Just a place to jot down my musings.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

“Transcendence and Self-Transcendence”

Michael Polanyi: chemist and philosopher, brother to Karl Polanyi, historian and sociologist. One of Michael Polanyi’s important shorter pieces is this one, called “Transcendence and Self-Transcendence”, published in 1970.

Some of the interesting bits that emerge (no pun intended) from this work:
I introduce the concept of hierarchical levels. A machine, for example, cannot be explained in terms of physics and chemistry. Machines can go wrong and break down—something that does not happen to laws of physics and chemistry. 
In fact, a machine can be smashed and the laws of physics and chemistry will go on operating unfailingly in the parts remaining after the machine ceases to exist. Engineering principles create the structure of the machine which harnesses the laws of physics and chemistry for the purposes the machine is designed to serve. Physics and chemistry cannot reveal the practical principles of design or co-ordination which are the structure of the machine.
And:
The more intangible the matter in the range of these hierarchies, the more meaningful it is. This is my criticism of all redactionist, mechanistic programs founded on the Laplacean ideal which identifies ultimate knowledge with an atomic topography, the lowest level of the universe.
Most provocative:
I have elaborated in schematic fashion a multiple hierarchy which leads on to ever more meaningful levels. Each higher level is more intangible than the one below it and also enriched in subtlety. And as these more intangible levels are understood a steadily deeper understanding of life and man is gained. These understandings constitute transcendence in the world. 
Unbridled detailing, the ideal advocated by Laplace and his modern followers, not only destroys our knowledge of things we most want to know; it clouds our understanding of elementary perception—our first contact with the world of inanimate matter and of living beings and our initial act of self-transcendence.
I must confess that these fragments of his essay, pulled out of context, do not convey its full meaning. The whole thing is worth reading.



Annambhaṭṭa on svârtha- and parârthânumāna

The Naiyāyikas, like every other philosophical “school” in India with the notable exception of the Cārvākas, accept that anumāna, the method of inference, is capable of giving rise to jñāna, an episode of knowledge—specifically, anumiti-jñāna, an inferential knowledge-episode. (Loosely translating jñāna as “knowledge” misrepresents the Naiyāyika position.) Interestingly, the Naiyāyikas hold that there are two kinds of anumāna: svârthânumāna (inferring for oneself) and parârthânumāna (literally, “inferring for another”). The latter makes no sense in English—how can one infer something for somebody else? It may make more sense to think of parârthânumāna as “proof” or “demonstration”.

Here is what Annambhaṭṭa has to say on the matter.

anumānaṃ dvividham — (1) svârthaṃ (2) parârthaṃ ca ||


(1) svârthaṃ svânumiti-hetuḥ, tathā hi svayam eva bhūyo darśanena yatra yatra dhūmas tatra tatrâgnir iti mahānasâdau vyāptiṃ gṛhītvā parvata-samīpaṃ tad-gate câgnau sandihānaḥ parvate dhūmaṃ paśyan vyāptiṃ smarati — “yatra yatra dhūmas tatra tatra vahnir iti  | tad-anantaraṃvahni-vyāpya-dhūmavān ayaṃ parvataḥiti jñānam utpadyate | ayam eva liṅga-parāmarśa ity ucyate | tasmātparvato vahnimāniti jñānânumitir utpadyate, tad etat svârthânumānam ||

(2) yat tu svayaṃ dhūmād agnim anumāya paraṃ prati bodhayituṃ pañcâvayava-vākyaṃ prayujyate tat parârthânumānam | yathā — 
(a) parvato vahnimān [pratijñā]
(b) dhūmavattvād [hetu]
(c) yo yo dhūmavān sa vahnimān yathā mahānasam [udāharaṇa]
(d) tathā câyaṃ [upanaya]
(e) tasmāt tathêti [nigamana
anena pratipāditāl liṅgāt paro ’py agniṃ pratipadyate || 



Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Annambhaṭṭa on the types of perception

nidhāya hṛdi viśvêśaṃ vidhāya guru-vandanam |
bālānāṃ sukha-bodhāya kriyate tarka-saṅgrahaḥ ||


How do we perceive the world around us? What sort of semantic structure does the content of these perceptions possess? The Tarkasaṅgraha or Bālagādādharī of Annambhaṭṭa, a 17th century introduction to the school of logic known as Navya Nyāya, attempts to answer these questions, among many others, at a level suitable to “children”. (Looks like they used to have smart kids back in those days.) Annambhaṭṭa presents six kinds of relations between the senses of perception and objects of perception to account for the various features of our perceptual experiences. This sextet is a tradition that extends over a millennium before him to Udayana. (For what it’s worth, this sextet was criticized by some very prominent Naiyāyikas like Gaṅgeśa and Raghunātha Śiromaṇi.)

