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[This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]
In a famous polemical essay (1986) in NYRB, my (recall) teacher, Myles Burnyeat, distinguished between two ways of entering Strauss’ thought: either through his “writings” or “one may sign up for initiation with a Straussian teacher.” That is, as Burnyeat notes, Strauss founded a school – he quotes Lewis Coser’s claim that it is “an academic cult” -- with an oral tradition. In the 1986 essay, Burnyeat spends some time on the details of Strauss’ teaching strategy and style that he draws from autobiographical writings by Bloom and Dannhauser[1] as well as by aptly quoting Strauss’ famous (1941) essay "Persecution and the Art of Writing." Somewhat peculiarly, given what follows, Burnyeat does not comment on the surprising fit he [Burnyeat] discerns between Strauss’ writing and teaching!
Burnyeat goes on to imply that without the oral tradition, Strauss’ writings fall flat, or (and these are not the same thing, of course) lack political influence. I quote:
“It is the second method that produces the sense of belonging and believing. The books and papers are freely available on the side of the Atlantic from which I write, but Strauss has no discernible influence in Britain at all. No one writing in the London Review of Books would worry—as Stephen Toulmin worried recently in these pages about the State Department’s policy-planning staff—that Mrs. Thatcher’s civil servants know more about the ideas of Leo Strauss than about the realities of the day. Strauss has no following in the universities where her civil servants are educated. Somehow, the interchange between teacher and pupil gives his ideas a potency that they lack on the printed page.”
I want to draw out to two themes from this quote: first, I’ll focus on the reception of Strauss in the UK. And, second, on the way governing elites are educated. So much for set up.
First, this is an extraordinary passage once we remember that already in 1937 Michael Oakeshott wrote an admiring and insightful review of Strauss’ ,The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: its Basis and its Genesis (1936) that is very much worth re-reading. (In his earlier, 1935, essay in Scrutiny on Hobbes, Oakeshott alerts the reader that he is familiar with Strauss’ (1932) French article on Hobbes.) It matters to Burnyeat’s empirical claim because while Oakeshott, who did have an impact British political thinking, certainly is not a slavish follower of Strauss, one would have to be confident that none of Oakeshott’s teachings weren’t taken from Strauss at all. Writing in the London Review of Books a few years later (1992), Perry Anderson alerts his readers to non-trivial differences between Strauss and Oakeshott (which is compatible with my claim), and more importantly for present purposes, treats Strauss as a major influence on the then newish resurgence of the intellectual right (although that can be made compatible with Burnyeat’s claim about Strauss’ purported lack of influence in the UK).[2]
But even when taken on its own terms, there is something odd about Burnyeat’s claim. For, even if we grant that Strauss has no following at all in British universities by the mid 1980s, this could have other sources than the lack of potency of Strauss’ ideas. After all, there had been a number of influential polemics against Strauss in the United Kingdom. Most notably, the so-called ‘Cambridge school’ of historiography (associated with Pocock, Dunn, and Skinner amongst others) polemically self-defined, in part, against Strauss and his school; this can be readily ascertained by, for example, word-searching ‘Strauss’ in Quentin Skinner’s (1968) "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas."[3] One can also discern, as I have noted before, such polemics by reading Yolton’s (1958) "Locke on the Law of Nature" in The Philosophical Review.[4] Yolton was then at Kenyon, but he had been an Oxford DPhil student of Ryle’s, who supervised his dissertation on John Locke.[5] Polemic is simply unnecessary with writings one foresees would have no influence or potency at all. So, I am afraid to say that Burnyeat’s presentation does little justice to even the broad outlines of the early reception of Strauss in the U.K.
As I noted, there is a second theme lurking in the quoted passage, namely Burnyeat’s interest in how civil servants are educated at university. This theme is developed by Burnyeat as follows in the NYRB essay:
The leading characters in Strauss’s writing are “the gentlemen” and “the philosopher.” “The gentlemen” come, preferably, from patrician urban backgrounds and have money without having to work too hard for it: they are not the wealthy as such, then, but those who have “had an opportunity to be brought up in the proper manner.” Strauss is scornful of mass education. “Liberal education is the necessary endeavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society. Liberal education reminds those members of a mass democracy who have ears to hear, of human greatness.” Such “gentlemen” are idealistic, devoted to virtuous ends, and sympathetic to philosophy. They are thus ready to be taken in hand by “the philosopher,” who will teach them the great lesson they need to learn before they join the governing elite.
The name of this lesson is “the limits of politics.” Its content is that a just society is so improbable that one can do nothing to bring it about. In the 1960s this became: a just society is impossible. In either case the moral is that “the gentlemen” should rule conservatively, knowing that “the apparently just alternative to aristocracy open or disguised will be permanent revolution, i.e., permanent chaos in which life will be not only poor and short but brutish as well.”
