Women in Religion

Exchange of Views Typical of Ms. Professor Fringemon:

Having proofread Ms. Professor Fringemon's manuscript Women in Religion, I say: "You can strengthen your argument on this crucial point if you make these changes."

Ms. Professor Fringemon, astonished by my suggestion, stares at me in silence for a full three seconds, before finally saying: "Well . . . I guess you learned something from my book."

Or is it my Doppelgaenger . . .

On Thursday, May 30, 2019 at 6:28 PM, Academia-dot-edu wrote me an email:

"Dear Horace Jeffery, The name 'Horace Jeffery Hodges' is mentioned in a paper published in Nature Reviews Microbiology."

But Academia-dot-edu, which offers more information in return for money, leaves me cold, so I replied:

"I find that 'mention' hard to believe."

I suppose that they, on second thought, might also have found that hard to believe. But as I sit here and think more deeply about this supposed mention, I begin to consider the point more carefully, and I wonder if this might be some connection to my old history-of-science days.

Or is it actually my doppelgaenger? The appearance of one's double is said to be bad luck, very bad luck, namely, death. Mine. Or my double's.

Oh, in case anyone's interested, I'll be returning to our over-educated beagle tomorrow . . .

Kim Ji-hyun Paraphrases Life's Preposition

Korea Herald

Ms. Kim Ji-hyun writes a Korea Herald column once a week, and I recently (March 21, 2019) read a singularly insightful remark in which she cited the comic actor Jim Carrey on life:

Two years ago, actor Jim Carrey gave an inspiring commencement speech that went viral. The essence of it was, that life doesn't happen TO you - it happens FOR you. It's a subtle difference, just one word, but the impact was lasting. It makes you want to go out and do things, to thank life.

That little prepositional change can make all the difference if you choose the things you want for yourself and refuse to see yourself as a victim to whom things happen.

At Carter Kaplan's Request . . .

"Despite the perhaps disagreeable-sounding title, this interview - this never-before-seen scene of colonial life in America - is a gem, a not-to-be-missed opportunity found only in Kaplan's offer of this year's Emanations: Chorus Pleiades!"  -- Anonymous

"What Anon said. Any negativity is bullcrap!"  -- Ree Verb Berate

"What Anon said. Any negativity is bullcrap!"  -- Iter Rate

"What Anon said. Any negativity is bullcrap!"  -- Ree Iter Rate

Negative Reviews Below The Fold

Click Here

Henry Hart Milman

Henry Hart Milman

I have noted above that the image of God as a bird brooding over creation is a commonplace in the Jewish and Christian traditions because the Hebrew word merachephet in Genesis 1:2 translates as "brooding." In our post-Miltonic times, we even find that Milton's Genesis account can migrate rather far afield in its influence. Take this passage from Belshazzar: A Dramatic Poem, published in 1822 by the clergyman, historian, and poet Henry Hart Milman:

A dim oppression loads the air, and sounds
As of vast wings do somewhere seem to brood
And hover on the winds; and I that most
Should tremble for myself, the appointed prey
Of sin, am bow'd, as with enforced compassion,
To think on sorrows not mine own, to weep
O'er those whose laughter and whose song upbraids
My prodigality of mis-spent pity. (page 93)

This is clearly not a creation account, nor is it an uncreation account, unless in a metaphorical sense, for Belshazzar's reign is about to end, but we see Milton's influence, especially in the words "vast" and "wings."

A Far Too Easy Pop Quiz

Flaming World

I think that the important words to apply to the lines below are Milton, uncreation, creation, and MacLeish, not necessarily in that order:

with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss

There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,

How did you arrange the terms and lines? This is too easy, I know, but you guys have been working hard recently.

About that Pop Quiz Yesterday . . .

God

Consistent or Inconsistent?

God is all good.
God is all knowing.
God is all powerful.
There is evil.

Some say these four statements are inconsistent, but how do they know? Our knowledge is finite. God's knowledge is infinite. God might have a good reason for allowing evil. That reason itself might be beyond our understanding.

