This is Wittgenstein's General Propositional Formula which I am still working towards understanding. Bertrand Russell explains the elements of it as follows:
- p with the dash over top stands for all atomic propositions.
- that funny looking thing is the Greek lower case xi with the dash over top and stands for any set of propositions.
- N (xi with dash) stands for the negation of all the propositions making up xi with dash.
The symbol is intended to describe a process by the help of which, given the atomic propositions, all others can be manufactured.
Uh-huh. I'm currently studying a text on propositional logic which will, over time, clarify this. The problem is that this is on a level of generalization and abstraction so elevated that it is extremely difficult to grasp--and this despite the very plain and simple words used in explanations. But the whole discussion kind of assumes you just had a seminar in propositional logic.
[Added update: of course if you are a musician that formula is perfectly obvious: the passage is to be played piano with tenuto and a breath between each note. The big N stands for Nebenstimme and tells us the piece is by Arnold Schoenberg as this is how he indicated a secondary voice, as opposed to Hauptstimme, the main voice.]
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Having a cup of Earl Grey tea with my breakfast reminds me of something that has been bugging me for years: Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation is obviously intended to be French (even though the inspiration for the character was a pair of Swiss scientists) as is evidenced by his visit to the family vineyard in one of the films spun off from the tv series. His character is described like this:
Jean-Luc Picard was born to Maurice and Yvette Picard in La Barre, France, on July 13, 2305. As a child, he dreamed of joining Starfleet. He and the rest of his family speak English, with UK English dialects—the French language having become obscure by the 24th century... [from Wikipedia]
The problem is that Patrick Stewart, a Shakespearian actor born in Yorkshire, is so obviously not French in any way. That note about the French language having become obscure is a feeble attempt to paper over what is obviously either a serious mis-casting or a badly-conceived character. Frankly, I can't imagine an actual French character, or actor for that matter, playing the part of the captain of the Enterprise. So why not just admit the character is English? Who knows. But every time Captain Picard strides to the replicator and orders a cup of "tea, Earl Grey, hot" I curse inwardly.
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The media are awful. That's been said a thousand times, but let me add some refinements. The idea of sober, truthful, discussion of the events of the day has been leached out to the point that the New York Times is a cookbook with articles interspersed designed to affirm whatever nonsense passes for fact on the Upper West Side. Even the Wall Street Journal to which I have fled because it is almost the only place left with actual news, frequently succumbs to absolute nonsense. Today featured an article on Mexico that discussed the apparent failure of AMLO, the current president, to solve the cartel violence problem. There were some scary statistics. As a matter of principle I refuse to accept any statistics without a precise and thorough description of how the data was obtained and the calculations derived. So, yes, I don't believe statistics. Apart from that there were photos of a few remote villages and some anecdotes. So, basically a made up story. But it leaves the reader the strong impression that Mexico is a chaotic, violent and corrupt society to be avoided. Mind you, my impression of Washington DC from the outside is quite similar. But I have lived in Mexico for 26 years and the truth is that Mexico, at least where I live, is a peaceful and productive society much given to traditional customs and courtesies. There are no homeless people and not even any shoplifting. As for television I have avoided it for a couple of decades now.
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I notice that a number of the books I have ordered from Amazon recently have been apparently printed to order. For example, my just-received text on propositional logic says on the last page:
Coppell is a suburb of Dallas and the book is copyright 2020. Quite a few others were also printed to order such as the 1611 edition of the King James Bible and the English edition of the Hebrew Bible. I only just started checking and I notice that the University of Chicago edition of Wittgenstein's Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology and Saul Kripke's book on Rule-following and the Private Language Argument published by Blackwell are also printed out in Coppell TX. This is really one of the fruits of information technology: any book can be printed out in a convenient location for speedy shipping. What a wonderful thing this is as one of the irritants of the intellectual life is not being able to get a particular book.