If that makes no sense, fear not. Navya Nyāya is regarded as impenetrably technical hair-splitting by most Sanskrit paṇḍits, who are themselves usually regarded by others as engaging in impenetrably technical hair-splitting. As a result, English translations of Navya Nyāya texts flourish in a special circle of Indological hell where even furiously sleeping colorless green ideas fear to tread.

Nevertheless, I shall try to translate this short excerpt from the Tarkasaṅgraha into English, fully aware that I resemble the man who wishes to speak in an assembly without knowledge of grammar, who in turn resembles the man who wishes to restrain a rutting elephant with a rope made from a lotus-stalk (śabda-śāstram anadhītya yaḥ pumān vaktum icchati vacaḥ sabhântare / bandhum icchati vane madôtkaṭaṃ kuñjaraṃ kamala-nāla-tantunā). If nothing else, my translation will show how wordy an English translation of Navya Nyāya will be if it wants to resemble idiomatic English. I make no claims of correctness or accuracy of translation. This is what I understand of Navya Nyāya for now.
[For those who actually want to know what objects of perception are in Navya Nyāya, I recommend Daniel H. H. Ingalls’ classic Materials for the Study of Navya Nyāya Logic, as well as Sibajiban Bhattacharya’s critical review of this book. I should add that I haven’t really read Ingalls as closely as I ought to, but am relying on āpta-vacana in recommending this book.]
pratyakṣa-jñāna-hetur indriyârtha-sannikarṣaḥ ṣaḍ-vidhaḥ (1a) saṃyogaḥ (1b) saṃyukta-samavāyaḥ (1c) saṃyukta-samaveta-samavāyaḥ (2a) samavāyaḥ (2b) samaveta-samavāyaḥ (3) viśeṣaṇa-viśeṣya-bhāvaś cêti ||

    1. cakṣuṣā ghaṭa-pratyakṣa-janane, saṃyogaḥ sannikarṣaḥ ||
    2. ghaṭa-rūpa-pratyakṣa-janane, saṃyukta-samavāyaḥ sannikarṣaḥ: cakṣuḥ-saṃyukte ghaṭe rūpasya samavāyāt ||
    3. rūpatva-sāmānya-pratyakṣe, saṃyukta-samaveta-samavāyaḥ sannikarṣaḥ: cakṣuḥ-saṃyukte ghaṭe rūpaṃ samavetaṃ, tatra rūpatvasya samavāyāt ||

    1. śrotreṇa śabda-sākṣāt-kāre, samavāyaḥ sannikarṣaḥ: karṇa-vivara-varty-ākāśasya śrotratvāc, chabdasyâ ’’kāśa-guṇatvād, guṇa-guṇinoś ca samavāyāt ||
    2. śabdatva-sākṣāt-kāre, samaveta-samavāyaḥ sannikarṣaḥ: śrotra-samavete śabde śabdatvasya samavāyāt ||
  1. abhāva-pratyakṣe, viśeṣaṇa-viśeṣya-bhāvaḥ sannikarṣaḥ: “ghaṭâbhāvavad bhū-talam” ity atra cakṣuḥ-samyukte bhū-tale ghaṭâbhāvasya viśeṣaṇatvāt ||
evaṃ sannikarṣa-ṣaṭka-janyaṃ jñānaṃ tat-karaṇam indriyaṃ tasmād indriyaṃ pratyakṣa-pramāṇam iti siddham ||



Monday, June 11, 2012

Should conservatives conserve the environment?

The title of this post is obviously a leading question—conserving the environment is a good thing ceteris paribus, although there can (and should) be reasonable debates on where to draw the line. For a variety of reasons, the words “conservative” and “liberal” mean things in the US today that they have historically almost never meant—signifying membership of one tribe or the other. Call them Team C and Team L, if you will. It is thus entirely possible for a self-identified American “conservative” to call for the shutting down of the Environmental Protection Agency and for increased oil prospecting in national parks. Although there may be good reasons for these two positions, neither of them seem to be in resonance with the attitudes of old-school conservatives like Sir Edmund Burke. Indeed, there seems to be a near-total alignment of the American environmental movement with Team L, which makes it almost impossible for a supporter of Team C to express any conservationist attitudes at all.