Pop Quiz Today

Bored of Education?

Who wrote the lines below, what's the title, what's the genre, and what's wrong with the logic?

I heard upon his dry dung-heap
That man cry out who cannot sleep:
"If God is God He is not good,
If God is good He is not God;
Take the even, take the odd,
I would not sleep here if I could
Except for the little green leaves in the wood
And the wind on the water."

No, I'm not trying to foist my work off on you. I do know the answers.

Mixed Company: The Avant-Gardes

En Garde

Richard Kostelanetz announces the third edition of A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, which has entries by Carter Kaplan on Michael Butterworth and Herman Melville, as well as an entry about Carter Kaplan himself.

Buy this book because Richard and I share the same birthday!

MacLeish's Early Childhood Education

Creation

Here are some notes on Archibald MacLeish's early childhood education, as described by Edward Arthur Morin in "An Interpretive Study of Archibald MacLeish's Plays" (1967, Dissertations, Paper 854):

MacLeish's early schooling was conducted at home, and he and his brothers loved learning about the various creation stories. Of the Hebrew, Greek, and Norse stories, they thought the Hebrew version was best (page 25). The children had had Bible stories reserved for Sundays from the beginning of the reading program, when Archibald was three years old. At first Martha read isolated stories and then, when the children asked her to begin at the beginning and read the whole Bible, she began with Genesis (page 27). Occurring as it did between Archibald's fifth and ninth years and in an informal but supervised way on into his adolescence, with the Bible readings beginning when Archibald was three, the program reached a climax when the young mind was most impressionable for the formation of life long habits (pages 30-31).

This should turn out to be useful when the time comes for explaining some of MacLeish's 'cosmic' obsessions.

Update: Kevin Kim informs me that I've already posted this blogpost. He's right. My apologies. For myself, however, this remains a useful reminder to deal more with Milton soon.

The Hotchkiss School: MacLeish meets Milton

The Hotchkiss School
Circa 1905

MacLeish attended the boarding school Hotchkiss and excelled there in academics, sports, and poetry. Later on, as both public life and private poetry grew in importance to him, he could perhaps reach back in memory for inspiration, especially since he had written at Hotchkiss a winning essay on Milton's hard choice between public and private:

At such a time, MacLeish could not but have reflected back on his Hotchkiss essay on Milton. In Archibald MacLeish: An American Life, Scott Donaldson (2016) informs us of this essay on John Milton by the 17-year-old MacLeish, an essay on Milton's dilemma, which was also MacLeish's dilemma. It was a "dilemma that was to confront him time and again in his career: how to reconcile the demands of private poetry with those of public service" (Donaldson). In Intellectuals Incorporated: Politics, Art, and Ideas Inside Henry Luce's Media Empire (2010), Robert Vanderlan had earlier linked Milton and MacLeish. The connection would be hard to miss, of course, as readers can see that even from "a very young age MacLeish was already trying to sort out his conflicting feelings about the relationship between art and the rest of the world." Attention was then drawn by Vanderlan to the youthful poet's essay on John Milton: "During his time at Hotchkiss, [MacLeish] . . . wrote an essay on John Milton. The great poet had been called away from his art to serve the cause of Cromwell, a decision MacLeish depicted in these terms: 'His pen, which once had traced the sweetest poetry, was turned to work any scribbler could have done'" (Vanderlan 32). Donaldson draws readers to see the same hard choice. In concrete detail, he shows that "MacLeish focuses on the choice the great English poet had to make between his art and his country, 'between the dream which had become himself, and the duty which was calling him from off the road.' Milton chose to do his duty, to give up the artistic career that had already produced such brilliant work as 'Il Penseroso,' in order to become a pamphleteer and treatise writer for the Puritan cause and Oliver Cromwell's government." Donaldson then quotes the same words as did Vanderlan about Milton turning "to work that any scribbler could have done." In this process, Donaldson adds, Milton's "sight was taken – his sword was fallen from his hand" (Donaldson). When "the Stuart kings returned to the throne, Milton was left 'sightless, friendless, and alone.'" He had, however, made the right decision, MacLeish insists, "for not only did he serve when needed, but Paradise Lost lay ahead" (Donaldson). Vanderlan had made the same point, citing MacLeish in arguing that "Milton had been correct in his choice, for his active engagement with the world prepared him for the greater poems to follow. 'Now there gathered in his brain the threads of the great realities of life and death,' he concluded, and it was this that enabled him to write Paradise Lost (Vanderlan, 32). Donaldson does the same, pointing to – and extending – what he calls MacLeish's flight of rhetoric: "Now there gathered in his brain the threads of the great realities of life and death, and exalted by the scenes of noble beauty in his sightless eyes, he wrote his epic through the hand of one who did not know the greatness of the thing he wrote" (Donaldson). Vanderlan argues that negotiating "the line between art and a broader engagement with the world became and remained the animating question of his [i.e., MacLeish's] intellectual life" (page 32).

