Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 302.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2023-11-13 07:51:58+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: why e-mail?

I suspect that many from the younger cohort of academics these days use
e-mail less, social-media forms of communication more. As useful as the
latter is--for some purposes I live by WhatsApp, for example--conducting
reasoned discourse in Twitter-alias-X et alii must be difficult if not
impossible. Admittedly, a Heracleitus could show us a thing or two in
those media, but for us who write in paragraphs, tweets and emojis don't
quite do it. Rapid bursts of short utterances are great, but I suspect
that for many whose toolkit contains little else, the mind has shrunk to
fit the Procrustean form, not (as with Heracleitus) expanded beyond the
reach of telescopes--even the Event Horizon kind--to say much in little.

Take, for example, that elusive ancient Greek's fragment 33 (Kahn, Diels
93): "The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither declares nor conceals
but gives a sign." If it's been a while since Heracleitus crossed your
path, I can recommend more highly than I can explain Miles Burnyeat's
"Message from Heracleitus", New York Review of Books, 13 May 1982,
reprinted in Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, Vol II (CUP,
2012).

All this from early morning reflections on why Humanist continues after
so long to use e-mail, despite the amount of unwelcome dreck that comes
this way.

Have a good week.

Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews;  Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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