01 SEP 2014 by ideonexus
The Problem of Too Much Information in Literature
When I am reading Hamlet I often develop an urge to tell people about it, as if the Melancholy Dane's history had heretofore been classified as a top secret. I am bursting with information about Hamlet, so filled am I by the massive "evidence" presented by Shakespeare. So I sit down at my writing table and begin to put together an essay or a lecture in which I seem to extract a thesis out of the evidence in the play. I say "seem" because I think I actually begin with some kind of preconceived...Folksonomies: literature humanities
Folksonomies: literature humanities
1 
notes
notes05 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Negative Capability
I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caugh...
1 According to wikipedia: "...the capacity of human beings to transcend and revise their contexts." Here is the first use of the term by John Keats, where it sounds more like the ability to remain calm and rational in the face of uncertainty and not jump to conclusions without evidence.
23 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Why is Scientific Illiteracy Considered Acceptable?
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you...When failing to read Shakespeare is considered unacceptable?
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Relationship Between Geology and Geography
All that comes above the surface [of the globe] lies within the province of Geography; all that comes below that surface lies inside the realm of Geology. The surface of the earth is that which, so to speak, divides them and at the same time 'binds them together in indissoluble union.' We may, perhaps, put the case metaphorically. The relationships of the two are rather like that of man and wife. Geography, like a prudent woman, has followed the sage advice of Shakespeare and taken unto her '... 1 notes
notesThey are intertwined, but there are strict boundaries.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Science and Art, the Few and the Many
In science, address the few; in literature, the many. In science, the few must dictate opinion to the many; in literature, the many, sooner or later, force their judgement on the few. But the few and the many are not necessarily the few and the many of the passing time: for discoverers in science have not un-often, in their own day, had the few against them; and writers the most permanently popular not unfrequently found, in their own day, a frigid reception from the many. By the few, I mean ...Folksonomies: communication two cultures
Folksonomies: communication two cultures
Interesting way to frame a difference between the two as they relate to their audiences.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Herschel Sees Spirituality in Science
To the natural philosopher there is no natural object unimportant or trifling … A mind that has once imbibed a taste for scientific enquiry has within itself an inexhaustible source of pure and exciting contemplations. One would think that Shakespeare had such a mind in view when he describes a contemplative man finding
Tongues in trees — books in the running brooks
Sermons in stones — and good in everything
Where the uninformed and unenquiring eye perceives neither novelty nor beau...Folksonomies: philosophy naturalism
Folksonomies: philosophy naturalism
Everything in nature is interesting and significant.
