Harry Pollard wrote:
>
> Brian,
>
> You choose your words - which doesn't mean you get them right.
>
> Would you say that ohm, volt, and ampere are the "tenets" of the
> electrician's "creed".
Well, perhaps in a sense they both can and should be.
I am referrig here to Susanne Langer's analysis of the
reasons why science -- which most people say "disenchants"
the world and strips our experience of meaning -- is
meaningful to scientists, and how we can make it even
more meaningful.
Part of the reason science is meaningful to scientists
is, of course, that it wnables them to "get back at"
their persecutors: For Galileo, the motion of the
earth around the sun was vengeance against the Pope
who put him [Galileo] in his place ("Eppur si muove").
But Langer also makes a constructive proposal: She notes
that all the things we interact with in our daily life
acquire, simply through that interaction, *referential
auras* which make them ever more meaningful to us.
For an electrician, the omega symbol means a lot more than
it means to some college student who is oppressed to
learn Ohm's law to keep from flunking Physics 10 and
being sent to Nam (Take away the threat and Ohm's
law may not even enter the student's awareness...).
Langer goes on to urge that we can make our lives
more meaningful, WITHOUT REVERTING TO MYTHOLOGIZING!,
by actively cultivating these associational auras.
A trivial example here would be an electrician who
lovingly painted an omega on his truck.
I am not in the least being facetious here. I am proposing
that Langer pinpointed the solution to The Crisis of meaning
in Western civilization. It is a shame that
nobody seems to notice. AI gives us algorithms for
pretending to reduce human existence to the machinations
of electric circuits. Langer proposed an "algorithm"
for transfiguring our social reality [Abwelt].
Of course, this kind of endeavor cannot be sustained
by persons who are busy semiotically imploding into
a psycho-social black hole of reducing everything
to the lowest possible price (including, first of all,
the persons themselves). And yet, even this is not
quite so simple, since economists who are interested
in their work for more than a paycheck can find
meaning in the symbols of their discipline just
like medical researchers can find meaning in melanoma
cells [provided, of course, that the cells are not
in their own bodies or the bodies of their loved ones].
The book is _Philosophy in a New Key_, by Susanne Langer,
a Harvard Univ. Press paperback.
Tolle, lege. [Buy it and read it.]
\brad mccormick
>
> And when you parse, are you using the tenets of your creed.
>
> Probably not.
>
> The terms you refer to as tenets are the labels given to well thought out
> defined concepts.They are used not in a creed but in a science.
>
> They are delightfully chosen so nothing can be in more than one category.
>
> They make possible some useful excursions into the economic analysis.
>
> So, now you know something you previously didn't know, which is good.
>
> Harry
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Brian wrote:
>
> >Harry wrote:
> >If they buy something it's because they want to buy it.
> >
> >Hi Harry,
> >If people buy things because they want them, why do people who sell
> >things spend billions of dollars advertising? Are they afraid that
> >buyers might forget that they want their product, sevices? Why do
> >advertisers hire the best psychology grads to work for their firms? Are
> >these people more gifted at reminding people what they want? Or is the P
> >T Barnum quote at play here?
> >
> >Take care,
> >Brian
> >ps I really want to read your views on adjunct vs tenured profs but I'm
> >not willing to pay for them. I'm hoping that you will freely share them
> >like you do with the tenets of your creed: Land, Labour, Capital and
> >Wealth.
>
> ******************************
> Harry Pollard
> Henry George School of LA
> Box 655
> Tujunga CA 91042
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Tel: (818) 352-4141
> Fax: (818) 353-2242
> *******************************
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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