|
Post by johntufail on Apr 21, 2008 17:21:59 GMT -5
Hi Carlo,
Yes. The SPR was indeed a very respectable society. It contained many distinguished members as you know. However, I think members should realise that the SPR WAS a part of the schisms within the Anglican Church in the 19th Century and membership of SPR did define, to some extent, which element of the competing factions one was associated with.
You are correct in stating that the aims and objects of SPR did not contradict the fundamentals of Christian religion. However your statement inadvertently disguises the fact that thee were major controversies going on about what actually WERE the fundamentals of Christian religion. I remarked obliquely on this in my mention of Horst and Westcott in a previous mail.
I'm a little concerned that we are getting to the boundaries of readers' knowledge here (though not readers' intelligence!). What was going on in the 19th century - in science, theology, geography, philosophy and art was a debate that was broadly akin to the divide between on the one hand Newtonian physics (and math) and what we now know as quantum and relativity physics.
In Newtonian physics there is a strictly ordered universe, precise in every detail, unswerving in its order. In theological terms, God is the general and the universe, God's soldiers, unswervingly obey its commands unquestioningly.
For the sake of simplicity let us call this the Aristotolean view of the universe.
On the other hand we have those who have argued that perfect order is not only impossible but also contrary to God's will - that human's have the gift of Free Will. They are not sheep.
This is the quantum/relativity (Platonic) side of the coin.
Everything is relative. Everything is contingent. Everything is subjective.
So instead of having a mechanistic universe that is ruled and directed by an unswerving, unchanging God. We have a universe that is constanty changing, dynamic and, above all, subject to to the impostiion of Free Will.
This is what the debate was about and this is what Carroll was both addressing and struggliing with.
I think that if anyone reads Carroll in these terms, many things that did not seem clear WILL become clear.
Regards
JT
|
|
|
Post by johntufail on Apr 23, 2008 16:17:49 GMT -5
I think the discussion on why Carroll went to Oxford rather than Cambridge is more appropiate on this site given the way the debate is developing.
First, I doubt that Carroll had much say in choice of university. His father's links were all with Oxford and of Course, in Pusey, Dodgson Snr had a very powerful advocate for his son.
Even were Pusey not a major factor, there is little doubt that Dodgson Snr would have vehemently objected to his son attending Cambridge. The reasons for this have nothing to do with the relative merits of the two varsity's mathematical or classical curruculae. Rather there were fundamental religious objections to Cambridge from Dodgson Snrs point of view (ironically as it turned out!).
Cambridge was the seat of the 'Apostles' (The Cambridge Apostles, one of the world's most famous 'secret' societies). Founded in 1820, the Apostles was a debating society. More to the point, during the period we are examining, leading up to Caroll's move into tertiary education, the Apostles had become the most powerful force for liberal reform of the Anglican Church in England. The antithesis of the Oxford Movement. It was the catalyst for the Broad Church movement in general and Christian Socialism in particular. It numbered among its members, Ludlow and Maurice, but also Tennyson and Hort.
What I find fascinating about this is the timing. Carroll enrolled as an undergraduate at Oxford around 1850. Prior to that, there is no indication that he had any particular affilliation in the various religious, philosophical or political debates that were rampant at the time.
Yet, almost as son as he arrived at Oxford, his diaries show that, from as early as 1851, his curiosities and interests were directed to precisely the position taken by the Apostles. He religiously read Coleridge (the inspiration of Maurice and Ludlow), read with approval and admiration the works of Charles Kingsley. Within two years he was writing political 'squibs' that mocked the status quo (in the person of his own patron, Pusey).
This is, to me, the most puzzling aspect of Carroll's life. From the evidence of his own diaries it sems as though he had arrived fully (at least emotionally) prepared to combat and refute the domination that the Oxford Movement legacy then held over Oxford University.
There remain major gaps in Carroll's early life (especially 16-20 yrs) that require further rigorous investigation.
JT
|
|
|
Post by ermete22 on Apr 29, 2008 16:20:09 GMT -5
Hi John, very interesting information. Frankly I just have heard about Apostoles Society, but I am quite ignorant about it. Years ago I investigated, as an amateur of curse, for some months about a problem related to that; I found out some details that are really surprising and which I was not able to fully understand about Carroll and the secret societies. Some details are apparently rather stupid, but others are surprising. I decided to keep them for myself; I am just a professor of theoretical physics, not an historian, so my researches’ results are without any real value. My impression is that, for some reason I do not fully understand (or maybe understand too well) there has been a strong censure about the subject, but I am convinced this is not the place to raise the subject. If you agree I will contact you on your personal address. Carlo
|
|
|
Post by johntufail on Apr 30, 2008 18:05:35 GMT -5
Hi Carlo,
Don't feel ashamed about your lack of knowledge about the Apostles society. After all not one of Carroll's biographers have ever mentioned it - despite it's clear influence on Carrol's life!
I have always put this down to the fact that not one of Carroll's iographers has been a professional or even competently 'amateur' historian. Mind you, this has strained my antipathy to conspiracy theories to the outward limits!
