File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1997/phillitcrit.9711, message 541


Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 13:43:31 -0500
From: Gregory {Greg} Downing <downingg-AT-is2.nyu.edu>
Subject: Complexity; Georgics and Bucolics (Was Re: PLC: Romanticism &


At 10:12 AM 11/10/97 -0500, you (George Trail <gtrail-AT-UH.EDU>) wrote:
>It has struck me,as you note that the polarities are always dissolving (a
>la thesis/antithesis/synthesis -- hell, sounds like some philospher don't
>it) but that they break down in interesting ways. 
>

Empirical complexity seems to be constituted of complementary combinations
of binaries. The binaries are often seen as opposite and mutually exclusive,
but are in fact complementary when looked at carefully. One could argue this
position as a philosopher, as a computer-scientist or an AI theoretician, as
an empirical social-scientist such as a structuralist (or even post-s.)
anthropoligist, as a literary exegete, u.s.w.

Class next hour, so tchouzinho as they say in Brasil. What is truth, said
jesting Pilate, but would not stay for an answer....

Also, yes Georgios means farmer, but literally earth-mover (gaia + ourg-). I
mentioned Hesiod last night and everyone knows his Georgics, which are about
how to act properly in the world of interpersonal and social action....

See also Tony (Anthony) Low of NYU English's _The Georgic Revolution_
(1980-something) and Dwight Durling's older but workmanly _The Georgic
Tradition in English Lit_ (about 1930 or so, Columbia). Why do they write
about farms in Manhattan? (Though it was of course all farms, not so long
ago.) Well, why did Theokritos make his native island of Kos a bucolic
setting when it was the summering-place of the Hellenistic court from
Alexandria? The ways of the culture are not our ways....

Gregory {Greg} Downing, at greg.downing-AT-nyu.edu or downingg-AT-is2.nyu.edu 



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