Dear Friedrich --

I'm reading a wonderful paper by N.K. Humphrey entitled "The Illusion of Beauty," and thought I'd pass along a couple of lovely passages. The first is a quote Humphrey cites from the British philosopher A.N. Whitehead:

The essence of rhythm is the fusion of sameness and novelty; so that the whole never loses the essential unity of the pattern, while the parts exhibit the contrast arising from the novelty of their detail. A mere recurrence kills rhythm as does a mere confusion of differences. A crystal lacks rhythm from excessive pattern, while a fog is unrhythmic in that it exhibits a patternless confusion of detail.

And a passage from Humphrey himself:

If I give a hungry dog a solution of saccahrine it will lap it up; if I show a cock robin a bundle of feathers with a red patch on its underside the robin will attack it; and if I show a man an abstract painting or play him a piece of music he will, if he thinks it beautiful, stop to watch or listen. There is, I believe, a formal similarity in all these cases. In each we have an animal performing a useful and relevant piece of behaviour towards an inappropriate sensory stiumulus. But there is, I agree, a rather basic difference, namely that in the first two cases we have a good scientific explanation of what is going on, while in the third we're almost ignorant.

I notice that Humphrey has worked with both Richard Dawkins and Dian Fossey -- beat that. A number of his papers, which I'm just beginning to read through, can be seen here. The next one I'm going to dig into: "Cave Art, Autism, and the Evolution of the Human Mind." Bliss.

To think of the time and energy American lib-arts departments have wasted on their love-affair with politics and deconstruction when there are minds like Humphrey's out there to be enjoyed.

Best,

Michael

To think of the time and energy American lib-arts departments have wasted on their love-affair with politics and deconstruction when there are minds like Humphrey's out there to be enjoyed.

True...except that at this point I find it scary to think what American lib-arts department members might do with evo-bio...everything but understand it, one suspects.

Or am I just having a bad day?

Posted by: Friedrich von Blowhard on October 24, 2003 2:35 PM

mmmmmm.....critical thinking going on....I'm almost drooling.... I am *so* bored without interesting classes, and with a mindless job - I'm glad your website help keeps me sane...

And, may I humbly ask what is it exactly that you're referring to with the phrase "evo-bio"?

And you're just having a bad day, trust me. There are good profs out there, I promise. I've had several.

Posted by: Courtney on October 25, 2003 9:27 PM






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