Dreams

As soon as I wrote the title for this blog, the Cranberries began to sing, making this blog vaguely like an advert for Bord Failte...

The Acousmatist-Logopoet recently wrote about a dream. I had an interesting dream last night that makes me think of landscapes. All my dreams make me think of landscapes. Whether it is my recurring dream about the Siege of Montreal or the Battle of Lake George or more mundane ones. My dreams are not united by their themes, I think, but the strange and disarming familiarity of their landscapes. When I'm running up a hill from Frenchmen with bayonets in my French and Indian war dreams, I'm running up the primeval version of the hill in Tolland, CT where my grandmother lives.

But most of the landscapes that transfix me are academic. Oddly, I've never had the naked dream (maybe once). But I do have dreams about a post-apocalyptic school that is a mix of Cambridge and Chestnut Hill Academy. Somehow, Penn's Quads and my high school campus merge, too. There are a few other more bizarre mixtures of landscapes that I have noticed, and some of the input, I suspect, isn't academic but includes the lodges of Indiana state parks. But Delaware Valley College and Juniata College often appear, too, even though I haven't spent much time there.

Last night, I actually had two dreams. The first I don't remember, but it must have been nightmarish. I woke up needing a few glasses of water and thinking, "I ate too much cheese last night," which is an explanation for nightmares as old as Beowulf . (Note: The house was Grendel-free this morning). The next dream was half-nightmarish, half-hysterical. I was with my father and I was supposed to do something but I needed to print something out. Oh, well, I said, I'll just go to Crerar Usite, since it's Sunday and Harper won't be open until 2 PM (I probably have the hours wrong...). The problem, folks, was that there might have been people I knew from U of C in the dream doing perfectly logical things, but I was mostly on my high school campus. So after running around frantically for five minutes and running away from tennis-playing Lower Schoolers, I finally realized where I was and woke up.

ESA(20041218.1)

And then God created Hobbits

Reading Right Hook in Salon today, I note that the Institute for Creation Research is trying to use Homo floresiensis "to bolster its case." (Note: If you look up this particuilar item, you will notice the conflation of young Earth creationism and intelligent design. Although I believe neither should be taught in schools, the latter is worthy of continued debate in the literature, whereas the former has been relegated to the dungheap of history by radiometric dating and other lines of evidence. Reading ICR's own item , I note that while the ICR critiques controversies about facts in the press and cites an article from a neurology journal in Spanish, there is no attempt to use the actual research letters published in Nature on Homo floresiensis to answer the ICR's abundant questions. Moreover, note that the key argument against Homo floresiensis not being a new species is the use of tools and fire. A species that is not sapiens using tools and fire would be a problem. Well, I think it's clear, ICR is one graduate school I will not be applying to... (see sidebar on left of linked ICR item).

ESA(20041216.1)

Notes on Convocation and Michelson House Culture

I exercised the duties of my office today, mainly shepherding a group of bewildered computer scientists through the obsequies of taking their master's degrees. The address was by Chris Faraone, reminding us all of the importance of full intellectual engagement not only with the materials we study but with our colleagues in intellectual and professional endeavors. The themes of a University of Chicago Convocation always seem to be the continuity of communities of scholars and educated people, and the need for professionals to exert themselves for the common good. Even the Dean of Rockefeller Chapel prayed in the Invocation about "the cloud of witnesses who surround us," a conflation of the communion of saints with academic tradition that I did not find disagreeable. Oh, and I was wearing a lovely maroon robe and mortar board, giving me my necessary dose of academic pageantry and officiousness until I actually graduate from this University. I also was pleased to see a friend of long acquaintance graduate from the College. And I heard ill news from the east...

Today, at lunch, some of the grandees of Michelson House discussed a change in House culture. Now, House culture is a fine thing, and I am pleased to be in a House with such a vibrant culture. Michelson House culture of my generation was certainly an intellectual one where the life of the mind was treated with seriousness when seriousness was required and with great humor when that attitude was necessary. Michelson House culture, however, is changing to an anagathic one, in which those things kalon kai agathos , as the Republic has it now fall in disrepute as the absurdity of intellectual and artistic endeavor is worshipped to the point of obsession. New Michelson House culture still will be an intellectual culture, because people still will seek to engage complex ideas and will not fear the strange and will despise the banal and the empty. But New Michelson House culture likely will value only novelty and absurdity. But I will depart, depart, depart in peace.

ESA(20041210.1)

Day of Infamy
Never take three exams on the same day. None of them will go well, and it will just put you in a foul mood. And by the way, Pearl Harbor apparently has become a proper subject for humor. After the first test, which was harder than the practice problems despite the professor's intent otherwise, I said to him, "You sunk my battleship." I got laughs...AARGH

Aristotelians Run Amok

Saletan, I think, doesn't quite get this right . The particular bioethical doctrines of Roman Catholicism that normally apply here contradict Aristotelian or Thomist norms. The currently ascendant post-Thomistic view is that there is no body-soul dualism, hence you cannot say that an embryo after conception is organized first by a vegetative soul, then by an animal soul, and then by a rational (or human) soul at some later time. The Roman Catholic view, as I understand it, is that the embryo is ensouled eo instante at conception. The increasingly popular Anglican view argues for personhood at implantation in the wall of the uterus.

But this reasoning synthesizes the actual rationale with an Aristotelian argument. The embryo could be seen as protected as potential human, but what if that potentiality for harmonious organization as a human being (i.e., the effect of having a human soul) could be undermined ante instantem ? Now, frankly this argument fails in the framework in which it is posed in the same way that the precedence of souls theory that once held sway in embryonic ontology. Genetic mutations do occur in which the child develops extremely abnormally (so it cannot possibly survive independently) but still is born nearly dead. And yet I believe it has a soul (which doesn't matter), but I also suspect that the Roman Catholic Church says it has a soul (which really does matter in this case). What worries me is that I cannot see any ontological difference between this genetically altered embryo before implantation and a naturally aberrant embryo before implantation.

ESA(20041207.1)