7 20 453 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e69cfd4b302a71f33edc2994888691f4.mp4 19e81d94888bc4f519a01f57c4160c5f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:56:10 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Moments in the Liberal Education of Frederick Douglass from My Bondage and My Freedom Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on August 26, 2022 by Joseph Macfarland as part of the Formal Lecture Series. First formal lecture of the academic year, previously referred to as the "Dean's Lecture", but now called the "Christopher B. Nelson Lecture". Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-08-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Permission has been given to make this available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895 Education, Humanistic Slavery--United States Slaves--United States--Education Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Macfarland_Joseph_2022-08-26_ac Christopher B. Nelson Lecture Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8daf28e6162f65ee6c3f662f61c820a2.mp4 44f4029c52262d4f8ad896c43ca85095 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:02:03 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Perceptual and Deliberative Imagination in Aristotle’s De Anima Description An account of the resource Video recording of the National Endowment for the Humanities lecture delivered on April 22, 2022, by Annapolis tutor Jason Tipton as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Tipton describes his lecture: "Many animals, Aristotle claims, live by imagination. In an important way, we can understand that imagination is the product of the process of perception and the condition for noetic activity. It is both an end and a beginning. Imagination is proto-cognitive and supra perceptual. The task will be to disentangle imagination from perception and understanding so that we might see the proper unities that come to be." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Tipton, Jason A. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-04-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library." Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Aristotle. De anima Imagination (Philosophy) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Tipton_Jason_2022-04-22_ac Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f0ad61f8a58ce280b730e638c1c90471.pdf cbcbec0adcf644670e9ddc57e39ba3d5 PDF Text Text �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 18 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Reading Genesis Chapter Three Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on September 2, 2022, by William Braithwaite as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Braithwaite offers this description: "The Garden of Eden story, about Adam and Eve, what they did and how they were punished for it, is the authoritative source for the Christian doctrine of original sin. Before St. Augustine and St. Paul appropriated it for this purpose, however, the story belonged to the Hebrew Scriptures of the ancient Israelites, and Judaism has no dogma of original sin. But even before ancient rabbis put the story in writing many centuries ago, it may, some scholars suggest, have circulated orally. If we try to imagine who first told the story, and to whom, and with what end in mind, what would we take it to be about, and what truth might we find in it? What does the story say to those who are not Christians or Jews, whether of another faith, or even atheist or agnostic? Seeking reliable speculations on such questions is the work behind this lecture." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Braithwaite, William T. (William Thomas) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-09-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: make a recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John’s College Greenfield Library; make a recording of my lecture available online; make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John’s College Greenfield Library; make a copy of my typescript available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Bible. Genesis Eve (Biblical figure) David, King of Israel Parables Solomon, King of Israel Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Braithwaite_William_2022-09-02 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/9d616d3a535fd123c110306180d11c1b.mp4 93d3683564517a6d7a174ed2f280deae Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:57:46 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Danger of Political Pessimism Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on November 19, 2021, by Melvin Rogers as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Professor Rogers is an Associate Professor of Political Science and the Director of Graduate Studies of Political Science at Brown University. His current book project is, The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought. Professor Rogers describes his lecture: "'One of the fundamental paradoxes of black politics,' writes Barnor Hesse and Juliet Hooker, is 'the invariable futility of directing activism toward a racially governing regime historically founded on the constitutive exclusion and violation of blackness.' This paradox raises a fundamental question: How can African Americans appeal to the nation in the name of freedom and equal standing, if the ethical and political presuppositions of the polity turn on their fundamental exclusion? Although this question animates our contemporary moment, especially with the ascendancy of Afro-pessimism, this essay recovers its initial articulation as well as pessimistic response from the 19th century African American nationalist Martin Delany. And it seeks to distill from Delany’s counterpart, Frederick Douglass, an alternative vision that both resist the paradox and the political logic that gives it shape. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rogers, Melvin L. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-11-19 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library." Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Delany, Martin Robison, 1812-1885 Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895 Afropessimism (Philosophy) Philosophy, Black Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Rogers_Melvin_2021-11-19_ac https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/dc06c22013d18f65428a401d773c47f5.mp4 c57e3f4182d4ff5f178750deda3d92d4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:43:04 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gender, Intersectionality, and Marx’s Value Theory Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on October 29, 2021, by Sarah Vitale as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Dr. Vitale is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Co-Editor of Radical Philosophy Review at Ball State University. Dr. Vitale describes her lecture: “Marxist feminists have approached the question of what comes first – patriarchy or capitalism – in many ways, but there are two main threads: dual systems theories and single systems theories. In the first, capitalism and patriarchy are two separate systems existing alongside one another, creating different oppressions. In the other view, capitalism and patriarchy are part of the same system and cannot be understood properly apart from one another. In my presentation, I will consider one recent attempt towards a single systems theory – the intersectional feminist approach. Intersectionality, an important contribution by Black feminists to the discourse on oppression and emancipation, diagnoses an important problem. However, I will argue that to apply the intersectional approach to the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy requires a different approach to capitalism than most intersectional feminists – and perhaps most Marxists – use. I will suggest that despite the best intentions, intersectional approaches to the question of capitalism and patriarchy end up functioning as dual systems theories depending on an ahistorical notion of gender. If we want to examine and dismantle capitalism and patriarchy, we must understand how patriarchy or the gender order in capitalism is a capitalist gender order. To do so, I suggest we look to a relatively recent turn in Marxist theory called Wertkritik or value criticism, which has also made significant contributions to the conversation about gender and capital.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Vitale, Sarah (Professor of philosophy) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-10-29 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library." Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Socialist feminism Intersectionality (Sociology) Capitalism Patriarchy Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Vitale_Sarah_2021-10-29_ac Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c1e2075a0aaf60f1e0b0cd3e605106f9.mp4 5c17fe83adad9e63be30a19715786f28 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Zoom video conference Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:37:59 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Reading and Teaching the Constitution Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on June 29, 2022, by Steve Steinbach as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. Mr. Steinbach was a partner at a law firm in Washington, D.C. before leaving the legal profession for teaching. He is now the chair of the History department at Sidwell Friends, and is the author of With Liberty and Justice for All?: The Constitution in the Classroom. Mr. Steinbach describes his talk: "Is the Constitution of the United States a 'great book' in the St. John’s tradition? How might the document be read, taught, and understood intelligently, whether in the nation’s classrooms or our wider civic discourse? The lecture will explore the Constitution’s continuing relevance by focusing in part on two critical 'constitutional moments' from the past: the Alien and Sedition Acts controversy and the Dred Scott case." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Steinbach, Steven A. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-06-29 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource An email has been received from the lecturer giving permission to record the lecture and make it available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Education, Humanistic Alien and Sedition laws, 1798 Scott, Dred, 1809-1858 Constitutional law Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Langston, Emily Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Steinbach_Steve_2022-06-29access Graduate Institute Summer lecture series https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/aa011b7993207e6293c473b9ef6b85a9.mp4 efb11d8f9962485fbfdc4bb50957330c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Zoom video conference Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:36:49 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource It’s Just Talking: Legal Advocacy and the Vital Role of Listening Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on July 6, 2022, by Gabriela Quercia Kahrl as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. Ms. Kahrl is the Associate Director of the Chacon Center for Immigrant Justice at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. As part of the partnership between the Annapolis Graduate Institute and the Carey School of Law, Ms. Kahrl speaks about liberal education and the role of listening in legal advocacy, reflecting on the nature of conversations, oral advocacy as a kind of conversation, and why and how listening is a vital legal skill. Her lecture draws from texts/authors, including Simone Weil, the Bible, and Plato, and includes examples of legal practice. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kahrl, Gabriela Quercia Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-07-06 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource An email has been received from the lecturer giving permission to record the lecture and make it available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Education, Humanistic Communication in law Conversation Legal assistance to immigrants Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Langston, Emily Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Kharl_Gabreila_2022-07-06access Graduate Institute Summer lecture series https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/afafde9a2dae43b98b911a93dfee3f49.pdf 969f3058d093fecd2ffe45d260eabab2 PDF Text Text Looking in Freshman Lab III – Looking into The Constitution of Bodies: How does the supposition of particles help us to see? 1 LAVOISIER’S PROGRAM FOR GENERATING SEQUENCES OF EXPERIMENTS LEADING TO FACTS AND IDEAS, BASED ON MEASURING WEIGHTS (1789) In his “Preliminary Discourse” 2 Lavoisier lays out guidelines for how to arrive at knowledge in the physical sciences in general and in chemistry in particular. Students should follow the same course as “nature follows in the formation of a child’s ideas … [T]heir ideas ought to be only the consequence, the immediate continuation (suite) of an experiment or observation” (0.6). According to Lavoisier the child’s first ideas, engendered by its sensations of its needs, are of objects appropriate for satisfying those needs. Insensibly over time, as a result of a sequence (suite) of such sensations and observations of suitable objects, the child generates a succession “of ideas, all bound to one another.” As with the child so in chemistry, if one were “an attentive observer,” one “could, up to a certain point, even find again” in the sequence of sensations, observations, and analyses “the thread and the linking (enchaînement) of those ideas, bound to one another, which constitute the totality of what we know” in chemistry (0.5). 3 In accord with this account, we might say that Lavoisier will aim to show us a sequence of sensations and observations of experiments and a corresponding sequence of ideas, which he generated from them. In his case following “the course that nature follows” appears to consist: i) in linking “the facts and the truths of chemistry in the order most appropriate for facilitating the insight (intelligence) A Wednesday Afternoon Lecture, delivered at St. John’s College, Annapolis, on April 13th, 2022. For all translations from the first chapters of Lavoisier, Antoine Lavoisier, Oxygen, Acids, and Water, H. Fisher, ed., C. Burke and M. Holtzman, trls. (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 2019) was consulted and often followed word for word. The references in parentheses are to chapter and paragraph number in that translation. 3 Dans notre première enfance nos idées viennent de nos befoins; la sensation de nos besoins fait naître l'idée des objets propres à les satisfaire, & insenfiblement par une suite de senfations, d'observations & d'analyses, il se forme une génération sucçessive d'idées toutes liées les unes aux autres, dont un observateur attentif peut même jusqu à un certain point y retrouver le fil & l'enchaînement, & qui constituent l'ensemble de ce que nous savons. 1 2 1 �of beginners” and ii) in ensuring that the consequent ideas “derive immediately from the facts” and “from experiments and observations.” This arrangement would be “the natural linking of experiences and observations” “from the known to the unknown” (0.5, .6, .8, .10, .11). As with the child our “sensations give birth to ideas” and ‘’ideas ought to be only what … follows immediately an experiment or observation” (0.6). Then we are not led “to draw conclusions which by no means derive immediately from the facts,” (0.8). By presenting the facts and ideas in this way, Lavoisier will enable us, if we are attentive, to find for ourselves the thread binding those ideas to one another. In coming to see this connection, we should be in a situation somewhat like that of Goethe’s reader—mentioned in the first lecture on looking in Freshman Laboratory—who can follow similarity through its transitions, by holding in her imagination a temporal sequence of appearances, until she can derive them from one another. Based upon our experience in the lab up to this point, the interpretation of “derive immediately from the facts” is that our awareness of an experiment, whether we performed it or read Lavoisier’s account of it, gives birth to an idea in us. The experiment suddenly “makes sense” to us. But it wouldn’t have done so absent the foreknowledge we had acquired through experience. In this respect there is an analogy with Euclid’s sequence of propositions. A given proposition at the place where it is enunciated appears to derive immediately from the preceding propositions in the sense that given our familiarity with the earlier ones, in some cases, insight into the truth of the later one may be born in us as we read it. 4 Following Lavoisier’s course involves, first, describing all the equipment used in each experiment and telling the step-by-step story of what was done and what occurred throughout. That story includes both observations and notes of the qualities of the substances involved in the experiment and of the The analogy could be extended to include Euclid’s postulates. Just as Euclid needs to request that we admit them, if we are to have the sequence of insights generated by his propositions, so Lavoisier has to ask that we admit his “principle” “that, in every operation, there is an equal quantity of matter before and after the operation” (see below), as a condition for the possibility of ideas being born in us immediately in response to his experiments. 4 2 �weights of all of those substances. Other relevant quantities, such as temperature, pressure, and volume of gases must also be recorded. 5 In addition, one experiment, even if repeated several times, would not be sufficient: Chemistry furnishes two means for determining the nature of the constituent parts of bodies: composition and decomposition. When, for example, water and … alcohol… are combined, creating … eau-de-vie, we are entitled to conclude therefrom that eau-de-vie is composed of alcohol and water. But the same conclusion can be reached through decomposition, and we ought to be fully satisfied in chemistry only as far as we have been able to bring together both kinds of proof (3.3). Much of Lavoisier’s focus will be on concluding—from experiments in which he observes and measures especially the weights of the substances before and after the experiment—to a fact that a particular substance, having weight W, has been composed from two (or more) other substances, having respective weights w1 and w2. For instance, after his first description of a pair of decompositionrecomposition experiments, Lavoisier writes that it “does not give us exact ideas about the proportion” of the weights of the component substances (3.14). So, he goes on to perform a further experiment in the same series, as a result of which one can determine that the one substance “diminishes by an amount in weight exactly equal to that by which [the other] is increased” (3.25). In the course of describing the next set of experiments, having noted that “since nothing with weight passes through the glass,” Lavoisier writes, “we are entitled to conclude from them that the weight of whatever substance has resulted from this combination … had to be the same as the sum of the weights” of the substances that were there before the combination (5.7). He only later 6 states the “principle” upon which he bases this claim: “Nothing is created, …; we may posit in principle (poser en principe) that, in every” experiment, “there is an equal quantity of matter before and after” the experiment, “and that there are only changes, modifications” of matter. 7 He is In their papers at the end of Equilibrium and Measurement, Marotte and Gay-Lussac reported having done this. Antoine Lavoisier, Oxygen, Acids, and Water, H. Fisher, ed., C. Burke and M. Holtzman, trls. (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 2019), p. 57, note to 5.7. 7 Traité Élémentaire de Chimie, T. 1er (Paris : Cuchet, Libraire, 1789), Ch. 13. 5 6 3 �positing this principle underneath his feet, as it were, like a foundation on which to stand, in order to be able to investigate. A student 8 put it this way: “you have to find a foundation—which does not shift around as much as what you are trying to see—on which to discover something new amid what is shifting.” In this respect Lavoisier seems to be illustrating the following words of Socrates to Glaucon: “a soul … is forced to seek on the basis of sup-positions (ἐξ ὑποθέσεων)” (Rep 510b). At a minimum Lavoisier has recognized that such a sup-posit-ion is a necessary condition for being able to learn anything from chemical experiments by keeping tally of the weights involved in them. In spite of the support provided by the principle, however, just after having concluded to the sameness of weights before and after the above experiment, Lavoisier goes on to write that “no matter how conclusive this experiment may have been, it was not yet sufficiently rigorous,” due to the fact that it was “not possible to verify the weight” of the resultant compound. “We can only conclude to it by way of calculation, in supposing it equal to the weights of” the ingredient substances. “But however evident this conclusion may be, in chemistry and physics it is never allowable to suppose something that can be determined through direct experiments” (5.9). So, as long as all the weights involved in an experiment are determinable by some experiment, he does not rely on what he can conclude by standing on the principle he has posited. For physical scientists have “often supposed instead of concluding,” and “these suppositions, from one age to the next, … acquire the weight of authority” (0.9). We might say that when he concludes, Lavoisier encloses together all that he’s observed, measured, and noted throughout an experiment, in order to come to a fact, which would be the conclusion, or end, of the experiment. The act of concluding would then be a shift from taking “composition” as meaning the process of putting (poser) two substances together (com) during an experiment to viewing it as signifying the qualitative and quantitative make-up, or composition, of the outcome of an experiment. 8 Katherine Bates in Freshman Lab class, 2020. 4 �For instance, from having made (ayant fait) a certain weight of white flakes out of a given weight of oxygen and another of phosphorous, one is entitled to conclude to the fact (fait, factum) that a certain weight of white flakes is made (est fait) of a given weight of oxygen and another of phosphorous. A decomposition experiment of unmaking the white flakes would allow concluding to the fact from an un-making. On this literal understanding of “fact,” it would not be correct to say it’s a fact that a given substance is elementary, since no making or unmaking has shown that to be the case. However, in view of the principle, such an enclosing-together is possible only if the “walls” of the “enclosing room” let nothing come in or out, at least in the course of the experiment. That is, we would have to suppose something which could not be determined through direct experiments, namely, that “the great walls of the capacious world” are closed, in the sense that they cannot, “suddenly torn asunder, have burst apart” 9 and have allowed material substances to pass through them in either direction. An example of particular ideas that derive immediately from a sequence of facts, each like the one in the above example of white flakes, might be the idea that this kind of white flakes, which is found to have various acidic properties (5.18), is a compound substance, or, to take another case, the idea that water is a compound substance, composed of hydrogen and oxygen, approximately in the ratio of 1g : 5.2555g (8.12). In Lavoisier’s usage such ideas are “consequences” that we “draw” (0.8). An example of a general idea would then be compound substance. Perhaps, in the case of compound substance, it is as if we now not only were looking at these white flakes and remembering them as the concluding frame of a “film strip” of the just performed composition experiment, but also were seeing, as such a frame of a generalized film strip, any substance for which such a sequence of experiments had revealed that instances of it were made of two or more component substances. 9 Lucretius, De rerum naturae, VI.122-23: divolsa repente maxima dissiluisse capacis moenia mundi. 5 �We may take Lavoisier’s figures along with the accompanying text as a musical score in two different ways. In one way they tell us how to “play” each experiment in our imaginations, picturing the equipment, the ingredient substances, the sequence of steps and events, and the outcome. We may write down his numbers for height of mercury, volume of a container, and weights of substances and then do the calculations. Finally, based upon trust in his report and in his results, we may see that the burning of phosphorus, which we had considered an alteration of one substance, can be analyzed as the composition of one substance from two others. Moreover, we may also see that having kept track of the change in volume and of the weights of the substances we can conclude to the fact that, for example, 45 gr of phosphorus and 69.375 gr of oxygen composed to make 114.375 gr of white flakes (5.7). Furthermore, based upon trust that Lavoisier has done many repetitions of this experiment, we can draw the consequence that such white flakes are composed of phosphorous and oxygen, roughly in the ratio 1 : 1.54 by weight. So, we now have the idea of such white flakes as a substance composed of two other substances in this weight ratio. In the other way of taking the musical score, we “play” Lavoisier’s score in our laboratory, with equipment similar to his. Here we trust only what we observe, that is, see and measure. Thus—it is hoped—we arrive at the same conclusion, consequence, and idea, but upon a different basis. In either way through his “score” Lavoisier has given any human being access to the facts and ideas he has generated. In that sense these latter are objective. We also recognize that in addition to the resultant general insight that, in some cases, at least, apparent alteration might be analyzable as the composition or decomposition of substances, Lavoisier must have relied, in advance, upon three supplementary insights: 1) that this analysis could be most productively carried out by keeping track of the weights of the substances involved, 2) that a condition for the possibility of this keeping-track is the supposition of the principle that, in every operation, there is an equal quantity of matter before and after the operation, and 3) that another condition for the 6 �possibility of this keeping-track is the supposition that the vessels used in the experiments are impermeable to the passage of the substances involved. One way to imagine the generation of these insights would be as follows. Suppose we had left a piece of moistened steel wool in a jar with a top on it. When we return after several days, we notice not only the rusting of the steel wool but also a sensation of air being sucked into the jar as we unscrew the top. It would seem as if something had happened to the air, a reduction in amount, simultaneously with the rusting. Perhaps we could repeat this experience on a larger scale, using a bell jar, inverted over mercury, weighing some dry steel wool, before and after the period of several days, etc. If when we calculated we found a significant reduction in the amount of air and a significant increase in the weight of the steel wool, we might think that the rusting might be a combining of the steel wool with something in the air. We could then go on to figure out how much of a reduction by weight the air underwent and compare that with the weight gain of the steel wool (cp. CB 6). 10 We could note along the way that our calculations would not be valid, unless we had made Lavoisier’s suppositions. INTERLUDE: GAY-LUSSAC’S RECOLLECTION OF IDEALLY EXACT LIMIT-NUMBERS (1808) Before returning to Lavoisier, we shall glance at a paper 11 by Gay-Lussac, which is read about a week after Lavoisier is finished. Gay-Lussac generally proceeds in accord with the course recommended by Lavoisier, of beginning with observations and experiments, concluding from them to facts, and deriving ideas immediately from the latter. He did, however, introduce a new feature. The students sometimes claim that Gay-Lussac introduced mathematics into Lavoisier-style chemistry. What are they thinking of? Gay-Lussac began by noting a contrast between the behavior of gases, on the one hand, and, on the other, that of liquids and solids, which had been revealed by the experimental work of Edme The Constitution of Bodies (Annapolis, MD: St. John’s College, Printed Spring 2021), p. 6. Future references to this manual will be noted “CB,” followed by the page number. 11 “Memoire on the Combination of Gaseous Substances with Each Other” (1808), CB 37-42, translation modified in places. 10 7 �Mariotte. Mariotte showed that the same reduction in pressure, say, by 2/3, applied to volumes of any two different gases, say, hydrogen and oxygen, would produce the same expansion of an increase by 2/3 in each of the two volumes, so that for an expansible container of a gas at any given fixed temperature the product of the pressure-number and the volume-number remains the same, as its pressure and volume vary. In contrast, as Gay-Lussac noted, “the same compression applied to all solid or liquid substances would produce a diminution of volume differing in each case” (CB 37). Thus, while the variations in volume of liquids and solids, with changes in pressure, “have hitherto presented no regular law,” independent of the nature of the liquid or solid in question, the laws of the variations in volume of gases are “equal and independent of the nature of each gas.” This recognition probably led Gay-Lussac to the intuition that he could see something new by simultaneously narrowing his gaze to experiments involving only ingredient gases and shifting his focus from Lavoisier’s weight-experiments to volume-experiments. He writes that it is his intention to show thereby that gases “combine amongst themselves in very simple ratios” (CB 37). Gay-Lussac thinks that the cause of this key difference between liquids and solids, on the one hand, and gases, on the other, is that the particles of the former are drawn close to each other by an attractive force, which is not present in the case of gases (CB 37). Imagining the particular attractions between particles makes for a complicated picture when we look at volumes of solids and liquids. In addition, it is a picture which we cannot actually see because we don’t know anything about the smallscale details of the attractions which would allow us to predict any determinate experimental outcome. So, in effect, Gay-Lussac “hears” attractions between particles as “noise.” That noise is silenced when he listens only to gases and their volumes. Then, Gay-Lussac “listens” to the regularity Mariotte had found to be independent of the natures of particular gases. Gay-Lussac presents the facts from which his idea arose. He performed an experiment with a colleague in which they found an “exact ratio of 100 of oxygen gas to 200 of hydrogen gas for the 8 �[volume] proportion of water.” This result led him to suspect “that the other gases might also combine in simple ratios” by volume. In the next four experiments he performed, Gay-Lussac found that in two of them the volume ratios of the combining substances were 100 : 100 and, in the other two, 100 : 200 (CB 38-39). He goes on to offer “some fresh proofs, after which he states: Thus it appears evident to me that gases always combine in the simplest proportions when they act on one another; and we have seen in reality in all the preceding examples that the ratio of combination is 1 to 1, 1 to 2, or 1 to 3 (CB 41). He adds that when the result of the combination of two gases is a gas, its volume is also in a very simple whole-number ratio with that of each of the components (CB 41; cp. Avogadro, CB 43). Analogous to Archimedes in his first treatise, Gay-Lussac has found a way to see ideal-exact limit-formations—in his case, to see, in chemical experiments, the unit and assemblages of units (ἀριθμοί). When he looked at the ingredient and resultant gas volumes in his and others’ experiments, “the thought occurred to him of another thing”—a unit or two units or three units—a thing not found in his sensory experience, something as if he knew it “from before.” Socrates would have said that GayLussac “is recollecting that of which he grasped the thought” (Ph 72e-73cd). For instance, Gay-Lussac saw the volumes of nitrogen gas and oxygen gas that combined to form nitric acid gas as “reaching after” the One and the Two, respectively, but “in a condition of falling short” of them (Ph 74c-75b; italics added). Edmund Husserl would have claimed that the unit volumes that Gay-Lussac saw were examples of ideally exact limit-formations, like those encountered in Lecture II. 12 The last three of Gay-Lussac’s proofs are based upon the results of experiments performed by Davy, in which the weights of the combining substances and of the resultant substances were given. In order to “hear” the corresponding volumes, Gay-Lussac must reduce the weight ratios in each case to volume ratios. He reverses Lavoisier’s procedure (see, for example, Lavoisier 3.25) for translating a Husserl, op. cit., pp. 22-23; The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, tr. D. Carr (Northwestern: 1970), pp. 25-26. 12 9 �measured diminution in volume into the corresponding diminution in weight. Gay-Lussac divides the observed weights by the known densities of the gases in order to determine the volume ratios of the experiments. For instance, Gay-Lussac then heard, or, to shift metaphors, saw, the volumes of nitrogen gas and oxygen gas that combined to form three nitrogen compounds as “reaching after” the One and the Two, respectively, but “in a condition of falling short” of them (Ph 74c-75b; italics added)—like a chalk mark reaching after the Straight. For the actual experimental results for these three compounds were that the nitrogen volume was to the oxygen volume as - 2 : 0.99 and 1 : 1.089 and 1 : 2.047, respectively. Gay-Lussac comments: The first and the last of these [ratios] differ only slightly from [2 to 1], and [1 to 2]; it is only the second which diverges somewhat from [1 to 1]. The difference, however, is not very great, and is such as we might expect in experiments of this sort; and I have assured myself that it is actually nil (CB40). 13 This assurance suggests that hearing, or seeing, ideal-exact volume-units can allow us to correct values arrived at by measuring weights. In an application of his new approach—without having to perform any experiments, but simply by viewing a weight-experiment, through the lens of volume— Gay-Lussac corrected the accepted density of carbonic acid gas. Cruickshanks had experimentally determined its value to be 0.9569. When Gay-Lussac looked at the volume results of an experiment by Berthollet, in which 200 carbonic oxide + 100 oxygen → 200 carbonic acid, he concluded that the relation of the densities is dcoxide = dcacid - ½doxy. Since the latter two densities had been well established 14 by many experiments as 1.5196 and 1.1036, respectively, GayLussac saw that the density of carbonic oxide gas had to be .9678. The elimination of weight-noise— “Reducing these proportions to volumes we find— Nitrogen Oxygen Nitrous oxide 100 49.5 Nitrous gas 100 108.9 Nitric acid 100 204.7 The first and the last of these proportions differ only slightly from 100 to 50, and 100 to 200; it is only the second which diverges somewhat from 100 to 100.” 14 CB 41, n. 17. 13 10 �each experiment involving a particular kind of chemical reaction yields slightly different weight relations—allowed Gay-Lussac to hear the ideal-exact sound of the volume, by which he could correct, in the second decimal place, the previous value, which depended on weight-experiments. In his experiments Lavoisier was measuring magnitudes, as dealt with by Euclid in Book V of The Elements. Now Gay-Lussac is counting numbers, which Euclid treated in Book VII. Gay-Lussac has, thus, opened the realm of chemistry to include the discrete as well as the continuous. This new seeing of units and numbers of units in chemistry may be what the students glimpsed when they said that Gay-Lussac had introduced mathematics into chemistry. LAVOISIER AND THE ROLE OF IMAGINATION (1789) We return to Lavoisier in order to consider the role of imagination in chemistry. In accord with his aim to rely on what we observe and conclude when we perform experiments involving weighing, Lavoisier wanted to avoid being led astray by the imagination. With respect to the things we want to come to know, he presents “imagining them” as an alternative to his program of “observing them” (0.41). Moreover, Lavoisier specifically warns us of the dangers of the imagination, “which constantly tends to carry us beyond the true … [and] invite[s] us to draw consequences which by no means derive immediately from the facts” (0.8). Especially “in the case of things that can be neither seen nor felt, it is of the utmost importance to guard against the deviations of the imagination, which always tends to soar beyond the true and which has considerable difficulty in confining itself within the narrow circle that the facts draw around it” (1.10). Thus, what we imagine, in that it leads to consequences not immediately derivable from the facts, stands squarely opposed to ideas, which do so derive by insight. For instance, while Lavoisier spoke of particles, he did not go on to imagine what they might be like in detail. “Lavoisier’s ‘particles’ are simply small portions of a substance, not necessarily either the 11 �smallest possible portions or even of uniform size.” 15 He drew no consequences from any suppositions about the nature of the assumed particulate nature of matter. Nevertheless, under certain conditions, he does draw tentative consequences, in an interesting way, from imagining the behavior of particles, namely, their separation by warmth (1.1): It is understandable that since they are … continually invited (sollicitées) by warmth (chaleur) to separate from one another, the particles of bodies would have no connection among themselves and that there would be no solid body if they were not held back by another force that would tend to bring them together and, as it were, to link them to one another…. And so the particles of bodies can be considered as obeying two forces, one repulsive and one attractive, between which they are in equilibrium (1.3 & .4; italics added). This imagined picture—which involves considering-as—does not seem to acquire the status of a consequence that Lavoisier would or could legitimately draw. On the one hand, he imagines “a real, material substance, an exceedingly subtle fluid that insinuates itself throughout the particles of bodies and separates them.” Yet the grounds for speaking of it are that the phenomena of bodies’ changing state as they are warmed up or cooled down are “difficult to understand … without admitting that they are the effects” of such an imagined substance. So, that substance would appear to be a supposition of a different kind than his sup-position of the principle mentioned above as a foundation for the chemist to stand on. He states: “Even supposing that the existence of this fluid were an hypothesis, we shall see in what follows that it explains the phenomena of Nature quite felicitously” (1.7). “Explaining” must be distinguished from concluding or drawing a consequence. The hypothesis of a subtle fluid would help us to imagine a picture of what might be going on “beneath” or “inside” those things we can actually see and measure in the lab. “Since the sensation that we call warmth is the effect of the accumulation of” this imagined substance, “whatever it may be,” Lavoisier names it, as being the cause of warmth (Lat. calor), “caloric.” Yet in the same paragraph, he assures us that 15 Lavoisier, Op. cit., p. 13, note to 1.1. 12 �rigorously speaking we are not even obliged to suppose that caloric is real matter; it suffices … that it be a repulsive cause of any sort that separates the particles of matter, and so we may view its effects in an abstract and mathematical way (1.8). Lavoisier seems to be inviting us to fantasize anything whatsoever as long as it helps us to imagine what could be happening when bodies change state with changing temperature. Ultimately, whatever we imagine will have to agree with any empirically established mathematical functions that express change of matter as a function of temperature, as well as with the ideal gas law, which we have already encountered in Ch. VI of Measurement and Equilibrium. 16 While the above account “determines the idea that we ought to attach to the word ‘caloric,’” Lavoisier wishes to “give correct ideas of the manner in which caloric acts on bodies” (1.10). In the course of doing that, he reports that caloric “plays in some way the role of solvent” in the case of every gas, in that it “tends to separate” the particles of all bodies, opposing their attraction (1.28 & 1.30). Since, in dealing with abstract things, we should not over-rely on the help of sensible comparisons, Lavoisier offers several ways in which we may form a picture of these opposing tendencies: “we picture (figure) to ourselves,” now a vessel filled with little lead balls into which a very fine powder … has been poured,” now pieces of different kinds of wood, submerged in water (1.31-.34). This use of the imagination to picture sensible comparisons clearly does not risk carrying us beyond what is true. These comparisons may call to mind that earlier in the lab Theophrastus, Aristotle, and Harvey analogized the working of plant parts or animal organs to that of products of art. In those cases, though, we could actually look at the part in question and see the similarity in it, somewhat as we can see a particular expression in a face. However, the substance that Lavoisier is looking at in his imagination bears no visible trace of anything expressive of lead balls or pieces of wood. We are imagining them alongside or inside the phenomena we are looking at in the lab. Putting it that way is suggestive of the 16 Measurement and Equilibrium (Annapolis: St. John’s College, printed Fall 2020), pp. 128-30. 