Negative Dialectics

In Aesthetics with DKJ, we were discussing very briefly Theodor Adorno who, according to DKJ, comes up in almost every discipline and what interested me mostly (he interested me quite a bit otherwise) was what he put forth in his Negative Dialectics, a kind of critique of Hegel's dialectic in which there is not such a hopeful resolution into synthesis. I was wondering whether anyone knew anything more on this or has any notable anecdotes of experiences with Adorno.

Ortega Hypothesis

The Ortega hypothesis (after Jose Ortega y Gasset) states that average and mediocre scientists contribute over time to the development of science and that the major breakthroughs happen through a culling of all this work, yet one name is usually recognized. I'm wondering whether you could apply this to the humanities as well. Literature doesn't seem to work in this way. Frequently, commentators draw connections between works from any time and I wonder what would happen if this connective way of understanding the progression of ideas can work with the sciences. It doesn't seem likely. In a way, and I'd like people to poke holes in this, I think the sciences are the farthest away from culture as an intellectual pursuit.

Ethical Arguments

I'm not entirely sure how to express this accurately, philosophically. But I've thought about this lately. In rhetoric revolving around the environment and issues surrounding it, I've noticed a kind of extension of care ethics that says simply "you should care about the environment and how you affect it because the earth's survival is contingent on your care." This is simplistic. But the arguments seem to want outsiders to its ideology to care because it is either morally wrong not to or detrimental to the whole human race (which is supposedly morally wrong). I hope I'm quantifying this correctly. I'm sure there are much stronger arguments than what I'm hearing because frequently people don't care and if we proposed compelling arguments, there may be different effects. May be.

Galileo

In the beginning of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, one of the characters, Salviati, states: "Yesterday we resolved to meet today and discuss as clearly and in as much detail as possible the character and the efficacy of those laws of nature which up to the present have been put forth by the partisans of the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic position on the one hand, and by the followers of the Copernican system on the other. Since Copernicus places the earth among the movable heavenly bodies, making it a globe like a planet, we may well begin our discussion by examining the Peripatetic steps in arguing the impossibility of that hypothesis; what they are, and how great is their force and effect. For this it is necessary to introduce into nature two substances which differ essentially. These are the celestial and the elemental, the former being invariant and eternal the latter, temporary and destructible. This argument Aristotle treats in his book De Caelo, introducing it with some discourses dependent upon certain general assumptions, and afterwards confirming it by experiments and specific demonstrations. Following the same method, I shall first propound, and then freely speak my opinion, submitting myself to your criticisms -- particularly those of Simplicio, that stout champion and defender of Aristotelian doctrine."

If I'm not mistaken, this and the bolder statements that follow are part of the reason Galileo was tried. It looks long-winded but the concise language Galileo (or Galileo's translator Stillman Drake) uses makes his initial point of criticism clear. I'm not sure I follow his argument about the celestial vs. the elemental maybe because of lack of knowledge of Aristotle. Is there a connection I'm missing between Aristotle and Copernicus that he's making?

C.S. Peirce (post that was supposed to be published two weeks ago)

In a short essay "The Red and the Black", C.S. Peirce (who Prof. Silliman said was the smartest person to walk these shores) claims that "to be logical men should not be selfish; and, in point of fact, they are not selfish as they are thought. The willful prosecution of one's desires is a different thing from selfishness. The miser is not selfish; his money does him no good, and he cares for what shall become of it after his death...
   Now, it is necessary for logicality that a man should himself be capable of the heroism of self-sacrifice. It is sufficient that he should recognize the possibility of it, should perceive that only that man's inferences who has it are really logical, and should consequently regard his own as being only so far valid as they would be accepted by the hero. So far as he thus refers his inferences to that standard, he becomes identified with such a mind" (347).
   For a logician, this appears very emotive. Also, this an essay on probability which he takes half the essay to get to (perhaps his own idiosyncrasy). I didn't find it dumb but I found it peculiar and cool; he is very smart, evidenced for me in just this one essay but I'm more curious now on this topic of the selflessness of the logically minded and the logicians. He does err at the beginning by just throwing his claims out there with "the willful prosecution...is a different thing from selfishness" and then later "it is necessary..." Well, how is it different? Why is it necessary?

Alfred

Alfred North Whitehead makes this claim in his The Axioms of Descriptive Geometry; I found it one of the more brilliant parts (so far) of the book:
"The independence of the Dedekind axiom of the other axioms, combined with the negation of the Euclidean axiom, is proved by considered as in section 12, Descriptive Space to be atetrahedral region in Projective Space, but confining ourselves to the points whose coordinates are algebraic numbers, as in the corresponding proof for Projective Geometry.
   The independence of the Dedekind axiom of the other axioms, combined with the Euclidean axiom, is similarly proved by considering Descriptive Space to be the region in Projective Space found by excluding a particular plane; and further, as before, we confine our consideration the points whose coordinates are algebraic numbers" (14-15).

I don't want to misexplain any of the terminology he uses (which I'm getting a grasp on myself) so I'll be lazy and say that you should look it up. But I want to know what everyone thinks on this statement. He seems pretty logically consistent although I think you'd have to start at the beginning of the book and go through to do sensical logical proofs.

Moby-Dick

Early on in MB, before Queequeg's and Ishmael's homoerotic relationships, there's a good old puritanical sermon. Father Maple claims this:

"Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers. So Jonah's Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah's purse, ere he judge him openly."

So, the argument:

J implies P
S implies F
:./
(V implies P) implies ~F

J = judges openly and encapsulates the first sentence
P = pauper, poor, penniless
S = Sin
F = free
V = virtue

Do you think this works? Or do could we say for sin ~V so that we don't have this floating variable?