Burnyeat infers these claims from a number of Strauss’s writings in the 1950s and 60s which he has clearly read carefully. In fact, at the end of the second paragraph, Burnyeat adds in his note (after citing Strauss’ What is Political Philosophy? p. 113), “where Strauss indicates that when this argument is applied to the present day, it yields his defense of liberal or constitutional democracy—i.e., modern democracy is justified, according to him, if and because it is aristocracy in disguise.”
Now, even friends of mass education can admit that modern democracy is an aristocracy in disguise. This is not a strange claim at all when we remember that traditionally ‘democracy’ was associated with what we now call ‘direct’ or ‘popular’/’plebiscite’ democracy, whereas our ‘liberal’ or ‘representative’ democracy was understood as aristocratic in form if only because it functionally preserves rule by the relatively few as Tocqueville intimates. This fact is a common complaint from the left, and, on the right, taken as a vindication of the sociological ‘elite’ school (associated with Mosca, Pareto, etc.). It is not limited to the latter, of course, because the claim can be found in the writing of Max Weber on UK/US party politics (which Strauss knew well.)
Of course, what matters is what kind of aristocracy modern liberal democracy is, and can be. And now we return, anew, to theme of the education of the governing elite(s) as Burnyeat put front and center in NYRB. That a liberal education can produce a ‘natural’ aristocracy is, in fact, staple of writings in what we may call ‘the conservative tradition’ as can be found in Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind. The idea is given a famous articulation in the writings of Edmund Burke (1791) “An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.” (I have put the passage from Burke in a note.)[6]
So, as summarized by Burnyeat, Strauss simply echoes a commonplace about how Burke is understood by post WWII conservatives. What’s distinctive then is that Strauss is presented as claiming that the ancient wisdom he discloses is that trying to bring about a fully just society would re-open the Hobbesian state of nature/war, that is, permanent chaos. It won’t surprise that Burnyeat denies this is the unanimous teaching of the ancients (although when I took a seminar with him about fifteen years later he came close to endorsing this himself as a reading of the Republic). For, the closing two paragraphs of his essay, drive this point home:
Plato’s Socrates attacks this very notion early in the Republic. No matter: Strauss will demonstrate that it is the only definition of justice from Book I which is “entirely preserved” in the remainder of the Republic. Plato’s Socrates argues passionately in the Gorgias for a revolutionary morality founded on the thesis that one should not return wrong for wrong. Strauss’s unwritten essay on Plato’s Gorgias would have summoned all his Maimonidean skills to show that Socrates does not mean what he says. Much more is at stake here than the correctness or otherwise of the common scholarly opinion that Xenophon, a military man, was incompetent at philosophy and did not understand Socrates. The real issue is Strauss’s ruthless determination to use these old books to “moderate” that idealistic longing for justice, at home and abroad, which grew in the puppies of America during the years when Strauss was teaching and writing.”
That Xenophon was incompetent at philosophy and did not understand Socrates is, in the context of the debate with Strauss, a petitio principii. That’s compatible with the claim that Burnyeat is right about this. But it's worth noting that this is characteristic of analytic historiography. For example, in his early (1951) review of Strauss, Vlastos also describes Xenophon as having a “pedestrian mind.” (593)
Even so, that international justice between states is impossible is not a strange reading of the Republic (or the other ancients). Plato and Aristotle are not Kant, after all. (Plato may have thought that Kallipolis could have just relations with other Hellenic polities, but I see no reason he thought that this was enduringly possible with non-Greek barbarians.) And if we permit the anachronism by which it is phrased, it strikes me that Strauss is right that for the ancients civil society must, of necessity, foster warlike habits and make its citizens apply different rules of conduct to one another and to foreigners (even if many foreigners could be treated in pacific fashion and in accord with a supra-national moral norms). Part of Plato’s popularity (recall; and here) in the nineteenth century was undoubtedly due to the plausibility of reading him as a pan-hellenic nationalist. It doesn’t follow from this, of course, that for Socrates whatever justice is possible within the city has to be attenuated or imperfect. It is, however, peculiar that even if one rejects Strauss’ purported “great lesson” and if one grants that Kallipolis is, indeed, the ideal city one should treat the effort to bring it into being as anything more than a dangerous fantasy; and while I wouldn’t want to claim that a “just society is so improbable that one can do nothing to bring it about,” it is not odd to wish to moderate those that try knowing, as we do, the crimes of the Gulag or the Great Leap forward, if that's really what Strauss taught.
[1] “Leo Strauss September 20, 1899–October 18, 1973,” Political Theory 2 (1974), pp. 372–392, which Burnyeat commends, and Werner J. Dannhauser, “Leo Strauss: Becoming Naive Again,” The American Scholar 44 (1974–1975),
[2] Anderson, Perry. "The intransigent right at the end of the century." London Review of Books 14.18 (1992): 7-11. Reprinted in Anderson, Perry. Spectrum. Verso, 2005.
