George Bernard Shaw on Einstein

I read Shaw's toast to Einstein probably a good 50 years ago or more, but lacking a reference as well as the appropriate memory, I was not certain where to find a certain passage I remembered. Now I have located the text of the whole speech:

Toast to Albert Einstein, by Bernard Shaw, edited by Fred D. Crawford, Shaw, Vol. 15 (1995), pp. 231-241.

This is more or less the passage I remembered:

As an Englishman, Newton was able to combine mental power so extraordinary that if I were speaking fifty years ago, as I am old enough to have done, I should have said that his was the greatest mind that any man had ever been endowed with. And he contrived to combine the exercise of that wonderful mind with credulity, with superstition, with delusion which would not have imposed on a moderately intelligent rabbit. (Laughter) 

As an Englishman also, he knew his people, he knew his language, he knew his own soul. And knowing that language, he knew that an honest thing was a square thing; an honest bargain was a square deal; an honest man was a square man, who acted on the square. That is to say, the universe that he created had above everything to be a rectilinear universe. (Laughter)

Now, see the dilemma in which this placed Newton. universe; He knew his universe, he knew that it consisted of heavenly bodies all in motion; and he also knew that the one thing that you cannot do to any body in motion whatsoever is to make it move in a straight line. You may fire it out of a cannon with the strongest charge that you can put into it. You may have the cannon contrived to have, as they say, the flattest trajectory that a cannon can have. It is no use. The projectile will not go in a straight line. If you take a poor man - the poorer the better - if you blindfold that man, and if you say, "I will give you a thousand pounds if you, blindfolded, will walk a thousand yards in a straight line," he will do his best for the sake of the thousand pounds to walk in a straight line, but he will walk in an elliptical orbit and come back to exactly the same place.

Now, what was Newton to do? How was he to make the universe English? (Laughter) Well, mere facts will never daunt an Englishman. They never have stopped one yet, and they did not stop Newton. Newton invented - invented, mind you; some people would say discovered, I advisedly say he invented - a force, which would make the straight line, take the straight lines of his universe and bend them. And that was the force of gravitation. And when he had invented this force, he had created a universe which was wonderful and consistent in itself, and which was thoroughly British. (Laughter)

I remembered the association of cultural and physical rectilinearity, and I also remembered that Shaw failed to understand the nature of scientific idealization and physical explanation. Perhaps by this time I was aware of Shaw's penchant for the crackpot mysticism that vitiated his rational diagnosis of society's flaws. 

However, I have just learned that Shaw's anti-science was more extensive and preposterous, but was mitigated somewhat, partially due to his friendship with Einstein:

Shaw, Einstein and Physics, by Desmond J. McRory, Shaw, Vol. 6 (1986), pp. 33-67.

Shaw's animosity towards (astro)physics was mitigated and in any case overshadowed by his persistent contempt for biology. Einstein's relativity (and to a lesser extent quantum mechanics) shows up in many of Shaw's later works. Einstein is likened to a great artist. The revolution in physics is favorably contrasted with what came before.

Philosophy and Method in the West & India

Sarukkai, Sundar. “Philosophy and Method,” in Mapping Scientific Method: Disciplinary Narrations, edited by Gita Chadha and Renny Thomas (London; New York: Routledge, 2023), pp. 85-103.

This is an interesting essay which I nonetheless consider to be an elementary introduction to the question. Sarukkai broadens the usual terms of debate in the anglophone world (characterized as a restrictive focus on Western philosophy) to include Indian philosophy in the mix, which resonates with the phenomenological tradition in the West. Sarukkai suggests the complementary nature of focusing on the subject-object relation by addressing the approaches of phenomenology and science respectively. Of interest in particular is the Nyāya 16-step process as a model for philosophical method.

The narrowness Sarukkai confronts is most characteristic of analytical philosophy. Sarukkai’s broadening of the base of discussion is welcome, but his pluralism has limitations. He accepts the now-conventional categories of analytical and continental philosophy as givens. He mentions Marxism and Critical Theory in passing, but his entire discussion bypasses Hegel, Marx, and the Frankfurt School, which would lend themselves to an overview of disparate methods and schools of thought from a decidedly different perspective.

And there is the question of the nature of method and the manner of its applicability, an issue that applies also to critical thinking in general. Interpretation is not algorithmic or formalistic; it requires non-mechanical judgment of specific content even with the cognizance of general principles.

See also my bibliographies:

Indian Logic & Argumentation: Selected Bibliography

Argumentation & Controversies: Selected Bibliography

Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking: A Guide

Philosophical Style: Selected Bibliography

Philosophy of History of Philosophy & Historiography of Philosophy: Selected Bibliography

Christ the Vampire reappears

I posted about this novel once before and have now uploaded an old review of it:

Review of J. G. Eccarius, The Last Days of Christ the Vampire by L. Chernyi

Here is a sample of the novel itself.

III Publishing is still in business, but only offers digital editions now.

You can now buy a Kindle (3rd) edition of this book.

James Baldwin's "The Amen Corner"

James Baldwin's 1954 play The Amen Corner was slated to be presented by the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington DC, just before the pandemic shut the city down. I attended some of the rehearsal and later attended a discussion under the auspices of the production's director. Here is my report of this experience.

2 February 2020

Well, I went to the open rehearsal today, the first rehearsal on the stage where the play will be performed. Never got through the play, as two scenes were rehearsed over and over for three hours. However, seeing the characters perform is superior to reading the actual play. But also the disconnect between all that carrying on in church and the actual conflicts and behavior of the church people is even more palpable. The first scene is singing and carrying on and preaching. The second scene sets up all the conflicts in the play, and what's really going on behind all that piety.