13 �transparencies that Archimedes and Pascal used to bring about an essential seeing in the lab. In the case of Lavoisier, however, what we fantasize allows us to picture what could be happening below the level of appearances that could account for them. Lavoisier’s final discussion of caloric in Ch. I is based on the twin suppositions of the existence of particles of matter and of particles of caloric. Having stated that caloric is both an elastic fluid and the cause of the elasticity of bodies, Lavoisier poses the Socratic question, “what is elasticity”? It is the property that “the particles of a body have of moving away from one another when they have been forced to draw near,” a “tendency … that manifests itself even at very great distances.” That air can be highly compressed presupposes that particles of air are already quite far from each other. But we know from experiments that they tend to move even further away from each other. The only way to explain that effect is by “supposing that the particles make an effort in every direction to separate” (1.44). There may, in fact, be such a real repulsion between the particles of elastic fluids, since it would be consistent with the phenomena, but Lavoisier thinks that such “a repulsive force … is difficult to conceive” (1.45). Trying out another supposition leads him, finally, to the thought that the separation of the particles of bodies by caloric is due to a combination of different attractive forces, and it is the result of these forces that we seek to express … when we say that caloric communicates a repulsive force to the particles of bodies. (1.46) At the very least we may say that Lavoisier’s imagining of caloric did not lead him to cling to a fixed supposition of what is going on “behind” or “inside” the things we can see with our eyes. He is flexible in the ways in which he imagines the supposed action of caloric. He keeps his eye, simultaneously, both on the phenomena and on the supposed separation of gas particles with increasing warmth. He encourages us to play around with different suppositions, without mistaking any of them for “the true” picture. 14 �DALTON’S SUPPOSITION OF ULTIMATE PARTICLES, OR ATOMS, AND MAKING USE OF THEM (1808) (NOTE: The terminology used in the discussion of Dalton and his followers will be a translation into a more modern terminology, established by Cannizzaro, 17 in which “atom” refers to a single hitherto un-cutable, or in-divisible particle, which may or may not be attached to other particles by attraction. And “molecule” refers to a separate particle, one not joined to other particles by attraction; it may consist of one atom or of many.) Dalton’s first great insight is that “we have hitherto made no use of” the pre-supposition that each material thing is made up of a great number of atoms. There are two different uses that Dalton has in mind, first, using experiments to make the particle picture more determinate and, second, using the particle picture to propose and correct experiments. First, chemists have not “inferred” from their experimental determination of the relative weights of the ingredient and resultant substances to “the relative weights of the ultimate particles or atoms of the [different kinds of] bodies” involved (CB 20-21). If they had done so, they could have seen i) how many atoms of each kind of elementary substance were in molecules of various compounds, ii) the relative weights of different elements in those compound molecules, and iii) the relative molecular weights of the various compounds (CB 21). The second use that chemists have not made of atoms is dependent on the first. For since the chemists had no accurate, determinate atomic-molecular picture, they had no way of using particles “to assist and to guide future investigations, and to correct their results” (CB 21). His claim is analogous to saying that until he worked out the mathematics of the motions of heavenly bodies, Ptolemy could not predict the date of a solar eclipse. 17 “The conception of [Avogadro and Ampère] contains nothing contradictory to known facts, provided that we distinguish, as they did, molecules from atoms; provided that we do not confuse the criteria by which the number and the weight of the former are compared, with the criteria which serve to deduce the weight of the latter; provided that, finally, we have not fixed in our minds the prejudice that whilst the molecules of compound substances may consist of different numbers of atoms, the molecules of the various simple substances must all contain either one atom, or at least an equal number of atoms” (CB 53). 15 �Dalton’s second great insight was that it was impossible to make any use of the presupposition of atoms as long as chemists were thinking of molecules of, say, water, as being of diverse weights. Just as Lavoisier could not make any real use of experiments, unless he sup-posed that there is an equal quantity of matter before and after each experiment, so, too, experiments won’t be able to show anything about the relative atomic makeup of substances’ molecules, unless we sup-pose 18 that the ultimate particles of all homogeneous bodies are perfectly alike in weight, figure, &c. In other words, every particle of water is like every other particle of water; every particle of hydrogen is like every other particle of hydrogen, &c.... (CB 21). We might say that Dalton has introduced into the world of presupposed, imaginary atoms the supposition of ideally exact atoms. So, all ingredient and resultant substances will now be seen, at the same time, in a double vision--both as weights, continuous magnitudes, in the lab and as atom-units of different kinds, discrete multitudes, in the particle world. In this respect his seeing is like that of Euclid and of Archimedes’ first treatise. The difference, though, lies in that things—in particular, things in the material world—are thought of as “reaching for” and “falling short of” (Phdo 75ab) the exact limitformations of Euclid and Archimedes, whereas Dalton thinks of atoms as (tiny, invisible) things that make up the actual material world. Thus, Dalton is not led to think of his homogeneous particles by what he sees in the lab, in the way that Cebes might be led to think of Simmias by a picture of him or by a face glimpsed in a crowd. Dalton isn’t viewing the substance in the lab as an image (εἰκών) of a number of atom-units. He might, while looking at the particular substance, be supposing a huge number of identical molecule-units. But the substance could not be said to image them. Moreover, at least so far, the number of identical molecule-units would also be quite indeterminate. 18 Dalton’s word is “conclude.” The grounds for his conclusion are that “from what is known, we have no reason to apprehend a diversity in these particulars” and that “it is scarcely possible to conceive how the aggregates of dissimilar particles should be so uniformly the same.” For it is not conceivable to Dalton that, due to the great number of atoms in any body weighable in the lab, it could be impossible for chemists to distinguish between the sameness of all atoms of each element and a distribution of the specific gravity of each element that is represented graphically in the shape of a bell-curve. 16 �How well does Dalton execute his program and use his supposition of homogeneity? He shows how chemists could go about determining the atomic makeup of molecules and relative atomic weights of elementary substances and relative molecular weights of compound substances. First, in order to guide chemists in deducing such “conclusions” from experimental “facts already well ascertained,” he proposes “general rules” like the following: 1st. When only one combination of two bodies can be obtained, it must be presumed to be a binary one, unless some cause appear to the contrary. 2d. When two combinations are observed, they must be presumed to be a binary and a ternary. (CB 22) The first two pairs of conclusions that he goes on to mention are “1st. That water is a binary compound of hydrogen and oxygen, and the relative weights of the two elementary atoms are as 1 : 7, nearly” and “2d. That ammonia is a binary compound of hydrogen and [nitrogen], and the relative weights of the two [elementary] atoms are as 1 : 5, nearly…” (CB 22). He accompanies his statement of the conclusions with “arbitrary … signs chosen to represent” the atoms and their composites, as shown in Figures 1a & b PLATE IV (CB 24-25). PLATE IV. This plate contains the arbitrary marks or signs chosen to represent the several chemical elements or ultimate particles. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. Fig. Hydrog., its rel. weight 1 Azote, 5 Carbone or charcoal, 5 Oxygen, 7 Phosphorus, 9 Sulphur, 13 Magnesia, 20 Lime, 23 Soda, 28 Potash, 42 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Fig. Strontites,46 Barytes, 68 Iron, 38 Zinc, 56 Copper, 56 Lead, 95 Silver, 100 Platina, 100 Gold, 140 Mercury, 67 An atom of water or steam, composed of 1 of oxygen and 1 of hydrogen, retained in physical contact by a strong aﬀinity, and supposed to be surrounded by a common atmosphere of heat, its 8 relative weight = ............................................ ………………… An atom of ammonia, composed of 1 of azote and 1 of hydrogen = 6 An atom of nitrous gas, composed of 1 of azote and 1 of oxygen = 12 An atom of olefiant gas, composed of 1 of carbone and 1 of hydrogen = 6 An atom of carbonic oxide composed of 1 of carbone and 1 of oxygen = 12 Figure 1a 17 �Figure 1b Hence—given Lavoisier’s principle and the results of his and other chemists’ composition and decomposition experiments, in which the weights of the bodies involved were ascertained—if we presuppose atoms and suppose them to be homogeneous in Dalton’s sense and apply his heuristic general rules, then both the relative weights of many atoms and the numbers of them in the molecules of various compound bodies do follow as “conclusions.” In this way Dalton’s vision resembles that of Ptolemy. 19 The manual directs our attention to a conclusion that follows directly from Dalton’s supposition, without any need to apply his “general rules” to particular experiments. There was a debate, 15 years This is true, provided Ptolemy’s mathematical apparatus be interpreted simultaneously as showing that for which the motions of the heavenly bodies reach while falling short of it and that which enables the astronomer to say in advance where a given body will be in the sky on a given date. But there is a difference between the two visions, unless Ptolemy be interpreted as considering his cycles and epicycles to be invisible material bodies. 19 18 �after Lavoisier’s Treatise, between the chemists Berthollet and Proust as to whether or not substances react and combine in definite and fixed weight ratios. For example, if 2 gm of substance A reacts with 16 gm of substance B, then 2½ gm of A will react with 20 gm of B, and so on, so that the ratio of the weight of A to the weight of B is 1 : 8 in every case (CB 33). Lavoisier had pre-supposed that this was so, but Berthollet claimed to have demonstrated experimentally that compositions of two substances occur “in all ratios, up to [an] extreme value which … varies with the temperature.” Proust, though, claimed to have found “fixed ratios” in his experiments (CB 104). 20 On the basis of Dalton’s supposition, Proust must be correct. For if every molecule of water is made of the same number of homogeneous oxygen atoms and of the same number of homogeneous hydrogen atoms, then in a given amount of water, say, one million molecules, the weight ratio of oxygen to hydrogen must be the ratio – (atomic weight of oxygen)(number of oxygen atoms per water molecule)(1,000,000) : (atomic weight of hydrogen)(number of hydrogen atoms per water molecule)(1,000,000). Whether or not Dalton’s “general rules” are “adopted as guides,” the ratios always have to be the same, on the basis of his supposition. So, in imitation of Gay-Lussac’s correction of Cruikshank’s experimental determination of the density of carbonic oxide gas (CB 41), Dalton could correct Berthollet’s empirical claim. This might be like telling an astronomer, who reported having seen an eclipse of the moon between 10:05 PM and 2:44 AM on a given night, that she must have fallen asleep for an hour and ten minutes, because it had actually begun earlier, according to our mathematical calculations. 20 The manual adds a second necessary conclusion that follows directly from Dalton’s supposition of homogeneity, without reference to his general rules, namely, the Law of Multiple Combining Proportions: “From Dalton’s doctrine of atoms it follows that whenever two elements unite in more than one [ratio] there will be small whole number ratios among the [weights] of the first element that combine with a fixed [weight] of the second—whole number ratios because the various [weights] of the first element that combine with a fixed [weight] of the second must always represent whole numbers of atoms; and small because according to Dalton the most prevalent combinations may be presumed to be those between the least numbers of atoms” (CB 30). 19 �AVOGADRO’S “ONLY ADMISSIBLE” HYPOTHESIS ABOUT SIMPLE GASES (1811) Avogadro saw that in order to use particles, as Dalton wished to do, chemists needed to eliminate Dalton’s guesswork, that is, his arbitrary, general rules, as heuristic “guides” (CB 22) to determine the relative number of particles in compounds (CB 46). Avogadro’s key insight is that it is necessary to provide “Dalton’s system … with a new means of precision through” connecting it with Gay-Lussac’s discovery of small whole-number ratios of ideal-exact unit-volumes of gases (CB49). Then, still looking through the Daltonian lens, Avogadro will be able to see the particles more clearly. To review where we are at this point: we are supposing that all atoms of any given element are identical, that all molecules of any given compound are identical, and that at STP all boxes of any given gas contain the same number of molecules. The density of most gases have been determined by experiment, as described above. Finally, as Gay-Lussac had shown, gases combine in very simple wholenumber ratios by volume. 21 Avogadro, with all of that in mind, realizes that “viewing” Daltonian particles “through” GayLussacian boxes gives him a way to bring the Daltonian picture into better focus. It makes particles, as it were, into learnables (μαθήματα), about which one can learn, apart from doing experiments. He sees an apparent necessity in the relationship between “the relative number of particles which combine and … the number of composite particles which result,” on the one hand, and, on the other, “the ratios of the quantities of substances in compounds.” 22 Avogadro believes that introducing a mathematics of numbers of particles and boxes will enable him “to confirm or rectify” Dalton’s results (CB46). This insight immediately leads him to another: “It must then be admitted (Il faut donc admettre) that very simple ratios [or relations] also exist between the volumes of gaseous substances and the 21 “The combinations of gases always form in very simple ratios (rapports) by volume, and that when the result of the combination is a gas, its volume is also in a very simple ratio with that of [each of] its components” (CB 43). 22 “The ratios of the quantities of substances in compounds would appear to be able to depend only on the relative number of particles which combine, and on the number of composite particles which result” (CB 43; italics added). Avogadro’s word “quantities” may cover both weights and volumes. If quantities—weights or volumes—of two gases combine to form a third, the ratios of the first to the second to the resultant “would seem to be able to depend only on the relative number of particles” in the first, the second, and the resultant volumes, respectively. 20 �numbers of simple or compound particles which form them” (CB 43; italics added). Getting milage out of the simplicity of the relationship between lab experiments involving boxes of gases and pictures of the numbers of atoms or molecules composing gases would be easiest if it turned out that, for all gases at STP, the number of particles per box were identically the same. For then the weight ratio of two boxes, or equivalently, the densities of two gases, would at once also show the relative weights of the two gases in the compound molecule. In a way, the boxes would be acting like magnifying glasses, or lenses. In order to see that, consider Figure 2. Suppose that it turned out that for every gas there were DALTON’s supposed molecules 1 imagined molecule of oxygen ⃝ 1 imagined molecule of hydrogen AVOGADRO’s lens to ‘see’ weight of Dalton molecules in Gay-Lussac boxes 1 box of 100 imagined molecules of oxygen GAY-LUSSAC’s unit boxes of gases weighed in the lab 1 box of 100 imagined molecules of hydrogen 1 actual box of oxygen 1 actual box of oxygen ‫ﬦ‬ Weight of 1 oxygen molecule -----------------------------------Weight of 1 hydrogen molecule = 1/100 of weight of 100 oxygen molecules -----------------------------------= 1/100 of weight of 100 hydrogen molecules Weight of 1 box of oxygen -----------------------------------Weight of 1 box of hydrogen Figure 2 exactly 100 molecules of it in one Gay-Lussac box. Then the experimentally determined weight ratio of a box of oxygen to a box of hydrogen (see left column) would have to be the same as the supposed weight ratio of one oxygen molecule to one hydrogen molecule (see right column), because the lens shows that the former ratio is the same as the ratio of the weight of 100 oxygen molecules to 100 hydrogen molecules. 21 �But could Avogadro learn the relative numbers of particles per box of two different ingredient gases that result in a compound gas? He claims that the hypothesis just stated in the previous paragraph, “which presents itself first in this connection,” is not only the first to present itself and the simplest but also “the hypothesis … which even appears to be the only admissible one” (CB 43). How could he have learned that no other hypothesis could be admitted? Avogadro devotes most of the rest of the first paragraph to hypotheses about the possible distances of gas particles from each other. 23 But he summarizes these speculations by stating that “in our present ignorance of the manner in which this attraction of the particles … is exerted, there is nothing to decide us a priori” for or against any one of these hypotheses. However, he concludes that “the hypothesis we have just proposed relies on that simplicity of ratio between the volumes of gases in the combinations, which would appear to be unable to be explained otherwise” (CB 44; italics added). In other words, the necessity of the simple relationship between experimental boxes and numbers of particles—itself, the necessary result of bringing GayLussac and Dalton together—forces him to reject any hypothesis other than the simplest one. 24 Dalton’s first “object” had been to make “use of” the presupposition of particles, in order to determine the relative weights of particles and the composition of composite particles (CB 20-21). Avogadro can claim that relying on his new lens, or hypothesis, he was able to “see,” in all volume experiments involving gases, the relative numbers of ingredient and resultant molecules involved, and so, also, their molecular weights. In this way his first hypothesis makes the supposed, invisible realm distinctly and determinately visible. 23 If you think of gas molecules as floating freely, unattracted by each other, then there is no reason to think that two boxes of different gases would contain different numbers of particles. 24 In order to see that Avogadro’s hypothesis is the only way to arrive at this simplicity, one would have to work through all the known experimental results involving gases, while trying out different numbers of molecules per box. For each trial the supposed molecular composition of each gas would have to remain the same in all reactions. In doing this Avogadro seems to have seen that the simple relations follow only from one hypothesis about the relation between number of molecules per box, namely, that a box of any gas contains the same number of molecules. 22 �CANNIZZARO’S DETERMINATION OF A TABLE OF MOLECULAR AND ATOMIC WEIGHTS (1858) Avogadro’s hypothesis lets us “see” the relative molecular weights of gases, “even before their composition is known,” since the molecular weights have to be proportional to the experimentally determined densities of the gases, as we’ve just seen. Cannizzaro’s first insight is that instead of focusing on particular reactions and particular compounds “it is useful” (giova) to view all the elementary and compound gases together and, in particular, “to refer” the molecular weights (or, densities) of all gases to that of the lightest gas (CB 56), namely, hydrogen. He sets up a ratio scale of relative molecular weights. Since it is a scale of relative, not actual, weights, the weight-number to assign to the smallest molecule is completely arbitrary. With later considerations in mind, he assigns to hydrogen the weight-number 2 on the scale, rather, than 1. All other molecular weights will be determined by their ratios to that of hydrogen = 2. Then looking at unit volumes through Avogadro’s lens, Cannizzaro can make a table of the molecular weights of all gases, relative to this unit. For instance, in order to determine the relative molecular weight of any gas, all he has to do is look up the density—that is, the weight per box—at the same temperature and pressure, of hydrogen and of the gas in question. Since (molecular weight of gas x)/(molecular weight of hydrogen, viz., 2 = (density of gas x)/(density of hydrogen), he has only to multiply the density of gas x by the density of hydrogen gas and then to multiply that by 2. And he has determined the molecular weight of the gas. Cannizzaro list the molecular weights of some gases in the right-hand column of Figure 3 (CB 56). 23 �Names of Substances Hydrogen Oxygen, ordinary Oxygen, electrised Sulphur below 1000° Sulphur* above 1000° Chlorine Bromine Arsenic Mercury Water Hydrochloric Acid Acetic Acid weights of the molecules referred to the weight of a whole molecule of Hydrogen taken as unity. 1 16 64 96 32 35.5 80 150 100 9 18.25 30 weights of the molecules referred to the weight of half a molecule of Hydrogen taken as unity. 2 32 128 192 64 71 160 300 200 18 36.50† 60 Figure 3 Cannizzaro’s second insight is that we must clearly distinguish between the criteria used just now to arrive at the weights of all the gas molecules from those that yield the weights of the atoms and the numbers of them in the molecules (CB 53). Avogadro—in the course of using his “lens” for looking through equal boxes, at same temperature and pressure, in order to see molecular weights—had been forced, in considering the composition of water, to recognize that a molecule of elementary oxygen contains two oxygen atoms. To see this let’s suppose, again, that there are 100 molecules of any gas in one box. In the composition experiment, one box of oxygen combined with two boxes of hydrogen to form two boxes, that is, 200 molecules, of water. If the oxygen molecule consisted of only one oxygen atom, there’d be only 100 oxygen atoms available for forming 200 water molecules—not enough! So, Avogadro “supposes” that the molecules “of any simple gas whatever,” like oxygen, are “not formed of one single” atom, “but result from a certain number of these molecule joined together in a single one” (CB 45). He also supposed that for instance, if oxygen and hydrogen molecules were, respectively, O2 and H2, then one atom from each box of oxygen and of hydrogen would have to join to compose one compound molecule; so, there would be 200 water molecules of the composition H2O, since there are two boxes (200 molecules, or 400 atoms) of hydrogen and only one box (100 molecules, or 200 atoms) of oxygen. 24 �But if oxygen and hydrogen molecules were, respectively, O4 and H2, then two atoms of oxygen would have to join with one hydrogen atom from each box of hydrogen to compose one compound water molecule. So, there would be 200 water molecules of H2O2. In either case the number of water molecules “becomes … exactly what is necessary to satisfy the volume of the resulting gas” (CB 45), 25 that is, two boxes of water. Perhaps it is the principle of simplicity, reminiscent of Dalton, that decides him in favor of H2O. In order to determine molecular formulas in a more systematic and reliable way, Cannizzaro considers in one view all of the elements that can be produced in gaseous form. In agreement with the argument of Proust and the conclusion from Dalton’s supposition, he begins with fixed, determinate, experimental ratios between the weights of the two component substances in a given compound. Then the weight of the molecule is divided into parts proportional to the numbers expressing the [experimentally determined] relative weights of the components, and so we have the [weights] of [the components] contained in the molecule of the compound, referred to the same unit as that to which we refer the weights of all the molecules [namely, hydrogen = 2] (CB 57). This method allows him to construct the following table, shown in Figure 4 (CB 58): Name of Substance Hydrogen Oxygen, ordinary Oxygen, electrised Sulphur below 1000° Sulphur above 1000° (?) Phosphorus Chlorine Bromine Iodine Nitrogen Arsenic Mercury Hydrochloric Acid Hydrobromic Acid Hydriodic Acid Water Ammonia Arseniuretted Hyd. Phosphuretted Hyd. [molecular wt (H’s = 2)] 2 32 128 192 64 124 71 160 254 28 300 200 36.5 81 128 18 17 78 34 [weights of the molecule’s components] 2 32 128 192 64 124 71 160 254 28 300 200 35.5 80 127 16 14 75 31 Hydrogen Oxygen ” Sulphur ” Phosphorus Chlorine Bromine Iodine Nitrogen Arsenic Mercury Chlorine Bromine Iodine Oxygen Nitrogen Arsenic Phosphorus 1 Hydrogen 1 ” 1 ” 2 ” 3 ” 3 ” 3 ” 25 “When particles of another substance unite with the former to form a compound particle, the whole [compound] particle which should result is divided into two or several parts (or separate particles) [each]composed of half, quarter, etc., the number of elementary particles going to form the constituent particle of the first substance, combined with half, quarter, etc., of the number of constituent particles of the second substance, which should combine with the whole particle (or, what comes to the same thing, [combined] with a number equal to this [last number] of half-particles, quarter-particles, etc., of the second substance); so that the number of separate particles of the compound becomes double, quadruple, etc., what it would have been if there had been no dividing, and exactly what is necessary to satisfy the volume of the resulting gas” (CB 45). 25 �Calomel Corrosive Sublimate Arsenic Trichloride Protochloride of Phosphorus Perchloride of Iron Protoxide of Nitrogen Binoxide of Nitrogen 235.5 271 181.5 138.5 325 44 30 35.5 71 106.5 106.5 213 16 16 Figure 4 Chlorine ” ” ” ” Oxygen ” 200 Mercury 200 ” 75 Arsenic 32 Phorphorus 112 Iron 28 Nitrogen 14 ” In order to understand Cannizzaro’s procedure, let’s suppose that the relative weight ratio for producing 100g of arseniuretted hydrogen has been found by experiment to be weight of arsenic : weight of hydrogen :: 96.15g : 3.85g. Cannizzaro would divide the relative molecular weight, 78, of arseniuretted hydrogen into two numbers, a, representing how much of the 78 is due to arsenic, and h, representing how much of the 78 is due to hydrogen. So, 78 = a + h. But also, since the 78 is to be divided in the same proportion as the 100, he knows that 96.15g : 3.85g :: a : h. Solving these two simultaneously 26 tells him that the breakdown of the molecular weight of arseniuretted hydrogen into the weights of its component elements has to be 75 parts from arsenic atoms and 3 from hydrogen atoms. At this very moment Cannizzaro says the following to his students (CB 59): ‘Compare … the various quantities of the same element contained in the molecule of the free substance and in those of all its different compounds, and you will not be able to escape the following law: The various quantities of the same element contained in different molecules are all integral multiples of one and the same quantity, which, always being integral, ought rightly be called [the atomic weights relative to that of hydrogen as 1] (CB 59, underlining added). 27 For instance, if we look for chlorine in the right column of Figure 4, we see that the number it has been found to have is 35.5 or twice that, or triple that. So, 35.5 must be chorine’s relative atomic weight; and its molecule must be diatomic; and, for instance, there must be three chlorine atoms in 26 27 If a + h = 78 and a/h = 96.15/3.85 = 25, then (78 – h)/h = 25. So, 78 – h = 25h, and 78 = 26h. Or h = 3 and a = 75. His actual words are: “ought rightly be called atom.” 26 �protochloride of phosphorus (molecular weight = 138.5). A similar search for phosphorus tells us that its relative atomic weight must be 32 and that there must be one phosphorus atom in a molecule of protochloride of phosphorus. It is easy to see that we can now “express all chemical reactions by means of the same numerical values [that is, these relative atomic weights] and integral coeﬀicients” of them (CB 60). That is, we can write reliable, accurate chemical formulas for such compounds. For the present example of protochloride of phosphorus, the chemical formula must be PCl3. 28 MENDELEEV’S CONSTRUCTION OF THE PERIODIC TABLE (1870-71) Mendeleev points to his fundamental insight right at the beginning of the excerpt in the manual. In order to make the “inadequacy” of current atomic doctrine in chemistry “disappear,” he will “put at the foundation of the study of the main [physico-chemical] properties of the elements their [relative] atomic weights,” which Cannizzaro had worked out, less than 10 years before Mendeleev set to work. Mendeleev’s bringing two previously separate realms into relationship may remind us of Avogadro’s advancing to a new insight by bringing into relationship Gay-Lussac’s perception of small whole numbers of boxes of gases and Dalton’s supposed ideal-exact atoms. Mendeleev indicates several steps by which he came to his insight. Chemists had long recognized certain “natural groups” of elements based on their physicochemical properties. For instance, lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, and cesium had been referred to as alkali metals; they are good conductors of heat and electricity, are highly malleable and ductile, have very low boiling and melting points and shiny surfaces, and are distinguished from other metals by their lower densities and softness. Beryllium, magnesium, calcium, strontium, and barium were known as alkaline earths; they are solid, hard, dense, and usually shiny, are less reactive than metals, are often insoluble in water, and are found in the earth crust. Fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine are non- 28 It is, of course, clear to Cannizzaro that the numbers may have to change as future empirical discoveries are made. 27 �metallic, have relatively low melting and boiling points and generate salts (ἅλς) when they react chemically with metals; they had been grouped together as halogens. Other natural groupings were “analogues to sulfur,” including oxygen, selenium, and tellurium; as well as analogues to nitrogen, including phosphorous, arsenic, antimony, and bismuth (CB 81). Initially the elements were put in groups due to their similarities with respect to these properties. Then some chemists noticed among pairs or triples of elements of high atomic weight, analogues to pairs or triples of elements of much lower atomic weights. This noticing of analogues “gave the first impetus to compare the different properties of the elements with their atomic weights” (CB 81). For example, the physico-chemical properties of cesium (w 29 = 133) and barium (w = 137) were analogous to those of potassium (w = 39) and calcium (w = 40). With respect to such properties, they are proportional, in the sense that K : Cs (among alkali metals) :: Ca : Ba (among alkaline earths). In other words, within the natural group of alkali metals, the ways in which K differs from Cs, in its physico-chemical properties, is analogous to the ways in which Ca differs from Ba, in those properties, within the group of alkaline earths. Such analogies led to the insight that the way a given physico-chemical property alters, as we consider, one after the other, the elements of increasing atomic weight within one natural group, may often occur in parallel with corresponding changes in other natural groups. That insight, in turn, led to “thinking of classifying all the elements according to their atomic weights,” as determined by Cannizzaro, in order to see what might be revealed. Mendeleev reports that when we do this “we find an astonishing simplicity of relationship” (CB 82). 29 The letter “w” will stand for relative atomic weight, according to Mendeleev’s figures. 28 �His illustration of that simplicity is the arrangement, shown in Figure 5, in two horizontal rows of all the elements of relative atomic weight between 7 and 36, “in arithmetical order according to their atomic weights.” He looks in two different ways at these rows. Li=7 Be=9.4 B=11 C=12 N=14 O=16 F=19. Na=23 Mg=24 Al=27.3 Si=28 P=31 S=32 Cl=35.5. Figure 5 First, when he looks at a row by itself and attends, one by one, to the different physical and chemical properties, he notices “that the character of the elements changes regularly and gradually with increasing magnitude of the atomic weights” (CB 82; italics added). For instance, the characteristics—whether qualitative or quantitative—of the elements in the row change from left to right in the following ways: i) from being basic to being acidic; ii) from metals, through semi-metals, to non-metals; iii) from being good conductors of heat and electricity to being insulators; iv) from being lustrous and shiny to being dull; v) from a boiling point of 1330°C rising in the middle and then falling to -188°C; vi) again rising, from a melting point of -180°C, to a maximum and then falling to -187°C; vii) density, too, rises to a high point and then falls, as shown in Figure 9; viii) a graph of the relative atomic volumes [that is, the relative atomic weight (weight per atom) divided by its density (weight per unit volume) = relative volume per atom] would be U-shaped ix) and, finally, a graph of the volatility would also be U-shaped (CB 83-84). (See Figure 6 for viii and ix.) Na Mg Al Si P S Cl vii) Density: 0.97 1.75 2.67 2.49 1.84 2.06 1.33 viii) At Vol: 24 16 14 10 11 16 27 Figure 6 Second, when we compare the patterns of change, from left to right, along the top row with 29 �those along the bottom row, we find that “the character of the elements changes … in the same way in both series, so that the corresponding members of them are analogues.” In this example, the patterns of change are the same for all nine characteristics listed above. Thus, lithium and sodium, the respective members of each series that are highest in basic character, metallic character, luster, and conductivity are the leftmost ones, are also at the beginning of rising curves of the graphs of melting and boiling points and density, and so on (CB 82). Finally, Mendeleev stresses the importance of the forms of the compounds that are formed—in order along each of the two rows—with oxygen and with hydrogen. The forms of these compounds present regularities that are familiar to chemists from their experimental work. As we look from the beginning of either row, “the corresponding elements in the two series have the same kind of compounds” with oxygen: That is, two atoms of the given element combine with the following numbers of oxygen atoms—1, 2, 3, … respectively, a uniformly increasing sequence of whole numbers, as the atomic weight of the element increases. For instance: The seven elements of the second series give the following higher oxides capable of forming salts:— Na2O, Mg2O2, Al2O3, or MgO, Si2O4, P2O5, or SiO2, S2O6, Cl2O7, or SO3. Thus, the seven members of the above [second] series correspond in the same sequence to the seven generally known forms of oxidation (CB 83). Moreover, beginning with the righthand member in either row and moving left, a similar pairing of compounds with hydrogen occurs—hydorfluoric acid (HF) and hydrochloric acid (HCl) are 1 : 1; water (H2O) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) are 2 : 1, and so on, up to 4 : 1.. Mendeleev states: “This regularity proves that the above comparison of elements presents natural series in which it is impossible (нельзя) to assume any intermediate members” (CB 82-83; italics added). The arranging of the elements in the order of increasing relative atomic weight has led Mendeleev to see a new necessity, or rather impossibility, such as we might find in mathematics. He goes on to present such pairings for all the elements. That he can do so “indicates a close 30 �dependence of the properties of the elements on their atomic weights.” As we have seen from his example and as he goes on to show, all the individual relationships of the dependence of physicochemical properties on atomic weight are “periodic.” “First, the properties of elements change with increasing atomic weight; then, they repeat themselves in a new series of elements, a new period, with the same regularity as” in the series we just went through in detail (CB 84). Mendeleev is using “period,” in the sense familiar to us from Ptolemy. Just as a heavenly body has different positions over time and returns to its starting point, after completing one period, and then begins a repetition, a new period, so a given physico-chemical property has different values as we consider, in turn, elements of increasing atomic weight along one row, and returns to a value near its starting value, after completing one period, and then begins a repetition, a new period, at the first element of the next row. Once Mendeleev had thought to arrange all the elements in the order determined by their atomic weights, these repetitive patterns suddenly became visible to him, as a picture of wave-like motions. His experience might be analogous to suddenly seeing something appear in Figure 7. Figure 7 31 �Mendeleev next goes on to show how he found the complete periodic dependence of the physico-chemical properties on the relative atomic weights (CB 85ff). He lined the elements up in rows, like the ones we’ve considered. Table II, in Figure 8, shows all the elements in eight columns— Figure 8 the eight natural groups—and twelve rows. Rows 2, and 3 are the two complete series we’ve already considered. However, the remaining elements revealed their periodicity only when Mendeleev lined them up below one another in longer rows, in the following way: Row 4 (group I-VII) + Group VIII + Row 5 above Row 6 (group I-VII) + Group VIII + Row 7 above Row 8 (group I-VII) + Group VIII + Row 9 above Row 10 (group I-VII) + Group VIII + Row 11 Thus, one circuit begins with K and Ca’s properties and ends only with those of Se and Br; a new circuit begins with Rb and Sr’s properties and ends with those of Te and I. And so on. 32 �Mendeleev concludes by returning to what Dalton saw as the second use that chemists had not made of particles—using them “to assist and to guide future investigations, and to correct their results” (CB 21). Perhaps Mendeleev thought that by his time it was not particles, but relative atomic weights that still had not been made use of. He says that in order for a law, like his periodic law, to acquire scientific importance its logical consequences have be useful, in the sense that they “explain the as yet unexplained, give indications of hitherto unknown phenomena, and [allow] one to make predictions that are accessible to experimental verification” (CB 89). He does all that in the rest of his article. For instance, the element indium had been discovered in 1867 and assigned the relative atomic weight of 75.6. Mendeleev saw that there was no open slot in the periodic table for an element of relative atomic weight 75.6. But by comparing its compounds with those of other elements, Mendeleev saw that indium would have to be placed in an open slot in in Group III, row 7, with atomic weight about 113 (CB 91-92). Moreover, Mendeleev investigated the empty slot in Group IV, row 5. He saw that there had to exist an element of relative atomic weight “about 72” in that slot. Based on the known physico-chemical properties of the elements in the slots around the empty one, he predicted the properties that the yetto-be-discovered element would have to possess. About 15 years later the element germanium (Ge), of relative atomic weight about 72.5 and possessing those properties, was discovered (CB 93-95). Perhaps chemists experienced this discovery as somewhat like reading a novel, coming away with a very precise sense of the main character, and then meeting someone at a party who strikes us as perfectly fitting the fictional portrait. It might seem as if we knew him “from before.” Would Socrates say that we are “recollecting,” but in some to-be-determined different sense (Ph 72e-73cd)? What do we make of Dalton’s seeing supposed particles—not actual chalk marks on the blackboard or lines drawn on paper—as ideal-exact limit-entities, in the realm of μαθήματα, of objects of study leading to insightful learning? Do they eventually lead to acts of insight into the actual material 33 �world, in the way that Archimedes’ learn-ables about weight or Ptolemy’s about motion do? How does the way in which they allow us to see more in the world compare with the way Archimedes’ transparencies refine our vision? Do Mendeleev’s successes in making use of the supposed particles and of their relative atomic weights show that atoms and molecules are not merely supposed but also actually existing entities in the material world? 34 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 34 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Looking in Freshman Lab III – Looking into The Constitution of Bodies: How Does the Supposition of Particles Help Us to See? Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on April 13, 2022, by Annapolis tutor Robert Druecker as part of the Formal Lecture Series. The lecture is the third in a three-part series on Freshman Lab. Druecker describes his lecture: "This is a lecture specifically for first-year students. It will tell a story of how the presupposition that particles exist is used and made precise by a succession of chemists, from Lavoisier through Mendeleev. Does it enable us to see anything new in the phenomena we encounter in the laboratory? How does its contribution to seeing compare with that of Archimedes’ and Pascal’s mathematical approaches to weights and fluids?” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Druecker, Robert Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-04-13 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online" Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Chemistry--Study and teaching Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent, 1743-1794 Chemistry--Experiments Mendeleyev, Dmitry Ivanovich, 1834-1907 Cannizzaro, Stanislao, 1826-1910 Avogadro, Amedeo, 1776-1856 Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7629">Looking in Freshman Lab part I (typescript)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7350">Looking in Freshman Lab part I (video)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7628">Looking in Freshman Lab part II (typescript)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7627">Looking in Freshman Lab part II (video)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7682" title="Looking in Freshman Lab part III (video)">Looking in Freshman Lab part III (video)</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Druecker_Robert_2022-04-13 Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d04082d50b80ac869f37d0adc6760e0c.pdf 2f1fa11ad333f88b69b8d4bbe9c940bf PDF Text Text Looking in Freshman Lab – A Path to Experiencing the Blossoming of Things? A Two-part Lecture1 Robert Druecker The spirit of this lecture—most especially of Part Two—is one of spreading seeds on rich soil. Part One has three sections. Section One explains the visual thinking of Leonardo da Vinci and the living movement that Chinese ink painters aimed to infuse into their paintings. Section Two could be called “Theophrastus’s λόγος pours forth much.” Section Three shows how Goethe’s intuitive looking discloses the formation and transformation of the leaf. Part Two walks along the path connecting the approaches of Part One to the blossoming of things. PART ONE Section i: Visual Thinking and Living Movement Before they actually go into the courtyard to look at and sketch magnolia trees, the students read about a way of looking which they can immediately put into practice. The botanist and philosopher Agnes Arber introduces them to an approach known as pure morphology. In it, rather than aiming to analyze the shape or appearance of a plant in terms of function, she looks at form contemplatively, “not only in itself, but in its nexus of relations.” Looking contemplatively requires engaging “in a “process of mental visualization,” or “visual thinking,” making use of both “the bodily eye and … the mind's eye.”2 The morphologist must always begin her flights of thought by taking off from, and must always end them by returning to, “the solid ground” of the visual appearances, thereby “chastening … the mind through the discipline of the eye.” For there are “many subtleties, seizable by the eye,” that are routinely eliminated in arriving at the mental concept (Arber, 1964). Arber points out that this solid ground is not always easily accessible to the eye of the morphologist. For one’s perception “depends upon preparedness of mind.” She herself had 1 �been familiar with the flowering plant Queen Anne's lace3 (see figure 1) for decades. Then one day she Figure 1 – Queen Anne’s Lace finally noticed that “the pattern of its growth is such that the main axis almost invariably terminates in a reduced inflorescence.”4 Henceforth, whenever she observed the Queen Anne's lace, it “was found to show this salient feature so strikingly as to leave” her “bewildered and humiliated at having been totally blind to it year after year” (Arber, 1964). The morphologist makes use of two media—words and drawings. With respect to the first, her aim is to describe precisely. That is, she describes what the plant looks like, in a way that allows us to form a distinct mental image of it. We can put the plant object into various mental categories we have of known things and of familiar appearances. The better the fit in this placement, “the better described the object becomes.”5 As a result we are able to read the description as a musical score and play, in our imaginations, the melody of precisely this plant. The morphologist’s second medium is visual expression. “‘The pen and the pencil are the two principal means [she] can use for the depiction of beings’, and ‘of the two … the pencil’” is better able to depict. Hence, “artistic power and morphological insight” are, in a certain way, correlated. For there is much in all of a plant’s detailed visible characteristics “which cannot be expressed in words, but … can 2 �be portrayed by the artist.” Our visual thinking can then use these visible traits to interpret the appearance.6 The preeminent botanist of the 19th century, Julius von Sachs, used to tell “the students in his laboratory that ‘What one has not drawn, one has not seen’” (Arber, 1964). Finally, according to Arber, “one of the factors which …. cramps the biologist's visual thinking” is her tendency to see a thing from a human standpoint, instead of “as it is in and for itself.” Many of the plant’s subtleties are on offer to the eye-and-mind if it “becomes one with what it sees, thus breaking down the rigid subject-object antithesis.” Arber is here referring to a mental state in which she is not conscious of herself as, so to speak, standing over against the plant. A Freshman Lab student said7 that when we see what we see in our own way, we have a better sense of its individual tendency. Then it’s as if we were touching it in our drawing. “Then it’s already inside me, in the way a character in a short story I’m writing is inside me.” We might say that there is an individuality coming from two sources, the individual thing and the individual looker. This state of being-one-with is “prior” to the state of duality; it is a “self-identification with the living thing.” Arber refers here to “Chinese and Japanese artists, who often identify themselves, as it were, with a bird or a flower, thus revealing its individual character with an intuitive insight” (Arber, 1964). When these artists expressed that distinctiveness on paper, the drawing was said to exhibit “living movement,”8 that is, the transfusion into the work of the felt nature of the thing to be painted [or drawn] by the artist. At the moment of painting, the artist must feel the very nature of the subject, which he transfers into the work, so that it can affect all who see it with the same sensations he experienced when painting it. So, when painting a tree, feel the strength of a tree shooting through the branches or, when painting a flower, the grace with which a flower expands or bows its blossoms.9 In this quotation the repeated mention of feeling refers to a sensing that is both pre-conceptual and prior to I-versus-object perception.10 Indeed, “the primary quality of all perception” is our feeling of dynamic properties, like “the aggressive outward pointing of the triangle, the dissonant clash of the hues, the onrush of the movement.” In applying the phrase living movement to drawings, we may seem to be speaking 3 �metaphorically. If so then the phrase “directed tension” may better capture what the viewer actually experiences,11 namely, qualities like “compactness, striving, twisting, expanding, yielding,” in all sensory modalities.12 The students’ looking can become sensitive to such dynamic effects visually received, but perhaps not consciously registered in the moment. A lab student said that she could sense the energy of the leaves of a tree, as if they were falling like drops from a fountain.13 They could sense those effects “prior” to consciously registering the tree as object. When people become habituated to see what is familiar, they become less spontaneously responsive to directed tensions.14 A good way to become (re-)sensitized to living movement is to practice gesture drawing in the way outlined by Kimon Nicolaides in The Natural Way to Draw.15 He tells us that we are “to seek the actual impulse of the gesture” in whatever we are drawing. We are not to confuse this impulse with emotion. For instance, when we call a certain tree a “weeping willow,” we do not mean that it is sad, because it “looks like a sad person.” Rather we are, first, responsive to “the shape, direction, and flexibility of the branches,” which “convey passive hanging.” Subsequently we may notice a similarity with “the … similar state of mind and body that we call sadness.”16 (See figures 2 and 3) Figure 2 – Weeping Willow 4 �Figure 3 – White Pine (for contrast) So, when the students are drawing the magnolias in the courtyard, they bear in mind-and-eye Nicolaides’s advice that a tree does not grow from the top down but from the bottom up. Start then at the bottom, and in a loose, easy, tentative manner allow your pencil to move upward as you can feel that the tree moved up—upward and out along the branches. Let your pencil follow the sense of movement through to the leaves. Do they spread like bursts of flame from a skyrocket or do they fall down, dropping like water? As the tree reaches upward, it moves out from its core into a three-dimensional form. (Nicolaides, p. 30; italics added) We are to draw rapidly and continuously and to let our pencil swing around the paper, impelled only by the felt sense of the living movement, without taking our pencil off the paper. “YOU SHOULD DRAW, NOT WHAT THE THING LOOKS LIKE, NOT EVEN WHAT IT IS, BUT WHAT IT IS DOING. Feel how the figure lifts or droops—pushes forward here—pulls back there—pushes out here—drops down easily there” (Nicolaides, pp. 14-15). While gesture is only one of many aspects of drawing that Nicolaides had his students practice, if that aspect has not been felt and incorporated into the final drawing, the latter will lack aliveness. Thus, in addition to conveying, in their drawings and descriptions, precisely how the magnolia appears to their perception, the students express the active impulse which they felt “prior” to their objectperceptions. Here are two examples of gesture drawings of a life model by his students (see figure 4). 5 �Figure 4 – Student Gesture Drawings Section ii: Theophrastus’s λόγος pours forth much Having begun, in the first class, by attending to looking—to our state of mind as looker and to our way of looking, we now, with Theophrastus’s Inquiry Concerning Plants, turn to the looked-at. Instead of looking contemplatively with an open gaze and with sensitivity to living movement, we are invited to attend to certain determinate features of plants, to their differences with respect to a) parts, to b) ways of responding to changes in their surroundings, to c) ways of coming-into-being, and to d) ways of life (i.1). Because we spend only five classes on plants, our reading centers on a) the parts of plants. The fact that in order actually to see evidence relevant to the other three we’d need to be observing the plants over a longer period of time raises a question for the students about how well they could come to know a tree or a plant by looking closely and drawing over a short two-week period. One17 suggested that our task is to tell the story of the tree, a story that would be composed of sub-stories of its various parts, which were like characters in a novel. Yet in the lab we have only a short time to become acquainted with it and with its characters. Another student suggested that you can’t have a clear sense of how the tree trees, unless you study the parts it uses to tree. A second said that looking very attentively at some one part might, in a way, convey a sense of the whole. A third18 proposed that the key might lie in attaining a certain level of 6 �intimacy with the tree in her sessions of looking and drawing. It may have been helpful that the first drawing exercise19 asked them to experience their drawing of the plant part as if it were a chance, intimate, personal chat with a neighbor they hadn’t really known before. After it they’d have a deeper sense for what that neighbor is like. One student20 said that she could later reawaken that moment of close contact with the tree when she came to draw the whole. Theophrastus points out that several factors make it difficult to determine precisely what is to count as a part and what not. We notice that some portions of a plant, like flowers and leaves last only to the end of the year, and, in addition, that new sprouts21 keep springing up. Thus, if these are included as parts, the number of parts would be indeterminate. But we must include them since it is “when [plants] are sprouting and blooming and bearing fruit that they not only seem but also are more beautiful and more complete (τελότερος)” (i.2). They are complete in the sense that they are at their peak, or end-state (τέλος). It is striking that plants are at their high point when they are in motion, becoming more themselves, growing twigs, leaves, blossoms, or fruit. For animals, as we shall see, differ fundamentally from plants in that they are at their high point when they are keeping themselves—that is, their parts and the capabilities of those parts to perform particular actions—at the very point at which they have already arrived, that is, precisely when they are not still moving toward their end-state. This difference should serve as a warning to us—in dealing with the difficulty of delimiting parts and in viewing plants in general—not unthinkingly to rely on animal analogues. For instance, while it is true that leaves are like certain animal parts, such as, horns, feathers, hair, in being cast off, on the other hand, only plants, and not animals, are “capable of sprouting (βλαστητικόν) everywhere” (i.3-4). So, too, the fact that during growth animals’ limbs emerge only in determinate places and that they have limits of growth and maintain those limits means that we must be careful in speaking of the “limbs” of trees. 7 �Theophrastus makes recommendations about what to focus on when we are looking at the external parts of plants, that is, when we are doing morphology and inquiring about “μορφή as a whole.” In spite of the fundamental difference, just mentioned, between plants and animals, he recommends that in addition to noting which parts belong to all plants and which are proper only to one or to several and which parts are similar to which other parts, he tells us to take note of which plant parts have analogues among animals (i.4-5). The reasons for his last recommendation are: first, animals are “more complete” than plants, in the sense that their activity is complete, and not on the way toward becoming complete. The sprouting of plants, on the other hand, “seems to be a certain activity but an incomplete one (ἀτελὴς)” (Aristotle, Physics 201b32)22; second, that we are more familiar with animals (ii.3-5), partly because being animals ourselves we know them “from the inside.” So, we can sometimes recognize a part of a plant more easily by seeing its similarity to a more complete or more familiar part of an animal. We may even learn from looking for an animal analogue and not finding one. For instance, a mouth and intestines belong to animals generally. But when we seek for an analogue in the case of plants, we realize that there is none to be found. Then we understand that, compared with animals, the plant is so “diverse and elaborate (ποικίλον)” that it “is hard to speak about as a whole” (i.10-11). Theophrastus next tells us what we are aiming at in noting differences among the parts of plants. We look for them because “from them, in the case of each plant, the morphe as a whole becomes altogether manifest.” In general there are three or four such differences: plants may have some parts, such as leaves, but not others, like fruit; their parts may be dissimilar in color, in figure, in proximity, in texture, and so on, or may be unequal in size; and they may be arranged in a different order, as when the fruit is below rather than above the leaves (i.6-8). Theophrastus then says that after enumerating the differences among the parts we are to focus on each part by itself. We should begin by attending to those parts that are “greatest and common to 8 �most” plants, even though not all plants have all of them. The four parts to study first are roots, stems—or, in the case of trees, trunks—branches, and twigs, that is, shoots coming from branches (i.911). In addition to these four parts, there are other sorts of parts—first, parts of these four, such as bark, wood, and core; second, impermanent parts, like flowers and leaves, mentioned above; and, finally, things like sap, fiber, veins, and flesh which are “prior” to the others and which are common to all the parts. Theophrastus says that these last are the initiator-rulers (ἀρχαί) of the other parts, which come forth and appear to us as we draw. “Indeed, it is rather the case that [the plant’s] way of being what it is (οὐσία) and [its] whole origination (of sprouts) (ϕύσις) is in these” latter parts (i.11-12; ii.1). Perhaps they are the initial sources of “the impulse of the gesture” that Nicolaides asks us to seek. In Theophrastus’s view we do well to begin our lab by observing the magnolia trees in the courtyard. For the four parts with which we ought to begin our observation happen to “belong most of all to trees, and the division into parts is more proper to them” than to any other plant. Moreover, the variety of differences with respect to parts that we notice among trees will “indicate clearly” the differences of the parts “of each of the other plants as well.” We’ll be able to discern differences in color, in figure, in proximity, or in order of arrangement most easily in trees. So, it is a good approach to refer the other plants to trees (i.11-12; ii.1; cf. i.6-8). From another point of view, too, we do well by studying the magnolias first. For our understanding becomes clearer if we divide according to the looks (εἴδη) of the plants. Most plants exhibit one of the following four looks—tree, shrub, small shrub, or herb (iii.1). It is true that some plants change their look from one to another of these, as well as that others “become quite different and depart from their [mode of] origination (of sprouts).” Nevertheless, provided we don’t become overly precise in marking the looks off from one another, we ought to divide with respect to the four just mentioned. The reason is that something in their origination of sprouts is common to all four of 9 �them. So, it is reasonable to think that what’s responsible for their differences is also common to all of them (iii.2, 5, 6). Theophrastus makes the following more general observation: “The plant is a thing pouring forth much (πολύχουν)” (i.10; cp. ii.3). According to our manual the progressive participle, πολύχουν, emphasizes that a plant’s sprouting or blooming is “never finished, unlike the corresponding activity of animals.” It seems that the “much” of a plant that is poured forth is or becomes its various parts. Perhaps, Theophrastus’s idea is that if our looking were not oriented by the many helpful distinctions he makes, we’d look at a plant and have only a global sense of the energy of water being shot up by a fountain and then falling down. With his guidance, though, and his foregrounding of differences of parts and of sprouting, or budding, blooming and bearing fruit, what we see may be likened to a fountain having different-sized and -shaped openings, putting forth water to different heights at different pressures. The water from various openings may come forth in different colors. From some the water may gradually shoot higher and higher; from others it may suddenly turn off. We’d miss much of this variety if we had not read Theophrastus. As we attempt to follow Theophrastus, how does our observation of the magnolias differ from what it was like on the first day? Then, it seemed, we were invited, first, to begin by being open to whatever came forth spontaneously from our sensory experiencing. Second, we were also initiated into a state of mind prior to words, in which we aimed to sense and to express the plant’s doing; we avoided slipping into the attitude of being a mere observer, over-against objects. Theophrastus’s λόγος may have both benefits and drawbacks for us. On the one hand, it offers us new perspectives. When we view plants from those standpoints, we find that new aspects disclose themselves to our gaze. Instead of puzzling over some feature of the plant, we may now feel, “That’s it. I’ve got it.” Or his λόγος may open our eyes to a part that is right in front of us, so that we don’t have to 10 �wait fifty years, as Arber did, before seeing it. Or, again, the disconnected pieces that we are looking at may suddenly come together, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Moreover, additional layers of meaning are added when we see the likeness of a tree-part to a more familiar and determinate animal-part. Finally, our attending to similarities and differences between parts embeds them in a web of relationships. In ways like these our tree comes to make more sense to us. This additional sense may, in turn, lead us to say something new about it; and that may lead us to a fresh seeing, and so on. On the other hand, the direction that Theophrastus’s λόγος gives to our gaze may come to prescribe what we look for in a way that closes us off from other possibilities and more fresh discoveries. We might “lock onto” the distinctions we’ve learned from Theophrastus in a way that our “tracking” of them prevents us from noticing other “targets” on our radar screen. There is also a risk of not noticing the impulses of living movement, which we had sensed on the first day. We might become like someone who only notices and responds to the meaning of what a friend says, and is oblivious to the speaker’s tone of voice, physiognomy, and gestural accompaniments. In such an event our drawings and descriptions of parts and of their interrelationships would seem “dried up,” withered, lacking aliveness.23 Both approaches, the impulse-approach and the logos-approach, go beyond ordinary experiencing and awaken or enliven us to what is new. The aliveness of the first lies in our sensing the impulse of the tree’s gesture, in our feeling “the strength of a tree, shooting through the branches.” What is enlivening about the second is illustrated when the vague becomes sharp, as in “Ah, so that’s it!” or when isolated fragments suddenly fit together into a whole. It’s like what occurs when we’ve been observing a face and then “suddenly notice its similarity to another”; a new aspect of the face lights up (Aufleuchten) for us in an instant.24 Experiencing either of these two kinds of aliveness feels like a bud’s bursting into flower. We die to either approach to aliveness when we become content to drift smoothly, carried 11 �along by familiar concepts—interrupted neither by a sudden sense of striving or twisting nor by an unexpected connection between familiar things popping into mind. In the same way forming an opinion (δοξάζειν)25 is enlivening; holding onto an opinion (δόξα) is not (cf. Theat. 189e-190a). Moreover, both approaches to aliveness are characterized by their temporal priority to the everyday, but in different senses. The priority exemplified by the impulse-approach is that of the split second when a tree is just coming into focus but I have not yet “registered” it as a tree.26 One can train oneself to stay in touch with that pre-conceptual awareness beyond the first fraction of a second. In the logos-approach the priority is usually of very long duration. It has taken centuries for the language to acquire the relevant individual meanings and the web of family relationships (συγγενοῦς) among them. The experience of drawing them up now has the feel of “recollecting” (ἀναμνησθῆναι) a name you “already knew before” but had long ago forgotten (Meno, 81cd). Ideally we could experience the benefits of both approaches, while avoiding the downside of either. As a student27 suggested, we could aim to alternate back and forth between them: Now we look “through” the Theophrastian λόγος; now we sense the leaves spreading like bursts of flame or dripping like water. Our encounter with the unique individuality of the plant incites us to endeavor to grasp and articulate it on the level of logos. We seek to understand it through moving back and forth between sensing the particular and comprehending it together with others and distinguishing it from others. It might be possible, though, to be, somehow, experiencing in both ways together at the same time and yet not quite in either of them.28 The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting hints at this possibility in a colorful formulation: We are inspired by the madness of a wild dog (kuang),29 and simultaneously our mind is opened wide (大) to the oneness (一) of the Heaven (tiān).30 Finally, before leaving Theophrastus let us revisit a word, ϕύσις, that occurs right at the beginning of his treatise (i.1), and which we have been translating as origination (of sprouts). The transitive verb from which it is derived, “ϕύω,” means: I. bring or put forth (as, leaves or shoots); 12 �engender, or generate (as, offspring); (in reference to parts of oneself) grow (as, a beard); II. (in present, seemingly intransitive) put forth shoots. The middle voice φύομαι means grow, wax, spring up or forth, especially of the vegetable world.31 According to Theophrastus our task includes grasping the plant’s mode of origination of sprouts, including buds and shoots—stems and their appendages, leaves, flowers, fruits. Aristotle’s account of ϕύσις in the Physics (192b12ff)32 will help us to refine our thinking about it. Animals as well as plants have ϕύσις. Both—primordially (πρώτως)—have within themselves the originator of and ruler over (ἀρχὴν) their moving (κινεῖσθαι) and their remaining-at-rest (ἠρεμεῖν). This inner originator-ruler may be understood, Aristotle says, as a switch-over impulse (ὁρμὴν33 … μεταβολῆς; perhaps, Umschalt-Impuls), an impulse that originates a “shifting of gears” from motion (κινήσεως) to stand-still (στάσεως) or vice versa. It is important to note that—as evidenced by the verb μεταβάλλω,34 from which μεταβολή (switch-over) is derived—the switch-over at issue here has two features, which distinguish it from a process or motion. First, it is a shift between alternative positions, as in turning the earth upside down or turning about to face the rear. Second, it is quick and sudden, as if it took no time at all and as if it were not gradually led up to by what preceded it. So, ϕύσις here is the source not of a process or motion but of an instantaneous shift or change-over, as in flipping a light switch on or off. This impulse may be what Nicolaides proposed that the draftsperson aim to sense and to express through the body-mind’s intuitive sensing: “seek the actual impulse of the gesture,” whether of the model’s pose or of the magnolia. If we looked more closely, it might even be possible to detect a sequence of switch-overs in what had appeared to be a smooth growth process. In that case growing would turn out to be a series of tiny growth-spurts, with pauses in between.35 In summary, the plant’s ϕύσις impels it to change over instantly from inactivity at a particular place and time to putting forth (ϕύειν) leaves, shoots, flowers, or fruit, or, conversely, from sprouting, 13 �blossoming, fruiting to inactivity there and then. The plant’s individual acts of putting-forth, its ϕύειν, then, are manifestations of the inner originator-ruler. It is the latter that is the plant’s ϕύσις. Let’s now skip a few weeks ahead in the lab to the activities of unicellular animals, in order to see how the switch-over impulse might show up in them, too. We study animals like amoebae with some help from the theoretical biologist Jakob von Uexküll. We notice that when faced with tasks like escaping a predator, feeding on a prey, or digesting what it has consumed, the amoebae’s protoplasm has the power, in each situation, to form the structure the animal needs in order to perform the given task and, afterwards, to un-form that structure again. For instance, in eating and digesting, a compartment enclosed by a membrane, known as "a vacuole … first becomes the mouth, then the stomach, then the intestine, and finally the anus.” “We see the organs appear one after the other in a fixed temporal sequence; and each [organ], when its performance is finished, disappears again.” Here the immediate “effect of the impulse” (Impulsfolge) of the switch-over is to form the first organ the amoeba needs in order to exercise that organ’s function.36 The next switch-over is to exercise that function. Then it forms the second organ needed, and so on, in a sequence of bursts of formation and un-formation or of action and cessation of action. Each forming or using of an organ is, in one way, analogous to an act of sprouting by the magnolia. We might say of either the plant or the amoeba that what it has at the ready is a complex power with respect to its actions. This power enables it to display, in the appropriate ways as required from moment to moment, the relevant features of the complex activity which comprises its way of being what it is (οὐσία). However, the plants’ part-making origination of sprouts and the amoebae’s organ-forming origination of metaphorical sprouts also differ significantly. A plant’s switch-over to budding, blooming, or fruiting is an initiation of a production. What it is producing is a part of itself, which will endure for at 14 �least long enough to become an object of study for Theophrastus. As producing itself, a plant’s switchovers are engaged in its continual process of coming-to-be. In the case of the amoeba, the sequence of its “sproutings,” that is, its switch-overs to shaping, to using, and to un-shaping organs, leaves it right where it began. That is, nothing like a sprout, twig, or flower, or additional length persists; it comes to have no new part or augmented part. It is now what it has been. It was already in a complete state, and its turnings-on and -off have served to maintain itself in that same state of completeness. They are change-overs to or from actions, which hold, or keep, it in its pre-existing state of completeness. We might compare the plant, the amoeba, and the adult multi-cellular animal as follows. “The urge towards self-maintenance … in the flowering plants … is expressed in repetitive branching.”37 The branches that the plant puts forth become co-constitutive of it, by accretion. So, in one sense it remains the same plant; in another sense it is always impelling itself to switch over to motion and to put forth another sprout, thus becoming different. The impulse in the amoeba expresses itself in a temporary “branching” and “unbranching,” so that it does not become altered or increased relative to what it was. The adult multicellular animal’s maintaining itself leads it merely to move its “branches” around relative to itself. As we later read in the lab excerpt from Aristotle’s On the Soul (II.1), there are, in the case of adult animals, two sorts of holding themselves (-έχεια) in their end-state of completeness (ἐντελ-). The first one is an activity of keeping themselves in an active state of readiness, so that they are able to turn on or off, at a moment’s notice, any one or several of their activities of the second sort. Moreover, each of those latter activities—like sensing and chasing prey; sensing and fleeing from predators, etc.—makes its contribution to maintaining the animal in its adult condition. In these examples they provide needed nourishment and offer escape from death at the hands of predators. So, the amoeba stays at its peak because it preserves its power to turn on and off, as needed, its 15 �working at its various jobs of self-maintenance, a working that includes a “just-in-time” production of the tool needed to work at the respective job. As was just illustrated, the first and the second sorts of staying-itself are each a being-at-work, or activity, or a set of several of them. This combining of action and self-maintenance is nicely captured in Joe Sachs’s translation of “ἐντελέχεια” as being-at-workstaying-complete.38 What is true of amoebae also holds for adult multicellular animals, with the one major difference that the organs of the latter are persisting parts of the adult animal. Generally there is not even a momentary making or unmaking of an organ. The existing organs are simply switched over from performing one action to performing another or from action to rest and back or into simultaneous action—as in lying on the ground, then noticing and following with the eyes a potential prey moving across the field, and then rising and running in pursuit. We might say that the animal had been “idling”39 and had then shifted into first “gear,” then into second, third, or fourth “gears.” The animal’s watching and running are the analogues of the plant’s sprouting and flowering. Section iii: Goethe’s Intuitive Looking and the Transformation of the Leaf Our next author, Goethe, seeks to combine in a fresh way the impulse- and logos-approaches that we discerned in the readings and practica of the first three laboratories. As suggested by the title of his major work on plants, The Metamorphosis of Plants,40 he reconceptualizes Arber’s pure morphology in two-steps. First, as Goethe explains in introducing his aim,41 morphology is literally an account (λόγος) of a structured shape, or form (μορφή; Gestalt), which, in assuming “that a connected thing is … fixed,” abstracts “from what is mobile.” But when he gazes intuitively at the shapes of plants and their parts, Goethe sees that “nothing in them is … at rest …—everything is fluctuating in continual motion.” What he actually experiences as the referent of the expression “μορφή” is something “that is held steady only 16 �for an instant” in his experience. So, he replaces “Gestalt,” or “μορφή” with “formation” (Bildung), which would be “μόρφωσις” in Greek. The word “formation” can refer to “both what has been brought forth and what is being brought forth.” If he had stopped here, he would have written a work of morphosis-ology, The Morphosis of Plants, illustrating the impulse-approach. However, in Goethe’s intuitive vision “what has been formed is immediately again being transformed,” that is, metamorphosized. What does this mean? In gazing intuitively at a tree or at another plant, Goethe sees that while it “really does appear to us as an individual,” it actually “consists of nothing but particular single things.” Furthermore, these single things: i) are similar (ähnlich) in appearance, ii) are identical (gleich) in Idea (Idee), and iii) are alike (gleichen) to the whole plant or tree (Aim 55-57; italics added). Goethe’s intuitive gazing might be compared to viewing a ballet from three different viewpoints. First, when I focus on several individual dancers, I notice that their movements, when not identical, are similar to each other. Second, I am able to intuit in each of them the source (Idee) from which the whole ballet first sprang up in the mind of the choreographer. Third, when I step back and take in the flow of the whole dance, I can see how the movements of the individual dancers are like the larger movement of the entire ballet. In viewing the ballet of the plant in this way, Goethe claims to be recognizing “living formations as such,” that is, as alive and as moving on to their next formation. He is also grasping the “outward, visible, tangible” dancers “in interrelation,” that is, as forming the ballet as a whole. And he is shedding “light on these [dancers] as hints of the interior” (Aim, 55) Idea, whence the ballet originated and which it expresses. The name Goethe chose for that which stands for what is the same in Idea and tendency was “leaf.” Here is a way to experience, right now, what he might have had in mind. Look at the sketch of the two leaves below (figure 5) for a short period of time, with the question in mind, What are some possible relationships between them? 17 �Figure 5 – Two Leaves Now, after that pause, look at the next sketch (figure 6). Figure 6 – Nine Leaves 18 �It shows leaves taken from the common buttercup, ordered from the bottom of stem, at the lowest left, to top of the stem, displayed at the bottom right.42 Looking at the two leaves from the first figure, we can intuit little kinship between them. When we look, in succession, at the nine formations in the second figure, we see them as if "held steady for only an instant,” in their temporal sequence. The two leaves from the first figure now make sense to us as successive moves in a dance of development. Goethe has, in a way, developed into “moving pictures,” that is, into movies projected in the imagination, Theophrastus’s image of “pouring forth much” and his accounts of differences and similarities of parts. That is why Goethe says that “if we wish to look at nature in a way that is alive and intuitive, we ourselves must remain as mobile and flexible as nature and follow the example she gives” (Aim, 56). Through the mobile imagining of such a film, he is able to “make intuitive (anschaulich) to us,” the “inner identity of the diﬀerent plant parts,” “despite the greatest deviation of their outer form” (## 60, 67). Thereby we may accompany, in our imaginations, “the outer form of the plant through all its transformations,” while, at the same time, keeping a mental gaze on the inner identity—as we have just experienced when we looked at the wheel of the nine schematic shapes of the buttercup leaf. Viewed from a different perspective, Goethe’s emphasis on an underlying sameness throughout the sequence of appearances might lead us to see that, in his moving pictures, the Same, while remaining itself, is generating likenesses or images (εἰκόνες) of itself and of each other. Φύσις, as the source of formation and transformation, could then be said itself to have “within itself the possibility of acting as the source of repetition.” It would “have a primal character of ‘image-ability,’ a character which makes possible all ‘difference’”—in the sequence of appearances as the plant is growing—as well as making possible “all ‘recognition’”—of similarity, as in the above example of the nine leaves.43 Goethe’s view of the leaf as playing the key role was later revised.44 The shoot, or the unity of the stem-and-leaf complex, came to be seen as the source of the plant’s dance. Later botanists thought it obvious that “each branch shoot echoes the characters of the parent shoot.”45 The lab students, too, 19 �seemed to see the centrality of the shoot, two classes before they had even read Goethe. One46 proposed that each part of the tree began by coming forth as a shoot and then differentiating itself and distinguishing itself as it grew. For another47 the shoot was like the tree or plant coming forth to say, “Here I am,” making its identity known. In the Metamorphosis Goethe shows that the flowering plant continually moves through the following six-step cycle: expanding “from the seed to the fullest development of the stem leaf”; contracting to the sepals of the calyx; expanding to the petals of the corolla; contracting to the style and stamen; expanding to the fruit; and, finally, returning to seed by a contraction (#73). In effect the sequence is bud - expansive shooting forth – bud – contractive shooting forth – bud - expansive shooting forth – bud – contractive shooting forth, etc. The “motion” is not circular but rather like a graph of waves moving around a circle, contracting and expanding alternately. Let’s look at the second of the six transitions. When it occurs rapidly: “the stem, suddenly lengthened and reﬁned, shoots up from the node of the last fully developed [stem] leaf and collects several leaves around the axis at its end.” Goethe suggests that, in examples like figures 7 and 8,48 Figure 7 - Cornﬂower with urn-shaped calyx beneath corolla 20 �Figure 8 - ‘Thai Delight’ Bougainvillea with leaﬂike bracts collected around the tubular ﬂowers since the stem leaves “still fully retain their shape, we can rely on the mere appearance.” For “we see unaltered stem leaves moved closer together, in a kind of calyx right under the ﬂower.” Goethe’s intuitive looking discloses that the “the same organs which so far can be seen developed as stem leaves,” now “often in a very altered shape,” are “collected around a common center,” as the leaves of a calyx (## 31, 32, 34; italics added). If the transition to the calyx should occur slowly, “as the stem leaves come together gradually, alter, and gently steal over, as it were, into the calyx,” as in figure 9. Or the edges of the clustered Figure 9 – Stem leaves and calyx of the sunﬂower 21 �and modified stem leaves may grow together, making them even less recognizable, as in figure 10.49 Figure 10 – Calyx of pot marigold Goethe’s conclusion from such observations is that in forming the calyx, nature—instead of producing several “leaves and nodes successively and at a distance from one another”—joins them “together around a central point” (## 35, 36, 38). Following this contraction of leaves in the formation of a calyx, the next transition is produced by an expansion of the leaves, that is, the sepals, in the formation of the petals of a corolla. However, the petals are so different in appearance from the sepals that we couldn’t recognize that they originated from the sepals, “were we not able to eavesdrop on nature in several abnormal cases.” Here are three of the examples of eavesdropping which Goethe mentions. In the first (figure 11) the color of some of Figure 11 – Calyx and corolla of coreopsis displaying both green and more reﬁned golden sepals 22 �the sepals is not green, as usual, but anticipates the gold of the petals. Sometimes (figure 12) even Figure 12: Bee balm showing advancing coloration in stem leaves and a second ﬂower emerging from within the ﬁrst. the stem leaves already show some of the purple of the petals. Finally, we can see “that stem leaves transition into petals” in the abnormal case of a tulip (figure 13)50 where half of one petal is green Figure 13 – Transition from stem leaf to petal in the tulip and still attached to the stem, like a sepal, and the other half is colored like the other petals and raised up as part of the corolla. It looks as though nature had skipped over the calyx in rushing ahead to the corolla (## 40-44). The six steps in the circular wave motion mentioned above are the steps in “progressive metamorphosis,” which, “through transformation of one shape into another, climbs up, as it were, on a 23 �mental ladder, to that pinnacle of nature, propagation through two genders” (#6). The contraction in the sixth step of the spiral staircase Goethe sees in his mind’s eye as “a mental junction (geistige Anastomosis)” of pollen and ovule. He believes that this mental junction has, “at least for an instant, … brought the concepts of growth and reproduction closer together” (#63). As he puts it more fully later: as the plant … sprouts, … a propagation is taking place, but a propagation that differs from that of ﬂower and fruit, which takes place all at once, in that it is successive and appears as a sequence of individual developments. This sprouting force that expresses itself gradually is in the most precise way akin to the force that suddenly develops a large propagation (#113). Hence, Goethe can call “sprouting a successive propagation, but ﬂowering and fruiting a simultaneous propagation” (#114). In the case of both sorts of propagation, there is “the development of innumerable identical individuals,” whether from a bud or from a mother plant (Aim 57). So, we can view “ﬂowers that develop from the buds … as whole plants that are standing on the parental plant, just as the [parental plant] is standing on the earth” (#95). 