Please don’t forget Rex Warner

Rex Warner

It astounds me that even some of the most well-read of people have no sense of who Rex Warner is. My introduction to Rex Warner was via his translation of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War some thirty years ago when I was studying the philosophy of history. Soon after I came to discover Rex Warner as novelist by reading The Aerodrome. I had prior viewed the BBC adaptation but my then understanding was less than superficial since I hadn’t read the novel yet. Years later the name Rex Warner popped out at me, if I recall correctly, in Tim Fuller’s annotation of Oakeshott’s Rationalism in Politics. Around this time I made contact with someone who knew Rex and told me that Rex went to school with Oakeshott though they were in different years and one assumes they stayed in touch (something I will inquire about). Anyway, I’m of the view that Warner’s novels (at least The Aerodrome and The Professor) are as timely now as when they were written. I’m very much looking forward to reading Rex’s student Stephen Tabachnick’s biography and checking out Look up at the skies: Poems and prose chosen by Rex Warner by Gerard Manley Hopkins (Hopkins and Warner: how can one resist?). For more on RW see the NYT‘s slight obituary (I can’t find others); The Independent‘s Forgotten authors No 59: Rex Warner as well as a BA dissertation entitled An English Kafka?: a reading of Rex Warner’s The Professor and Franz Kafka’s The Trial. See also here, here, and here for various shades of opinion.

The British critic V. S. Pritchett once described Mr. Warner as ”the only outstanding novelist of ideas whom the decade of ideas produced.”

[t]his dandyish vicar’s son and disillusioned Marxist led a life packed with colour, incident and, by his own admission, lechery.

22183598

Remembering Allen Toussaint

Allen Toussaint

Commemorating the birth of the master. I think that of his more recent recordings The Bright Mississippi stands as his best, far exceeding his posthumous American Tunes. I must be the only one who thinks that Toussaint’s collaboration with Elvis Costello is thoroughly overrated, though that doesn’t compromise AT at all. Though he has his moments Costello for the most part comes off as pompous, dissonant and forced when taking the lead (EC as himself in Treme was thoroughly irritating unlike Kermit, who in response to the Davis Roganish character, gave this characteristic response.)

allen-toussaint-2

Mind and Behavior 37:2

journal of mind and behavior

The latest issue of JMB is now available. I especially want to bring your attention to the Critical Notice of Susan Haack’s latest book Evidence Matters: Science, Proof, and Truth in the Law reviewed here by Erica Beecher–Monas.

9200000034375822

Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words

frank zappa

Waiting with bated breath for Who the F is Frank Zappa? I chanced upon this documentary called Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words. Like George Carlin, more than ever we need Zappa. Even The Guardian gets his value: he along with Bowie was the most articulate, independent-minded and philosophical, the funniest and artistically, the bravest of the lot.

A Case of the Politicization of “Science”

science

Though there is nothing new in this phenomenon here’s a nice example of good science reporting by Jesse Singal, someone who has consistently taken on the left and the right on at best questionable or at worst outright junk science, the worst offenders these days emanating from the intersectional identitarians. It would be interesting to see how much of this stuff has been been uncritically assimilated and regurgitated by the priestly class of ideologues in philosophy. 

The scientific truth is that we don’t know exactly how big a role implicit bias plays in reinforcing the racial hierarchy, relative to countless other factors. We do know that after almost 20 years and millions of dollars’ worth of IAT research, the test has a markedly unimpressive track record relative to the attention and acclaim it has garnered.

test_3-w512-h600-2x

Walker Percy Wednesday 118

walker percy

percycovercroppea

I look at him steadily. “That every society has a right to protect itself against its enemies. That a society like an organism has a right to survive.

00000

I know that you work with dreams. What I want to ask you is this: Is there something which is not a dream or even a daydream but the memory of an experience which is a thousand times more vivid than a dream but which happens in broad daylight when you are wide awake?”    “Yes.” I am thinking of his “spell.”

00000

“I was dreaming of Germany. Germany! Why Germany? No, not dreaming. It happened. I was wide awake. I was lying down after you left yesterday. It was getting dark but the sky was still bright against the dark pines. It reminded me of—what? the Schwarzwald with its dark firs? I’ve told you about it before. I don’t know. Anyhow, it was as if I were back in Tübingen, where I’d been as a boy. I was lying in bed in my cousin’s house. It was so vivid I could have been there. I stayed with them a year. I would wake every morning to the sound of church bells.”    He moves the kerosene lamp again, leans forward.    “Have I spoken to you about this?”    “About Germany? Yes.”    “But not about—” He stops, rubs his forehead with both hands. “Yes, the church bells. They had a special quality, completely different from our church bells, a high-pitched, silvery sound, almost like crystal struck against crystal. Even the air was different. It was thin and clear and silvery and high-pitched too, if you know what I mean. It had a different—smell. Or was it lack of smell? Anyhow, nothing like our old funky, fertile South. No, it was a smell, a high-pitched sweet smell, almost chemical, yet sweet too, something like the cutting room of a florist’s shop—like old geraniums? Of course it is impossible to describe a smell. But it came back! I would wake in the morning to that high silvery ringing and the chemical geranium smell. I slept in a narrow bed covered not by a blanket or a quilt but by a soft goose-down bolster, like a light mattress. It was like an old-fashioned Southern feather bed with the mattress upside down. There was also the vague but certain sense that something was about to happen.”

71xts9yjggl

Continuants: Their Activity, Their Being, and Their Identity

david wiggins

One of my favourite living philosophers (if not the favourite) is David Wiggins. He was my tutor for ethics but not unfortunately for metaphysics which by then had become a secondary interest for him. Great to see that he has just released a new book gathering several of his most important essays on identity in one volume. Speaking of identity, it’s disheartening to see the cavalier use of this technical term by many in domains where there is no philosophical culture — e.g. typically in English, gender, and sociology departments. DW must surely be one of the last of the philosophers from the golden age of Anglophonic philosophy and unlike the overtly ideological or scared or bully-type careerists (often all three) that populate most departments now, David is known as a philosopher’s philosopher. a man of unimpeachable integrity.

9780198716624

Tool selection during foraging in two species of funnel ants

stigmergy

This paper is to be found in Animal Behaviour, Volume 123, January 2017, pp. 207–216. Could this be an extension of the mechanism of stigmergy? (H/T to Jerry Coyne).

We investigated tool selection in two species of Aphaenogaster ants by giving them the choice between different kinds of potential tools (natural and artificial objects). Ant workers showed a clear preference for certain materials to be used as tool objects. Tool selection was also shaped by familiarity with the material as ants developed a preference for artificial tools with a good soaking capacity that cannot be found in their natural environment. Our results indicate that ants of this genus have evolved unique foraging strategies and show plasticity in their behaviour.

screen-shot-2017-01-09-at-8-20-58-am

Bowie: The Last Five Years and The Last Supper

david bowie

For those who can’t access BBC player here is (a version?) of the show that has just been broadcast along with a companion piece featuring some of those who worked with him. (For the second time, the first vid has been pulled — just search “Bowie: The Last Five Years” in YouTube and perhaps someone has reposted).