This is why I found the article “A Righter Shade of Green” by Roger Scruton interesting. Some of it is sanctimonious, much of it is written from within the tribalist mindset, but some of its arguments are worth pondering over.
Political solutions represent agreements among the living, but our real problems are transgenerational. At present, we are externalizing our costs not to people who can complain but to unborn people who can’t. Democratic politics, Burke and Chesterton pointed out, has an inbuilt tendency to disenfranchise the unborn and the dead. 
So what is to stop us from externalizing our costs onto future generations? Within our own families, we recoil from doing such a thing. I don’t want to dump the costs of my life on my son, even though I shall be dead when he feels them. Nor would I wish my grandchildren to pay the price of my selfishness. 
It is here that I think we Anglophone conservatives can show our relevance. The common law of England developed, through the branch known as equity, a concept that has no real equivalent in Napoleonic or Roman legal systems: the concept of the trust. Trusteeship is a form of property in which the legal owner has only duties, and all rights are transferred to, and “held in trust for,” the beneficiary … This form of ownership, and the moral idea contained in it, ought to be regarded as defining the conservative approach. We don’t solve environmental problems by abandoning our attachment to private property or free enterprise, but we can make sure that these notions are shaped by the spirit of trusteeship.
Scruton makes the point that, since modern societies are “societies of strangers”, erosion of trust and of social capital in general makes it very hard for people to adopt attitudes other than self-oriented individualism. The cultivation of an attitude (and of the institution) of trust offers the sort of motivation that human beings are naturally responsive to.

Scruton’s perspective seems close to Wendell Berry’s, at least insofar as both see the structure of our society as the fundamental problem, and think that the pre-moderns got it right to the extent that their communities were structured around trust and a natural sense of belonging. Thought-provoking though Scruton’s piece is, it is unclear to me how he envisions society re-cultivating the attitude of trust. But что делать?

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Appayya Dīkṣita on apahnuti (“denial”)

More kārikās from the Kuvalayānanda of Appayya Dīkṣita, this time on the arthâlaṅkāra known as apahnuti, which translates to “denial”. As before, my translation is loose and aims only to capture the sense, the artha, of the verses.


[apahnuti]


[1. śuddhâpahnuti ]
śuddhâpahnutir anyasyâropârtho dharma-nihnavaḥ |
nâyaṃ sudhâṃśuḥ kiṃ tarhi vyoma-gaṅgā-saroruham ||


[2. hetv-apahnuti]
sa eva yukti-pūrvaś ced ucyate hetv-apahnutiḥ |
nêndus tīvro na niśy arkaḥ sindhor aurvo ’yam utthitaḥ ||


[3. paryastâpahnuti]
anyatra tasyâropârthaḥ paryastâpahnutiś ca saḥ |
nâyaṃ sudhâṃśuḥ kiṃ tarhi sudhâṃśuḥ preyasī-mukham ||


[4. bhrāntâpahnuti]
bhrāntâpahnutir anyasya śaṅkāyāṃ bhrānti-vāraṇe |
tāpaṃ karoti sôtkampaṃ jvaraḥ kiṃ na sakhi smaraḥ ||


[5. chekâpahnuti]
chekâpahnutir anyasya śaṅkātas tathya-nihnave |
prajalpan mat-pade lagnaḥ kāntaḥ kiṃ na hi nūpuraḥ ||


[6. kaitavâpahnuti]
kaitavâpahnutir vyaktau vyājâdair nihnutaiḥ padaiḥ |
niryānti smara-nārācāḥ kāntā-dṛk-pāta-kāitavāt ||


Tuesday, June 5, 2012

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?”

From the Choruses of TS Eliot’s The Rock:

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.


Why pearls, and why strung at random?

In his translation of the famous "Turk of Shirazghazal of Hafez into florid English, Sir William Jones, the philologist and Sanskrit scholar and polyglot extraordinaire, transformed the following couplet:

غزل گفتی و در سفتی بیا و خوش بخوان حافظ

که بر نظم تو افشاند فلک عقد ثریا را


into:

Go boldly forth, my simple lay,
Whose accents flow with artless ease,
Like orient pearls at random strung.

The "translation" is terribly inaccurate, but worse, the phrase is a gross misrepresentation of the highly structured organization of Persian poetry. Regardless, I picked it as the name of my blog for a number of reasons: 
1) I don't expect the ordering of my posts to follow any rhyme or reason
2) Since "at random strung" is a rather meaningless phrase, I decided to go with the longer but more pompous "pearls at random strung". I rest assured that my readers are unlikely to deduce from this an effort on my part to arrogate some of Hafez's peerless brilliance!

About Me

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Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
—W.H. Davies, “Leisure”