24 �PART II Section i: GOETHE AND CHINESE PAINTING Goethe’s constant endeavor to “make intuitive to us” the “inner identity of the diﬀerent plant parts,” in spite of their great outer diversity, helps us to “derive” all the transformations of “the outer form of the plant” (# 84). It may be that in performing this derivation we become, as it were, identified with the origination of the shooting-forth, so that in our imagination we pulsate rhythmically with it, in its switch-overs from ON to OFF and back. For Goethe making intuitive the inner identity and deriving the appearances requires a training in a new way of looking and in a new way of using “the power of imagination and the understanding.” It gradually will become easy for us to look at the appearances next to “each other in both a forward and a backward direction.” We’ll be able to “say that a stamen is a contracted petal or, with equal justiﬁcation, that a petal is a stamen in a state of expansion; that a sepal is a contracted stem leaf … or that a stem leaf is a sepal expanded” (#120)—as depicted here in Goethe’s drawing (figure 14).51 Figure 14 – Successive transformation of petal into stamen in white water lily After the Metamorphosis we read some reflections by Goethe on his way of looking.52 Some observers of nature, on the basis of isolated, single experiences, try to come up with an idea, hypothesis, or theory (Experiment, 16). To them he says that while experiences may appear isolated, in reality they interconnect both with each other and with the whole. In order to allow the interconnection to appear, 25 �we must multiply and diversify the initial experience, by arranging for a series of closely related experiences. Then we can survey and see them all as revealing “a higher sort” of experience. What we then see is, in reality “only a single experience” viewed from many different viewpoints or composed of many facets (Experiment, 17-18). Instead of thinking of a box of slides as separate photos, he sees them the “frames” of a film, and, hence, as presenting a single, temporally spread-out entity. Goethe calls the object of this deeper view “the pure phenomenon.” When he looks at a sequence of experiences in this way, what seemed to be wavering in the isolated experiences becomes stable. What appeared merely accidental is eliminated, and what looked too complicated becomes untangled (Experience, 24-25). Goethe uses the word “idea” in two different ways. On the one hand, a scientist may think up and formulate an idea in advance, and state it as an hypothesis to be confirmed by subsequent experiments. On the other hand, Goethe himself holds his mind and his senses in a state of “attunement” and “attentiveness as sharp as it is calm.” He is then able to see the pure phenomenon displaying “itself in a continuous sequence of appearances.” He experiences it as a living idea. As Goethe puts it—in language reminiscent of Nicolaides’s account of drawing a tree—he is experiencing nature herself “as alive and active, striving from the whole to the parts” (Experience, 24; Fortunate, 54142). It was in this way that Goethe experienced the idea of the metamorphosis of plants, blossoming in himself (Significant, 39). Once he described the metamorphosis of plants to his friend, Schiller, and made a schematic sketch of it. When Schiller responded, “That is not an experience. That is an idea,” Goethe was taken aback and somewhat annoyed and said, “Then I may rejoice that I have ideas without knowing it, and can even see them with my own eyes" (Fortunate, 540-41).” This mental participating in nature’s productions is what he has been calling “intuitive looking” (Power, 31). In it our “power of thinking is active in an objective way” (Significant, 37). Goethe 26 �understands objective thinking to mean that when he looks at a plant in his mental “film” what he is looking at then “belongs to” him, so that he can produce it again in his mind (Polarity, 863). Such belonging echoes what my student said, in the first class, about the tree being inside her, in the way a character in a short story she’s writing is inside her. Goethe can generate the appearances “under thousands of circumstances, their uniformity and mutability [being] looked at with an intuitive gaze …; their determinateness … recognized and determined again by the human mind” (Experience, 25). This objective thinking is the ultimate ground of Goethe’s ability to derive plant forms. It is “a pregnant point from which much may be derived” (Significant, 40). Perhaps in looking at his mental film of the appearances of a plant, Goethe participates in its unique switch-over impulse, in such a way that he can generate those appearances and their modifications in his mind. The pregnant point of objective thinking would be the point where the aliveness of the bud’s bursting-into-flower meets and is one with the aliveness of our sensing the flower’s impulse (impulse-approach). Or, since objective thinking is not limited to the study of plants, the pregnant point could also be where the lighting-up of one face’s similarity to another meets and is one with our noticing the new aspect of the face (logos-approach). What has Goethe shown us about how we can look in a different way? First, he emphasizes that we need to be focused on two aspects of a plant—on its continual shifts over time and on the interconnectedness of its parts. Second, by arranging our experiences of the plant in the proper sequence, we can see the pure phenomenon revealing itself in and through them. Third, if we become objectively one with the pure phenomenon, our mind will derive countless varieties of the plant’s appearances. In this way of looking, we hold ourselves back from imposing our preconceptions and from projecting our hypotheses. We are participating mentally, in a way, in the plant’s origination of sprouts. We are experiencing ϕύσις “as alive and active.” Goethe’s “pregnant point” is the source of experiencing the immediate trans-formation of what has just been formed. Nicolaides’s advice, “to seek 27 �the actual impulse” of the tree, which appears to be static, changes the drawer’s looking into this Goethean mode of “objective thinking.” In what is motionless to the ordinary gaze, Nicolaides has us sense a lifting or drooping, a pushing or pulling, just as Goethe invites us to see an expansion or contraction—what was called “living movement” at the beginning of Part One of the lecture. “Living movement” is a translation of the second half of the First Canon of Chinese painting, which, according to Sze’s The Tao of Painting, reads as follows: “Circulation of Ch’i makes living movement.”53 In a later version it was changed slightly to: “Rhythmic reverberation of ch’i makes living movement.”54 This canon of painting may be interpreted more broadly as a standard of what constitutes alive drawing, or, more generally, alive looking, seeing, and thinking. Of the two parts of the First Canon, the key is the first: “circulation of the Ch’i.” For the alive moving follows from it. “This concept of the Ch’i in action governs all the principles and every work of art, down to each brushstroke.” While the Ch’i is what brings forth and “permeates life and its movement,” it is not to be identified with that life and movement; they emerge from it. In the same way, when the wind in “stirring the leaves produces a rustle,” the rustling is of the foliage, not of the wind. Thus, living movement is the rustling of the things, the stirring of the forms in the painting, and the motions of the painter’s hand-and-arm (cp. Sze, 42, 54-55), all of which are brought forth and permeated by the circulation or reverberation of the Ch’i (Sze, 52) Chinese painters aimed to render the ch’i that resides in each form (Sze, 34). The forms of a painting would be lifeless if they did not manifest something of that ch’i, which is moving and transforming the depicted things. The painters recognized that “when one succeeds in conveying the ch’i of each form, the result is an expression of the Ch’i that pervades the universe” (Sze, 35). In our terms, to produce such a result, the painter must penetrate into the secret of the inner switch-over impulse. In Goethe’s formulation of such penetration, we transcend mere looking-at and pass over into 28 �intuitive looking, participating in nature’s productions. Intuitive looking allowed Goethe to see nature herself “as alive and active,” as in the metamorphosis of plants. In the same way “Ch’i … has to be grasped through intuition,” that is, by looking “in a certain way” (Sze, 52-53), so as to call forth the receptivity and responsiveness of the heart-mind (hsin; Sze 35). For Goethe the metamorphosis of plants was a succession of alternating expansions and contractions. In Chinese painting what is important in nature’s perpetual motion is the constant interaction of “the rising, floating, expanding, and active qualities of the Ch’i,” known as yáng, and “the sinking, settling, shrinking, and passive qualities,” known as yīn. The painter sees “the cycle of growth, bloom, and decay of a flower” as illustrating the operation of the yīn and yáng, so that the resulting “painting of a flower at a given stage of development depicts either a yang or yin aspect of it” (Sze, 41, 54-55, 41). Goethe seems to have a more regular sense of the alternation of yang and yīn. Perhaps he would prefer the second version of the First Canon, which speaks of rhythmic reverberation of ch’i. Here is a passage—echoing Goethe’s account of his intuitive looking—that describes the Chinese painter’s participation in one of nature’s formations: In observing the way a bud opens into full flower, eventually to shed its petals, and the conditions under which this process takes place, the painter is exploring an aspect of [ϕύσις]. He is able to understand [ϕύσις] when he is thoroughly familiar with every stage of the process, can see it [namely, the bud opening, then shedding petals, etc.] at each stage of the process and as a whole as analogous to other manifestations of the way of [ϕύσις] around him, including himself, and can through his heart and mind55 become aware of the same pattern of movement beyond his own limited horizon, on the scale … of the whole universe (Sze, 41).56 In this description one has only to replace “painter” with “observer of nature,” in order to have a good account of Goethe’s “objective thinking.” In the painter’s way of observing, too, we are “accustoming ourselves to hold the appearances against each other in both a forward and a backward direction.” Moreover, just as the painter’s seeing the way of ϕύσις includes seeing it in himself and in the whole universe, so, too, was Goethe himself transformed by his observation of nature: “[I and my] brothers and sisters … think: ‘in every place/ We are in the Interior [of Nature].’” 29 �To myself a thousand times I say: “All things she gives, gladly and lavishly; Nature has neither kernel nor shell, She is everything at once. Examine chiefly only yourself, Whether you are kernel or shell.” (Allerdings) When we draw the impulse or when we look intuitively, how are we experiencing in a way different from our everyday experiencing? When we participate in the formations of ϕύσις, as we draw, look, see, or think, how are we experiencing? Drawing-looking-describing is an action that aims to manifest outwardly what is appearing, precisely in the way it is appearing to us. Taking our cue from Arber and Nicolaides, from Goethe and the Chinese painters, we might compare ourselves to a musical instrument on which the plant is playing its melody, when we are drawing, painting, or describing it. If we are in a state of calm attention and flexible responsiveness to the plant’s “playing,” we are a well-tuned instrument. Our drawing or our precise description is then the melody that the plant is playing. Section ii: ΦϓΣΙΣ AND BEING Drawings and descriptions aren’t the only kinds of melodies that may come forth from us in response to the appearances of a plant. We might, instead, come up with a metaphor or write a poem. The conclusion to this lecture borrows from the philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s reflections on the way of experiencing that is proper to metaphorizing. His ideas, which are in part inspired by Aristotle, will deepen our understanding of Goethe’s and of the Chinese painters’ way of experiencing. In the discussion to follow, “intuitive looking” will be used to refer equally to Arber’s visual thinking, Nicolaides’s gesture drawing, Goethe’s intuitive looking or objective thinking, and the looking of the Chinese painters. The above characterization of intuitive looking as alive means that it presents “all things ‘as in act.’” Intuitive looking allows “every latent capacity for action” in each thing to appear as at work (ἐνέργειᾳ), “every dormant potentiality of existence [to] appear … as in bloom (éclose),” or, 30 �according to an alternative translation, as a new life emerging, like a chick, from the cracked shell of an egg.57 In allowing human beings to experience things in this way, intuitive looking has an “ontological function,” that is, a role to play in regard to the Being of beings. Intuitive looking allows the Being of things to be manifested in such a way that it is made available for others to encounter, too. The intuitive looker has an insight which is like a “glance … of genius.” Think of an instant in which fresh aspects of things are, as it were, “in the process of being born” for you. In this instant you would be experiencing things before conceptualizing them. That is, this insight would occur in “a preconceptual mode” (MV248-49/230-31, 253/236). The new aspects arising from, in, and to the intuitive looking constitute an instance of genuine origination, or “sprouting.” As the Chinese painter shares in nature’s production, so here, too, the one looking intuitively participates in the sprouting of novelty in what is being looked at. Moreover, the resulting expression of the insight allows us to participate in the “emergence” of those novel aspects, too. This seeing of new aspects is a two-sided seeing. It is partly active thinking and partly receptive sensing. In the case of Arber’s visual thinking and Goethe’s intuitive looking, the active part is a thought—a fresh cognition, which arises spontaneously, due to the advance preparation of the experience(s) by the observer. In the case of Nicolaides and the Chinese painters, the active part is the body-mind’s moving the pencil or brush over the paper, as if their receptive looking called forth, spontaneously, arm-hand motions that expressed what they were receiving. They are engaged in “thinking in movement.”58 In either case the intuitive looking both “escapes any voluntary control”— that is, either you see it or you don’t—and involves “doing something” (MV270/252). When we are looking at things in the fraction of a second before taking them in their familiar sense, we are, as it were, joining them in their coming-into-being (γένεσις) as they are sprouting (φυομένων).59 The person looking sees things springing up, as if for the first time. Seeing them in this way is what is meant by “seeing all things in act,” or “seeing them as natural bloomings, or hatchings 31 �(éclosions).” This mode of seeing and of subsequent showing of what is seen is alive, is “alive experience” (MV391-92/364-65). In Goethe’s terms we are experiencing the things not as static shapes but rather as formations. To see in this way would be to see act—in the sense of being-active-staying-in-its-state-ofcompletion—and to see power—in a sense that would include the ability to produce different kinds of motion or rest—as together, as simultaneous. An intuitive looker would then be seeing, first, “power as act,” that is, would be seeing as a finished thing what is still only potentially that thing. A person gazing intuitively would, second, be seeing “act as power,” or seeing “every achieved form as a promise of novelty” (MV, 391-92/364). Like the two paths we saw in Part One, that of the impulse-approach and that of the logosapproach, power and act are not mutually exclusive alternatives. Perhaps it is because one’s heart-mind has penetrated to the inner switch-over impulse at the “pregnant point” that one sees rest in a production of motion and motion in a resting. This could be one way of taking that to which the Eleatic Stranger was referring when he said that it is “as if Rest and Motion were embraced by” Being.60 One who is seeing in this way is reaching ϕύσις “in the primary sense.”61 “Comings-into-being and sproutings (φύεσθαι)” are the rustling of the things in the wind of ϕύσις. They are not ϕύσις itself. For, in Aristotle’s words, it is rather “the way of being what they are (οὐσία) of things that have an originator of and ruler over motion within themselves precisely as themselves.” This originator-ruler may be in them in either of two ways—as a power-to-do or as a holding-itself-in-its-end-state (Met. 1015a14-15, 18-19). In being able to experience the wind in the rustling of the trees, the intuitive looker, upon seeing a thing as simply at work staying itself, can also see it as having capabilities to become some new thing. Alternatively, when such a looker sees something in motion or as having the potential to move, she can also see it as already having arrived at its goal. These ways of seeing are 32 �familiar from Goethe’s considering the appearances next to each other in both a forward and a backward direction. In order to assist in resuscitating this sense of ϕύσις, we “moderns” must look for places “where appearing signifies ‘the coming-into-being of the things that are sprouting.’” One such place is where we have begun the Lab, where intuitive gazing at plants shows us “the blooming, or hatching (éclosion), of appearing” (MV392/365). We can then look at actions, makings, and motions metaphorically as particular species of sproutings, bloomings, or hatchings. This may reawaken in us the boundlessness of the original sense of ϕύσις, which is responsible for the “rustlings” of actions, makings, and motions. Thus, it might be possible for St. John’s students to be in a position to connect what is being said in the following passage to some of their own experiences in Freshman Lab. They’ll have something toward which they can be looking off (ἀποβλέπειν) in trying to make sense of it. Now what does the word ϕύσις say? It says that which is spontaneously blossoming on its own (das von sich aus Aufgehende) (e.g., the blossoming (Aufgehen) of a rose), the unfolding that is opening itself up, the entering-intoappearance in such unfolding, and holding itself and persisting (Verbleiben) in appearance, in short, the rulingworking holding-sway (Walten) that is blossoming-abiding (-verweilende)…. Φύσις as blossoming can be experienced everywhere, e.g., …, in the growth of plants, in the emergence of animal and human from the womb. But ϕύσις, the holding-sway that is blossoming, is not synonymous with these processes, which we today still count as part of “nature.” … Φύσις is Being itself, by virtue of which beings first become and remain observable.62 As we students of the early part of Freshman Lab listen to this passage written by the philosopher Martin Heidegger, we are able to recognize its kinship with our experience so far in the lab. We might add that blossoming brings to our minds the sudden putting-forth of shoots and the switchover impulse that is the originator-ruler of moving and of standing still. We also recognize in it the plant’s staying itself in a way, while at the same time becoming other. Looking ahead to the next section of the lab, on animals, we might wonder whether we’ll encounter some new feature, which foreshadows what we’ll soon meet in seminar—the idea that there is something—or rather not some thing—the Good itself, which might even transcend Being as blossoming. 33 �1 A two-part lecture delivered on September 11-12, 2020. Agnes Arber, The Mind and the Eye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), pp. 115-21, 124-26. (Translations of quotations sometimes added or modified; italics occasionally added.) 3 The Queen Anne's lace flower resembles lace and often has a solitary purple dot in the center. Each flower cluster is made up of numerous tiny white flowers. 4 a cluster of flowers arranged on the shoot of seed plants. 5 Jacob Klein, “On Precision,” lecture St. John’s College. 6 Agnes Arber, The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), pp. 210-11; quotation from P. Turpin, 1820. 7 Ms. Younji Youn, on August 31, 2020. 8 Sei do (sheng 生 + dòng 動). 9 Henry Bowie, On the Laws of Japanese Painting (NY: Dover, 1911), pp. 77-78; italics added. 10 “Feeling” here is to be taken in the same sense as “Empfinden,” which Erwin Straus characterized beautifully and distinguishes from I-versusobject perception (Wahrnehmung), in Vom Sinn der Sinne: Ein Beitrag zur Grundlegung der Psychologie (Berlin: Springer, 1936). 11 Experiencing directed tensions corresponds to Whitehead’s perceiving sensa in the mode of causal efficacy, which is prior to perceiving objects in presentations (Vorstellungen), clothed with sense data, in space. See A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, revised edition (NY: The Free Press, 1979), pp. 58 et passim. 12 Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (Berkeley: U of CA Press), 412-13, 416, 437, 444-45, 449. The phrase “directed tension” was proposed by Wassily Kandinsky in Punkt und Linie zur Fläche. 13 Ms. Kelly Kane, on August 31, 2020. 14 “The dynamics is an integral part of what an observer sees as long as his natural sensory responsiveness has not been repressed by an education geared to the static” (ib.). 15 Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1941, pp. 14-18 and 30. 16 Arnheim, op. cit., p. 454. 17 Mr. Frederic Duch Clerici, on September 3, 2020. 18 The three students are Mr. Roman Paul Wlodkowski, Mr. Henry David Hills, and Ms. Younji Youn, respectively, on September 3, 2020. 19 Suggested to me by my friend, the artist, Betsy Kopmar. 20 Ms. Songeun Jang, on September 3, 2020. 21 Note on terminology: Sprout will mean (v.) to begin to give off shoots or buds; (n.) young plant growth, such as a bud or shoot. Shoots will mean the new fresh plant growth of both stems and their appendages, the leaves and lateral buds, flowering stems and flower buds. Bud will mean an undeveloped or embryonic shoot, normally occurring either in the axil of a leaf (= axillary bud) or at the tip of a stem (= terminal bud). 22 What is responsible for this seeming incompleteness of activity is the fact that the potential of which the sprouting is an activity is itself incomplete (201b33). 23 As the DC-based painter Paul Reuther has said, when paintings give evidence of mastery of shape, line, value, and composition and yet lack life it is often due to their not having a gestural foundation, as taught by Nicolaides (private communication). 24 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (NY: The Macmillan Company, 1953), tr. G. E. M. Anscombe, modified, Part II, section xi, pp. 193-94. 25 Included in forming an opinion are all of the lively transformations of thought that follow in its wake. 26 Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1991), pp. 149-50. 27 Mr. Adam Miller Powers, on September 7, 2020. 28 In Japanese this state of self-world interrelationship is known as jishu zammai (自主三味). It is, perhaps, somehow both self-less absorption (三味) and agency (主) by the self (自); and yet it is neither the one nor the other. It will be explored in a later lecture. 29 狂, the left side of which originally represented a wild dog. 30 天, where the upper horizontal line originally represented the Heaven, below which stands a human being, with arms stretched out wide. 31 Henry George Liddell; Robert Scott [1940], A Greek-English Lexicon; Machine readable text (Trustees of Tufts University, Oxford). 32 ταῦτα γὰρ εἶναι καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα φύσει φαμέν. πάντα δὲ τὰ ῥηθέντα φαίνεται διαφέροντα πρὸς τὰ μὴ φύσει συνεστῶτα. τὰ μὲν γὰρ φύσει ὄντα πάντα φαίνεται ἔχοντα ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἀρχὴν κινήσεως καὶ στάσεως—τὰ μὲν κατὰ τόπον, τὰ δὲ κατ᾿ αὔξησιν καὶ φθίσιν, τὰ δὲ κατ᾿ ἀλλοίωσιν—κλίνη δὲ καὶ ἱμάτιον καὶ εἴ τι τοιοῦτον ἄλλο γένος ἐστίν, ᾗ μὲν τετύχηκε τῆς κατηγορίας ἑκάστης καὶ καθ᾿ ὅσον ἐστὶν ἀπὸ τέχνης, οὐδεμίαν ὁρμὴν ἔχει μεταβολῆς ἔμφυτον, ᾗ δὲ συμβέβηκεν αὐτοῖς εἶναι λιθίνοις ἢ γηΐνοις ἢ μικτοῖς, ἐκ τούτων ἔχει καὶ κατὰ τοσοῦτον, ὡς οὔσης τῆς φύσεως ἀρχῆς τινος καὶ αἰτίας τοῦ κινεῖσθαι καὶ ἠρεμεῖν ἐν ᾧ ὑπάρχει πρώτως …. Ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἕκαστον τῶν ποιουμένων· οὐδὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν ἔχει τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τῆς ποιήσεως, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν ἐν ἄλλοις καὶ ἔξωθεν, οἷον οἰκία καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν χειροκμήτων ἕκαστον, τὰ δ' ἐν αὑτοῖς μὲν ἀλλ' οὐ καθ' αὑτά, ὅσα κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς αἴτια γένοιτ' ἂν αὑτοῖς. 33 A rapid motion forwards, onrush, onset, assault; II impulse to do a thing, effort; III setting oneself in motion, start on a march, etc. in Liddell and Scott, op. cit. 34 The verb μεταβάλλω means: I throw into a different position, turn quickly or suddenly, turn, i.e. plough, the earth; II turn about (Liddell and Scott, op. cit.). 35 This possibility will be explored in Senior Laboratory. 36 J. von Uexküll, Theoretische Biologie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), p.148. 37 The quotation from Agnes Arber, The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form (Cambridge University Press, 1950), p. 78, continues: “The plant in endeavouring ‘to persevere in its own being’, repeats that being time after time, each daughter shoot or root becoming, in its turn a parent shoot or root.” We see here the being-at-work-staying-itself of the potential, precisely as potential, which is the definition of motion (Aristotle, Physics, Book III ). She also mentions there an interesting proposal by Baruch de Spinoza, who after having identified “‘the effort (conatus) by which each thing endeavours (conatur) to persevere in its own being (esse)’” with life, stated that that conatus “‘is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itself’ (Ethices, pars III, Prop. vii).” 2 34 �38 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 9, Chapter 3, 1047a30-31, trl. Joe Sachs (Santa Fe: Green Lion, 1999): “And the phrase being-at-work … is designed to converge in meaning with being-at-work-staying-complete.” 39 The comparison of the soul as the first staying-complete to the idling of a car is due to Seth Benardete, in a course on the De Anima at the New School for Social Research. Included in idling are the activities going on within the body that allow animals to maintain their structures and to be ready and able to respond to changes in their environments. The fact that these are known as metabolic activities may be taken as a sign that they are initiated and ruled over (ἀρχή) by onsets (ὁρμαί) of a switch-on or a switch-off (μεταβολῆς). The latter two expressions are, of course, suggestive for those familiar with genetic regulatory mechanisms. 40 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Metamorphosis of Plants, introduction and photography by Gordon L. Miller (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2009), translation modified; hereafter cited by paragraph number preceded by “#.” 41 “The Aim Introduced” (1807) in J. W. von Goethe, Werke, Bd. XIII, pp. 55-59; J. W. von Goethe, Scientific Studies (NY: Suhrkamp, 1983), ed. and trl., Douglas Miller (translation modified), pp. 55-56, italics added; hereafter referred to as “Aim. 42 The two figures are from R. Brady, “The Idea in Nature” in Goethe’s Way of Science: A Phenomenology of Nature, eds. D Seamon & A. Zajonc (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998), pp. 94 and 107.] 43 The language in this paragraph is taken from Jacob Klein’s Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, trl. Eva Brann (The M.I.T Press, 1968), p. 82 (cited below as GMT). In context that which has “within itself the possibility of acting as the source of repetition” and has “a primal character of ‘image-ability,’ … which makes possible … all ‘recognition’” is being itself. This possibility and primal character is “the effect of … the ‘indeterminate dyad.’” Thus, when, following Goethe, we look at the formation and trans-formation and see that each leaf shape in the sequence of shapes “is originally ‘alienated’ from itself, is not only ‘itself’ but also ‘another’ than ‘itself,’” we are witnessing an instance of the indeterminate dyad at work (GMT 82; cp. 95-96). Goethe’s way of looking at plants might, in this way, plant a first seed in the students’ minds of what it could mean to say that being is ϕύσις. 44 Goethe himself implied that the word “leaf” was only a temporary makeshift. He wrote that “we would obviously need a general term by which we could designate this organ that metamorphosed into such different shapes, and with which we could compare all the appearances of its shape” (# 120). And, in any case, it should be clear that this difference in the ultimate unit does not alter the accuracy of Goethe’s mobile, flexible tracking of the fluctuation in the plant’s putting-forth, in its gestural impulse of formation and trans-formation. A plant’s inner truth would be its unique “gesture” of self-formation. 45 In The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form (Cambridge University Press, 1950), pp. 70-71, Agnes Arber reports the following: In 1875 the botanist Julius von Sachs wrote: “‘The expressions Stem and Leaf denote only certain relationships of the parts of a whole—the Shoot.’” Arber’s own view is that “we need … a synthetic standpoint combining the advantages of .… the conception of the shoot as the ultimate unit, and the opposed conception of the leaf and stem as each being ultimate units.” 46 Mr. Frederic Duch Clerici, on September 3, 2020. 47 Mr. Adam Miller Powers, on September 3, 2020. 48 Figures 7 and 8 are Images 10 and 11, respectively, on pp. 26-27 of Goethe, The Metamorphosis of Plants, op. cit. 49 Figures 9 and 10 are Images 12 and 13, respectively, in ibid., pp. 28-29. 50 Figures 11-13 are Images 14, 16, and 17, respectively, in ibid., pp. 32 and 34-35. 51 Figure 14 is Figure 6 in ibid., p. 44. 52 These short works will be cited by title; the page references are to J. W. von Goethe, Werke, Bd. XIII; the translation was based in significant part on that of Douglas Miller, found in J. W. von Goethe, Scientific Studies, op. cit. 53 氣運生動 (qì yùn shēng dòng), formulated by Xie He around 500 C.E. The following graphs and translations and the considerations in the text about the first canon are mostly based on Mai-Mai Sze’s The Tao of Painting, Volume 1 (Princeton University Press, 1956), pp. 33ff: 氣 qì: vapor, breath; air, manner, influence; Breath of Heaven, Spirit, Vital Force, vivifying principle. 運 yùn: turn, revolve; a circuit. 韻 yùn: beautiful sound, rhythm, reverberation. Hence, 氣韻 qì yùn = (of literature, art) distinct style, flavor, spirit, character. 生 shēng (pictograph of a plant sprouting): to be born; to give birth; to produce; life; to grow. 動dòng: (trans.) to move, stir, arouse, touch; to set into action; to displace—by some sort of power, force, strength (力 li). Hence, shēng dòng = vivid, lively; living movement, alive power of moving (trans.). 54 : 氣韻生動 (qì yùn shēng dòng), which means ‘Ch’i reverberation (turning/bending back) [or uttering sounds (radical 180) that are round like a cauldron (phonetic)] [is or makes] living movement, or alive power of moving’ (Sze, 49). However, while “circulation,” as “in the vast circuit of the heavens and the cycles of the seasons” may suggest rhythmic motion, the movement of the Ch’i is not subject to “the limitations of a measured beat…. Rhythm is only one aspect of the total action of the Ch’i.” 55 心 hsin. 56 In this passage “[ϕύσις]” replaces “the Tao” (道 = the head, or leader, seeing everywhere, is taking an initial step along the way). 57 Paul Ricoeur. La Métaphor vive (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1975), p. 61; The Rule of Metaphor, trls. R. Czerny et al. (Ny: Routledge, 1977), p.48; translation modified; hereafter cited in the text as “MV61/48.” The above quotations by Ricoeur are from Aristotle, Poetics, 1448a24 and 1411b25, respectively. As Ricoeur notes, the “as” in this and subsequent passages derives ultimately from Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Part II, section xi. 58 Maxine Sheets-Johnston, The Primacy of Movement (John Benjamins, 2011), Chapter 12 “Thinking in movement.” In particular she shows how dance improvisation is a “paradigm of thinking in movement” (p. 420). 59 I have altered Ricoeur’s translation of Aristotle, Met. 1014b17-18. Here is the whole relevant passage: “In a sense ϕύσις means [a] the coming-into-being of the things that are sprouting (φυομένων), as if one were to pronounce the upsilon in ϕύσις long; but in a sense it means [b] the thing present within forth from which the thing shooting forth, is first shooting forth (φύεται). Again, it is [c] the [source] whence the first motion in each of the beings that are by ϕύσις is present within it precisely as itself…. [e] The primary and authoritative meaning of ϕύσις is the way of being what they are of things that have in themselves, precisely as themselves, a ruling source of motion … and [a] the comingsinto-being and [b] shooting forth (φύεσθαι) are called ϕύσις by virtue of being motions from this [ϕύσις in the primary sense]. And [e] [ϕύσις in] this [primary sense] is [c] the ruling source of motion of beings that are by ϕύσις, in being present within [them] in some way, whether in the way of power-for or in the way of holding-itself-in-its-end-state-of completion” (Met. 1014b15-20; 1015a14-15, 18-19). 60 Cp. Soph 247de: Str: “I say, then, that whatever possesses any sort of power—whether for making anything at all, of whatever nature, other than it is or for being affected even the least bit by the meagerest thing, even if only once—… is in its very being (ὄντως ἐῖναι). For I set down 35 �as a boundary marking off the beings that it is nothing else but power”; and 250b: Str: “Then do you posit in the soul being as some third thing beyond [Motion and Rest] as if Rest and Motion were embraced by it? And is it through taking them together and looking away toward the community of their way of being that you say that both of them are?” The translations generally follow that by E. Brann, P. Kalkavage, and E. Salem (Newburyport: Focus Philosophical Library, 1996). 61 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Δ, 1015a18-19, based on the Sachs translation, with changes, here and in the following quotations. 62 Martin Heidegger, Einfūhrung in die Metaphysik (Tūbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1953), p. 11; Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University, 2000), trls. G. Fried and R. Polt, p. 15; translation modified. 36 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 36 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Looking in Freshman Lab I: A Path to Experiencing the Blossoming of Things? A Two-Part Lecture Description An account of the resource Typescript of two lectures delivered by Robert Druecker, Annapolis tutor on September 11 and 12, 2020 as part of the Formal Lecture Series. The lectures are the first in a three-part series on Freshman Lab. Mr. Druecker describes the lectures: "Part One gives a sense both of what students at the beginning of Freshman Laboratory read about looking at plants and of how they look at trees and other plants. Part Two considers one 'Big Picture' that they might paint, if they follow the guiding thread of the impulse-to-sprout, encountered in those first few classes." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Druecker, Robert Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020-09-11 2020-09-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library; make typescript copies of my lecture available for archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library." Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären Arber, Agnes, 1879-1960 Nicolaïdes, Kimon, 1892-1938 Ink painting, Chinese Buds Flowers Morphology Magnolias Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7627" title="Part II"></a><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7350">Looking in Freshman Lab part I (video)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7627" title="Part II">Looking in Freshman Lab part II (video)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7628">Looking in Freshman Lab part II (typescript)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7630">Looking in Freshman Lab part III (typescript)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7682" title="Looking in Freshman Lab part III (video)">Looking in Freshman Lab part III (video)</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Druecker_Robert_2020-09-11 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bb98f2039c549c670a0b8e326fd60716.pdf b0c7ba37f5552797089bba7dd5ac02ea PDF Text Text Looking in Freshman Lab II How measuring, weighing, and counterbalancing can inspire us to see things in new ways This is the second in a series of lectures 1 for freshman on ways of looking encountered in the first year of laboratory. In the second segment of the class, the students are invited to consider various ways of mathematizing the world. 2 They may come to see certain phenomena as μαθήματα, that is, as objects of study that can be used to learn through insight. While these phenomena are also investigated empirically, the lecture will explore whether they can be viewed in ways that lead to insight. 3 The lecture will be limited to the ways in which the characteristics of length and heaviness and different sorts of equilibrium can lead the students to new ways of looking and seeing with the mind’s eye. PART ONE The first exercise performed in the second segment of the lab is measuring the quantity length. We measure the length of a table by laying out, end to end, a strip of cardboard—our standard unit length—as many times as it will fit on the table, say, seven. Then, unless we are very lucky, so that it happens to fit exactly seven times, we claim that the table is between seven and eight units long. In order to measure the table more exactly, we make a new unit by dividing our first unit in half. Then we may say, for example, that the table is between 15 and 16 new units long. Continuing the process of bisecting, at some point—due to the thickness of the pencil mark or to the limitations of our vision—we find ourselves, perhaps, after four bisections, unable to perform a further one. At that point we might determine that the table was longer than 123 and shorter than 124 of the last standard unit. We’d go on to say that the ratio of two lengths, that of the table to that of the last standard unit, is somewhat greater than the ratio of the numbers 4 123 to 1 and is somewhat less than the ratio of the 1 �numbers 124 to 1. We claim we have measured the length of our table on “a ratio scale,” in that we have determined “the ratio between a measured magnitude and the standard magnitude as … equal or nearly equal [to the] ratio between two numbers” (E&M, p. 5). 5 We are asked (E&M, p. 5) think about whether any of the “practical limitations to achieving … exactitude … in the exercise … might be overcome.” Let’s take this question as an invitation to imagine, in a way proposed by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, 6 a series of practical refinements to our standard and the corresponding improvements in our ability to measure length exactly. We begin with our last cardboard standard, sharpen the pencil we used to make it, and make an improved standard. Next if we think we can do better, we may sharpen the pencil more. Or we may come across a different tool for making even finer marks that can be made closer together. And so on. We imagine that as “technology progresses” we are able to distinguish separate lines that are ever closer together. Perhaps a machine is invented that can draw lines .1 mm apart. We might be able to view them under a microscope and see that the edge of the table falls between two of them. As we imagine “the ideal of perfection …pushed further and further,” we never get to the point of thinking that no further improvement could ever be conceived. We can imagine repeated experiences of moving, in the "again and again” (im Immer wieder), toward a more perfect standard. 7 If we think of this perfecting process as carried to its ideal limit, we may think of an ideally exact limit-standard of length. That standard would be “like [an] invariant and never attainable pole…, which” we’d approach, but never reach, as ever more perfect standards were produced. 8 Our imagining of this progress and our thinking of this standard appear to have led us to what Socrates, in conversation with Simmias, called recollecting. He spoke of recollection as a potential accompaniment to our recognition of a thing we are sensing—an accompaniment that would take place whenever someone “not only recognized (γνῷ) that thing but also thought (ἐννοήσῃ) of another thing, 2 �the knowledge of which isn’t the same” as the recognition of that thing. When we recognize a set of marks on the cardboard, we think – short, parallel, straight-line segments, equidistant from each other. As Socrates might have said: from these (apparently) equal distances and this (apparently) straight edge, we think of the Equidistant Itself and the Straight Itself. From our perception of the equidistant marks along the edge of the cardboard standard, we think that they “both are reaching after the [Equidistant and the Straight] … and are in a condition of falling short of [them].” Socrates would say that “that of which [we] grasped the thought (ἔννοιαν) was recollected.” It was not found in our sensing of the marks on the cardboard. Rather it felt as if we knew it from “sometime before” (πρότερόν ποτε; as in a priori). This kind of experience is what we call “learning through insight” (Phdo 72e-75b), as opposed to merely making empirical observations, interpreting them, and learning through experience. Recollection is a two-in-one experience—like visually recognizing something in a crowded room as a face—or as a lyre—and, at the same time, thinking of it as Simmias’s face—or thinking of the boy who is always playing that lyre. When, for the first time, someone recollected an ideal limit to the perfecting process described above, it might have been experienced as a thought that suddenly fell into her or his mind (in German: ein Einfall). The experience of recollecting may have shared certain features with Wittgenstein’s description of the experience of suddenly “noticing an aspect”: “I’m considering a face, suddenly I notice its likeness to another. I see that it has not altered; and yet I see it differently.” 