My concern is that when all is done, the impact of all that getting happy will obscure Baldwin's message of the limited mentality and the cramped lives that feed that religious fanaticism.

This was, I think, Baldwin's first major enterprise after the publication of his first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, which also has an ambiguous ending, and has a couple characters interested in something other than praising Jesus 24-7. Whereas this play has David taking his musical talent out of the church into the world of music developing in the 'sinful' outside world.

17 February 2020:

Yesterday I attended an interview with the director and a scholar of James Baldwin's play The Amen Corner at the Shakespeare Theatre [in Washington DC]. I came in with some skepticism, but I was pleased at the insightful commentary of the speakers (two Black women interviewed by a white guy), which also gave me a more positive view of the play as well as an understanding of just how innovative it was in 1954, though it has been comparatively neglected in Baldwin's oeuvre.

I started off the Q & A with my excellent intervention. The director was thrilled by my observations and questions. I inquired: given your understanding of the complexity of the play, have you found that the audiences and critics of 1954 and today appreciate the ambiguous position that Baldwin presents (comparable to that of his first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, which I also characterized)? Were you worried that the audience might be so distracted by the feelgood singing and dancing and carrying on that they would overlook Baldwin's negative attitude towards the Black church?

To my surprise, the director responded with a resounding yes. She said that when she first started rehearsing, she was afraid the story would turn into a musical, so she had to tone it down so that the complexity of Baldwin's play would not be obscured. The Baldwin scholar added information about the first performance of the play at Howard University in 1954, as well as other contextualizing information.

The director emphasized that the play would be just as controversial today for Black audiences exposing the dirty laundry in the church. In response to a question about problems with white reviewers (viz. a current controversy), the director said that since a negative review can destroy a play and the author's career, lazy and insensitive reviewers present a serious problem, but the very nature of theater is to reach out to everybody, so it's a risk she believes in taking.

I didn't get to talk with the interviewees afterward, but a Black guy came up to me and said he really liked what I had to say.

I am the best.

22 February 2020:

I've just re-read James Baldwin's The Amen Corner, and I like it much better this time around. Now I'm inclined to think Baldwin takes his criticism of the Black church another step or two beyond his first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain. It would not be long before he would reveal his separation from Christianity, though not his religious sensibility, in his essays.

Also, the more I think about his struggle with his upbringing, the more I think I understand part of the basis for his attacks on Richard Wright, who never showed the slightest sympathy for Black religion. Baldwin before the end of his life admitted he was wrong about Wright. Here is a conclusion of a talk he gave which I transcribed from a tape:

"Richard went to Paris in 1946, when I was 22, he was 38. Now, it took me a long time; I had to get to be much older to realize something. I didn't realize it that day at all. I was not born in Mississippi; I was born in New York. And I did not leave Mississippi to go to Chicago. And endure all that. I was much too young to realize what I was looking at really. But, that's a journey. To go from Mississippi to Chicago to New York to Paris in 38 years is amazing. You might as well have walked all that distance, it's almost that remarkable."

— James Baldwin on Richard Wright, Yale University, 2 November 1983

D. T. Suzuki revisited

I had forgotten that I had something to say about D. T. Suzuki in a previous post: 

Gods, UFOs, Zen, epistemology, autonomy

Last year I retraced my steps back to 1977, when I read Zen Buddhism & Psychoanalysis, by D. T. Suzuki, Erich Fromm, and Richard De Martino (New York: Harper, 1960). I concluded somewhere along the line that Fromm was naive about Suzuki and other religious/spiritual figures, but this time I was appalled by Suzuki, so I wrote this:

Revisiting D. T. Suzuki: Selective reading, memory, & embarrassment

Andrew S. Curran on Diderot

Andrew S. Curran, author of the acclaimed Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely (Other Press, 2019), was the guest speaker in a virtual meeting of the Greater Boston Humanists on 22 November 2020 titled 'Enlightenment, Atheism, and Race'. 

From today's perspective Diderot can be seen as more progressive than Voltaire and Rousseau. The concept of the 'Radical Enlightenment' was discussed, as well as the origins and causes of modern racism. This was an excellent presentation with exceptionally intelligent audience participation.

Curran is also the author of The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Era of Enlightenment (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).

Richard Wright vs Sun Ra

This is only a hypothetical confrontation to have taken place in the 1950s, or posthumously in the '60s. I recently came across an untitled poem that I wrote the same day I wrote this:

UFO (Haiku for Richard Wright)

In a rootless cosmopolitan way, Wright also belongs to Afrofuturism, maybe not so much Afro-....

"I have no religion in the formal sense of the word .... I have no race except that which is forced upon me. I have no country except that to which I'm obliged to belong. I have no traditions. I'm free. I have only the future."

-- Richard Wright, Pagan Spain

My haiku was prompted by a conversation about flying saucers buried in Wright's novel The Outsider. Both Wright and Sun Ra were hot to escape the confines of the Jim Crow South, taking different routes. Both are admirable for different reasons. Sun Ra was a musical genius and quite a charismatic character, but having listened to his blather in person, I could only take so much. So this is what I must have been thinking when I wrote the following, to which I must now give a title in addition to some slight editing and rearrangement:

Richard Wright to Sun Ra From the Tomb

Shaking hands with the ether,
Knowing Natchez was a pile of shit
Spewn over the globe.

Faith in articulate waves
broadcast into the galaxy . . .
and not your crank etymologies
concocted in the Magic City.

Bluesman in Paris
did not settle down,
Hallucinating into the future
And abruptly cut down.

(4 August 2011)