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Now this blog is not exclusively about music, but that has certainly been the major focus and I am feeling deeply guilty over having nothing musical so far! So let's do some listening. I noticed the other day that Jay Nordlinger, music critic at The New Criterion was complaining that in all his years of reviewing concerts he has yet to hear a single symphony by Walter Piston. This is particularly shocking as Mr. Piston, a professor at Harvard, wrote the book, or rather books on this stuff. For decades his texts on harmony, counterpoint and orchestration were used in courses throughout North America. So here is the Symphony No. 6 with the Seattle Symphony conducted by Gerard Schwartz. A very fine work, it was recorded on Naxos.
[Another update: two of Piston's symphonies won the Pulitzer Prize in music.]
Definitely agree that Picard’s frenchness was never convincing. It is shown in more than just that spinoff film, though. There is a full episode in the TV series where he goes back to France, has a fight with his brother (who, unlike Starfleet Picard, is a man of the soil and even rejects replicator food), and meets a nephew who eventually dies in an accident.
ReplyDeleteMexico is obviously not a war-torn failed state, but last year I heard two shopkeepers in small towns in Baja California complain about how much shoplifting they suffered from, and I saw the occasional homeless person, too. Sure, few of the massive homeless encampments in city centers like the USA, or shoplifters just walking into a shop with a big sack and shamelessly filling it up, but still.
Publishers’ switch to print on demand is a terrible thing, because it always means shoddy glued bindings. For example, Oxford Classical Texts, the world’s most prestigious series of Greek and Latin editions, used to be books with sewn bindings and strong covers that were passed down from generation to generation. Oxford University Press now produces those titles as print on demand, and I think the ISBN numbers remain the same, so you can’t be sure of what you’ll get.
Thanks, Anonymous! Yes, quite right, I was thinking of that episode where he goes back to France and has a fight with his brother. One could probably write a considerable essay on the casting of leading roles on Star Trek--the first Captain Kirk was a nice Jewish boy from Montreal.
ReplyDeleteI was careful to offer the caveat "at least where I live" because I am in a special kind of enclave with a large expat population in a very conservative state and no, we really don't have homeless people or not visibly. And no, I have never heard of any shoplifting. But this is likely not true elsewhere in Mexico. I do rather doubt that there is an actual encampment of homeless anywhere in Mexico though.
Re print on demand, yes, I would fear exactly those things you talk about, but I have a stack of these newly printed books and they are all very well bound. No, not with sewn bindings as there used to be. (I have a first edition of Anscombe's introduction to the Tractatus from 1959 and while the dust cover was ragged and had to be thrown away, the book itself is in perfect condition. Published by Hutchison University Library.) But all the on-demand books I have are doing very well, even after more than one reading. The only book I have purchased recently that is not doing well is The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry, in the traditional edition and the binding is cracking and the pages coming loose. But time will tell, I suppose.
since Picard/Stewart came up ... I couldn't help but imagine that one episode Picard should have said "Maxwell House, room temperature". :)
ReplyDeleteThen cue up Mississippi John Hurt singing "Lovin' Spoonful", of course.
The joke being that it's so out of character across the board.
Yes, one reason I mentioned William Shatner as the original Captain Kirk and that he was Jewish from Montreal is that it is rather an interesting conundrum of how to cast the captain of a starship hundreds of years in the future. Most of the roots of science fiction are American (of course the early beginnings were French with Jules Verne and H. G. Wells) so starship captains, even far in the future can be usefully distanced by being played by non-Americans. On Battlestar Galactica and Stargate SG1, both shot in Vancouver, a remarkable number of characters are played by Canadians, carefully disguising their accents, but Canadians are too similar to Americans to provide that useful distance. Now that Chinese science fiction is evolving and expanding, it will be interesting to see how that develops.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I accidentally left out "and English with H. G. Wells"
ReplyDeleteBefore Wikipedia, how many people were even aware that William Shatner was born to a family of Eastern European Jewish immigrants? He doesn’t look particularly Ashkenazi. And in the mid 20th century when anti-Semitic stereotypes were still common in Hollywood, that fairly generic appearance is probably what allowed him to make the successful career he did.
ReplyDeleteHm, interesting, probably not a lot knew of Shatner's origins before Wikipedia. As a student and later lecturer at McGill in Montreal, I certainly did. The Student Union building is named after him. The culture of Montreal has a strong Jewish component.
ReplyDelete