9 As Socrates pointed out, however, an additional feature characterizes the recollection-experience. For a key part of the way I see the “face” “differently” in recollecting is that I see it as wanting to be of the same sort as the ideal-exact limit-standard—like Socrates’ pair of equal sticks, wanting to be of the same sort as the Equal itself—but as falling short of it. We are also asked (E&M, p. 5) to consider a second question: whether, given any table, we could always subdivide the standard enough times, so that the length of that table would “turn out to be an exact multiple of the subdivided standard.” Whereas the first question led us to recollection, involving a 3 �a two-in-one experience—recognizing a piece of cardboard with pencil marks on it and simultaneously, together with that, thinking of an ideally sharp standard for length—this second question leads us to a single seeing, or, perhaps better, a fantasizing. For it raises the possibility that the things in the world of our experience might themselves actually be—rather than reach after being—ideally exact. If that were the case, it would then be theoretically possible to express the length of every particular rectangular table exactly as a ratio of whole numbers. We might then be thought to have accomplished a rationalization of the world. At the end of Ch. I, we turn from length to the characteristic of heaviness, or weight. The first two questions posed are: how would it be possible to determine that two weights are “virtually indistinguishable” and how could we arrange different instances of heavy bodies “in a linear series,” from lightest to heaviest. If we were able to do both, then we‘d claim that we could measure heaviness on an ordinal scale (M&E, p. 4). In order to experience what it means concretely to measure heaviness on an ordinal scale, we use a device called a “substitution balance.” Here is a picture of one: A Weight Counterweight Figure 1 This instrument consists of a straight wooden beam that rests on a knife-edge called the fulcrum; from each end of the beam a plastic pan is suspended…. the arms of the beam are not equal…. The beam is free to swing within the limits established by the two bumpers (M&E 8). 4 �We place an object A in the weight pan on the right and enough clay in the counterweight pan on the left, so that the beam comes to rest somewhere in between the two bumpers. Then we mark the pointer’s position. In order to determine experimentally that two bodies, A and B, are equally heavy, [we] carefully remove A from the “weight” pan, “without disturbing the counterweight, and substitute B in its place…. If B causes the pointer to rest exactly where A did, then A and B are equal in their … weight; and if not, not” (M&E 9). Students find this balance and this experimental definition of equality of weight to be “counterintuitive.” It is especially puzzling to them to read: “No inferences whatever may be drawn, by means of the balance, as to the comparison of the ‘weight’ and the ‘counterweight.’” Why can’t we say that the sinking of the counterweight would show that it is heavier than the weight? In response, after having tentatively considered A and B to be equally heavy, whenever B causes the pointer to rest exactly where A did, the students formulated the following insight: It makes sense because “whether A or B is in the weight pan seems to make no difference to anything at all, since everything is the same either way. B leaves the pointer in the same position as A did.” As one student said: Weighing using the substitution procedure “challenged my presuppositions” about what equality of weight really means. It was as though working with the method of substitution played an analogous role, for the students, to the one Socrates plays for the slave boy in the Meno. The students, too, at the beginning, without knowing, “suppose [they] know” how to determine equal weights; then they become aware that they “don’t know” and are “perplexed” by the procedure proposed; and at the end they arrive at “true opinions” about it (Meno 82e, 84ab, 85c). After that each lab team is given an identical metal cylinder, called a baros, to use as unit standard weight for making two pieces of clay, each equal in heaviness to one baros. By repeated 5 �halving they go on to construct a ratio scale for measuring weight and use it to assign weight-numbers to various bodies, in a way very similar to their assignment of length-numbers to the edge of the table. A student asked: “What’s the point of spending even more time with such primitive equipment, like the substitution balance?” A possible response arises out of the fact that in performing the barosexercise many of the weighing teams ended up not using the method of substitution. Instead, they reverted to their initial “knowledge” that the two weights at opposite ends of a horizontal beam are equal. Perhaps, then, the student’s earlier realization of having had his presuppositions challenged may have been like the slave boy’s true opinions, which had merely been “stirred up in him, like a dream” (Meno 85c). It may be that his realization didn’t “stay put” but rather ran away (97d-98a), or, through the lens of a different metaphor, flew up to mix in with and fly around with his previous opinions (cp. Theat 197cff) about what weighing is. Socrates says to Meno that in order for true opinions to “stay put” they must be tied up “with a giving-an-account of what is responsible” (αἰτίας λογισμῷ)—a tying-up process that they’ve also agreed to call “recollection” (Meno 97d-98a). Perhaps it’s a recollection-process that makes use of recollected things, like a Square, in this case. Socrates had said earlier that in order for one to go beyond having true opinions “stirred up … like a dream” and to come “himself to draw up [knowledge] again out of himself (ἀναλαβὼν αὐτὸς ἐξ αὑτοῦ),” one needs to be asked “these same questions many times in different ways” (Meno 85cd). Perhaps by thinking out afresh, each time, our responses to those questions about the relations among the parts of a recollected Square, we become able to recollect them, too, and to articulate them, eventually, with assurance. After the baros-exercise, in discussion the students realized the mistake they’d made. Did their questioning and the rethinking of the exercise lead them, at this point, genuinely to draw up again out of themselves and to formulate an account of what is truly responsible for showing equality of weights? Or not? They may have only been remembering that they were supposed to follow the recipe for the 6 �substitution procedure and had merely forgotten to do so. This latter suggestion is reinforced by the fact that in an exercise three weeks later that again required a weighing using the substitution balance, no one in the class actually used the counterweight. PART TWO Chapter II, dealing with equilibrium, revisits the balance from a different point of view. A suitable balance allows us to go beyond measuring the heaviness of a single body to determining a certain relationship among two bodies and two distances. The students perform simple practical exercises in the lab and study a treatise on equilibrium by Archimedes. How are we to think about the exercises in relation to the treatise? Does the latter provide hypotheses, which the students test with the aim of learning, through their experience of the former, what does happen? Or could Archimedes, be, as it were, the Euclid of weights-in-equilibrium? If so he’d be offering us a way to learn through insight into what must happen when bodies are counterbalanced on a true Balance. At the beginning of the new chapter, we perform five simple exercises, in order to gain a sense of how heavy bodies behave when suspended from a point. Then, in our imagination, we take a second look at those experiments, in order to seek out the essence of the bodies’ behavior. We, first, make a number of pinholes around the edge of a piece of cardboard as shown in Figure 2, and suspend it from each in turn. After the cardboard comes to rest, we draw a vertical line through each pinhole. 7 �A B C D A' Figure 2 The lines drawn come very close to passing through a single point, which we call the cardboard’s center of weight (M&E, p. 13). The name is apt in the sense that the cardboard shape “behaves as if all of its weight were concentrated at or near” this point. Second, we confirm this claim by, sticking “the head of a pin through this center” and then balancing “the cardboard, in a horizontal position, on this pinhead.” Third, when we “insert the pin through the center of weight and hold the pin horizontal,” the cardboard remains at rest in any orientation in its vertical plane. This rest position is neutral, in the sense that the cardboard has no preferred orientation; it does not rotate out of any position in which it is placed. In comparison, the rest positions observed in our first set of experiments, where the center of weight rotated until it came to rest vertically below the point of suspension, are stable. For even a small displacement leads to oscillation and, ultimately, to a return to the initial position. Fourth, if we were very careful, we could bring the cardboard to rest—at least for a short time— with its center of weight vertically above a pinhole through which the horizontal pin was inserted. It would then be in an unstable rest position. For if our hand trembled ever so slightly, the cardboard would swing around in its vertical plane and come to rest in a stable rest position. 8 �Finally, what is even more puzzling, when the center of weight is not even on the piece of cardboard, as in the case of the odd shape depicted in Figure 3, the lines drawn intersect at a point that is not located on the cardboard. Generalizing from these empirical observations, we claim that all heavy bodies have a center of weight in the above sense and have the three kinds of A A' rest position, which depend upon the relation of their points of suspension to their center of weight. Figure 3 Could we say that, beyond such a generalization, these few exercises have led us, whenever we recognize a heavy body, to think, in addition, of a point that behaves as that body’s center of weight? Would our experiences support the claim that the center of weight did not come from our empirical observations of bodies in the lab? Rather it occurred to us in our observation of them in the lab. If so our simple exercises with the pieces of cardboard would, perhaps, have allowed us to recollect the center of weight, so that it felt as if we knew it from “sometime before” (Phdo 72e-73d). In thinking of the center of weight, we seem to be looking “through” the body with a sort of Xray vision. Only the body’s center of weight and the point of suspension, its “bones,” show up as white on the X-ray. The other parts of the body, its “soft tissues”, appear black. If the two bones were given, then we could see in the mind’s eye—without our having to do further experiments 10—that the actual amount of the weight and its disposition throughout the body would be irrelevant to the way the body behaves when suspended. X-ray vision, thus, would allow us to separate something essential in the situation of a suspended body from what is merely accidental. We turn now to Archimedes’ treatise “The Centers of Weight of Planes” (M&E, pp. 14ff). Figure 4 is the second figure in the treatise. It depicts two magnitudes, A̲ and B̲ , 11 of equal weight and 9 �A D C B Figure 4 having centers of weight, 12 A and B, respectively. The previous figures, of the substitution balance and of the cardboard cutouts, were schematic depictions of physical objects. How are we to interpret Archimedes’ figures? In what new ways do they invite us to look at material things? He clearly shares two ways of looking with Euclid. First, his vision is abs-tractive in Aristotle’s sense. He, too, sees the “things that result from drawing [trahere] [something] away [abs-]” (τὰ ἐξ ἀφαιρέσεως), namely, things that our mental removal of other sensible characteristics—like “hardness and its opposite, and also hotness and coldness, and other pairs of contrary perceptible attributes,” “leaves behind.” 13 If we look for bodies that have typical shapes, like oval, roundish, or oblong, our looking ignores, or has “stripped off” all characteristics—including heaviness—except shape. If, instead, we were preparing to look at bodies with Archimedes’ vision, we’d perform almost the same stripping-off. However, in addition to shape we’d leave behind weight—a characteristic that does not, like shape, manifest itself fully to the eye. Second, Archimedes shares with Euclid—and with our previous consideration of the limitstandard of length—a vision of ideally exact limit-formations. For instance, in the Archimedean Figure 5 below, as we do with Euclid’s figures, we take it as imaging an ideally exact straight line, on which there are three ideally exact points, 14 as indicated. But, in addition, we shall take the respective sizes of the two rectangles as indicating an exact relationship between the weight of A̲ and that of B̲ . 10 �A C B Figure 5 In particular, if we take the straight line AB in Figure 5 as representing a beam and C as representing the tip of a fulcrum, then we’ll say that the figure images an ideally exact limit-balance. The treatise will show us what must happen when we weigh heavy bodies on such an ideally exact limitbalance. Furthermore, while Archimedes’ rectangular figures are, like Euclid’s, intended to be imagesand-likenesses (εἰκόνες) of exact shapes, in this lecture we shall focus on them only as indices of relative amounts of heaviness. That is, we shall neglect the shapes of the two rectangles A and B as shapes and attend only to their sizes, which will be taken to indicate the relative weights of the two represented bodies. We shall interpret not only Archimedes’ figures of weights but also bodies in the laboratory as indices of relative amounts of weight. Many of the relevant features of indices are borrowed, with some modification, from C. S. Peirce’s treatment of the index. 15 The connection of likeness between the recognized object and the thought of the Thing itself, in the experience of recollection, is replaced, in the case of an index, by a direct, factual, non-arbitrary space-time connection between the index and the indicated thing. Here are some examples—many of which are experienced by animals—of indices and what each points to: rock – hardness; frost – coldness; dark clouds - impending rain; (for a fish in the sea) direction of greater light - warmer water; limping gait – physically impaired animal; scowling human facial expression - displeasure or concern; particular way of pronouncing a word - particular geographic place or social group. 16 11 �As can be seen from those examples, the “naturalness” of the connection between pointer and pointed-to may involve innate knowing in some cases, in others, learning through experience 17 (neither through teaching nor through insight)—including the experience of “artificial” correlations, such as, between a beep from the oven and the cookies’ readiness to be taken out or between a red traffic light and the urgency of stopping the car. Rather than “seeing” what is being pointed to, we may feel an urge to, “hear” an invitation to, or tend to make an inference to it—for instance, at the sights of smoke or footprints, at the sounds of thunder or of the doorbell ringing, or at the tastes of flavors. Thus, the correlation need not be perfect, in order for a thing to act as an index. Our earlier experiences both with weighing on the substitution balance and with suspending pieces of cardboard from pins through holes, as well as our everyday experiences of lifting bodies and our childhood play on seesaws, all contributed to our having learned through experience, or associatively, the connections between, on the one hand, Archimedes’ rectangles or the bodies we work with in the laboratory and, on the other hand, the weights that they indicate. Contrary to mathematical symbols, these rectangles and those bodies indicate the relative amounts of heaviness in an inherent way; bigger means heavier, in some rough sense. But it is a way that is in between being an image-andlikeness—it does not resemble its signified object, in this case, heaviness—and being arbitrarily assigned to signify heaviness. Whereas recollection was a two-in-one experience, indication is an experience of duality, but of a “naturally” connected duality. There is a meaningful connection between magnitude of size and magnitude of weight, but the relationship between the size of the rectangle and the magnitude of the weight has to be stipulated if there is to be an exact account. If we sup-pose that inherent connection, then Archimedes may lead us to recollect Equilibrium Itself. So, for instance, the ratio of the sizes of the rectangles A and B in Figure 5 is taken to indicate the exact ratio of the weight of body A̲ to that of body B̲ . 18 Our X-ray vision then 12 �shows us that the weight of any body at all could be indicated by the same rectangle A, provided its center of weight were at A and its weight were equal to that of A̲ . For the first time in the measurement segment, we are using things that we have recollected in order to arrive at further insights into relationships within what has been recollected. This is a third way in which Archimedes is following the Euclid’s way of seeing; he shows how a sequence of conclusions can be generated from the ideal-exact limit-formations. For as the arithmeticians do based on “the odd and the even” and as the geometers do based on “the geometrical shapes, the three kinds of angles,” etc., Archimedes “is forced to seek on the basis of sup-positions (ἐξ ὑποθέσεων), proceeding not to a beginning but to an end.” The conclusions about the equilibrium of weights are “in agreement with that from which [he] set [his] inquiry in motion” (Rep. 510bd; Sachs trl., modified). In that way Archimedes engages us in learning through insight. The first part of Archimedes’ title is “On the Equilibrium of Planes.” In some of the postulates and propositions, 19 we read: to be in equilibrium, or, equivalently, to sink, or incline, equally, and ii) to sink, or incline, toward 20—which latter seems to be a specification of not to be in equilibrium. Archimedes does not follow Euclid’s procedure by stating precisely what it is for weights to be “in equilibrium” or, for that matter, for a point to be “held fixed” or to be “the center of weight.” 21 Perhaps for the first two of these expressions, he relies on the reader’s everyday experiences with things like seesaws; for the third he may be counting on the reader’s having played around with suspending objects from strings, just as we did in the earlier exercises. Or one might adopt a view introduced in the last century 22 and claim that Archimedes defines these phrases implicitly. Then the statements in which he uses them would aim to specify, without ambiguity, how they are to be interpreted in terms of other, familiar terms. He also often 23 mentions equal or unequal weights at certain or equal or unequal distances, before making explicit, in Prop. 4, that each weight is taken to be “at” its center of weight and that each 13 �distance is from a body’s center of weight to what the manual calls “a pivot”—what was referred to earlier as the “point of suspension” of the cardboard or the “fulcrum” of the substitution balance. Whereas length and weight are characteristics of individual bodies, being-in-equilibrium specifies a relationship among five entities. For the setting-out of the above figure, involving bodies A̲ and B̲ , they would be—the two weights, A and B, their respective centers of weight A and B, and the pivot point C, 24 on the rigid, straight, weightless beam ACB. The first postulate of the treatise states “that equal weights at equal distances are in equilibrium, and that equal weights at unequal distances are not in equilibrium but incline toward the weight which is at the greater distance.” The insight expressed here is of a kind familiar from Euclid. Recalling what the students had said in relation to the substitution balance, we see that if we exchanged the two equal weights with each other, it could make no difference to anything at all. Everything would be the same either way. In addition to the X-ray vision involved in seeing centers of weight, Archimedes introduces a few other ways of looking. Prop. 4 mentions “the magnitude composed from both magnitudes.” 25 When we first glance at Figure 6 below, we see two separate bodies, A̲ and B̲ , of weights A and B, respectively, and their respective centers of weight, A and B. A D C B Figure 6 Then, in a second, compositional looking, we see “the magnitude composed from both magnitudes,” that is, we imagine A̲ and B̲ as composing two parts of a single body, say, A̲ /B̲ , in which they are joined by a rigid, straight, weightless beam, AB. In this way we are thinking of A̲ and B̲ as forming a shape reminiscent of the odd cardboard 14 �shape from the beginning of Ch. II, shown again in Figure 7. We then imagine A A' molding that cardboard (illustrated on the left side of Figure 8)—simultaneously shrinking and straightening its central portion into a straight line and shaping the two end portions into congruent rectangles—all the while still viewing it as one object, so that we end up with the shape on the right side of Figure 8. Figure 7 Figure 8 Another way of looking is the reverse of the above, namely, decompositional looking. Just as we can compose, so we can decompose. We can view a single body as two separate ones. Archimedes sometimes accompanies compositional or decompositional viewing with a third mode of looking. In the proof of Prop. 4, he shifts from viewing a point as the center of weight of a composite body A̲ /B̲ to seeing that same point as a pivot about which the two bodies A̲ and B̲ , into which A̲ /B̲ is considered to be decomposed, are in equilibrium. 26 In these ways Archimedes is inviting us to shift back and forth, at will, between ways of looking. First, like seeing Figure 9 now as a duck and now as a rabbit, we can consider a figure as depicting either 15 �Figure 9 two separate bodies A̲ and B̲ or one composite body A̲ /B̲ . Second, like seeing Figure 10 now as an old Figure 10 woman and now as a young one, we can consider a particular point as either a center of weight or a pivot point for equilibrium. Whereas, for a viewer who actually does see them, the shifts back and forth between seeing the duck or the rabbit or between seeing the young or the old woman—each of which is a genuine seeing—are involuntary, for us the shifts Archimedes prescribes are voluntary; and each of them might be more a viewing-as or even only a thinking-of. 27 In Prop. 6, in a virtuoso display of all of his ways of looking, Archimedes shows us that what the students had unthinkingly assumed in working with the substitution balance, namely, the so-called “Law of the Lever”—that “bodies will be in equilibrium at distances from the pivot which are reciprocally proportional to the weights of those bodies” (M&E 20)—must be true of an ideally exact limit-balance. Figure 11 shows two bodies A̲ and B̲ that are given as having commensurable weights, A and B, 16 �Figure 11 and as having their centers of weight on a straight-line beam at points E and D, respectively. Their weights are also given as having the following relationship to their respective distances from a point C, located on ED between E and D – C�D� : E�C� :: A : B. What is to be shown is that A̲ and B̲ are in equilibrium about point C. The givens permit us to carry out the proof by assigning particular numbers to the distances and weights. In Figure 12 C�D� is shown as 5 units long and E�C� as 3 units, where each unit is labeled N� . Figure 12 Moreover, in the construction E�C� has been extended to the left by 5 N� and C�D� to the right by 3 N� , as pictured. In Figure 13 A̲ is shown divided into 10 equal unit weights Z̲, and B̲ into 6, respectively. Figure 13 17 �Then in Figure 14 the centers of weight of the 10 Z̲ are shown as having been placed at the �� and those of the 6 Z̲ at the midpoints of the remaining N� on midpoints of the 10 N� on the left end of LK ��. the right end of LK Figure 14 Now Archimedes simply has us look at these 16 Z̲, successively, in different ways and in relation to the given weights A̲ and B̲ : As we look at the 16 equal weights Z̲, each at the midpoint of an equal length N� , we see ��, five pairs of Z̲s situated symmetrically about point E, respectively; i) on the left end of LK ��, three pairs of Z̲s situated symmetrically about point D, respectively; ii) on the right end of LK �� iii) on the whole of LK, eight pairs of Z̲s situated symmetrically about point C, respectively. Hence, we see, by the first postulate, that each pair must be in equilibrium about the point about which it is symmetrically situated. By shifting from duck to rabbit, we consider each of these pairs of Z̲s (ducks) as a composite weight (rabbits). By simultaneously shifting from old woman to young woman, we see that for each composite of two weights, the point of equilibrium (old woman) of the pairs in question—E for i), D for ii), and C for iii)—is its center of weight (young woman). By again shifting from duck to rabbit, we consider each of the three sets of pairs of composite weights (ducks)— i) the five pairs on the left (from L to H), ii) the three pairs on the right (from H to K), and iii) the eight pairs on the whole (from L to K)—as itself a composite weight (rabbits). So—by an analogue to Euclid’s first common notion: Composites of weights having the same center of weight also have that center of weight—we see that E is the center of weight of i) the composite of the 10 Z̲s, D of ii) the composite of the 6 Z̲s, and C of iii) the composite of the 16 Z̲s. By X-ray vision we then see that i) the composite of the 10 Z̲s is the same as A̲ as originally given, since both have the same center of weight E and same total weight. ii) the composite of the 6 Z̲s is the same as B̲ as given, since both have the same center of weight D and same total weight. So [by a common notion: Composites of pairs of weights (the first pair is the composite of the 10 Z̲s and the composite of the 6 Z̲s; the second pair is A̲ and B̲ ) having the same respective centers of weight (E for the first member of each pair and D for the second) and pairwise equal in weight are equal and have the same center of weight.], we see that the center of weight of the composite weight A̲ /B̲ is also C, the center of weight of the composite of the 16 Z̲s, that is, of the composite of the 10 Z̲s and of the 6 Z̲s 18 �Finally, by shifting back from rabbit to duck, we consider the composite weight A̲ /B̲ (rabbit) as two separate weights A̲ and B̲ (duck). And simultaneously, by shifting back from young woman to old woman, we consider C, the center of weight (young woman) of the composite weight A̲ /B̲ , as a pivot point for equilibrium (old woman). So, we see that: “therefore if A̲ be situated at E and B̲ be situated at D, they will be in equilibrium about the point C.” QED Given two bodies on a beam that counterbalance each other in the lab, we consider them, first, as counterbalancing on an Archimedean true Balance. That is, as we perceive the lab situation, there occurs to us, in recollection, the thought of two ideal-exact centers of weight and an ideal-exact pivot point on the true Balance. On the basis of our sup-position based on the experienced “natural” connection to ideal-exact weights and of his suppositions about the μαθήματα, Archimedes’ Prop. 6 may have enabled us to learn through insight (μαθεῖν), precisely which relationships among those five entities associated with the two given weights are necessary, in order for them to be seen as a complex image-and-likeness (εἰκών) of what Socrates could call Equilibrium Itself—that at which our actual counterbalancing in the lab can be thought of as aiming, while still falling short. If so then we now expect that the closer our laboratory equipment comes to imaging an ideally exact limit-balance, the more exactly our experiments will manifest the Law of the Lever. PART THREE At the beginning of Chapter III of the manual, we again take up the Archimedean approach to looking at situations of counterbalancing. But now, first of all, Archimedes has stretched the meaning of being-in-equilibrium to refer to two portions of a body of water pressing down upon certain “parts” of the water below them, instead of referring to two solid bodies on a beam about a pivot. His treatise On Floating Bodies shows us how to consider this pressing-down as analogous to weights’ tending to push downward on a beam and, thereby, to incline it to sink. Second, he offers us a way of looking different from the X-ray vison and the compositional or decompositional looking familiar from the earlier treatise. We shall use this way of looking, in order to 19 �see, or imagine, certain things into given laboratory situations, almost as if we were looking at the latter through a PowerPoint transparency, placed over the actual things in the lab. For instance, as we look at a piece of wood floating in a bucket of water, we’ll be able to use our imagination and see that a portion of it must be below the surface of the water and why it must be so. It might be as if the “giving-anaccount of what is responsible” (αἰτίας λογισμῷ), which Socrates and Meno agreed to call “recollection” (Meno 97d-98a), were transformed into an imagining of what is responsible. In the previous treatise Archimedes had us look at his figures with a voluntary considering-as, analogous to the involuntary seeing of a figure as a duck or as a rabbit. As a result of that treatise, we were able to consider both drawings of his figures and certain beam and pivot arrangements in the lab as imaging the true Balance. However, the multiple shifts in looking required to see the truth of Prop. 6 are so elaborate that we are not in a position to execute them while we look at a given beam and pivot arrangement in the lab. That is, we can only “apply” Prop. 6, as when we refer to the Law of the Lever; we cannot “see” it immediately in the given beam and pivot arrangement. In his second treatise Archimedes offers a recipe for looking that shifts what we can immediately see as true of a given object in a pail of water in the laboratory—without relying on the mediation of the statement of a proposition, which we remember having proven. This new way of looking is introduced in Prop. 2, where Archimedes shows that “the surface of any liquid 28 which remains motionless,” such as the water in a bucket, “will have the form of a sphere which has the same center as the earth.” In this and the next few propositions, the treatise depicts the given liquid as a portion of a sphere, which is to represent an earth-size ball of liquid. If the given liquid were water in a bucket, we’d be imagining a ball of water the size of the earth and a tiny portion of it, which coincided with the water in our bucket. 20 �Archimedes justifies this way of imagining by showing that if we supposed that the surface of the water in the bucket did not coincide with the surface of a sphere, then we’d be led to contradict ourselves. Figures 15 and 16 are two versions of a schematic picture of what we’d see under this Figure 15 Figure 16 supposition. 21 �If the surface ABLCD 29 of the water (colored blue) in the bucket, did not coincide with the surface of a sphere centered at the center K of the earth, then we could describe some other sphere, an outline of which is partially pictured in pink, as ZBECH, centered at the center K of the earth, passing through point B on the surface ABLCD of the water in the bucket. As shown, the sphere ZBECH would also pass through two other points, one (Z) above the water in the bucket and one (E) in the water. In this way the supposed spherical surface would be above the surface of the water in the bucket from Z to B and below the surface of the water from B to E. In order to allow us to see the contradiction that would be lurking here, Archimedes has us look at two things, which we have imagined into the figures above: first, the two thin pyramids of water ABK and BLK; second, an imagined smaller sphere—part of which is shown as XOP–whose center is also K, and which cuts through the water in the bucket and intersects the pyramids in XOP. Then he allows the small spherical slice KXOP to play a role analogous to that of the beam-and-pivot in his previous treatise. He has asked for (postulated) only one thing of us in this treatise—that we assume that a liquid, like water, is such that if its parts lie evenly and are continuous, that part which is pressed the less is thrust out by that which is pressed the more; and each of its parts is pressed by the liquid which is vertically above it, if the liquid is not enclosed in anything and is not pressed by anything else (M&E, p. 25). In the above two figures, the pyramidal slice of water represented by ABK, which is inside the corresponding portion of the sphere (ZBK), is smaller than the slice BLK, which encompasses the corresponding portion of the sphere (BLK), congruent to ZBK. Hence, we can see that the part above OP is being pressed more by the water above it than is the part above XO by the water above it. Therefore, when applied to this situation, the postulate requires that the part XO be thrust out by the part OP, which means that the water has to be in motion—a contradiction of the given motionlessness of the water. Therefore, the supposition that the surface of the water in the bucket did not coincide with the surface of a sphere is necessarily false. QED 22 �Archimedes goes on to show how imagining an object and a bucket as placed within and near the surface of an earth-size ball of water could lead to other discoveries. In the next proposition he supplies the fourth ingredient in his recipe for looking, namely, a shape imagined as being mentally outlined within one of the two pyramids in the liquid and as equal and similar to the shape of (the immersed part of) a given object. Say, we look at a heavy piece of wood—which happens to be exactly as heavy as the same volume of water—being slowly lowered into the bucket, until it remains at rest exactly where it happens to be when released. Suppose that this remaining-at-rest happened before the wood had been completely immersed in the water, as depicted in Figure 17, and that at the instant when the lowering stopped all motion ceased in the bucket. Now imagine looking at this piece of wood through a transparency of an earth-sized globe of water, positioned so as to intersect with a plane through the center of the earth in the blue hemi-sphere KALBCMRYND and having “the form of a sphere which has the same center as the earth” (Prop. 2, enunciation). In what follows what is pictured is always the intersection with that same plane Figure 17 23 �through the center of the earth. The brown figures BEZC and BHTC represent, respectively, the parts of the wood above and below the surface of the water. Then imagine over the transparency of the globe of water another transparency with two adjacent pyramids, “equal and similar to” and “continuous with” each other and each “having for its base a parallelogram [lying] on the surface of the liquid, and its vertex the center of the earth” (Prop. 3, proof). The left pyramid, KXLBCMO, is shown containing the submerged part, BCTH, of the wood. In the right pyramid, KOMRYNP, we imagine a third transparency, showing “a magnitude [RYSG] … cut [out] from the liquid, equal and similar to the [submerged] part of the” wood, outlined in pink and in the same relative position, in relation to the right pyramid, as is the submerged part of the wood, in relation to the left pyramid. Finally, we imagine, over the other three transparencies, a fourth one (outlined in green in Figure 17) containing the surface, XOP, of a portion of a smaller sphere cutting through the bucket, below both the wood and the cutout, and also centered at the center K of the earth. Having superimposed such a detailed set of transparencies, we look at the one having the two pyramids. It is clear that each would contain two pairs of portions of things pressing-down equally— namely, the submerged wood HBCT and, seen through the third transparency, the congruent cut-out SRYG, respectively; and the remaining pyramidal portions XLBHTCMO and OMRSGYNP pressing equally—on the left and right “parts,” XO and OP, respectively, of the surface of the smaller sphere, shown on the fourth transparency. But it is also clear that the portion of the wood protruding above the water, BEZC, would be pressing on XO without being paired with anything additional pressing on OP. So, we see that OP would be “that part which is pressed the less.” Thus, by the postulate OP would be thrust out by XO, so that there would be motion in the water—a contradiction of the supposition that the water remain motionless. Therefore, the piece of wood could not have come to rest before it was completely immersed in the water. QED 24 �Here Archimedes has employed all the ingredients in his recipe for looking, namely, the four transparencies through which we look at the actual object in the bucket. They show, respectively: a) a spherical earth-sized globe of water, centered at the center of the earth, a small portion of the surface of which coincides with the surface of the water in the bucket, b) two equal and similar, adjacent pyramids of water, cut from the globe, continuous with each other, and having vertices at the center of the earth, in the left of which is the immersed (part of) the object, c) in the right pyramid, a cutout of water equal and similar and similarly placed to the immersed part of the object, and d) a spherical surface, with center also at the center of the earth, and which cuts through the water in the bucket, near its bottom. In contrast to the components of the figures in the first treatise—beam, pivot, and weights—these ingredients are mental additions to the things actually visible in the laboratory and to what a representation of them would show. The objects on the transparencies are neither images-andlikenesses nor indices of the bodies in the lab. As we are looking we add them mentally to any given object-in-bucket situation in the lab that we wish to understand, such as those to which the next few propositions in the treatise might refer—for instance, a piece of wood taped to a piece of metal that stays wherever it is released in the water, some wood floating partly above the surface of the water, or a metal block that comes to rest at the bottom of the bucket. Imagining the first transparency containing the globe of water and imagining the other transparencies laid over it will allow us to see clearly, in various situations in the lab, whether or not, with the specified givens, the left or right “part” would be being pressed more. For all we need do is look at matching pairs of congruent shapes in the left and right pyramids and look for anything else that might be pressing down on either of the two arcs that does not have a match on the other side. This is the second step in cooking with the recipe. We think about what we see through the transparencies, in the bucket of water. We can see in the mind’s eye whether or not there is equal pressing right and left. In the final step we may consult the postulate and see with insight whether or not, based on it, either “part” must be “thrust out.” 25 �When we first looked at the wood and bucket of water, we did not have anything like an earthsized globe of water or pyramids in mind. In the first step Archimedes’ recipe leads us to look at the bucket while imagining the transparencies overlaid onto the actual bucket. So, in using this treatise, in addition to recognizing the wood and bucket of water, we are thinking and imagining all that is in the four transparencies. We might say that one who is following Archimedes’ recipe “sees a thing according to an interpretation,” 30 or, rather, several interpretations, as instructed by Archimedes. Each transparency might be like a textbook illustration, which would always be accompanied by an interpretation. We can imagine each transparency as superimposed over the sight of the bucket. That will enable us to think of the transparency’s figure as being “in” the bucket. We may then view that figure as ingredient in the bucket. Perhaps, also, we might see it in this way. In the second step we think about what we have thought and imagined onto the wood and bucket of water. By viewing the latter through the transparency, we can see in the mind’s eye whether or not there is equal pressing right and left, and if not, we likewise see, in the third step, that the postulate requires there to be motion and that the supposition of motionlessness has been contradicted. Is it the case that familiarity with Archimedes’ recipe for looking is a recipe for essential seeing, that is, for seeing what is essential in certain situations? Does it enable an imagining-and-thinking that, in turn, allows something essential to be seen and a truth to be recollected? As noted near the beginning of the lecture, the experience of recollection is a two-in-one experience, like that of visually recognizing something as a face and simultaneously having a thought of it as Simmias’s face. It is seeing a straight line on the blackboard as an image-and-likeness (εἰκών) of the Straight Itself. When we follow Archimedes’ recipe, our experience seems rather to be a dual one of recognizing the water, the bucket, the objects, and, separately, of imagining-and-thinking. However, it is 26 �a dual one in which the correlation is due entirely to Archimedes’ instructions; we have had no experiences of pyramids of water, cut from the globe, or of cutouts of water from which we could have learned, associatively, to connect them to an object in a bucket of water. As opposed to the “naturally,” or inherently, connected duality of index and indicated, this duality is externally superimposed. 31 We “lay” the figures from the transparencies over the figure of the bucket of water on paper or over our sight of it in the lab. 32 A Friday Night Lecture, delivered at St. John’s College, Annapolis, on February 25th and 26th, 2022; revised, April 17, 2022. This kind of mathematization is independent of the “new mathematics” of Viète’s algebra and Descartes’s analytic geometry. So, no equations are involved. 