The point you make about Carrol's relationship with 'Secret Societies is well Judged'. His texts suggest not only familiarty and undestanding the existence and even understandings of secret societies but also a desire to keep knowledge of this undertanding available to an elite few who can understand the metaphors and symbolism in Carroll's works that relate to these.
Regards
JT
|
|
|
Post by johntufail on May 2, 2008 3:43:57 GMT -5
Carlo,
Sorry to be placing a personal message on a public borad, but my mails to you keep bein retuned by demon saying recipient unknown. Perhaps the sleeping King awakened?
Regards
John Tufail
|
|
|
Post by ermete22 on May 3, 2008 6:40:00 GMT -5
Hi John, you passed a lot of important information in your last messages, about the debates going on in the Victorian society during Carroll’s life; of some of them I was aware, on others I did not know. Referring to Carroll, one is left with the following question: why was he so laconic and often did not take any clear position on them? We know that he assisted to the public debate hold in Oxford about Darwinism just because someone has found out the accounts of his personal finance. I have a copy of a letter by Darwin, who kindly refuses the proposal by Carroll to take pictures illustrating the different human expressions. In Sylvie and Bruno he jokes about Spencer’s social version of Darwinism. But no clear cut comment on evolutionism remains in the surviving documents (at least to my knowledge). Wescott and Hort took public positions about the interpretations of the Genesis after Darwin’s and Lyell discoveries (by the way The antiquity of Man is one of the most clever books it happened to me to read) and continued successfully the careers in the church. This shows that it was, after all, not so risky to spell out ideas also within the church of England. This has not always been the case; the Tractarians faced more difficulties. Carroll’s laconic position needs to be understood as the interpretations can be very different. He could maybe consider himself as a terracotta vase in an environment of steel vases, be afraid for his career even if he had in practice no career and did not seem very interested in it. Or, aware more than the characters moving around him of the conceptual difficulties associated with novel scenarios, he preferred not to take positions which could turn out be wrong in the future. Or he could believe in some sense in the Gnostic and Tractarian’s Doctrina Arcani, which could reinforce the idea that his secret society/ies connections where more important than what is normally believed. Or its conviction that you must start always from self-evident truths, blocked somehow his capability of judgement. He was at least not enthusiast about induction as one clearly see in Sylvie and Bruno.
Carlo
|
|
dragster
Pawn
Be IN with tyme !
Posts: 9
|
Post by dragster on Jul 19, 2008 12:12:14 GMT -5
Carroll’s logic, the advanced one in particular, is hard to read (I refer to “The symbolic logic by Lewis Carroll” by W. W. Bartley,III in 1977). Often you are lost as you can hardly follow Carroll due to its language. Why? One of the fundamental reasons is for sure the fact that Carroll often touch problems which are at the limits of logic, as, for example the sentences stating the laws of logical inference. To properly make clear his points, Carroll would have needed a meta-language, that is a language which could contain logical sentences between “ “. It looks funny but it is like that. When you can put a logical sentence between “ “ you can obtain strange things, as you refer to the sentence as a pure string of symbols. The famous (“The snow is white “ only if the snow is white), by Tarski is one of the possible tricks. It is evident that if you have a meta-language you can reason ABOUT your logical system, while, not having it, you are CLOSED INSIDE the logical language you use, you cannot talk about it. At Carroll’s times meta-language concept had still to come in definite form, so Carroll, willing to discuss truth and its definition, was closed inside the language: he made terrible efforts to express his intuitions (The Achille and Tortoise dialogue) and he almost reached the point while remaining inside the logical system, by inserting an additional general law of inference as a internal language sentence. He could go no more ahead. The major critics of Carroll about his B.S. argument were Ryle and Toulmin, who were actually wrong by choosing to forbid in logic statement about the logical inference itself. If the absence of a clearly conceived concept of meta- language makes some times Carroll hard to understand, it is evident that he was grasping some real need of it for real advances in logics; but what seems more important, contributed to create the most fascinating situations in Alice's Books and in Sylvie and Bruno. as you can feel the problem he talks about in his amusing funny style. A man who correctly understood the existence of problems like "how can I justify the validity of inference in logics?" and the need of semantic to talk about truth was for sure a relevant actor of the logic studies of his epoch. He missed to identify the need of a logic with a meta-language as many others. Also Boole would have solved many of his deepest conceptual problems if he had introduced a meta- language. Carlo I'm in the language business and sure enough this topic interests me beyond the logics. I think Carroll uses a limguistic style that is rather difficult to grasp by most readers. Rob
|
|
dragster
Pawn
Be IN with tyme !
Posts: 9
|
Post by dragster on Jul 19, 2008 12:38:22 GMT -5
I voted NO of course!!
|
|
|
Post by jabberwock on Mar 30, 2010 13:51:20 GMT -5
I find it interesting that no-one has taken up the challenge "to give particular examples of Carroll's logic problems and explain them". It is also interesting that I cvan find nowhere in the literature a complete solution or full discussion of his famous "Froggy" sorites. Maybe someone would like to start with that? I have done some preliminary work in putting it into Carroll's notation on: www.connectedglobe.com/froggy/index.html
|
|