I hope someone can read this passage and make sense of it. I don't have the Donaldson pagination, and that might confuse quite a few readers . . .

MacLeish's Early Home Education

Martha MacLeish

MacLeish's early schooling was conducted at home, and he and his brothers loved learning about the various creation stories. Of the Hebrew, Greek, and Norse stories, they thought the Hebrew version was best (page 25; Edward Arthur Morin, "An Interpretive Study of Archibald MacLeish's Plays" (1967). Dissertations. Paper 854).

The children had had Bible stories reserved for Sundays from the beginning of the reading program, when Archibald was three years old. At first Martha read isolated stories and then, when the children asked her to begin at the beginning and read the whole Bible, she began with Genesis (page 27).

"Occurring as it did between Archibald's fifth and ninth years and in an informal but supervised way on into his adolescence, with the Bible readings beginning when Archibald was three, the program reached a climax when the young mind was most impressionable for the formation of life long habits" (pages 30-31).

MacLeish entered the prestigious Hotchkiss School in 1907, when he was 15, and graduated in 1911, age 18. Scott Donaldson, writing in Archibald MacLeish: An American Life, informs us that in the Hotchkiss annual literary contest between the Forum and its rival society, the Agora, in December 1909, MacLeish read his essay "John Milton," which contributed to the Forum's victory by winning the best essay award.

Peter Kracht in support of Duquesne University Press

Logo

of the

Duquesne University Press

Today's blogpost is for readers with an interest in practical university problems, but everyone is welcome to read it, of course.

Peter Kracht, director of the University of Pittsburgh Press, speaks out in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for the Duquesne University Press. That press is facing closure for budgetary reasons, but Kracht calls out to "Let Duquesne University Press live" (March 7, 2017).

Why? Because this press "has built a truly outstanding reputation in . . . . medieval studies, philosophy and scholarship on John Milton."

Many of my Milton-scholar friends are speaking up in support of this university press, so I've concluded that I ought to add my voice, and I'm doing so by way of Kracht's article. At its most concise and pragmatic, here is the argument by Kracht:

Duquesne University recently announced that it is contemplating the closure of its university press for budgetary reasons . . . . University presses have always required substantial financial support from their parent institutions to fulfill their mission. Instead of looking at university support for its press as a "loss," I think it's useful to flip the equation around - actually the university press is one of the few departments at any university that actually contributes in a routine, ongoing way to the cost of fulfilling its mission.

The argument is intriguing, and I've not heard it before, so maybe it will make the Duquesne University administration reconsider, especially since this press has such high standing in the academic world.

EWIS Course Finished!

I started this EWIS course with sixteen students but lost six within a week - four of them after two days. They wanted a faster pace, apparently. After two weeks of the course, another four no longer came, though I later learned that they remained enrolled, which usually bespeakes an intention to attend.

My class attracts mostly graduate students, who often find that their graduate duties - for example, caring for white rats or doing somesuch similar labwork - dominate their time and bring them to attend only sporadically.

