Michael Flynn's Blog, page 6

First Way, Part III: The Big Kahuna

P revious episodes in this exciting series, now drawing toward its thrilling climax:

Background lays out the history of the Argument from Motion and the impatience of those who demand that it prove more than it asserts to prove (e.g., that it prove that Jesus is Lord or some such thing, as if the objector were genuinely concerned about this shortfall). The initial proposition in Euclid does not prove every conclusion in Euclid, and the same is true in other sciences as well.
Part I A Moving Tale discusses the concept of "motion" used in the Argument from Motion, and how this is persistently misunderstood today. Kinesis means the actualization of a potential, so "change" is a better summation of the concept than the modern term "motion," which to the our ears sounds like local motion only.

Recall that we are using "motion," "change," "actualization [of a potential]," and "kinesis" as synonyms.

Part II Two Lemmas demonstrate that

Whatever is being actualized right now is being actualized by another. In many cases, a thing is changing as a whole because it is being changed by one of its parts. The cat crosses the room to the milk dish because its legs are moving it; its legs are being moved by its muscles, etc. This is because the changer must be actual while the changee must be in potency and what is in potency cannot make something else actual.
There cannot be an infinite regress of instrumental changers, since an instrumental actualizer has no power to actualize diddly squat unless it is concurrently being actualized itself. Obvious instrumental changers include... well, instruments: golf clubs, clarinets, et al., which have no power to strike balls, make music, etc. unless they are concurrently being employed by a golfer or musician. Not all instruments are obvious: e.g., the muscles are used instrumentally by the nerves to move the arms. But not all changers are instrumental, either, and such "accidental" series can in principle (if not in fact) regress without limit.

A number of objections and misunderstandings were also dealt with in these prior posts.

We are now ready for the Big Kahuna:
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The Autumn of the Modern Ages: Preface

This is the first of a series of posts on the collapse of the Modern Ages. It uses as its starting point, John Lukacs' essay, At the End of an Age. It was originally envisioned as a fact article for ANALOG, but it became way too long for that. However, as TOF transcribed the final portions of these posts, he realized that he might be able to salvage one part of it: the Autumn of Modern Science for such an article, and so that is reserved from this series.

TOF also notices in Preview-view that there are whimsical font changes throughout which he has not been able to correct. Go figure.

The Autumn of the Modern Agesby Michael F. Flynn

“When the world was half a thousand years younger…” S o began Johan Huizinga’s portrait of the 15th century world: The Autumn of the Middle Ages. “Autumn,” because if the medieval world was fading, it “faded” in a burst of color and drama, and its passing was also a birth: The Renaissance. [JH]It wasn’t the first time the West had pulled off this re-birth thingie. When the world was half a thousand years younger still, Europe had once before been transformed – and more happily so, for the 10th century had seen, in the revival of commerce and town life, in a renewed thirst for knowledge, the fading of a genuinely desperate era. And five hundred years before that, in “the autumn of late antiquity,” people like Boëthius or St. Augustine would later rightly be styled the last of the Romans and the first of the medievals. [PB]. There is nothing magical about that 500-year interval, but… Another half millennium back and Caesar crosses the Rubicon and the decaying Republic ends in an Augustan rebirth bright enough that men fifteen centuries after found themselves blinded by its light. And a half-millennium forward of the Renaissance brings us to… Well, today. Thoroughly Modern Milieu The Series Begins Here, with links to subsequent parts

The Ongoing Redef

A couple of interesting stones embedded in the hillside of the slippery slope down which we are presently tumbling presented themselves to TOF's attention recently.
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Timothy Leary, Batu Khan, and the Palimpsest of Universal Reality

Over on the story preview page we have another Blast from the Past, a novelette entitled "Timothy Leary, Batu Khan, and the Palimpsest of Universal Reality," which appeared in F&SF in April, 1993. Only Part I is up. Part II will follow in a week.

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Book Review: Wreck of the River of Stars

Joseph Moore at Yard Sale of the Mind has posted a review of The Wreck of 'The River of Stars'. He thinks it's pretty good.

All the characters are loveable in some way, even those who seem harsh or cruel. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and many hold grudges or other hurts. These are revealed over time and become factors in the ultimate fate of the ship and its crew. Moments of great beauty and heroism, of the least likely coming through big, of tragic loss – it’s a modern Greek tragedy.


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In a Popular Albeit Neverending Series

which for fear of spoilers TOF shall not name, the following comment was made by a blogger. Names and context have been altered to protect the innocent.
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Poetry Time: Hopkins

When TOF was in high school, he (along with his fellow scholars) was assigned to write a term paper on a selected English writer. Unlike most of the others, the selection in his case was made by Sister. She selected for his edification Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet of whom TOF had not hitherto heard of. (Sister had the firm belief that TOF would one day become a Jesuit, and Hopkins was a Jesuit. In the end, the Jesuits lucked out.)

This was not the poem, but one TOF selected more or less at random for the blog. It is one of several untitled poems, apparently written while Hopkins was suffering from clinical depression, with its accompanying sleeplessness and despair. Like all of Hopkins' poems, it is meant to be read aloud.

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The Journeyman: On the Shore of the Unquiet Sea

The latest episode in the travels and travails of Teodorq sunna Nagarajan, nearly finished now, begins thusly:
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What the Well-Dressed Woman Will Be Wearing

"Down, boy!" or PTSD in the sexual revolution.

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Deja Vu All Over Again

Check out the four video clips here. Plus ça change and all that. Clinton is especially interesting, though no one later accused him of lying.

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