3 All page references to the manual are to a revised version, entitled MEASUREMENT AND EQUILIBRIUM: Archimedes’ and Pascal’s Ways of Looking at Weight, Water, and Air, edited especially for a Graduate Institute Preceptorial offered in Santa Fe in the summer of 2021. I would like to thank all of the members of my Freshman Laboratory classes in the last several years and, especially, the participants in the Graduate Institute Preceptorial in Santa Fe in the summer of 2021: Isabel Ballan, Bill Blais, Patricia Burk-Travis, Nicolae Federspiel-Otelea, Hugh Himwich, and Susan Olmsted,. 4 In calling 1 a number, we are diverging from the strict sense of “number” as an assemblage of units. 5 The way our table stands (σχέσις; Euclid, Elements, Bk. V, Df. 3) relative to the length of our new smallest unit is nearly the same as the way the number 123 units or 124 units stands relative to one unit. 6 This approach was proposed by the phenomenological philosopher Edmund Husserl in “Die Frage nach dem Ursprung der Geometrie als intentionalhistorisches Problem.” See The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, tr. D. Carr (Northwestern: 1970), trl. modified/Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 353-78/365-86. The quotations in the following two paragraphs are from this work. 7 “From the praxis of perfecting, of freely pressing toward the horizons of conceivable perfecting in the ‘again and again’ [im ‘Immer wieder’], limit-shapes become sketched out, toward which, as invariant and never attainable poles, the particular series of perfectings is progressing” (Husserl, ib., 26/23). 8 Our imagining of this progress and our thinking of this standard leads us to view the standard in the way we may have looked at a chalk line on the blackboard in the Freshman Mathematics Tutorial. We’d have seen it as imaging a line that matches Euclid’s definition of straight line— perfectly sharp, without thickness or waviness or fuzziness. All the shapes referred to by Euclid were ideally sharp in this sense. Whenever we look at a drawing of one of them, what we are invited to think of is characterized by ideal sharpness. (We could perhaps arrive at an “ideal visual acuity” in the same way.) 9 The example is borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (NY: Macmillan, 1953), tr. G. E. M. Anscombe, p. 193. 10 Nevertheless, the manual later (M&E, p. 19) proposes an exercise in which, simultaneously, the cardboard is replaced with a meter stick and an axis through a hole drilled at the 50 cm. mark substitutes for a pin through a potential center of weight of the cardboard. By adding or removing small amounts of clay as needed, the students are able to bring the meter stick into the three different kinds of rest position. In what way, if any, does this exercise deepen our insight into the center of weight or of the possible rest positions? 11 Here and throughout the treatment of Archimedes, the manual’s symbols are changed. 12 “Center of weight” is mentioned in some of the postulates (4, 5, 7) and in several propositions (e.g., 4 and 5) and proofs (e.g., of 6 and 7). 13 The translations of Aristotle generally follow those of Joe Sachs, in Aristotle’ Metaphysics (Green Lion Press, 1999), K.3, 1061a29-b4. See also Sachs’s note on p. xlix. 14 The points A and B represent, of course, the two centers of weight, at which the two bodies A̲ and B̲ are thought of as suspended. 15 Cf. C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (8 Vols.). (1931–58). Ed. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss & Arthur W Burks. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 4.447: “The kind of representamen termed an index. … is a real thing or fact which is a sign of its object by virtue of being connected with it as a matter of fact and by also forcibly intruding upon the mind, quite regardless of its being interpreted as a sign. It may simply serve to identify its object and assure us of its existence and presence. But very often the nature of the factual connexion of the index with its object is such as to excite in consciousness an image of some features of the object, and in that way affords evidence from which positive assurance as to truth of fact may be drawn. A photograph, for example, not only excites an image, has an appearance, but, owing to its optical connexion with the object, is evidence that that appearance corresponds to a reality. … An icon has such being as belongs to past experience. It exists only as an image in the mind. An index has the being of present experience.” 16 Most of these examples, as well as some in the next paragraph, are taken from https://legacy.cs.indiana.edu/~port/teach/103/sign.symbol.short.html. 1 2 27 �17 A special case of learning through experience is getting the hang of seeing photos as photos, and not as mere patterns on paper. This kind of learning through experience is relevant to the image-and-likeness, rather than to the index. 18 Using three different symbols involving the letter “A,” we may say: “Body A̲ , having center of weight at point A, and of weight indicated by rectangle A…” The same rectangle is taken both to represent a body and to indicate the amount of that body’s weight. 19 See Postulates 1-3 and 6 and Propositions 1-4. 20 The manual points out (14, n. 1) that the Greek word for being-in-equilibrium (ἰσορροπεῖν) could also be translated inclining-downwardequally. The manual has already sometimes used “downward tendency” as equivalent to “weight” (M&E, p.9). Perhaps we are to imagine that two bodies, each tending or striving to move downward, are joined by a weightless beam-and-pivot arrangement and are each endeavoring, in a struggle against one another, to incline the beam downward on its side of the pivot, and, in the case of equilibrium, are doing so with equal effectiveness. When one of the two wins the contest, the beam will come to sink, or incline, toward (ῥέπειν ἐπί) the side on which the winner is located. 21 For instance, Prop. 3 claims that “two weights [A̲ and B̲ in the above figure] will be in equilibrium” with each other. Prop. 4 takes A to “be the center of weight of magnitude A̲ ” and proposes that D be “held fixed.” 22 Padoa, A., “Essai d’une théorie algébrique des nombres entiers,” Bibliothèque du Congrès international de philosophie (1900) 3. 23 For example, Posts. 1, 2, and 6; Props. 1, 2, and 3. 24 If, inspired by Archimedes, we look at two weights in the lab, with the question of their being in equilibrium in mind, we can consider them as if they were situated at the ends of an ideal-exact straight-line, imaged by a seesaw on a playground, and ask: About which pivot point on the seesaw will neither side sink down. This Archimedean looking could be called seesaw vision. We, as it were, see an ideal-exact seesaw into the given actual situation—imagining the weights’ centers of weight at its opposite ends and indicating their amounts by the sizes of the respective rectangles. 25 Or: “of both taken together.” See T.L. Heath, The Works of Archimedes (NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1912), p.191; underlining added. 26 If D is “the center of weight of a magnitude [A̲ /B̲] composed” of two magnitudes [A̲ and B̲ ], then the composite magnitude “will be in equilibrium “if D is held fixed”—the manual’s footnote adds: “that is, as a pivot.” When we first arrived at the notion of a center of weight as a point on the piece of cardboard, at the beginning of Ch. II, we stuck a pin horizontally through it and showed that it was then also in a neutral rest position after any rotation about that point. That is, from a point’s being the center of weight of a body, it followed that the body would be in (neutral) equilibrium about that point. Archimedes appears to be in agreement with this suggestion that being a center of weight is the more fundamental notion and that being in equilibrium about a point follows from it. Thus, it makes sense for the manual to have introduced the former before the latter. It is easy to see the truth of the converse of Archimedes’ assumption, namely, that if equal weights are in equilibrium about a point, then that point is the center of weight of the weight composed of the two equal weights. 27 In one paragraph Wittgenstein asks the reader to consider, as an example of “the danger of wanting to make fine distinctions,” the aspects of a triangle”—such as, seeing it “as a triangular hole, as a solid, as a geometrical drawing; as standing on its base, as hanging from its apex; as a mountain, as a wedge, as an arrow or pointer.” In the next paragraph he gives the response of an interlocutor: “‘You can in doing so think now of this, now of that, can view (ansehen) it now as this, now as that, and then you will see it now in this way, now in that way.’” Wittgenstein immediately points out that it would be an error for the interlocutor to think that there is some way to make the this or that more determinate, by spelling out further what you are thinking of or that as which you are viewing it or the way in which you are seeing it: “— In which way? There is as a matter of fact no further determination.” See Wittgenstein, op. cit., translation modified and underlining added, p. 200. 28 “The Greek word is derived from the adjective ὑγρός, which means ‘moist’ or ‘wet’” (M&E, p 25n). 29 In what follows we often speak of three-dimensional shapes, like spheres or pyramids. But, for convenience, all of the labels are of the shapes’ intersections with a plane passing through the sheet of paper, or the computer screen, as the case may be. 30 This example is borrowed from Wittgenstein, op. cit., p. 200, but used in a different sense. 31 In that respect it is like Peirce’s “symbol.” See Peirce, op. cit., quoted above. 32 The above analysis of Archimedes’ second treatise would also apply to Pascal’s Treatise on the Equilibrium of Liquids. Pascal uses one transparency. The figure on it is one or another version of VI, VII, or VIII in Figure 18 below. Figure 18 The box may be imagined to be filled with a weightless liquid (M & E 41: “without counting the weight of the water”). The large weights on the right are each of 100 pounds, resting on a piston, over the right-hand aperture; the small one in VII is 1 pound. The ratios of the right aperture to left aperture are 1 : 100. The heights of the liquids are all the same. The weight of the liquid in the large tube in VIII is 100 pounds; that of the liquid in the narrow tubes in VI and VIII is 1 pound. This Pascal box-and-tubes transparency may be laid over situations like those in IX, X, XI, and XII in Figure 19—representing vessels partially submerged in a river, and containing mercury or copper or cork, in part—in order to see what 28 �Figure 19 must happen. In laying it over, we must mold the narrow tubes of the vessel and of the Pascal-transparency, so that they are exactly superimposed; and, similarly, for the vessel’s wide opening and the Pascal-transparency’s wide tube, and so on, as suggested by Figure 20. Figure 20 = Figure 21 may suggest a way of relating the Pascal transparency to those of Archimedes. Figure 21 29 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 29 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Looking in Freshman Lab II – How Measuring, Weighing, and Counterbalancing Can Inspire Us to See Things in New Ways Description An account of the resource Typescript of two lectures delivered on February 25 and 26, 2022, by Annapolis tutor Robert Druecker as part of the Formal Lecture Series. The lectures are the second in a three-part series on Freshman Lab. Druecker describes his lectures: "This will be the second in a series of lectures for freshman on ways of looking they encounter in Freshman Laboratory. In the second segment of the class, the students are invited, in various ways, to consider the mathematization of nature. They may come to see certain phenomena as μαθήματα, that is, as objects of study leading to acts of insight. While they also investigate these phenomena empirically, our question in the lecture will be whether they can be viewed in ways that lead to insight. The phenomena considered at the beginning— the characteristics of length and heaviness and various sorts of equilibrium—may introduce the students to some new ways of looking. The lecture will highlight those ways. Questions: Are they new in your experience? Are they helpful in learning from your studies in the lab?” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Druecker, Robert Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-02-25 2022-02-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online" Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Physical measurements Physics--Study and teaching Equilibrium Physics--Experiments Archimedes. De corporibus fluitantibus Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519. Trattato della pittura Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7629">Looking in Freshman Lab part I (typescript)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7350">Looking in Freshman Lab part I (video)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7627">Looking in Freshman Lab part II (video)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7630">Looking in Freshman Lab part III (typescript)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7682" title="Looking in Freshman Lab part III (video)">Looking in Freshman Lab part III (video)</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Druecker_Robert_2022-02-25-26 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/959daaa42167cbcea0e0f4e7b04b461e.mp4 dc5cfe9ca062a9f18c99be75b1648b07 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Zoom video conference Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:53:07 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Looking in Freshman Lab II – Measurement and Equilibrium: How Measuring, Weighing, and Counterbalancing Can Inspire Us to Look at Things Differently Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on February 25, 2022, by Annapolis tutor Robert Druecker as part of the Formal Lecture Series. The lecture is the second in a three-part series on Freshman Lab. Druecker describes his lecture: "This will be the second in a series of lectures for freshman on ways of looking they encounter in Freshman Laboratory. In the second segment of the class, the students are invited, in various ways, to consider the mathematization of nature. They may come to see certain phenomena as μαθήματα, that is, as objects of study leading to acts of insight. While they also investigate these phenomena empirically, our question in the lecture will be whether they can be viewed in ways that lead to insight. The phenomena considered at the beginning— the characteristics of length and heaviness and various sorts of equilibrium—may introduce the students to some new ways of looking. The lecture will highlight those ways. Questions: Are they new in your experience? Are they helpful in learning from your studies in the lab?” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Druecker, Robert Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-02-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online" Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Physical measurements Physics--Study and teaching Equilibrium Physics--Experiments Archimedes. De corporibus fluitantibus Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519. Trattato della pittura Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Druecker_Robert_2022-02-25-26access Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7629">Looking in Freshman Lab part I (typescript)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7350">Looking in Freshman Lab part I (video)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7628">Looking in Freshman Lab part II (typescript)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7630">Looking in Freshman Lab part III (typescript)</a> <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7682" title="Looking in Freshman Lab part III (video)">Looking in Freshman Lab part III (video)</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Druecker_Robert_2022-02-25-26access Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bf4e5164d43e8cad5ccd0e9a54a8638a.mp4 a8307b6f6d08799c46b145f38eac8288 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:53:22 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Poet, That’s Just Like You!": Language and the Figure of Echo (Steiner Lecture) Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on February 11, 2022, by Ange Mlinko as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mlinko is the poetry editor of the Nation, an associate professor at the University of Florida, and a Guggenheim fellow. Mlinko describes her lecture: "Poetry is an enormous subject, but it can be distilled into a single figure. This figure is Echo, who manifests in three ways: as a prosodic device at the level of the line and stanza; as a poetic form; and as a nymph from Greek mythology, who may stand in for literature itself. We will look at the many ways in which Echo informs poetry and teaches us to read it.” This lecture is also part of the Steiner Lecture Series, which is made possible by a gift from the Steiner family in memory of Andrew Steiner, an alumnus of the college from 1963. The lecture series was established to bring notable speakers to campus from a variety of disciplines and endeavors, in recognition of Steiner’s intellectual versatility, and for the sake of continued learning. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mlinko, Ange Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-02-11 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library." Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Poetry Echo (Greek mythology) Echo verse Frost, Robert, 1874-1963 Valéry, Paul, 1871-1945 Tyni︠a︡nov, I︠U︡. N. (I︠U︡riĭ Nikolaevich), 1894-1943 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 1844-1889 Barnes, Barnabe, 1569?-1609 Ovid, 43 B.C.-17 A.D. or 18 A.D. Metamorphoses Poussin, Nicolas, 1594?-1665 Webster, John, 1580?-1625? Duchess of Malfi Bishop, Elizabeth, 1911-1979 Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, 1799-1837 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Mlinko_Ange_2022-02-11acccess Alumni Friday night lecture Steiner lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a5db9ffa2b25d85aff19030ef7768984.mp4 5d7f5359c9f3dbb23fd47db4a41fee99 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:52:50 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Aristotle on the Impossibility of Defining Life Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on October 1, 2021, by Christopher Frey as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Dr. Frey is an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Frey describes his lecture: "What unites the millions of biological species that populate our universe and sets them apart from its inanimate remainder? Why should we consider activities as diverse as an amoeba dividing, a saffron crocus blooming, a Bengal tiger stalking its prey, and a human contemplating the heavens to be manifestations of a single thing, namely, life? This is one of the central questions Aristotle confronts in De Anima. He attempts to answer it in a familiar way: he provides a definition of life’s principle—the soul. But he is pessimistic about his purported definition’s adequacy. Life, Aristotle insists, cannot be defined properly. By his own lights, this renders any attempt to define soul, including his own, “foolish.” But what is it about life that makes definition impossible? And if we cannot define life, is there any unity at all to be found in the remarkable variety of ways that organisms pursue their lives?” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Frey, Christopher C. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-10-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Aristotle. De anima. Life Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Frey_Christopher_2021-10-01access Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2745243195d13f2e3564dbd078d26770.pdf eb1ceb1e6b9656bebc6ed954dec8ff8c PDF Text Text Hiding behind Geometry: Analysis and Synthesis in Descartes and Spinoza Lecture to be delivered at St. John’s College-Annapolis October 15, 2021 Joshua Parens Joshua Parens Dean, Braniff Graduate School Professor of Philosophy 1845 Northgate Dr. Irving, TX 75062 �1 Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza are the three early modern philosophers who are most famous for their imitations of features of ancient geometry, that is, Euclid, though none of them seems to follow in Euclid’s spirit. As Descartes writes in the Replies to the Second Objections to his Meditations, Euclidean synthesis, the gold standard against which Aristotle measured all modes of argumentation, is a method of compelling assent rather than a method of discovering the truth. Although I won’t touch on Hobbes in this lecture, I believe that the level of disingenuousness and obscurity surrounding the use of synthesis by all three of these authors is not widely appreciated. For an author so famous for both his pioneering of modern method and his emphasis on clarity and distinctness at least of perception, Descartes is remarkably ambiguous about what his method is in his most renowned statement on it, the Discourse on Method. The Discourse introduces his Essays, and one can gather a great deal more about what he means by analysis and synthesis from those Essays on Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology, especially the one on geometry, than from the Discourse on Method. Despite the greater clarity about the method evident in its application in the Essays, Descartes carried over some of his obscurity in the introductory Discourse to his Essays. Apparently, he was compelled to do so. In the final part of the Discourse, part 6, he explains how and why he decided not to publish his more comprehensive The World. (In comparison to the World, the Essays are piecemeal, avoiding anything like a clear portrait of . . . the world.) Descartes explains in part 6 of the Discourse that he wanted to avoid the fate of Galileo. Contrary to the impression modern scholarship brings to this inquiry, little becomes immediately apparent from a casual reading of the Discourse. Even if quite a bit is revealed by looking into the Essays, they are a mix of the mathematical and the physical. Consequently, they are or should be at least problematic for understanding what Descartes holds about method as it relates to his Meditations on First Philosophy or metaphysics. And Descartes gives hints that metaphysics is unlike math and physics in its methodological requirements even if he does not take this claim nearly as far as, say, Aristotle. �2 (In this lecture, I will refer frequently to Descartes’s Replies to the Second Objections to his Meditations, which is a sort of tail following the Meditations that makes of the Meditations a much more medieval looking work than it would otherwise have seemed to be because it turns it into something of a disputation, and disputed questions were common among medieval Christian authors.) In the Replies to the Second Objections, Descartes explicitly repudiates synthesis as a metaphysical method because it presupposes a ready grasp of the “primary notions.” In contrast, in Spinoza’s Ethics, which despite its title, begins as a work of metaphysics, he proceeds at least in part 1 synthetically—indeed, he doesn’t turn to use analysis until he reaches the so-called “Physical Digression” following proposition 13 of part 2. Despite the elaborateness of the Ethics, Spinoza nowhere provides a methodological work comparable to Descartes’s Discourse. That is, Spinoza nowhere gives a direct account of why he chose to use synthesis, despite Descartes’s apparent repudiation of it for metaphysics. A. Meyer’s Preface to Spinoza’s Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy” The closest Spinoza gets to giving such an account is highly indirect. In one of the two works published during his lifetime, his Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy,”1 Spinoza re-presents at least some of Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy, a relatively comprehensive textbook or handbook, in synthetic fashion. (Descartes seems to have written the Principles with an eye to displacing the Scholastic textbooks still widely studied in universities. This may also help explain why he gave such a medieval cast to the Meditations and its objections and replies.) Spinoza delegated to Ludwig Meyer the task of writing the Preface to his Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy.” As Meyer explains in that 1 The other published work, his Theologico-Political Treatise, was published anonymously. �3 Preface, he requested that Spinoza re-present the Principles synthetically. And Meyer even quotes Descartes in the Replies to the Second Objections, explaining both the Euclidean features of synthesis and especially that it is suited to garnering assent “no matter how stubborn and contrary” the listener might be, thereby nearly paraphrasing Descartes’s assessment of synthesis both in the Discourse and the Replies to the Second Objections. This has struck Spinoza scholars as strange on a number of accounts. Edwin Curley has claimed that it is odd that Spinoza would present the Principles in this way, given that in the Conversation with Burman Descartes is supposed to have asserted that the Principles is already in synthetic form.2 Indeed, Curley goes on to wonder, but “this would imply that Spinoza misunderstood Descartes’ distinction between analysis and synthesis.” That is, surely Spinoza would not go to the trouble of presenting in synthetic form a work already in synthetic form, unless he were confused about the differences between analysis and synthesis. It’s worth noting at least in passing that not all scholars agree that the Principles is in fact synthetic, despite the claims of the Conversation with Burman, a conversation of which some scholars question the value.3 So it is at least possible that both Curley and Burman didn’t understand the distinction, or, what I will try to show eventually, that Descartes was intentionally confusing about when, if ever, he was using synthetic method. An additional thought must occur to any thoughtful reader of Meyer’s Preface, leaving aside the confusion surrounding method in Spinoza’s Descartes’s “Principles,” it’s important to question Curley’s leap to the conclusion that Spinoza didn’t understand the difference between analysis and synthesis as conceived by Descartes. After all, it was Meyer who requested that the Principles be put into synthetic form, which would seem then to raise questions about his understanding of analysis and synthesis. Yet it was Meyer who reviewed key differences between analysis and synthesis in the Preface to Spinoza’s 2 Edwin Curley, ed. The Collected Writings of Spinoza, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 224n1. Daniel Garber and Lesley Cohen, “A Point of Order: Analysis, Synthesis, and Descartes’s Principles,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 64 (1982): 136-47, esp. 138. 3 �4 Descartes’s “Principles”! Could Meyer really be confused about the difference between analysis and synthesis, despite highlighting at least some of their differences? Now, some scholars have insisted that even though Spinoza read and approved Meyer’s Preface, making alterations regarding other features of the Preface, Spinoza must have been confused about the difference between analysis and synthesis, since he signed off on the inclusion of Meyer’s comments about it in the preface to the only work he published in his own name during his lifetime. I suspect an underlying reason Curley assumes that Spinoza was confused about these differences is that to agree that synthesis is intended to compel assent is to agree not only that what he is writing in Descartes’s “Principles” but also and more importantly Spinoza’s use of synthesis in the Ethics has this same purpose. As Richard Kennington notes, it makes sense that Spinoza would have published his Descartes’s “Principles” in synthetic form because it compels the assent of the reader—and Spinoza himself does not agree with much that Descartes argued in the Principles.4 It would hardly then make sense for Spinoza to use a method of discovery such as analysis to present Descartes’s Principles. It is almost as if Spinoza were demonstrating in writing Descartes’s “Principles” what one can achieve in the way of persuading others of things whose truth one does not oneself really believe, but more specifically by means of the use of synthetic form. Of course, this leaves one wondering why Spinoza would have used synthesis in his own Ethics, assuming, as I believe we must, that he was well aware that synthesis is a method of compelling assent! At this point, one might hope to turn to Descartes for some clarification of the distinction between analysis and synthesis. And it would be my preference as a lecturer to be able to clarify the distinction; however, as I already implied in my opening remarks, careful attention to the relevant texts yields little clarity. Let us begin, though, at least, with what can be determined with some clarity, before proceeding further into the bowels of obscurity. What is clear cannot be stated without reference 4 Richard Kennington, On Modern Origins (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 215-16. �5 beyond Descartes to Bacon. I apologize for adding to complexity here by bringing in yet another author; however, reference to Bacon will make it easier to state what is clear regarding analysis and synthesis. B. The Baconian and Cartesian Attack on the Syllogism and Descartes’s Pivot to Analysis in the Rules and Essays Descartes does prefer analysis to synthesis as a means of discovery, at least in some sciences. In doing so, he is following out an attack on the syllogism first set forth by Bacon in his Great Instauration and New Organon.5 Without referring by name to Bacon, in his relatively early Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Descartes agrees with Bacon that the problem with the primary unit of synthesis, the syllogism, is that everything rests on the discovery of the middle term, that is, on the definable forms or natures of things (Rule 13).6 In so rejecting forms, Bacon set us on the path away from them toward modern laws of nature.7 Descartes’s elaboration of analysis in the Essays is key to the emergence of said laws. And it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that he seals the fate of forms in his Meditations, when, as Richard Kennington has shown, in the opening two Meditations Descartes employs doubt to wipe away not only forms and natures but also the premodern reliance on opinion as a dependable starting point of inquiry.8 In turning away from forms or natures, Descartes is turning toward quantifiable relations in lieu of said forms. That this is Descartes’s intent is evident as early as Rule 6 and confirmed in the Essays. The turn toward quantifiable relations depends on the use of the sort of analysis on display in the Geometry. In lieu of the middle term, Descartes seems to place the unit—a unit which, though absolute in one series, may well be relative in another (Rule 6). With the unit in hand, and two known quantities, one 5 Bacon, New Atlantis and Great Instauration, Jerry Weinberger ed., (Croft Classics, 1980, 1989), 21-3; The New Organon, Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne, eds., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), aphor. 1319, pp. 35-36. 6 If necessary, insert here the classic example of the syllogism highlighting the role of the middle term: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. 7 Kennington, Modern Origins, 39-41. 8 Cf. Kennington, Modern Origins, 195 with 171, 176. �6 can of course discover a fourth unknown quantity, which we signify with some letter such as x, as Descartes already adumbrates in the Rules (Rules 13 and 14) and displays in the opening of the Geometry. Analysis due to its focus on quantification and relation is especially suitable to both mathematics and modern (that is, mathematical) physics. Of course, Aristotle, despite his recognition that the logical form of synthesis on the model of geometry is the gold standard of demonstrative argument, did not attempt to study natural beings in physics using number. Aristotle’s refusal of this integration of math into physics flows from his focus instead on natures or forms. With this broad background on the modern attack on the syllogism (that is, synthesis), the pivot to analysis, and the importation of number into math and physics, let us turn more directly to analysis. Is analysis applicable in any setting other than those that lend themselves to quantification—above all, is it suitable for metaphysics? Ultimately, I believe the answer to that question will be “no,” despite things Descartes says to the contrary. What then are we to make of the arguments regarding analysis, as a method of discovery, and synthesis, as a method of compelling assent? Here, I believe the parallels between Descartes and Bacon are very useful. Much as Bacon boosted “induction,” so Descartes boosted “analysis.” I must set aside the complicated task of attempting to explicate the meaning of “induction” in Bacon. It suffices for us that induction and analysis are both presented as the replacements or supplanters of syllogistic synthesis or, as it is often called, deduction. Yet the works in which the arguments are made against the syllogism and for induction or analysis employ if not demonstrative forms of synthesis like Euclid, then at least dialectical and rhetorical cousins of synthesis. Such forms of dialectic and rhetoric for promoting new methods are not limited to such promotion. Rather, I hope to show that Descartes may well use a mixture of synthesis (or old-fashioned demonstration), dialectic, and rhetoric in a work like the Meditations while passing it off as analytic—at least in part to promote the new method in the context of math and physics. To begin to show this, I �7 must wade once again into the waters of unclarity, that is, Descartes’s various accounts of analysis and synthesis. C. Descartes’s writings on analysis and synthesis: Discourse on Method, Synopsis of the Second Meditation, Second Objections to the Meditations, Replies to the Second Objections Very briefly, in the Discourse on Method, part two, Descartes renews the attack on the syllogism of the Rules as of little use “for learning [rather] than for explaining to others the things one already knows or even . . . for speaking without judgement about matters of which one is ignorant.”9 Then he touches on the virtues of the analysis of the ancients—which he had celebrated in Rule 4, as a secret method which they kept hidden behind a synthetic surface (AT 10: 372-4). And he touches on the virtues of modern algebra, while acknowledging some drawbacks even of analysis and algebra, only to conclude that he seeks “some other method comprising the advantages of these three subjects [syllogism or synthesis, analysis, and algebra] but free from their defects.” This extremely hazy declaration is then followed by his pronouncement of his famous four rules, which are so general as to find loud echoes back in the Rules. For our purposes, none of these rules clears up the sense that having previously championed analysis, he will now champion a hazier mixture of elements drawn from analysis, synthesis, and algebra. As I’ve already indicated and many of you have already seen, the Geometry, which follows the Discourse in the Essays, is quite clearly a mixture of analysis and algebra, excluding at least for the most part synthesis. What role synthesis might any longer be afforded is not obvious from the Essays, except the obvious derivative role that dialectic and rhetoric play in the promotional arguments for the method in the Discourse. When we turn to the Meditations, we begin a journey into greater lack of clarity. Unlike the Scholastics who used distinctions to increase precision, eventually we will see Descartes introduce 9 Here I quote from the standard Cambridge University Press edition by Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch (hereafter, CSM; Cambridge UP, 1985), vol. 1. �8 further distinctions into the contrast between analysis and synthesis in a way that only seems to increase confusion. Very briefly, I will touch on the three discussions of method in the Synopsis of the Second Meditation, the Second Objections, and the Replies to the Second Objections. In the Synopsis of the Second Meditation, Descartes states, “the only order (ordinem) which I could follow was that normally employed by geometers, namely to set out all the premises on which a desired proposition depends, before drawing any conclusions about it” (AT 7: 12-13; CSM 12). This reference to the “order [of the] geometers” appears to be a reference to synthesis, since analysis does not begin with the setting out of premises—though it may be intended to cover both synthesis and analysis, as we will see. When we turn to the Second Objections, written or at least gathered by Mersenne (more on Mersenne later), we see that at least in the estimation of Mersenne or those whose comments he gathered, what Descartes has written in the Meditations has fallen well short of geometrical order. The Second Objections conclude, “it would be worthwhile if you set out the entire argument in geometrical fashion (more geometrico), starting from a number of definitions, postulates and axioms. You are highly experienced in employing this method, and it would enable you to fill the mind of each reader so that he could see everything as it were at a single glance, and be permeated with awareness of the divine power” (AT 7: 128; CSM 92). Here, Mersenne seems to be describing the experience that readers of Euclid have, together with a dash of pious genuflection. In Euclid’s Elements, as a work of geometry at least, synthesis has less the feel of a method of compelling assent, as Descartes and Meyer characterize it, than a method of making insights intuitively obvious. Perhaps that is because the “primary notions” in geometry can be immediately grasped, unlike physics, not to mention metaphysics. When it comes time for Descartes to make good on Mersenne’s request, in his Replies to the Second Objections, he refers to the “geometrical manner of writing (modo scribendi geometrico), �9 namely, the order (ordinem), and the method (or form or manner) of demonstration (rationem demonstrandi)” (AT 7: 155; CSM 110). In other words, he takes what Mersenne identified as one method, alluding clearly to synthesis, and he treats it as a genus of a geometrical way of writing which can be divided into an ordo and a ratio, that is, an order and a form or manner of writing or arguing.10 Descartes then appears to attempt to explain what the geometrical order is. It is a matter of making sure that one has “put forward first [what] must be known entirely without the aid of what comes later.” That synthesis always does this is obvious. (Here, Descartes seems at least to be starting out with “order” as he had used it in the Synopsis.) Whether analysis follows such order is less clear. After all, as a method of discovery, it does not start by defining principles, and it is characterized more by searching for a something which one does not yet know. It has about it an air of conjecture or hypothesis that we are familiar with from the modern sciences that would eventually derive in one way or another from Cartesian analysis. However, even in traditions that privilege synthesis, as did most of premodern Western philosophy, there are important exceptions to this order (that is, putting forward first what must be known entirely without the aid of what comes later), at least outside of mathematics. The most obvious example of an exception is what Descartes will seem to allude to only when he pivots to geometric form (ratio) rather than order (ordo). I refer to the very prominent role played by what was for centuries of the Latin tradition referred to as a posteriori argumentation, that is, arguing from effects back to causes. Such argumentation prevents one from employing synthesis strictly speaking. At least for Aristotle, though synthesis or apodictic demonstration was the gold standard, in works like the Physics and the Metaphysics, he is rarely in a position to inquire using synthesis in its pure form as inquiry from causes to their effects. Instead, he employs dialectic, starting with an interrogation of 10 Cottingham’s choice of “method” to translate “ratio” is not helpful. “Form” is the suggestion of Kennington (Modern Origins, 206) and “manner” is that of Curley (“Analysis in the Meditations: The Quest for Clear and Distinct Ideas,” Essays on Descartes’ “Meditations,” Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, ed. [University of California Press, 1986], 153-76, esp. 153. �10 received opinions and then turning to the effects which are first for us—rather than attempting to start with the causes, as one is able to do in mathematics. Here we’re reminded, on the one hand, of why geometrical order cannot but seem to be a reference to synthesis rather than analysis, despite Descartes’s Geometry. On the other hand, when Descartes pledges allegiance to geometrical order in the Synopsis of the Second Meditation, most readers familiar with his oeuvres would tend to assume that he has in mind the geometrical order of his analytic work, the Geometry. Already, synthesis appears to presuppose too much foreknowledge of the primary notions for it to be applicable to metaphysics, and analysis seems to presuppose a focus on quantification and relations unsuited to metaphysics. When Descartes first declared his intention to follow ‘geometrical order’ in the Synopsis, we thought we knew what he meant. But by now it has become obvious that at the time we did not (and still likely do not) know what he meant. Having discussed ordo quite briefly in the Replies, Descartes then turns to the form (ratio) of demonstration (Demonstrandi autem ratio) and immediately subdivides it into analysis and synthesis. (It is worth noting that, when discussing geometrical “order,” since he did not make direct reference to analysis or synthesis, Descartes led us to believe that both should equally “put forward first what must be known entirely without the aid of what comes later.”) Descartes’s treatment of the “form” of demonstration is so vague and opaque that I will quote it at length and then attempt to make sense of it, noting in advance that the translator I quote, namely, John Cottingham, translator of what appears in the standard Cambridge UP edition, has two lengthy notes indicating that he too is far less than certain about what Descartes means: Analysis shows the true way by means of which the thing in question was discovered methodically [methodice] and as it were a priori [it is here that JC inserts his first long note, after the following comma], so that if the reader is willing to follow it and give sufficient attention