Anyhow, I had six who attended regularly, though two of them couldn't make our last day Tuesday, so I needed treat only four to coffee, as the photo below indicates (the hidden photographer being a Writing Clinic TA):

The four students - clockwise from upper left - are Set-Byul, Kamila, Bora, and Eun Young, and they're flashing the typical peace through victory sign so beloved here in Korea . . . though Bora appears to be enforcing the victory with pistols.

In the second picture, we are shown standing our ground, guarding the peace won through hard victory(,  which Eun Young continues to signal), and you can probably figure our identities out by now:

Same goes for the third photograph below:

Except that Eun Young no longer shows the sign so beloved by Koreans . . .

I suppose I should add a few words concerning a decision I've reached. This was the last time I'll teach EWIS. My style of teaching doesn't fit the expectations of about half of the class at the onset, so they withdraw. I've come to see that many Koreans really expect to be inundated with exercises from the first class on. They understand the "I" in EWIS - which stands for "Intensive" - to mean "Inundated," whereas I take the "I" to mean "In-depth." Mine is thus an English Writing 'In-Depth' Seminar. I might (and often do) therefore have a student write and rewrite a thesis statement several times. Or a paragraph. About half the students appreciate this approach. The work isn't fast-paced, but it's effective . . . for those who remain. Anyway, I've come to realize that I'll never retain an entire class with my 'slow-down-and-think' method, so I made the decision to stop teaching EWIS.

Farewell, EWIS, you've been a learning experience for me.

Academia Rejects Diversity?

Arthur C. Brooks

NYT

Academia? Reject diversity? Surely not! Let's look:

[N]ew research . . . shows that academia has itself stopped short in both the understanding and practice of true diversity - the diversity of ideas - and that the problem is taking a toll on the quality and accuracy of scholarly work. This year, a team of scholars from six universities studying ideological diversity in the behavioral sciences published a paper in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences that details a shocking level of political groupthink in academia. The authors show that for every politically conservative social psychologist in academia there are about 14 liberal social psychologists.

Why the imbalance? The researchers found evidence of discrimination and hostility within academia toward conservative researchers and their viewpoints. In one survey cited, 82 percent of social psychologists admitted they would be less likely to support hiring a conservative colleague than a liberal scholar with equivalent qualifications.

This has consequences well beyond fairness. It damages accuracy and quality. As the authors write, "Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority's thinking."

Who's telling us this? Arthur C. Brooks? The opinionated columnist who works for the American Enterprise Institute? Ah, a conservative. He's obviously biased, so ignore what he says, even if he is publishing this article, "Academia's Rejection of Diversity," in the New York Times (November 2, 2015).

Remember: Diversity in all but ideas! (Because ideas are dangerous.)

Rainey Knudson on "The Cult of Memory at Texas A&M"

The Mustangs of Freedom

Tearing Down the Wall

Despite her 'worst' intentions, Rainey Knudson - in "The Cult of Memory at Texas A and M" (Glasstire, June 7, 2015) - can't help but say some good things about Texas A and M:

[T]o this outsider anyway, the A and M campus feels unattractive, humorless and a little silly. They have more bronze statues than you can shake a stick at, there are overbearing messages of social conservatism everywhere, and if you're interested in good art, you're out of luck, at least in the public spaces. These people couldn't paint bigger targets on themselves for ridicule if they tried, right? And yet: the president of the school famously leaves the door to his house on campus unlocked. Students and faculty will tell you not to lock your car, that you could leave a computer lying somewhere on campus and it would still be there when you get back. And it would. That's the flip side to all the sanctimoniousness at A and M: there really is a palpable, profoundly likeable sense of honor at the place (and I'm not just saying that because it's one of their six core values that's repeated all over campus).

See? A and M is 'likable enough.' That's my summation of Knudson's view, and I agree with her view - speaking as the Baylor alum I am, required by long tradition to be anti-A-and-M - and yet, like Knudson herself, acknowledge their sense of honor. And there's more from Knudson:

Recently, an artist who taught at both UT Austin and A and M told me that, while the UT students were far more urbane and sophisticated than A and M students, they were also more disinterested and seen-it-all-jaded. Whereas the A and M students, with their earnestness and ingrained respect for authority, were more attentive and worked harder. My friend was somewhat at a loss as to which was preferable.

