Lise Meitner - Bona Fide Genius

In 1944 Otto Hahn would receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the interpretation of nuclear* fission*. Meitner was not mentioned. Some say this was the greatest oversight ever made by the Nobel prize committee. 

A life fraught with such toil,  loss, neglect, betrayal - in the midst of war  - despite remarkably tenacious bursts of creativity and insight, yet never receiving her share of the credit for discoveries that helped to "split the atom" - it's enough to get me interested in SCIENCE again.

Jon Von Neumann - Bona Fide Genius

I've met only very few really really intelligent people in my time - and that would include the two or three blessed souls who have posted on this blog spot. But this guy (Von Neumann) was the real deal - grandfather of computers and founder of game theory - this guy had the synapses firing - as is somewhat evident from the old world European hair and the tired-looking eyes.

Unforgettable Prose Classic.

"I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

Friday, March 9th - Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville - The perennial question remains: was Bartleby, the great American "I would prefer not to" refuse-nik, in actuality the uncompromising artist on a personal quest that no one else could understand/appreciate or the pathetic slacker who never fulfilled his expected duties at work or his civic responsibilities in the world outside... His spirit lives on in today's America...eh? 

Nathaniel Hawthorne on Herman Melville - "Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had "pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated"; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists - and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before - in wondering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us." - Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Agnes Grey - by Anne Bronte - The youngest Bronte sister is a very under-rated and under-valued, but thankfully not totally overlooked writer.

Thursday - March 8th - The Problem with Men - Part II  - Just can't seem to let go of those thoughts from yesterday... the silent protest of the American male ...his ongoing quest to "stop time" and re-write the rules of adulthood - to the chagrin of everyone around him...as a response to feelings of powerlessness and anonymity that he cannot otherwise articulate or overcome - inevitably leads me back to previous philosophical musings about the meaning of "post-modern" or "post-post-modern" not because I want to sound spacey or cosmic or altogether random and discursive in my commentary...but just because I have a hunch that the two are related -  if it is indeed the case that we have actually moved beyond the first phase of belatedness in the 21st century because the movement calling itself by the name postmodernism has sort of fizzled out in literary and other circles.  Of course, by postmodern, I refer to that increased level of awareness focused not simply on the "what" (the content or substance of an object per se) but on the "how" of presentation - on the various "mediums" through which something "out there" is received, processed, and understood. Stage one by itself would be "high modernism," yet we have reached the point at which the naive sense of "being" having already been replaced by "subjective experience" or "belief" (whatever appears true for me in my subjective awareness) next becomes swallowed up by the "contextual backgrounds of perception" (for lack of a better term) such that what gets affirmed in the final analysis is not "belief" as a  firm, substantial, empirical, albeit subjectively valid "true opinion," but a historically flexible horizon or Zeitgeist or  language-game or ideology that underlies and surrounds the now unstable subjective belief...  Heideggerians thus speak of the "event" that happens and keeping unfolding - not the "stable world" or  the "stable you" - but the "event" - Can you dig it? It is not as if, people do not still affirm their beliefs or that they lack strong yearnings to believe (quite the contrary); it is that belief does not/cannot resonate in a way that is socially binding - i.e. accepted without question and acted upon - thereby making the "believer" all the more frustrated. Proclamations from the sacred book fall on deaf ears. Skeptics and naysayers crawl out of the woodwork to shout down all true-believers and would-be prophets. The progressive call to action (another "War on Poverty"to save the 99%) begins and ends as street theater. Consider also the psychology of "fundamentalist thinking" where the constant rejection of absolute "truth-claims" by the "secular majority" only serve to plant the seeds of further alienation. Specifically what is at issue here then is the loss of belief - of any viable belief that is - in a shared public realm or external objective world that is somewhat etched in stone, that we participate in without question, that we inherit and grow up in, and agree upon for the most part, and which makes demands of us, which continues on intact and outlives us.  It is not as though the world is steadily, increasingly morphing out of control on a daily basis into new shapes and forms of fashion and style - driven by wild economic cycles, demographic changes, technology updates and shifts in public opinion. A case could be made in fact that the opposite is true, that things are changing at a slower pace as compared with 100 years ago. The problem has to do with our pre-established "ironic detachment" from any world that is "given" as such, simply because we recognize in advance the time-bound/historical parameters of such a world. (Enter here all ye slackers, geeks, and "lost boys.") And when the public world erodes, people turn inward not simply to immerse themselves in private, familial concerns, but to alternative, fantasy realms as well or escapist modes of consciousness or quasi-religious enthusiasms. But would not science be capable of giving that objective world back to us? Shouldn't science be able to deliver Truth with a capital T - free of all religious and political bickering - a paradigm that has been and continues to be our common frame of reference - and to which all intelligent people appeal? Yes, yes, I suppose that would be correct...and why not.... and isn't that the case already.... except for one simple, yet uncanny ingredient that seems to be missing... I don't really have a term for this missing dimension other than call it: "guidance," "direction," "value," or dare I say....."revelation"(?) Because after all, does science tell me how I feel or how I should feel, and why or what I should do in response to my basic moods and concerns? Does science give me "marching orders" as to what I must do to live above the "animal fray" and achieve those higher-level attainments that human beings tend to measure themselves by? Does science give me a sense of place and purpose - or even a "script" to follow beyond a series of instinctual imperatives - which taken on their own, absent any higher aspirations, only lead to chaos and ruin? But if science is not living up to its end - through no fault of its own - what shall we turn to to fill this vacuum? And should we call it by a definite name? Is it Art? Is it Literature? Psychology? Morality? Religion? And if so, what of traditional religion - should not that become part of the conversation - unless that too proves insufficient to the edifice we are seeking.