to all points, he will make the things his own and understand it just as perfectly as if he had discovered it for himself. But this method contains nothing to compel belief [credendum impellat] in an argumentative or inattentive reader; for if he fails to attend even to the smallest point, he will not see the necessity of the conclusion. Moreover there are many truths which— �11 although it is vital to be aware of them—this method often scarcely mentions, since they are transparently clear to anyone who gives them his attention. Synthesis, by contrast, employs a directly opposite method [viam oppositem] where the search is, as it were, a posteriori (though the proof itself is often more a priori than in the analytic method) [and it is here that JC inserts his second long note, after the following period]. It [that is, synthesis] demonstrates the conclusions clearly and employs a long series of definitions, postulates, axioms, theorems and problems, so that if anyone denies one of the conclusions it can be shown at once that it is contained in what has gone before, and hence the reader, however argumentative or stubborn he may be, is compelled to give his assent [assensionem extorqueat]. However, this method is not as satisfying as the method of analysis [both uses of the term “method” here are interpolated from viam above into, sed non ut altera satisfacit], nor does it engage the minds of those who are eager to learn, since it does not show how the thing in question was discovered. (AT 7:155-56; CSM 110-11) There is more to quote here but let us attend for now to the surprisingly unclear picture Descartes here paints. Cottingham points us immediately to the troubling passages. The only technical terms used in this passage, aside from analysis and synthesis, are a priori and a posteriori. Characterizing analysis as a priori first, Descartes goes on to give an utterly vacuous explication of what he has in mind: “if the reader is willing to follow it and give sufficient attention to all points, he will make the things his own and understand it just as perfectly as if he had discovered it for himself.” The only thing that makes this smack of analysis rather than synthesis is the reference to “discovery.” But what is meant by “discovery” is not explained. Perhaps Descartes expects us to go back and rummage through the posthumously published Rules to understand what he means. But even were we to do that, it would not give us any purchase on what Descartes means in characterizing analysis as “a priori.” Regarding this opaque use of a priori, Cottingham acknowledges that Descartes’s use of it “corresponds neither with the post-Leibnizian sense” familiar to many from Kant (as that which is prior to experience in reality or to use an anachronistic term “ontologically” if not temporally) “nor with the medieval, Thomist sense,” which I already adumbrated as proceeding from cause to effect or from principles to conclusions. Cottingham speculates in a footnote to his translation, “What Descartes may mean [in referring to analysis as a priori]. . . is that it starts from what is epistemically prior, i.e. from what is prior in the ‘order of discovery’ followed by the meditator” (CSM 110n2). If this were the case, then starting from �12 the cogito would seem to be what Descartes has in mind to characterize analysis in the Meditations: the cogito is first in the order of discovery. Yet this merely leads to other questions. What relation if any is there between the clear picture we gain of analysis from the Geometry and the process in the Meditations? In the Meditations, what is the x that we seek to discover? What are the two known things, and what is the unit? One thing is certain: God cannot be the unit, since what serves as the unit may be absolute in one series while being relative in another. A quick reconsideration of the differences between the ancient syllogism and modern analysis reveals the following troubling fact: if God is central in the Meditations, one of the key effects of modern analysis through its displacement of forms and natures is to eliminate the anchoring of inquiry in the search for a first cause. Like Bacon before him, the method of analysis, at least as it is practiced in the Essays points away from the search for a first cause. Analysis like induction is about laws of nature in the modern sense, which describe quantifiable relations among quantifiable things, no longer about the search for a first cause. Leaving these bigger questions aside, there are more immediate questions: Even if the turn to the cogito, as the turn to what is epistemically first, seems analytic, can any of the rest that follows in the Meditations be described as a priori in this sense of epistemically prior? Is the turn toward God to undergird the cogito a discovery? And when Descartes then pivots fully to his proofs of God are they analytic? As has been shown by many scholars, despite the great novelty of many of Descartes’s claims about the idea of God, especially God’s infinitude, and its role in proving God’s existence, the order (or is it the form?!) of those three proofs of God’s existence is either a priori or a posteriori depending on which one is referring to, according to the parlance of premodern thought against which Descartes was working.11 Indeed, elements of his proofs are quite old, as he already hinted was likely to be the case back in the Meditations’ Epistle Dedicatory to the Sorbonne (AT 7:3-4; CSM 4). Finally, it’s worth noting 11 See Edwin M. Curley, Descartes against the Skeptics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 125-6, 135-6, 141-2. �13 that this talk about what is epistemically prior brings to mind the Aristotelian distinction between what is first for us and what is first by nature. But that Aristotelian distinction at least presupposes the usefulness of recourse to generally accepted opinion. Descartes has clearly repudiated any such appeal to opinion in Meditations 1 and 2, before turning in Meditations 3 and 5 to the proofs of God’s existence. The real meaning of Cottingham’s “epistemically prior” then proves to be more than a bit challenging. By the end of this first quoted paragraph, we’re far from confident about Cottingham’s attempt to make sense of what Descartes means by characterizing analysis as a priori. This unhelpful initial paragraph is then followed by the tortuous twists and turns of the next one. Much that Descartes says here about synthesis, its use of definitions, axioms, etc., squares with what we know of synthesis based on our experience with Euclid. But the opening sentence that synthesis “employs a directly opposite method [viam oppositem] where the search [quaesitam] is, as it were, a posteriori (though the proof [probatio] itself is often more a priori than in the analytic method)” leaves us tied in knots. Is the distinction between “search” and “proof” yet another distinction from that between order and form, between analysis and synthesis, and between a priori and a posteriori? What contrast does Descartes intend in claiming that though the “search [quaesitam]” is a posteriori, the “proof [probatio]” is often more a priori? If only “search,” especially, and “proof,” to a lesser extent, had clearer, more technical meanings, what Descartes had in mind might be somewhat more evident. Once again, Cottingham offers gingerly a suggestion about what Descartes “may mean” in suggesting that synthesis is more a posteriori in its “search,” namely, that synthesis starts from premises “which are epistemically posterior . . . in the order of discovery” (CSM 111n1). It almost goes without saying that the sense in which synthetic proofs are more a priori fits with the premodern or Thomist sense that Descartes’s readers would have been familiar with. If Descartes were really offering a new view of the a priori/a posteriori distinction as Cottingham suggests, one might have thought that Descartes as the thinker who emphasizes clarity and distinctness of perception and places a premium on the novelty of �14 his method would have insisted on being clearer about his method, unless he made a conscious decision to be opaque. I believe that the level of opacity of Descartes’s prose here suggests that he is indeed consciously choosing to be opaque. In the following paragraphs, Descartes affirms more clearly than he ever does in the Meditations on First Philosophy themselves that the method (via) he employed there is analysis. He justifies that claim by asserting that though synthesis is well suited to geometry because its primary notions “accord with the use of our senses,” it is not suited to metaphysics—a claim I’ve already alluded to before. Yet he hesitates in making this claim. He writes, In metaphysics . . . there is nothing that causes so much effort as making our perception of the primary notions clear and distinct. Admittedly, they are by their nature as evident as, or even more evident than, the primary notions which the geometers study; but they conflict with many preconceived opinions derived from the senses which we have gotten into the habit of holding from our earliest years, and so only those who really concentrate and meditate and withdraw their minds from corporeal things, so far as is possible, will achieve perfect knowledge of them. (AT 7:157; CSM 111) Note here the tension between what Descartes argues about the ‘clarity’ of the primary notions as opposed to how “evident” they are. Wherein lies the implied distinction between “making clear and distinct” and “being evident”? Leaving yet one more unclear dichotomy to the side, one of the most obvious differences between the Meditations and nearly every other work of metaphysics ever written, with the possible exception of Thomas Aquinas’s De ente et essentia, is its length. I can think of no other work that has had so much effect but rested on so little argumentation. (Here, it’s worth considering Heidegger’s denial that Descartes was seriously innovative in his metaphysics, arguing instead that he was quite derivative from his medieval predecessors.) This fact of the Meditations brevity is directly connected to what I consider to be one of its most important novel features, namely, Descartes’s reliance on the clarity and distinctness of our perception of the idea of God to prove that God exists. This move enables �15 Descartes to vault himself over the tasks of explaining what he means by substance and being12—thus Heidegger’s complaints—not to mention really proving God’s existence, which in many works of metaphysics take place only after hundreds of preceding pages of argument such as in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. (It’s worth noting here that the brevity of Thomas’s De ente derives from the fact that it adds very important and novel distinctions to Aristotle’s, but it does not wholly reconceive philosophy, as does Descartes, even if only implicitly in the Meditations.) Though the Meditations achieves a radical transformation in a short span, Descartes also never really attempts to prove the clarity and distinctness of our idea of God. It is merely assumed. All this leaves one doubting how serious Descartes is being when he acknowledges in the Replies to the Second Objections that it is the difficulty of grasping the primary notions of metaphysics that precludes the use of synthesis. It is at this point that we cannot but start to wonder whether Descartes is sincere in claiming that the Meditations are analytic. Could it be that he claims this to lend rhetorical support to the use of analysis in math and physics? One thing seems likely: we should not take Descartes’s word for it that the Meditations is truly analytic. Even back in the Discourse on Method we were led to believe that his method would be some sort of hodgepodge of analysis, synthesis, and algebra. Could it be that Descartes must insist that the Meditations is analytic especially in the face of a demand like Mersenne’s in the Second Objections that Descartes produce a synthetic version of the arguments of the Meditations? Might not Mersenne’s request for a synthetic version of the Meditations boost the air of discovery about that work—thus further encouraging generation after generation of metaphysicians to dispute about the depths of the Meditations? An odd structural similarity exists between the situations of Descartes and Spinoza, which I believe undercuts the widely held view that Descartes knew what he was about regarding analysis and 12 See Kennington, Modern Origins, 165. �16 synthesis, while Spinoza was confused. Descartes was asked by his unique booster and ally Mersenne to present the Meditations in synthetic form—a work that may well already have synthetic features, despite Descartes’s own assertions against synthesis in the Reply to the Second Objections. Spinoza was similarly asked by his unique booster and ally Meyer to present Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy in synthetic form—a work that at least according to the Conversation with Burman was already synthetic. Both Descartes and Spinoza had many admirers and correspondents, but both also had only one correspondent who was much more than that. Each of these correspondents, Mersenne and Meyer, was on relatively intimate terms with his respective philosopher, and each was far more than a dabbler in philosophy, even if far from the rank of the philosopher he assists. The significance I attach to these parallelisms is that it seems extremely unlikely that both of these followers made these requests to their respective geniuses wholly unprompted. (Indeed, Meyer’s Preface almost makes it sound as if he had asked Spinoza to render Descartes’s Principles synthetically. Yet he also implies that Spinoza had already done so on his own initiative!)13 One thing is certain: these requests provided an opportunity to make more confusing rather than clearer what the true methodological statuses are of the Meditations, the Principles, and the approach of both thinkers to metaphysics. But why? That is, what purpose could all this obscurity serve? Why pass off the Meditations as more of a work of discovery or analysis than it really is? And what should we make of the fact that the Ethics, especially part 1, is primarily synthetic and primarily intended to compel assent? In the case of the Meditations, I believe that Descartes wants the majority of his audience to believe that they’re engaged in discovery not only to bolster the status of discovery practiced elsewhere by Descartes—that is, I believe that he intends the Meditations as something of a defense of philosophy, as it is practiced in his physical inquiries—but also to bolster the status of the Meditations, as if it were a radically new form 13 See Curley, Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 1, p. 227. And cf. Kennington, Modern Origins, 215, �17 of philosophy worthy of unprecedented attention. For those intrepid enough to see past the insinuations of discovery, the most thoughtful reader is challenged to read the Meditations with extreme care and attention to its use of synthesis, dialectic, and rhetoric. In the case of the Ethics, I believe that Spinoza wants the majority of his audience to adopt new views about God or Nature before they realize they’ve adopted them. He uses synthesis to compel assent to a new conception of God by reconceiving definitions of key terms such as substance, attribute, and mode. The typical reader on Spinoza’s time who picks up the Ethics brings certain primarily medieval preconceptions about what is God and the meaning of these key concepts. Spinoza relies on these preconceptions as his point of departure. These are the “primary notions” that his audience brings without clarity and as baggage. Spinoza uses synthesis to compel assent to a new understanding of the primary notions—in effect “deconstructing” (please forgive my use of this overused word) their understanding of these key concepts. At least in the case of Spinoza, if one wanted to approach his philosophy in a more hospitable way, one might want to consider studying his Theologico-Political Treatise first or rather than the Ethics, because the TPT sets forth the aims even of the Ethics far more directly: namely, to displace the authority of both the Bible and the prevailing revealed theologies and to establish the right to inquire freely. Even though the TPT is not a purely analytic writing, by steering clear of insincere imitation of Euclid, Spinoza gives the novice a better chance of understanding his ultimate aims. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. 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Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 18 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hiding behind Geometry: Analysis and Synthesis in Descartes and Spinoza Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on October 15, 2021, by Joshua Parens as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Dr. Parens is the Dean of Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts, the Director of the Institute of Philosophic Studies, the Philosophy Graduate Director, and Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the University of Dallas. Dr. Parens describes his lecture: "Spinoza published only two works in his lifetime: his Theologico-Political Treatise anonymously and his synthetic presentation of Descartes's Principles of Philosophy, called Descartes's "Principles of Philosophy," the sole writing to which Spinoza attached his name. Despite knowing that Descartes claimed philosophy, especially metaphysics, should be presented only analytically, Spinoza presented most of his Ethics (published posthumously) especially its metaphysical parts in synthetic form. This lecture will explore the many, at times conflicting, things Descartes wrote about analysis and synthesis, consider what he means by them, and attempt to determine what motivated Spinoza to present the Ethics as he did." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Parens, Joshua, 1961- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-10-15 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make a typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677. Ethica. Descartes, René, 1596-1650. Principia philosophiae. Analysis (Philosophy) Metaphysics Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677. Tractatus theologico-politicus. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Parens_Joshua_2021-10-15_Typescript Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ff57fa84fe678410fe660cc19fa0bedd.mp4 259b96598b6c421095a234b581a26987 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:50:36 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "We the Heroes" or "We the People?" Leadership in the Homeric Epic Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on September 24, 2021, by Johannes Haubold as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Dr. Haubold is a Professor of Classics at Princeton University. Dr. Haubold describes his lecture: "This lecture investigates some fundamental problems of leadership as they emerge from the Homeric epics. It asks what happens when heroic leaders (Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, Odysseus) ignore the needs of their people and end up failing them, despite their duty of care (a scenario expressed by recurring formulas in which leaders, as ‘shepherds of the people’, repeatedly and catastrophically ‘destroy the people’). The paper moreover asks whether ancient audiences in specific settings, most importantly the ancient Athenian festival of the Panathenaea, identified with epic leaders or their people.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Haubold, Johannes Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-09-24 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Leadership in literature Homer--Characters--Odysseus. Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism. Panathenaia Homer--Characters--Achilles Homer--Characters--Agamemnon Homer--Characters--Hector Homer--Iliad Homer--Odyssey Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Haubold_Johannes_2021-09-24acccess Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/4c6bdbe592b16f7f2044e7aec55a08a7.mp4 35a7c0e45bb838a453f453b4f91a890a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:50:01 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Female Drama Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on November 5, 2021, by Charlotte Thomas as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Dr. Thomas is Professor of Philosophy from Mercer University in Atlanta and Co-Director of the McDonald Center for America’s Founding Principles. She was named the Executive Director of Association for Core Texts and Courses in 2020. Dr. Thomas describes her lecture: "At the beginning of Book V of the Republic, Adeimantus and Polemarchus interrupt Socrates to say that he has neglected to explain something he had earlier said in passing about the role of women and children in the city in speech. Socrates admits that although the 'male drama' is complete, that he has indeed neglected these matters in the hope that he could avoid them entirely in their conversation. But with fear and trembling, prostrating himself to Adresteia and asking forgiveness for the hubris he fears he is about to display, he agrees to present the 'female drama.' Thus begins the notoriously difficult and controversial middle part of the Republic. One of the things that makes the middle books so difficult is that Socrates leans precipitously into constructing political structures which until this point of the dialogue he has been careful to remind his interlocutors were meant to function as paradigms to help them understand individual justice. But, although Socrates is quieter and more subtle about the teachings of the female drama for moral psychology, he is not silent. In this paper I will attempt to illuminate some of the hints we are given about the implications of the middle books of the Republic (especially Book V) for its teachings on the soul and investigate their place in the Republic as a whole." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thomas, Charlotte C. S. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-11-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Plato. Republic. Book 5. Justice (Philosophy) Sex differences in education Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Harrell, Daniel Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Thomas_Charlotte_2021-11-05 Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7591">Typescript</a> Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/499d77fed3c616f2dab52c7806ee2e61.mp4 add3744da74637264f675b79046187ac Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:01:15 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, and the Democratic Catastrophe of the Color Line Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered by Jared Loggins on April 16, 2021 as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Loggins is an Assistant Professor of Black Studies and Political Science at Amherst University. His research and teaching interests are in black political thought, religious studies, and modern and contemporary democratic theory. He is about to publish his first book, which he co-authored, that “explores a critical theory of racial capitalism in the work of Martin Luther King Jr.” Mr. Loggins describes his lecture: "When W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, at the dawn of the twentieth century, the now famous formulation in The Souls of Black Folk that 'the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,' he was issuing something of a prophecy. Du Bois foresaw catastrophe in a failure to regard the flourishing of African-Americans in the United States as of central concern in the American polity. Souls imagined racial domination as a shared 'democratic' catastrophe, and one that can be understood as taking on world significance in his later work. In seeing the catastrophe of racial domination as shared, Souls established Du Bois as a towering political theorist on the question of what freedom demands on both sides of the color line." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Loggins, Jared A., 1992- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-04-16 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963. Souls of black folk African Americans--Social conditions United States--Race relations Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Loggins_Jared_2021-04-16 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/859fc44a9287028c87b3114dba083ad4.mp4 1489873f26bd6c4824e2ca7aeeabcda8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:45:12 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource On the Originals of Fictive Mental Images Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered by Annapolis tutor Eva Brann on September 3, 2021 as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Ms. Brann describes her lecture: "Most people have 'mental images,' pictures and voices that don't occur through the eyes and ears but behind them. Most of these are memory images whose originals are things seen or heard in the outside world. Some, however, are inner events, imaginary images that are not copies of reality but our own inventions, for example, dreams. We call these 'images' as well. So what are they images of? What are the originals of fictive mental images? And derivatively, what are the originals of artful fictions such as epics, novels, and paintings? Of whom is Homer's Achilles the truthful portrait?" Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-09-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Imagination Joyce, James, 1882-1941. Ulysses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Brann_Eva_2021-09-03 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/9ff9362fe6ee6403769a214f1f36e8d4.pdf 6acfbd1f8f633dea94440ca7f955b914 PDF Text Text The Female Drama 1 A Lecture prepared for St. John’s College Annapolis Friday Night Lecture Series November 5, 2021 As Book V of the Republic opens, Socrates changes the subject from justice to injustice. The once feverish but now purged city was a fine paradigm, and analyzing it yielded a definition of justice suitable to investigate the comparative value of justice and injustice for a human life. So, Socrates says, the next step in their inquiry should be to consider injustice in the four kinds of deficient cities and souls that their inquiry has pointed them toward. After investigating the fourfold nature of injustice in cities and human beings, Socrates’ plan was then to compare the paradigm of justice they found in the proper arrangement of the three parts of the purged city in speech with each paradigm of injustice implied by rearranging those parts into other configurations. After comparing the just soul with each of the four unjust souls, they were to have attempted to determine which paradigm was most conducive to happiness in each case. At the end of the comparisons, they were to have attempted to answer to their original question: whether is it better to live a just or an unjust life. Socrates outlines, reviews, and alludes to this plan often. But, of course, things do not go to plan. Instead of leaving the just city in speech behind at the beginning of Book V, Adeimantus and Polemarchus insist that Socrates return to elaborate on a matter that they accuse him of neglecting: how women and children fit in the city. Glaucon joins with them in arresting (epilambano 2) Socrates and insisting that he continue to describe the constitution of the just city 1 Based on Chapter 4 of The Female Drama: The Philosophical Feminine in the Soul of Plato’s Republic, MUP 2019 2 ἐπιλαμβάνω �2 in speech. 3 Even Thrasymachus, who has been silent since shortly after Socrates made him blush in Book I, adds his voice to the cause. (450a) All four of Socrates’s most impressive interlocutors in the Republic insist that Socrates explain in more detail the role of women and children in the city in speech. Other than the implicit agreement at the beginning of the dialogue that Socrates should stay and talk to them, this is the only time in the dialogue that Glaucon, Adeimantus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus are portrayed as agreeing on something. And it is, without qualification, the only thing about which they explicitly agree. Specifically, Adeimantus, asks to be told more about (1) how arrangements with women and children should be understood as a case of friends sharing everything in common, (2) how procreation will be handled in the city, and (3) how young children will be reared before they begin their formal education (449d). Socrates agrees to work through these questions, but reluctantly. He warns that they will have to start from the beginning (450a), that they will be unleashing a “swarm” (esmos 4) of arguments (450a), that they are asking him to produce arguments about things of which he is uncertain (450e), and that what they are doing is both frightening (phoberos 5) and treacherous (sphaleros 6) (451a). Socrates says that he is afraid that if he is unsuccessful, he will not only fail himself but also do harm to his friends (451a). He bows 3 Many scholars have commented on the repetition at the beginning of Book V of the “arrest” scene in Book I and how it sets Books V-VII apart. For example: Laurence Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 279, 306, and 311–12; Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Republic, 167–9; Jacob Howland, The Republic, 41; Eva Brann, The Music of the Republic, 150; David Roochnik, The Beautiful City, 2-4; Leon Harold Craig, The War Lover, 185; Diskin Clay, Platonic Questions, 247; Leo Strauss, The City and Man, 64, 155; Kurt Hildebrandt, Platon: Logos Und Mythos, 393; Eric Voegelin, Order and History, Volume III, 46–52; and Mark Blitz, Plato’s Political Philosophy, 169. 4 ἑσμός 5 φοβερός 6 σφαλερός �3 to Adresteia, the goddess who punishes hubris. She is also called Nemesis. Socrates asks for forgiveness in advance for what he is about to do (451a). 7 This evening, I would like to begin to work through the arguments of Book V of the Republic and their implications for the further development of the city in speech as a paradigm for an individual soul, specifically the introduction of the First Wave and the account of how to weather it. To begin, we will face the swarm of questions implied and expressed in the rich dramatic opening to this new section of the dialogue. I am centrally interested in the moral psychology of the Republic, so some of my animating questions are: (1) How do the accounts of women and children in the city in speech help us understand the individual soul? (2) What do “birth” (genesis) and “rearing” (trophe), as they are introduced in Book V, mean in the context of an individual soul? And (3) since Socrates offers us a heuristic for this narrative shift, I would also like to inquire into why he names it as he does. That is, what could it mean for an inquiry into the 7 Laurence Lampert describes Socrates prostrating himself to Adrasteia “the most breathtaking image in the whole Republic,” and calls Socrates’ account of it his “most solemn speech in the whole Republic.” Lampert, who casts Socrates in the Republic as a new Odysseus, sets the scene this way: “The solemnity of Socrates’ speech derives from the greatness of its occasion: returned Odysseus, having manipulated them into compelling him to do what he alone compels himself to do, now embarks on the introduction of a great novelty into the stream of Greek wisdom and he cannot know whether introducing the rule of the philosopher will succeed. He stands over an abyss unable to know for certain whether it is possible and, if possible, if it is for the best. He must ask himself: is it a prayer? Fearing that he will bring his genuine friends, the few wise, down with him in this boldest of projects on behalf of wisdom, he in fact offers a prayer, the most solemn of prayers and the only one becoming a philosopher: ‘I will prostrate myself before Adrasteia.” He prays the prayer of a philosopher compelled to act on the grandest scale not knowing whether he can succeed; he submits himself to Nemesis, the necessity that rules all, knowing the rashness of his deed while judging that necessity itself calls it forth.” Laurence Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, 310-311. Whether or not one follows Lampert on the identification of Socrates with Odysseus, the account of Socrates’ fear of the consequences of his impiety and the necessity of taking the risk for the sake of philosophy seem precisely right. �4 moral psychology of the Republic to understand Books II-IV as the “male drama” and to see the section that begins after Socrates pays his fearful respects to Adresteia 8 as the “female drama?” 9 The dramatic introduction to Book V offers several clues about how Socrates intends to proceed and why he is intimidated by the work that lies ahead. First, Socrates says that they will have to begin again. This suggests that women and children are not a new part of the city in speech that can be tacked on to the account. They are some version of something that already exists in the city in speech, or a basic condition that will change the model fundamentally, or something that pervades the model. Exactly what women and children are to the city in speech is not clear yet, and we will have to look carefully at the dialogue to discern their significance, but that they are central or fundamental or pervasive seems to follow from the fact that we have to return to the beginning and retrace our steps in order see where they fit in. 10 8 Jacob Howland notes that the reference to Adresteia may also be an allusion to Aeschylus, Prometheus. Jacob Howland, The Republic: A Philosophical Odyssey (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2004), p. 111. 9 “Female,” is my choice of translation for gynaikeion/γυναικεῖον mainly because “the Female Drama” is the conventional translation of what Socrates calls the episode that begins in Book V. But, as Mary Townsend notes, the any choice of English words is fraught. “This adjective (γυναικεῖον) has a range of meanings, from ‘ladylike,’ or ‘womanly’ in a good sense, to ‘womanish’ or ‘effeminate’ in the bad. Socrates uses the word to decry the practice still in use among Greek male soldiers of stripping the corpses of the fallen after a battle, a practice he paints as a womanish custom unworthy of his male and female guardians (469d); I will note that however the reader would wish to gloss this word here, ‘feminine’ is hardly the right word for tearing valuables away from the dead in a bloody field.” Townsend, The Woman Question, p. 15 10 Steven Forde provides a helpful survey of interpretations of the role of women and children in the Republic (“Gender and Justice in Plato,” in the American Political Science Review, Vol. 92, No. 3 (1997)). Susan Muller Okin argues that Plato should be credited with a pioneering argument for women’s political equality (“Philosopher Queens and Private Wives: Plato on Women and the Family,” in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 6 (Summer) 1977.), while Arlene Saxonhouse (“The Philosopher and the Female I the Political Thought of Plato,” in Political Theory 4 (May), 1976), Julia Annas (“Plato’s Republic and Feminism,” in Philosophy 5 (July) 1976) , and Allan Bloom (The Republic of Plato. New York: Basic Books, 1968.) do not believe that the account women in Book V creates any meaningful equality for women, and Jean Bethke Elshtain (Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981) argues that Plato creates gender equality, but at the expense of �5 Secondly, Socrates tells us that the city in speech that includes a fuller explanation of women and children might appear to be something to be prayed for (euxos 11), rather than something, to be worked for (ergon 12) (450c). That is, it might seem like something impossible for human beings to achieve without divine intervention. Socrates asks whether or not their ambition for the best city in speech is like a euxos several times in Books V and VI (450a, 456b, 461a, 499c, and 540d), and the conclusion seems to be clear at 540d. It is not. The best city would be difficult for human beings to realize, but not impossible. The idea that what Socrates will present to them might look like a euxos is particularly provocative because he seems to be setting it up on a spectrum with ergon. That is, the interlocutors ask over and over again whether or not the city in speech can be a “city in deed,” an ergon; and Socrates admits at 473a that it cannot be fully instantiated in deed. But he rejects the idea that the improbability of attaining the fully formed ergon of Kallipolis implies that it is just a euxos, a lofty dream. Instead, it is a paradigm to be strived for, perhaps a thing that is achievable in conversation among friends. These are things that human beings can work for and achieve. This possibility—that the city in speech is attainable for human beings, but in some both male and female identity. Since the publication of Forde’s piece, a few important variations on these interpretations have appeared, including Catherine Gardner’s argument that women play an important role in Kallipolis, but that they are mainly understood as instrumental in its eugenics project (Catherine Gardner. “The Remnants of the Family: The Role of Women and Eugenics in Republic V.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 17, no. 3 (July 1, 2000): 217–35.); Catherine McKeen’s argument that women must rule in Kallipolis (Catherine McKeen. “Why Women Must Guard and Rule in Plato’s ‘Kallipolis.’” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87, no. 4 (December 1, 2006): 527–48.); and Mary Townsend’s recontextualization of the role of women portrayed in Book V in the political and religious culture of Classical Athens (Mary Townsend. The Woman Question in Plato’s Republic. New York: Lexington Books, 2017.). 11 12 εὖχος ἔργον �6 way other than founding cities according to its paradigm--that seems to sit on the line somewhere between ergon and euxos. It is severely constrained and difficult to achieve, but not impossible for human beings. These insights into the difficulties of founding a city according to the paradigm of the city in speech point in several directions. They may suggest that Socrates considers the city in speech constructed in Books II-IV to be plausible (or, at least, more plausible than the version of the city in speech they are about to investigate). And that is surprising, at least on the level of political interpretation. If, for the sake of argument, we bracket the noble lie and even the stringent requirements for qualifying as a guardian, achieving the political order described in the city in speech is still extremely implausible, if not practically impossible. If a suitable guardian were to emerge, which is unlikely, the odds that every citizen would agree to his power and commit wholly to their supporting roles in his regime are extremely long. (This is a scenario that is explored in detail in Book VI.) Other necessary conditions for the well-functioning purged city are just as unlikely. When Socrates warns that including a fuller account of women and children in the city in speech might make their project seem like a euxos, it seems far more likely to me that he is referring to the city in speech’s implications for moral psychology than for politics. Socrates seems to be concerned about whether what they have done and will do to describe the proper arrangement of a human soul will seem to be possible or not. This suggests that Socrates may consider the model of the soul in Books II-IV to be apparently achievable, but that the elaboration on which they are about to embark may not be. 13 13 Catherine Zuckert, commenting on Leo Strauss’s long list of quotations from the Ecclesiazusae in the Republic, notes that Plato underlines the “imaginary and non-historical character” of the dialogue by quoting a play that was not performed until after Socrates’ death. �7 Socrates’ concern that he and his interlocutors may be developing their image of justice in an apparently implausible way leads to the third dramatic clue in the narrative frame of Book V. Socrates strongly indicates that adding a fuller account of women and children into the city in speech will be dangerous. The germ of this danger appears to be Socrates’ fear that he might make justice appear to be unachievable. If Socrates makes justice seem unattainable, he will, first of all, be doing harm to himself because he will look like a fool for devoting himself so completely to something impossible. He says, though, that the threat of appearing ridiculous doesn’t trouble him (451a). What seems to worry Socrates deeply is the risk of hurting his friends. What would become of these great souled, politically powerful men with whom he is having this conversation if Socrates inadvertently convinced them that it is impossible (or radically implausible) to become just? Glaucon, Adeimantus, and Polemarchus (not to mention Thrasymachus) might feel unleashed to a life of injustice—precisely the opposite of what Socrates hopes this conversation (and perhaps every conversation) will encourage. And, of course, the corruption of the historical figures on which Socrates’ interlocutors in the Republic are based would also spell terrible political outcomes for Athens. 14 Socrates’s first move in his reluctant attempt to account for women and children in the purged city in speech is to return to his discussion of the proper natures (physeis 15) of the guardians from Book II. Socrates says that “for people born and educated the way we have Catherine Zuckert, Platonic Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 353 fn. 134. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 61. 14 According to Debra Nails, the people present at Cephalus’s house for the conversation of the Republic represent every sort of person who lived in Athens just before the war, perhaps suggesting that everyone had a stake in what was to come. Debra Nails, “Plato’s Republic in its Athenian Context,” History of Political Thought, vol. XXXIII. No. 1 (Spring 2012), p. 3. 15 φύσεις �8 described, there is no way to acquire and employ women and children other than to follow the path we first set them on.” The Male Drama was not wrong, it was incomplete. So, Socrates says, “let’s proceed by giving them corresponding rules for birth and rearing, and see whether or not they are fitting.” 16 The proper place to have introduced women and children in the city in speech would, apparently, have been the first moment the guardians were mentioned. What Socrates said that they achieved in the argument as they conducted it was to have established the guardians as guard dogs of their flocks. What they need now to consider are the rules for the genesis and trophe of those guard dogs. It appears that the argument for establishing the guardians as guard dogs was what Socrates is now calling the “male drama,” 17 and now as we consider where those guard dogs came from, their genesis and trophe, we are turning to “the female.” 