Magni Formica Laboris

Reading Patterns of World History: Since 1750. On p789 it is asked: Why did the industrial movement begin in Britain? Why not, say, in China in the Song or Ming period? Why in the eighteenth century? Why in such areas as textiles, iron, mining, and transport?" The sort of answer that does not seem acceptable to a historian, but which I nonetheless think should hold some weight, is that it comes down to the contributions of key players in the industrial period. I am certainly interested in pursuing this question by looking at how the stage was set. How, so many factors came together in just the right proportion in order to create a climate where the ideas of such key players were fostered instead of neglected. But I cannot draw my attention away from those key players and the way they lived. Perhaps my early foray with the history of science has led me to this, because there it seems very plausible indeed that breakthroughs in science, or natural philosophy as it was called at t...

Assuming the common starting point of solipsism that we all share, and hopefully lose at some point during childhood or adolescence, we can all now ask ourselves the question: at what point am I happy with my understanding of my relationships with others? To which we might respond: it's a never-ending battle. It's even what defines life, a constant struggle to live among other minds. Now if it's not a never-ending battle, perhaps it is literature that will take us to the end. Certainly we'd like to think we could do it without literature, but I think it's safe to say that literature would facilitate an understanding of relationship. But then there remains a question: how do we bridge the gap between what we learn from the text of the literature--what we observe from the safe vantage point as reader--and our own lives? Weinstein mentioned in one of his discussions that (I paraphrase) it's easier to judge characters in a novel than the characters in our own lives...

HAMLET Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true. Let me question more in particular: what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither? GUILDENSTERN Prison, my lord! HAMLET Denmark's a prison. ROSENCRANTZ Then is the world one. HAMLET A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst. ROSENCRANTZ We think not so, my lord. HAMLET Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison. Compare this to Protagoras' statement that each person is a scale, and to Sextus Empiricus' claim about rain and cold.

After the First Player's speech in Act 2 of Hamlet, one of my favorite speeches in Shakespeare (the performance by Charlton Heston is phenomenal), an exchange between Hamlet and Polonius reveals an interesting bit of Hamlet's moral fiber: HAMLET 'Tis well: I'll have thee speak out the rest soon. Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live. LORD POLONIUS My lord, I will use them according to their desert. HAMLET God's bodykins, man, much better: use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in. I'm convinced that Shakespeare's lines in total serve as a sort of treasure trove of 16th-century English culture. Hoping to study them...

Recently I've been reading Locke's biography by Roger Woolhouse. On p. 94 the discussion is on his manuscript de Arte medica : "He that thinks he came to be skilled in diseases by studying the doctrine of the humours, that the notions of obstructions and putrefaction assist him in the cure of fevers, or that by the acquaintance he has with sulphur and mercury he was led into this useful discovery that what medicines and regimen as certainly kill in the latter end of some fevers as they cure in others, may as rationally believe that his cook owes his skill in roasting and boiling to his study of the elements, and that his speculations about fire and water have taught him that the same seething liquor that boils the egg hard makes the hen tender." - Locke 1669: 223, 225

When we asked him what he was reading, he sighed and mentioned a book on the economic wars of the future, author and title unknown to me. "Better to read 'Don Quixote,'" I said to him. "Everything's in there." Now, the 'Quixote' is a book that is not read nearly as much as is claimed, although very few will admit to not having read it. With two or three quotes, Clinton showed that he knew it very well indeed. Responding, he asked us what our favorite books were. Styron said his was "Huckleberry Finn." I would have said "Oedipus Rex," which has been my bed table book for the last 20 years, but I named "The Count of Monte Cristo," mainly for reasons of technique, which I had some trouble explaining. Clinton said his was the "Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," and Carlos Fuentes stuck loyally to "Absalom, Absalom," Faulkner's stellar novel, no question, although others would choose ...

I've been interested in the appeasement policy of the British right before WWII.  It should be worth some time, given what the wikipedia writers had to say about it: The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the British Prime Minister  Neville Chamberlain  towards  Nazi Germany  between 1937 and 1939. His policies of avoiding war with Germany have been the subject of intense debate for seventy years among academics, politicians and diplomats . The historians' assessments have ranged from condemnation for allowing  Hitler  to grow too strong, to the judgement that he had no alternative and acted in Britain's best interests. At the time, these concessions were widely seen as positive, and the  Munich Pact  among Germany, Britain, France and Italy prompted Chamberlain to announce that he had secured " peace for our time ". [3] The onus, which I felt placed on me upon reading the bolded text, to get off my ass and start studying ...