Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 169.
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Date: 2023-08-16 11:03:24+00:00
From: Mcgann, Jerome (jjm2f) <jjm2f@virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.167: limits to attention
Dear Maurizio,
Yes, the dustup over AI is involved in my views, but even more is the science
that has been driving “industrialization”. The long arc of that mismanaged
project has obviously imperiled some of the most basic processes of Nature.
Thomas Hardy’s splendid poem on the disaster of the Titanic, “The Convergence of
the Twain”, hit the problem squarely:
And as the smart ship grew,
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the iceberg, too.
That phrase “stature, grace, and hue” is especially telling if you have read the
New Testament in English. It echoes the description of Jesus who “grew in
wisdom age and grace before God and men” (sometimes it’s “wisdom and stature”).
X
J
From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>
Date: Wednesday, August 16, 2023 at 4:43 AM
To: Mcgann, Jerome (jjm2f) <jjm2f@virginia.edu>
Subject: [Humanist] 37.167: limits to attention
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 167.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org<http://www.dhhumanist.org>
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
[...]
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2023-08-15 23:42:00+00:00
From: maurizio lana <maurizio.lana@uniupo.it>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.166: limits to attention
hi Jerry,
thank you a lot!
you are introducing these thoughts in relation to AI, i think, even if
it is never mentioned, because AI is the "Trinity" of these days, am i
right ?
i feel that we all need a secular thinking (in italian one would say
"pensiero laico" but i am not sure that "secular thinking" be a right
translation) like this one:
> The prejudice of any education is the temptation that by your own wit and
effort
> you can control your relation to the unknown. But to do that, in our limited
> conditions and perspectives, one has to proceed by controlling variables. But
> everyone knows or ought to know that you can’t control all the variables, and
> the assumption (=prejudice) that “for all practical purposes” you can, pretty
> much ensures disaster – not to God or Nature, since both are absolute so far
as
> we can see, but for ourselves. And the more faustian we become, as we have
> during the past 250 years, the more we damage the human world (not the world
of
> Nature – Nature proceeds along its merry way in any case, though of course we
> find those ways – the ways we have summoned – unpleasing and very far from
> merry).
M
Il 15/08/23 09:37, Mcgann, Jerome (jjm2f) <jjm2f@virginia.edu> ha scritto:
> If you watched the excellent documentary on Trinity (“The Day after Trinity”)
> you might find the last interview with Dyson useful (on what “went wrong” or
> rather, why they were working a scientific experiment they hadn’t “thought
> through”).
>
> As for the Salem Witch Trials, my remark was certainly far too elliptical.
But
> at its foundation I was referring to the symmetry between the Western
religions
> of Judeo-Xtianity and Science, and their axial objects of attention: God and
> Nature. Theology and the Philosophy of Science are, in my view, nearly
> perfectly symmetrical rationales for addressing their great unknowns. The
best
> scientists approach their god “in fear and trembling”, knowing full well that
in
> their efforts to understand that god and keep their faith in their ways of
> knowing and serving, they must not commit the sin of Satan (Faust’s sin, or
Elon
> Musk’s, or whoever –their names are Legion -- I do prefer the language of the
> People of the Book when talking or thinking about Science; pari passu, I
prefer
> the languages of Science when talking about the faith and sins of the People
of
> God).
>
> Simply, Science cannot know or control Nature and more than Western religion
can
> know of “appease” or “give glory to” God. The great “virtue”, in human terms,
> of both is when they prosecute their faiths in the faithful understanding that
> they not only will fail, but that they might, as Beckett put it, learn how to
> “fail better”. That would be Socrates talking.
>
> “Jehovah” and “Jesus” are far more complicated characters and sets of
> conceptions. Unlike Socrates, they never let you think that death is
something
> a human being, the more fully human you try to become, can find as anything
but
> a loss – in Jesus’s great and terrible view, a crucifixion. (The “Apology” is
a
> far too complacent little parable – but please don’t think I imagine my way of
> thinking and talking can hold a candle the majesty of Socrates, or Plato for
> that matter. As Blake would say, did say, in comparing science/philosophy to
> art, it is like holding a candle in the sunshine.)
>
> The prejudice of any education is the temptation that by your own wit and
effort
> you can control your relation to the unknown. But to do that, in our limited
> conditions and perspectives, one has to proceed by controlling variables. But
> everyone knows or ought to know that you can’t control all the variables, and
> the assumption (=prejudice) that “for all practical purposes” you can, pretty
> much ensures disaster – not to God or Nature, since both are absolute so far
as
> we can see, but for ourselves. And the more faustian we become, as we have
> during the past 250 years, the more we damage the human world (not the world
of
> Nature – Nature proceeds along its merry way in any case, though of course we
> find those ways – the ways we have summoned – unpleasing and very far from
> merry.
>
> I’ll leave it at that. Forgive me for mentioning my recent book on colonial
> American language and literature, Culture and Language at Crossed Purposes;
but
> the chapter of Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana has a discussion of
Mather’s
> presentation of the Witch Trials that is relevant to your question about “the
> prejudice of education”. And if you aren’t completely bored after that you
> might look at the last chapter, which is my pedantic manifesto on what Wallace
> Stevens called “the scholar’s art” – mu riposte to that American saint’s
> saintliness (ie, Emerson’s).
>
> Best, and with thanks for the query and hopes this little tract isn’t too
> intractable,
> Jerry
------------------------------------------------------------------------
many of us believe the EU remains
the most extraordinary, ambitious, liberal
political alliance in recorded history.
where it needs reform, where it needs to evolve,
we should be there to help turn that heavy wheel
Ian McEwan, the guardian, 2/6/2017
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maurizio Lana
Università del Piemonte Orientale
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici
Piazza Roma 36 - 13100 Vercelli
[...]
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