18 Although much of Books II-IV appears to be about education, I do not think an argument about the proper form of education is actually presented there. What I think is presented in Books II through the beginning of Book IV is an account of the telos of the purged, formerly feverish soul . 19 This is an important and necessary part of an account of education, but it is far from a sufficient one. “ἀνθρώποις γὰρ φῦσι καὶ παιδευθεῖσιν ὡς ἡμεῖς διήλθομεν, κατ᾽ ἐμὴν δόξαν οὐκ ἔστ᾽ ἄλλη ὀρθὴ παίδων τε καὶ γυναικῶν κτῆσίς τε καὶ χρεία ἢ κατ᾽ ἐκείνην τὴν ὁρμὴν ἰοῦσιν, ἥνπερ τὸ πρῶτον ὡρμήσαμεν . . . ἀκολουθῶμεν τοίνυν καὶ τὴν γένεσιν καὶ τροφὴν παραπλησίαν ἀποδιδόντες, καὶ σκοπῶμεν εἰ ἡμῖν πρέπει ἢ οὔ.” (451c-d) 17 ἀνδρεῖον δρᾶμα 18 τὸ γυναικεῖον 19 As Strauss puts it, “The question of possibility came to the fore only at the beginning of the fifth book as a consequence of an intervention initiated by Polemarchus. The two earlier comparable interventions—that of Glaucon after the description of the healthy city and that of Adeimantus after the abolition of private property and of privacy altogether—were limited to the question of desirability . . .” Strauss, The City and Man, 122 16 �9 What we have in Books II and III under the guise of the education of the guardians is really an account of their proper characteristics-the full actualization of all of their characteristic determinate potencies. If we were to carry the image of dogs into the contemporary context of breeding and dog shows, we could think of it as their “conformation.” Beagles and Great Danes are held to different conformation standards at dog shows, and breeders need to understand what each aims to be before they can undertake a plan to breed a dog to approach those standards. They need an account of what is desirable before they will be in a position to consider the conditions necessary for making the desirable actual. With apologies for the crass example, Books II-IV does the work of specifying (most of) the standards according to which a guardian should be judged (i.e. what is desirable); but it is not until Book V that Socrates begins to inquire into what would need to happen for such a guardian to come into being, (i.e. the conditions for actualizing what has already been determined desirable). Book II-IV give us a target to shoot for, but no instruction in archery. 20 Socrates’ account of becoming comes in Book VII and is a continuation of the accounts of the genesis and trophe that begin in Book V. All three of these modes of development (genesis, trophe, and paideia) are a part of what Socrates is here calling the Female Drama. They are what was left out of the city in speech of Book IV. 20 While I will later in this study consider the relationship between logismos and nous in the Republic in detail, it is important to notice that Socrates is careful only to refer to the former in Book IV. Once again, Brann’s account is extremely helpful. “Why then does Socrates call it the logistikon, connecting it explicitly with logizesthai, to reckon or to calculate (439d5), rather than with the logos of dialegesthai (511b4, 534c)? It is because the logistikon is a restricted power, a power of planning, whose specific work later does turn out to be calculation (cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1139a13), measuring, and weighing—in short, whatever corresponds only to the lower level of knowing power, to that power of mathematical thinking which Glaucon will discover later on as a mean between opinion and knowledge; it will be called dianoia.” Brann, The Music of the Republic, 163-164. �10 My argument, in the briefest terms, is that the Male Drama is an account of the being and actualities of the just soul, and the Female Drama is an account of the becoming and potencies of the just soul (which open into a consideration of the activity of the most just soul, philosophy). What we know at the end of Book IV is what all of the parts of the soul need to look like in order for that soul to be just. What we begin to consider in Book V is what needs to be true of each part of the soul in order for it to become what Book IV tells us it needs to be. And, as the Female Drama illuminates the Male Drama dialectically, the Male Drama, itself, will require revision. That is, the account of the telos of the just soul prompted the inquiry into the birth (genesis), nurture (trophe), and education (paideia) required to approach that telos. But when the genesis, trophe, and paideia of the just soul come into focus, they will illuminate things about the telos of justice that were not clear before. Generically, this is how Platonic/Socratic dialectic often operates. Specifically, it is the process by which the inquiry into the nature of justice turns toward the inquiry into the nature of philosophy in the Republic. Socrates marks the beginning of the Female Drama by saying that we must return to the beginning of our account of the guardians and consider their genesis and trophe (451d). I think this is exactly what he does in Books V and VI. There are three sorts of possibility or becoming that are systematically presented in Books V-VII. The ones I keep mentioning: genesis, trophe, and paideia, and these three are, for the most part, taken up in Books V, VI, and VII respectively. What this implies for the soul is straightforward, in principle, but extremely complicated in practice. Books V-VII will take up the potencies of soul necessary for the possibility of becoming just and the processes of becoming that move those potencies into actuality. �11 Socrates takes the conversation back to the beginning and turns our attention to what it would look like to introduce women and children into the city in speech. So, we find ourselves considering once again the dog-like disposition appropriate to potential guardians; but now we are prompted to consider the case of female dogs. First, we’re asked whether female dogs should be considered capable of becoming guard dogs; the answer is a quick yes, they should. This first point about female dogs is not argued, just affirmed. The first claim to be scrutinized is the second one to be made, and it is an apparent implication of the capacity of female dogs to become guard dogs: i.e., female dogs with such a nature should share everything with similarly disposed males, including their nurture (trophe) and education (paideia; 451e). The first principle of this further elaboration on the city in speech is that women and men can do the same work, and the first implication of this principle for the city in speech is that they should. This principle is no more argued than any of the principles that led to the organization of the cities constructed in Books II and III (i.e., insufficiency for the minimal city, efficiency for the healthy city, and desire for the feverish city). An immediate implication of the assertion that women can and should do the same work as men is that they should be prepared to do this work, just as men are. They should share the same rearing (trophe) and education (paideia), regardless of the accepted fact that women are, generically, weaker than men; an idea that will be scrutinized at length. When Socrates says he must go back to the beginning to account for the role of women and children in the city in speech, he does not go back to the minimal city or the healthy city or even to the structure of the once feverish, now purged city. He goes to the first moment of the discussion of the nature of the guardians; the beginning of the construction of the purged city. �12 This is the beginning of the account of women and children. This is where the distinction between male and female first matters. Not every dog, male or female, will be born with a nature suited to be trained and educated as a guard dog, but some will. So, by implication, maleness and femaleness can not be categories Socrates uses to explain the genesis of justice. Whatever maleness and femaleness are to the soul, they are both compatible with the nature (physis) of the guardians. We should be prepared to see that the proper genesis of the guardians may distinguish guardians from auxiliaries and workers, but it will not distinguish maleness from femaleness. It is premature to try to unpack the analogy for answers, but the psychological question it implies is clear. Which parts or versions of the calculating 21 part of the soul (likened to the guardians) are male and which are female, and what does maleness or femaleness mean in the context of moral psychology? When Socrates said what would have to be done to give a fuller account of women and children in the city in speech, he said that he would have to go back and consider birth and rearing (genesis and trophe) (451d). Now, he says that female guard dogs (which will immediately change, by analogy, into human female guardians of the city in speech) should “Calculating” is the conventional translation for λογιστικός, and I will use it consistently. “Planning” or “logical” might be better, except that “calculating” has become so well-known, and only insofar as logic is understood to deal with validity (or internal consistency) and not with soundness. The logismos of the mind is what calculates the best set of arrangements, given some set of given conditions or premises. Nous is the power of mind to apprehend the truth or wellfoundedness of those conditions or premises (and thus the soundness of those arrangements), but the psychology of Book IV does not include nous. The soul of Book IV is capable of knowing that its arrangements are valid, but is completely cut off from knowing if they are sound because it has no access to a reference point for determining whether or not something is true, i.e., it has no access to the Good. When I use “calculating” to describe a psychological power, I mean something very much like, perhaps precisely like, its logical capacity to determine the validity, but not the soundness, of a psychological arrangement. It is the part that can optimize a plan given a set elements, but cannot evaluate those elements except according to how well they fit together. 21 �13 share completely in the upbringing and education (trophe and paideia) of the male guardians (451e). Taken together, these two passages indicate the formal relationship of maleness and femaleness to the three categories of potentiality and becoming that run through Books V through VII: genesis, trophe, and paideia. Genesis, which would seem to mean “birth” in this context, applies equally to the maleness and femaleness of the progeny. And, when it comes to trophe and paideia, female guardians should be treated just like males and included in every way. In an important sense, the next two sections of argument happen in reverse order. First, Socrates moves to what I take to be the crucial problem of this section of Book V: the apparent ridiculousness of the proposal to educate men and women the same and together (452a-d). Secondly, the dialogue returns to defend the original organizing principle of this elaboration on the city in speech, i.e., that women and men can and should do the same work. (452e-456c). Then, after establishing that what they are proposing is possible, the interlocutors move to the question of whether sharing all work between women and men is best (456c-457a). Only then, does Socrates return to the claim that because the proposal for women and men to be educated together is both possible and optimal, and that one should ignore those who say it is ridiculous. (457a-b) Much of the argument of this section takes the form of Socrates responding to an objection that he himself raises. The way the objection is presented suggests that Socrates was unwilling to proceed until it was answered, even though none of the interlocutors raised it. 22 The objection is 22 David Wolfsdorf argues that the imaginary interlocutor Socrates engages in this section is less metaphysically sophisticated than Glaucon and must be convinced by arguments that do not rely on the distinction between ideas and those things that participate in them. For Wolfsdorf, the reason for introducing the imaginary interlocutor is to give Socrates a reason to use a form of argument that would be inappropriate for Glaucon. This does not seem right to me. The room is �14 that since men and women are different, and since we established in Book II that different citizens were suited for different sorts of work (the principle of efficiency, introduced at 370c), wouldn’t it follow that men and women should do different work (453c)? This is a centrally important objection because, so far, the interlocutors have only added to the model of the city in speech through their dialectic; they have not reversed themselves substantially regarding the nature of any of its structural elements. The development of the city in speech has operated by elaboration, not revision. If a more thorough explanation of the role of women and children in the city in speech implies a contradiction, the interlocutors might be in trouble. Socrates admits, in fact, that they are in trouble, lost at sea, but that perhaps they can hope for an unlikely rescue; a dolphin, perhaps (453d). Or just maybe, perhaps their ship might withstand the storm to come. 23 Socrates’s response to the objection he himself raises--his attempt to rescue them all after he has imperiled them all--has two parts: first, Socrates investigates the nature of the differences between women and men; secondly, he asks what relevance these natural differences have to the sort of work women and men can and should do in the city in speech. It is in the first part of his full of interlocutors, and Plato’s mind is full of people with whom he could have populated the room. There must be some other reason to introduce an imaginary interlocutor, and I think it is to signal that this is an issue that is particularly important to Socrates. David Wolfsdorf, “Plato’s Conception of Knowledge,” The Classical World, Vol. 105, No.1, (Fall 2011), pp. 57-75. 23 It is interesting that Socrates mentions a dolphin specifically in his account of what their possible rescue might look like. This could be an allusion to Apollo, since he took the form of a dolphin to escape the island where he was born, Delos, and make it to his sanctuary on the mainland, hence its name, “Delphi.” It could also be an allusion to the dolphin that rescued the invisible goddess, Aphaia, whom, though obscure, Plato would have known well if he spent some of his childhood on Aegina, as some believe he did. (See Diogenes Laertius. Lives, 3.1) The story of Arion from Herodotus might be in play here, as well, as Mary Townsend suggests. (Mary Townsend, The Woman Question, 35.) There could be an Homeric allusion to this shipwreck, as well, although Leukothea, not a dolphin, rescued Odysseus from the sea in Book 5. All of these possibilities are provocative, but since the dolphin does not appear again, it is difficult to know what work it is doing in the dialogue. �15 response to his own objection that Socrates offers his famous and important distinction between dialectic 24 and eristic 25 (454a). In dialectic, interlocutors engage in conversation to get to the truth. They may be impassioned and deeply committed to their positions, but ultimately they would rather be proven wrong than maintain a false opinion. In eristic, interlocutors just want to win the argument: they are more attached to besting their opponent than to arriving at the truth. At the moment, according to Socrates, they are in danger of falling into eristic if they do not look behind the words they are using to recall the meaning of those words and the role they play in the inquiry. This warning operates on two levels: first, it helps the interlocutors respond successfully to Socrates’s objection that giving women and men the same work violates the principle of efficiency. But, secondly, it also serves as a warning to the interlocutors (and to Plato’s readers) regarding the dangers of this section of the Republic. The larger warning will be clearer if we deal with the smaller one first. If one operates on the surface of the two claims set in opposition in the objection Socrates raises, then there’s a big problem. They established in Book II that citizens with different natures are suited to different work. They asserted in Book V that women and men should do the same work (even though women and men have different natures). Therefore, it seems they can either hold fast to the old principle (different natures imply different work) or the new principle (women and men, despite their different natures, should do the same work), but not to both. Socrates suggests, though, that this might not be as big a problem as it first appears to be. If one doesn’t think of differences in the abstract, but instead asks what sorts of differences are relevant to one’s work, then there appears to be a way out of the dilemma. If we are attempting 24 25 διαλέκτῳ ἐρίζω �16 to determine whether citizens should be shoemakers or guardians (454b-c), surely it doesn’t matter whether citizens are bald or have long hair. If the natural difference between women and men is like the natural difference between long haired people and bald people, then the problem posed in the objection would merely be semantic and not worth our concern (if we are committed dialectic rather than eristic). 26 Socrates then turns to the second part of the argument which asks: are the differences between men and women relevant to the work they pursue (454e)? And the answer is: apparently not. The commonplace that all the interlocutors agree to in this passage is that even though there may be certain arts (techne) such as baking and weaving that we could quibble about, and even though there may be individual exceptions; in general, men are better at everything than women (455c-d). But, the argument continues, it does not make sense for men to do everything in the city and women to do nothing, so the principle of male superiority in all things actually supports the position of educating women in all things. Plus, women are competent in all things, even if they are not equal to men (456b). For these reasons, Socrates concludes that they were right to say that women and men should be educated together. 26 27 This part of Socrates’ argument is sometimes used to credit Plato with being the first feminist, a claim Julia Annas, among others, rejects outright. She argues that, “his arguments are unacceptable to a feminist, and that the proposals made in Republic V are irrelevant to contemporary debate.” Julia Annas, “Plato’s Republic and Feminism,” Philosophy vol. 51 (1976). 27 Several commentators have noticed that Socrates’ revision to the status of women does not make them equal to men so much as it makes them identical to them, and yet inferior. Arlene Saxonhouse frames it this way: “Sexual equality is tied to the destruction of what is separate, what is other. On the one hand, in Greek thought the female had always stood for what is private and other. By equating the male and the female, the public and the private are made one. There is no ‘other.’ But, more basically, the female suggests the divisiveness of the human species, that we are indeed not all the same, that there is something that is other. In order to create the unified city, Socrates must destroy the female as female, the female as a threat to the unity of the human species. She is integrated into the political community not as herself, as one with distinctive talents or distinctive experiences, but as an inferior male, a physically weaker male.” (See Arlene �17 There is a larger, more significant issue operating in this section, though. The interlocutors do not only risk falling into eristic on the question of whether or not the differences between men and women demand that they do different work. They risk the whole inquiry devolving into eristic. Socrates has been clear since the introduction of the city in speech in Book II that the purpose of the model is to aid in their inquiry into the nature of the human soul, the place of justice within it, and the relative choiceworthiness of justice and injustice for a human life. But the question posed at the beginning of Book V that Polemarchus, Adeimantus, Glaucon, and Thrasymachus insisted Socrates answer does not seem to be motivated by their interest in the individual soul. They thought a full account of women and children had been left out of the city in speech, but was their concern based on the usefulness of an account of women and children to their inquiry into the nature of individual justice, or were they focused on a concern for the paradigm itself? The latter seems to be more plausible. Not only do none of the interlocutors mention the soul explicitly when they insist Socrates compose what he calls the Female Drama, but none of their arguments even seem to allude to the soul by analogy or otherwise. One of the reasons that it is so difficult to see what women and children signify for the structure and activity of the individual soul in the Republic is that it is nowhere made explicit in the beginning of Book V how a more detailed explanation of women and children in the city in speech will be relevant to the psychological inquiry they agreed to undertake together. Those accounts do not begin to emerge until late in Book VI. All four of Saxonhouse, Women in the History of Political Thought, 47-48). Mary Townsend puts it like this: “All this puts women in a very strange metaphysical position, no less strange than their resulting political one; it demotes them even as it raises them. Their situation is not that of women whose goodness is finally acknowledged as justice might demand; rather they have been given the status of lesser men, people who possess all the qualities of men but in a lesser degree.” (See Mary Townsend, The Woman Question, 38.) �18 Socrates’s most powerful and vocal interlocutors in the Republic seem to be in danger of falling from dialectic to eristic by attaching themselves to the literal meanings of the elements of the city in speech and forgetting or neglecting what makes them relevant to their shared inquiry. Socrates’s warning against devolving into eristic is explicitly aimed at his imaginary interlocutor who claims to have found an internal contradiction in the constitution of the city in speech, but I also read it to be an implicit warning to Adeimantus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, and especially Glaucon. I understand it to be a warning to the readers of the Republic, as well. If we want to continue to engage in dialectic, which may lead us to the truth, and not eristic, we should remember the meanings of our terms and what roles they play in our inquiry. We must try not to get lost in semantics, surface meanings, or irrelevant side concerns. Socrates’ warning about what could divert us from dialectic may serve as a heuristic for approaching the Republic, and especially its most confusing arguments. When we seem to be talking about ridiculous or implausible things, it will serve us well to recall how we got to that part of the argument, from where its terms were derived, and what work we were supposed to be doing as one of Socrates’s interlocutors. But I think there is another heuristic of sorts introduced in this section, as well, and it is even more subtle. At 456c, Socrates claims to have shown that it is possible for women to do the same work as men and, therefore, for men and women to be educated together. Immediately afterwards, he shifts his focus to a consideration of whether educating men and women together is best. This seems like a sensible and obvious argumentative development: first show that common education is possible, then show that it is optimal. But, this is not how any of the elements in the city in speech have been established before. Throughout Books II, III, and IV we considered the desirability, but not the possibility of each institutional arrangement. Is it possible to constitute a city with only four or five �19 individuals? Probably not. Could we find the perfect balance of citizens with natural talents for each task in the city, each of whom does his work and only his work so that we could constitute a healthy city? Almost certainly not. If we let desires run amok (as in the fevered city) could we set up institutional arrangements and find sufficiently wise leaders to moderate and balance that city into a purged, harmonious whole? Also extremely unlikely. Even though the cities in speech of Books II through IV are as implausible as the city in speech emerging in Book V, the possibility of constituting them was never at issue in the dialogue. What explains this, I believe, is the relative plausibility of the souls associated with the cities in speech in Books II-IV versus the soul associated with the city in speech that is beginning to emerge in Book V. If we shift our focus to the individual soul, the prescriptions for shaping up a life of justice are certainly demanding, but they are not implausible. One must cultivate logismos so that it is capable of determining the proper internal balances between itself, thumos, and epithumia. Logismos and thumos must be allied so that epithumia can be controlled and directed toward the good of the whole. These are no small tasks, but they are intelligible and even, to a degree, manageable if one commits oneself to the work. There is also no expectation of perfect achievement of virtue in the city in speech of Books II through IV. The model seems to suggest that the more you achieve the proper interrelationships and internal balances of soul that come to be known as the virtues, the better. The work one should be doing to become virtuous seems fairly clear and the hope for progress seems fairly reasonable. This is a workable model of the soul on its face, regardless of how far-fetched the political analogs might be. In that sense, there is no need for Socrates to defend its possibility. The city in speech of Book V is different not because the political arrangements it describes are less plausible but because their psychological analogs are. Despite the specter of Sparta that �20 always seems to float around descriptions of the city in speech in the Republic, it is indeed difficult to imagine how even these first institutions of the city in speech that will come to be known as Kallipolis could be established and maintained. 28 All of the practical problems of the earlier cities in speech persist, such as how one could accurately and consistently determine what sort of nature and thus education each baby proto-citizen would best be suited for; or, given that our legislative goal is to create a happy city and not necessarily happy citizens (although this will follow if the happiness of the city is perfectly instantiated), how to keep potentially unhappy people working well and exclusively at what they are best suited to contributed to the city. These are just low-hanging fruit. The practical problems inherent in this political model are legion. The problems inherent in the psychological model introduced in Book V are worse, though. Unlike the city in speech of Books II through IV, where the political arrangements were farfetched but the psychological analogs were more plausible, it seems to me that Kallipolis is less plausible as a soul than as a city. In order to make this clear, one would have to do quite a bit more work unpacking the psychological implications of the fuller explanation of the role of women and children in the city, but we can get started without getting into those details. As I have already noted, at 451d Socrates casts the task of giving a fuller explanation of women and children in the city in speech as the challenge of accounting for the genesis and trophe of the guardians. And as he begins this account, he immediately adds education paideia to the list of things about the guardians that this elaboration on the city in speech will have to include. All three of these (genesis, trophe, and paideia) concern, as I’ve already begun to explain, potency or becoming. So, at least, the description of the city in speech called Kallipolis will include an account of how each of the parts of the city in speech, but particularly the 28 Kallipolis �21 guardians/logismos come to be just. What is the disposition or original condition (genesis) of a soul capable of becoming just? What sort of training/formation/upbringing (trophe) prepares such a well-disposed soul for education? And, what sort of education (paideia) will move a welldisposed, well-formed soul to the actualization of justice? An interesting thing happens when we consider the conditions for the possibility of almost anything: our minds begin to move naturally to the actualization of that thing. When we ask about conditions, we bring the thing for which they are the conditions into our consideration, at least implicitly. We may ultimately reject a telelological account of whatever phenomena we are investigating in this way, but considering the conditions for the actualization of a thing is a teleological consideration, and it implies at least a provisional or inchoate idea of the telos of that thing. This dynamic created by the connection in our minds between the minimal conditions specified in a definition and the telos those conditions imply plays a central role in the constitution of Kallipolis, the noble and beautiful city in speech that is begun after the interruption at the beginning of Book V. The consideration of conditions opens up, by implication, a consideration of the thing for which those conditions are conditions. Now that the interlocutors have begun to consider the minimal conditions for the possibility of justice, the conversation opens to a consideration of the telos of justice, its highest, best, most complete form. The risk that Socrates seems to fear most acutely at the beginning of Book V is the danger of corrupting his friends. If Glaucon or the others see Kallipolis for what it is -- an paradigm that could orient their ambitions to become just, and they commit themselves to an attempt to approach the Good, then their successes and failures in that pursuit are not likely to be terribly dangerous, although they might be. The model of the best life, like the model constructed in �22 Books II through IV, will serve as their target, but there may be nothing inherently problematic about a life that misses the mark while keeping it in sight and attempting to get closer to it with every “shot,” regardless of how one might lament one’s failures. On the other hand, if Socrates’s interlocutors (or Plato’s readers) see that the realm of conventional justice is not truly authoritative, but they do not, for whatever reason, attach themselves to any higher authority, then they will be both politically powerful and morally unfettered. The psychological and political consequences could be catastrophic. Socrates’s attempts to contribute to the improvement of his interlocutors’ souls cannot help but risk corrupting them in, perhaps, the worst possible way. After they have seen that justice is largely conventional, they could decide that justice is unachievable or not worth the effort. If they cannot see the authority of the Good for their lives, or if they willfully choose to ignore it, they could be diverted from the project of trying to live a good and reasonable life approximating virtue and they could veer toward a life that embraces injustice, vice, and dissipation. They might not see or care to acknowledge that such a choice would bear any substantial costs, and they might not scratch beneath the veneer that makes such a choice appear to carry with it obvious benefits. The great is often the enemy of the Good, and Socrates knows it only too well. By taking the risk of having great ambitions for his interlocutors, Socrates might make more modest, less dangerous, more conventional ambitions to approximate goodness in human life appear less choice-worthy, perhaps even unacceptable. The Republic was written well after the Peloponnesian War but it seems to be set before it, so the threat of war and the inevitability of Athens’s defeat looms in the background of the dialogue. 29 The ghosts of Alcibiades and Critias lurk not too deeply in the shadows, as well. 29 Dramatic Date, Nails �23 They were two of Socrates’s brightest, most dissipated and, eventually, most catastrophically dangerous students-- men who saw themselves and their ambitions beyond justice, but who were not strongly enough attached to the Good. 30 As Socrates shows Glaucon, Adeimantus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus (who certainly already knows) how to detach themselves from convention in order to attach themselves to the Good, he risks leaving them completely unattached. He shows the way for them to become psychologically and politically tyrannical. Perhaps this is what happened to Alcibiades and Critias, Plato seems to imply, and the promise of educating them for philosophy is why it seemed to be worth the risk. The risks of composing the Female Drama are significant, but they are also necessary. Socrates cannot keep faith with his interlocutors without responding to their questions about women and children, and there is an important part of the story of the soul that has not yet been told. So, Socrates returns, after his brief excursis on dialectic and eristic, to the claim that women and men should train and be educated together. Or, more specifically, he returns to a consideration of what instituting this principle will look like and how one should react to those who will oppose it. When Socrates introduced the idea that women and men should pursue their physical training together, the first prompt he gave to Glaucon was to admit that what he was proposing seemed ridiculous (452a). In fact, Socrates didn’t just ask for an affirmation from Glaucon that he shared the view that the instantiation of this principle would look ridiculous, he pressed him to think through what its most ridiculous implications would be. This is not a question that was asked about any of the previous cities in speech, although it could have been. For example, there would have been nothing absurd about Socrates asking “what would the most ridiculous aspects of 30 Alcibiades and Critias, Nussbaum �24 trying to constitute a city with only four or five men?” or “could we really expect each person to do precisely the work they were best at and only that work?” So, why is Socrates now bringing forward these apparently ridiculous implications of trying to instantiate the city in speech? Why now? If the Female Drama tells the story of how a soul may become just, then it should begin with what sort of conditions must exist in order for that process of becoming to commence. This is what I believe is beginning to happen when Socrates asks Glaucon to focus on the ridiculousness of the proposal that women and men to should train together. In every society, the conventions of public behavior tend to be formidable. Practices that may once have been a matter of choice or legislation become ingrained over time and enacted unselfconsciously by many members of that society. Som other citizens may be more self-conscious, but believe there are rational justifications for maintaining conventional practices whether or not they find them rational. Resisting ingrained conventions tends to be difficult and to come at a high social cost. If one aspires to be just in the city or the soul, then one must be capable of resisting convention intellectually and in practice. Intellectually, one must be able see conventions for what they are, affirm them when they serve the Good of the whole, and resist them when they don’t. In practice, one must be able to withstand the resistance that inevitably will come from those for whom convention is more powerful. In the soul, that resistance comes from habit. In the city in speech, it might come from those who found unconventional behaviors ridiculous. Socrates’ point appears to be that a soul that will be capable of training and education for virtue will be the soul that can manage, among other things, the difficult business of being unconventional. This is precisely the lesson Socrates emphasizes to Glaucon in their consideration of women and men exercising together, that is, in what will soon be named “the �25 first wave” (457a). If training men and women together is the best thing for the city in speech, then one must not be deterred by those who call it ridiculous. Nor, should one be moved by the part of oneself that sees it as ridiculous. The part of oneself that understands it to be right must be in control. In large part, this provision is clear in Book IV where Socrates emphasized the nature of the guardians/logismos, and virtue’s requirement that it rule in the city in speech. This account in Book V is entirely harmonious with what was presented in Book IV, but it shows the dynamic from a different angle. In Book IV, Socrates elaborated on the necessity of the rule of the calculating part of the soul. Here, in Book V, the emphasis is on the capacity of the other parts of the soul to be ruled. Successfully controlling the desire to laugh at the ridiculousness of old men and women exercising together is Socrates’ image for surviving the first wave. Psychologically, it depicts logismos properly containing epithumia, which implies both a sufficiently strong calculating faculty (which was treated in the Male Drama) and a sufficiently containable appetitive faculty (which is what is now added to the account by way of the Female Drama). It is possible to know what is good and yet not to act on it when there are parts of your soul that are stronger than the part that knows what is good. Here, Plato anticipates what, in Book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle calls Akrasia. One can both know the right thing and be dissipated beyond the capacity to act on that knowledge. There are many ways to become one for whom right reason, or even knowledge, is insufficient to guide action. Drug addiction is the easiest example. It is a commonplace that addicts can talk sensibly about their misguided choices, can lament their dissipation, can decide to do what they know to be right, but can then succumb over and over again to urges that overwhelm their resolve. For addicts, the lesson is �26 clear: knowing what is good is a necessary condition for virtue, but it is not always sufficient for putting it into practice. 31 Knowing that it is best to create a training regimen for men and women together is not sufficient for institutionalizing that arrangement in the city in speech. Having the most knowledgeable person in charge of instituting the right plan is also not sufficient. In addition, the rest of the city must be capable of being led toward arrangements that they may find ridiculous. They must have that capacity. The psychological analog to this is that one who hopes to be trained and educated for virtue must be capable of overcoming those instincts and habits that are not, according to the calculating part of the soul, best for the whole. One’s thumos must be willing to align itself with logismos. One’s epithumia must be containable. This is the first lesson of the Female Drama. If we are up to these challenges, we might just weather the first wave. 31 For an account of how the structure of the tripartite soul in the Republic implies the existence of akrasia, see Michael Morris “Akrasia in the Protagoras and the Republic,” Phronesis, Vol. 51, No. 3 (2006), pp. 195-229. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Microsoft Word Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 26 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Female Drama Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on November 5, 2021, by Charlotte Thomas as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Dr. Thomas is Professor of Philosophy from Mercer University in Atlanta and Co-Director of the McDonald Center for America’s Founding Principles. She was named the Executive Director of Association for Core Texts and Courses in 2020. Dr. Thomas describes her lecture: "At the beginning of Book V of the Republic, Adeimantus and Polemarchus interrupt Socrates to say that he has neglected to explain something he had earlier said in passing about the role of women and children in the city in speech. Socrates admits that although the 'male drama' is complete, that he has indeed neglected these matters in the hope that he could avoid them entirely in their conversation. But with fear and trembling, prostrating himself to Adresteia and asking forgiveness for the hubris he fears he is about to display, he agrees to present the 'female drama.' Thus begins the notoriously difficult and controversial middle part of the Republic. One of the things that makes the middle books so difficult is that Socrates leans precipitously into constructing political structures which until this point of the dialogue he has been careful to remind his interlocutors were meant to function as paradigms to help them understand individual justice. But, although Socrates is quieter and more subtle about the teachings of the female drama for moral psychology, he is not silent. In this paper I will attempt to illuminate some of the hints we are given about the implications of the middle books of the Republic (especially Book V) for its teachings on the soul and investigate their place in the Republic as a whole." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thomas, Charlotte C. S. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-11-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Plato. Republic. Book 5. Justice (Philosophy) Sex differences in education Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Thomas_Charlotte_2021-11-05_Typescript Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7606">Video</a> Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/9f8a18ab961b3c1b924eb6e0ebcad19e.mp3 09cb4672fdd6266304ee457c07d5508b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp3 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:49:53 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Comedy and the Virtue of Divine Puppets Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on August 27, 2021 by Joseph Macfarland as part of the Formal Lecture Series. First formal lecture of the academic year, previously referred to as the Dean's Lecture, but now called the Christopher B. Nelson Lecture. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021-08-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7586">Typescript</a> Subject The topic of the resource Comedy Plato. Laws Plato. Republic Virtue Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Macfarland_Joseph_2021-08-27 Christopher B. Nelson Lecture Deans Friday night lecture