature

By Jennifer Franklin

I was reading this article which contained the following interesting historical tidbit about the different words that survived in modern English: Then there are doublets, less dramatic than triplets but fun nevertheless, such as the English/French pairs  begin / commence  and  want / desire . Especially noteworthy here are the culinary transformations: We kill a  cow or a  pig  (English) to yield  beef  or  pork  (French). Why? Well, generally in Norman England, English-speaking laborers did the slaughtering for moneyed French speakers at the table. The different ways of referring to meat depended on one's place in the scheme of things, and those class distinctions have carried down to us in discreet form today. This is a great example of the consistency theory of knowledge (see Lehrer text).

I just finished Of Mice and Men . Next is The Pearl, followed by Grapes of Wrath. Then I'll try to get through East of Eden. “Boileau said that Kings, Gods, and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present day kings aren’t very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation, and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor. . . . And since our race admires gallantry, the writer will deal with it where he finds it. He finds it in the struggling poor now.” —Steinbeck in a 1939 radio interview