If only Christina Rees - Knudson's colleague at Glasstire - could have been as gracious about art in the Ozarks . . .

The Islamic State's Destruction of Books: Ignoramus et Ignorabimus

ISIS Burning Books
"Those who begin by burning books
will end by burning people."
- Heinrich Heine

Image from Abouna

Sinan Salaheddin and Sameer N. Yacoub report on "Iraqi libraries ransacked by Islamic State group in Mosul" (My Way News, January 31, 2015):

When Islamic State . . . militants invaded the Central Library of Mosul earlier this month, they were on a mission to destroy a familiar enemy: other people's ideas . . . . [T]he extremists . . . loaded around 2,000 books . . . into six pickup trucks . . . . "These books promote infidelity and call for disobeying Allah. So they will be burned," a bearded militant . . . told residents . . . . as others [with him] stuffed books into empty flour bags . . . . [T]he Islamic State group . . . [has] sought to purge society of everything that doesn't conform to their violent interpretation of Islam[, including] . . . . many archaeological relics, deeming them pagan . . . . Mosul, the biggest city in the Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate, boasts a relatively educated, diverse population that seeks to preserve its heritage sites and libraries . . . . But . . . the Islamic State group has made the penalty for such actions death . . . . Days after the Central Library's ransacking, militants broke into University of Mosul's library . . . . [and] made a bonfire out of hundreds of books on science and culture, destroying them in front of students . . . . [T]he Islamic State . . . extremists started wrecking the collections of other public libraries last month . . . [and caused] particularly heavy damage to the archives of a Sunni Muslim library, the library of the 265-year-old Latin Church and Monastery of the Dominican Fathers and the Mosul Museum Library with works dating back to 5000 BC.

This sort of barbarity dooms the perpetrators to perpetual backwardness and forces them to live parasitically upon the wealth of civilized people who welcome knowledge and actually make things. Such radical destruction of secular learning leaves the Islamic State in the hands of arrogant militant fools who do not know and will not know - adding new meaning to "ignoramus et ignorabimus" - and whose ignorance will serve only to bring destruction down upon their own heads.

The tragedy is that they meanwhile destroy the lives of so many others and of so much that the others owned . . .

Immersion in 'Superior' Chinese Education?

Congratulating a Student
Photo by Jane Peterson
New York Times

In "An American School Immerses Itself in All Things Chinese" (NYT, October 26, 2014), Jane A. Peterson publishes an informative article - though also something of a 'puff' piece - about a school in Minneapolis, Yinghua Academy, that immerses American students in Mandarin Chinese to teach all of its classes from from kindergarten to eighth grade, which is fine and dandy by my reckoning, but I have a few reservations about some of the praise:

Math results, which are particularly strong, are partly attributed to the Singapore Math curriculum and its eight-step approach to word problems, as well as the Chinese-educated teachers who move through material more quickly than their American peers.

Ms. Peterson is a journalist stationed in Singapore, so she should know something about its approach to math education, but she might also be wont to consider it more positively than if otherwise stationed. I note this only as a possibility - and one should always practice some skepticism about what one reads. Consider, for instance, these words of praise for Mandarin:

Mathematical terms in Mandarin are also clearer. The word for "triangle," for instance, "sanjiaoxing," means three-sided. And when counting to 100, the Chinese use only 10 numbers to build all others; 71, for instance, is written 7-10-1. "The number system is easier to work with," said Mary McDonald, a seventh-grader who takes an extra university math class once a week. "It's faster and more organized."

Hmmm . . . Let me just point out that "triangle" means "three-angled," which is no more difficult than "three-sided." Moreover, I can't see the Chinese number system as easier since the Western number system also uses only ten numbers - 0 through 9 - to compose all others. But who am I to argue with a seventh-grader?

And perhaps I've simply missed the point about how math is "clearer" and "easier" in Mandarin. Might somebody explain to me how?

Also for reading the atmosphere of a too quiet classroom in Korea . . .

Have some nunchi?

Illustration by Rose Wong

NYT

In "Looking Another Culture in the Eye" (NYT, September 13, 2014), Erin Meyer tells of a recent educational experience she had in Tokyo:

While traveling in Tokyo recently with a Japanese colleague, I gave a short talk to a group of 20 managers. At the end, I asked whether there were any questions or comments. No hands went up, so I went to sit down. My colleague whispered to me: "I think there actually were some comments, Erin. Do you mind if I try?" He asked the group again: "Any comments or questions?"

Still, no one raised a hand, but this time he looked very carefully at each person in the silent audience. Gesturing to one of them, he said, "Do you have something to add?" To my amazement, she responded, "Yes, thank you," and asked me a very interesting question. My colleague repeated this several times, looking directly at the audience members and asking for more questions or comments.

After the session, I asked my colleague: "How did you know that those people had questions?" He hesitated, not sure how to explain it, and then said, "It has to do with how bright their eyes are."

He continued: "In Japan, we don't make as much direct eye contact as you do in the West. So when you asked if there were any comments, most people were not looking directly at you. But a few people in the group were looking right at you, and their eyes were bright. That indicates that they would be happy to have you call on them."

Ms. Meyer goes on to note that an absence of this ability to spot what people want has a name:

In Japan, there is an expression popular with young people: "kuuki yomenai." Often shortened to "K.Y.," it refers to someone who is unable to read the atmosphere.

This inability is the opposite of what the Koreans call nunchi (눈치, pronounced "noonchi"), an ability to read the atmosphere of a situation. But Koreans also have an expression for the inability to read atmosphere: nunchi eoptta (눈치 없다), meaning "nunchi is lacking."

The next time I inquire whether my Korean students have any questions, I'll remember to look for the shining eyes . . .

Roger Scruton on the Ideological University

Roger Scruton

Google Images

I've been reading and re-reading Roger Scruton's recent novel, Notes from Underground, and I'll blog upon it at greater length later on, for there are several points of contact between his philosophical ideas and this fictional work, but I want to focus today on an interview called to my attention by my friend Bill Vallicella through his link to an interview of Scruton by Spencer Case (philosophy graduate student, University of Colorado, Boulder, and U.S. Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan). The interview is titled, "Roger Scruton on the Decline of the Modern University" (College Fix, March 14, 2014), and here's a good excerpt:

One [problematic trend in the contemporary university] is the way in which the difficult . . . subjects . . . in the humanities . . . are being displaced by purely ideological subjects . . . . [Formerly,] at the heart of the humanities there were difficult things like the classical languages, modern languages, literature -- read properly and critically discussed -- and so on, the "Great Books" and all the rest, in music the study of harmony and counter-point, in philosophy the analytical discipline that we know about so well. All those were real intellectual disciplines. But I see more and more they're being replaced by gender studies and other forms of essentially ideological confrontation with the modern world . . . . [Of course, t]here is plenty of room for people to include as part of the philosophical discussions of justice the whole question about the relation between man and woman, all the questions that feminists consider. There's absolutely no reason why that shouldn't be included. But, if the assumption is that one has to be a feminist, one has to arrive at a particular conclusion as a result of studying this, then what is involved is not philosophical discussion but ideology. The whole defining nature of philosophy is that you start from free inquiry and you don't actually know what you're going to come up with as a result of your arguments. To think that you have to have the conclusion prior to the investigation is effectually to say that this is a form of indoctrination.

Agreed. Complete agreement. I've been around universities since 1975, and I've seen the shift take place. Things became so bad at one university I was at that the social work department lodged a formal complaint -- or at least threatened to lodge one -- against the philosophy department for daring to question fundamental assumptions held in the field of social work. I don't recall the precise issue, but I think that it had something to do with Leftist assumptions that shouldn't -- according to some -- be called into doubt. And as Scruton notes, when something can't be questioned, we're being confronted with ideology, not philosophy.