[3] Skinner, Quentin. "Meaning and Understanding in thef History of Ideas." History and theory 8.1 (1969): 3-53. (There is a huge literature on the debates between the Cambridge school and Straussianism.)
[4] John W. Yolton (1958) "Locke on the Law of Nature." The Philosophical Review 67.4: 478.
[5] Buickerood, James G., and John P. Wright. "John William Yolton, 1921-2005." Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association. American Philosophical Association, 2006.
[6] “A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state, or separable from it. It is an essential integrant part of any large body rightly constituted. It is formed out of a class of legitimate presumptions, which, taken as generalities, must be admitted for actual truths. To be bred in a place of estimation; to see nothing low and sordid from one’s infancy; to be taught to respect one’s self; to be habituated to the censorial inspection of the public eye; to look early to public opinion; to stand upon such elevated ground as to be enabled to take a large view of the widespread and infinitely diversified combinations of men and affairs in a large society; to have leisure to read, to reflect, to converse; to be enabled to draw and court the attention of the wise and learned, wherever they are to be found; to be habituated in armies to command and to obey; to be taught to despise danger in the pursuit of honour and duty; to be formed to the greatest degree of vigilance, foresight, and circumspection, in a state of things in which no fault is committed with impunity and the slightest mistakes draw on the most ruinous consequences; to be led to a guarded and regulated conduct, from a sense that you are considered as an instructor of your fellow-citizens in their highest concerns, and that you act as a reconciler between God and man; to be employed as an administrator of law and justice, and to be thereby amongst the first benefactors to mankind; to be a professor of high science, or of liberal and ingenious art; to be amongst rich traders, who from their success are presumed to have sharp and vigorous understandings, and to possess the virtues of diligence, order, constancy, and regularity, and to have cultivated an habitual regard to commutative justice: these are the circumstances of men that form what I should call a natural aristocracy, without which there is no nation.”
See also Kirk, Russell. "Burke and natural rights." The Review of Politics 13.4 (1951): 454.
[I am phasing out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]
Perhaps because I recognize in myself a warmth toward Spinozism, but I am always inordinately pleased when I can recognize and act on the play of chance. After a raucous pub lecture to the members of student-club of the political science department (aptly named Machiavelli) in the Amsterdam red light district, I received Jan Patočka' Living in Problematicity -- a slim volume of essays (selected and translated by Eric Manton) -- as a gift with a touching inscription from a former student. I knew that Patočka (1907-1977) was a philosopher and a courageous co-founder of Charta 77. His clandestine discussion groups and his lectures at the under-ground university are legendary. I had never read anything by him, although his work is becoming increasingly accessible in English.
Yesterday, while in transit, I read "Platonism and Politics," which is a very short meditation on Bendas' La Trahison des clercs (1927; often translated as: The Treason of the Intellectuals); recall this post). Because in preparing a syllabus for a class on conservatism, I had stumbled on a 1944 note by T.S. Eliot engaging with Benda, I had just been musing about the use of Benda by contemporary intellectuals -- I tweeted this on june 4 (and no, Tweeting is not Thinking) -- so this post was born.
I don't mean to suggest I randomly muse about Benda. As regular readers know, I write in a philosophical tradition that feels entitled to be unlearned. And so in our controversies over 'public [facing] philosophy' and 'responsible speech' we end up repeating, over and over again, the same trite clichés without any sense of embarrassment. And this lack of shame is, of course, characteristic of a modern clerisy (in Benda's sense). Since I am a blogger, feel free to read this as self-indictment. Okay, so much for set up.
Now, for sociological reasons I do not fully understand, while Benda is wholly unknown inside my tradition, he does repeatedly get invoked in relatively serious public essays. With the help of Google, here's a few examples of the kind of thing I have in mind:
Mark Lilla December 7, 2021 Tablet Magazine (taken from his intro to a re-issue): Julien Benda’s The Treason of the Intellectuals, an essential intervention in 20th-century debates about intellectual responsibility, is the second sort of book. Cast into the agitated waters of European politics between the two world wars, it still floats ashore every decade or so, attracting readers with its stirring call to the independent life of the mind, free from the lures of power and authority.... he makes a practical case against practicality, an engaged case against political engagements.
Antony Julius (reviewing Berman), May 14, 2010, The New York Time: The masterwork, however, is still Julien Benda’s “Treason of the Intellectuals.” This book, written in 1927 by one of the leading French intellectuals of the early 20th century, may be regarded as the inaugural work of the line....For Benda, the intellectual betrays his vocation when he compromises his commitment to universalist values. The temptation to make such compromises, he argues, lies principally in the appeal of national sentiment, to which intellectuals are quick to subordinate themselves. And the role they assume as nationalists is to conceptualize political hatreds.
I listed these because each of these essays is worth reading as a window on their own polemical moment as well as a kind of an evolution of a meme/trope. What's notable here is the subtle shift in character among what Benda was supposedly inveighing against: political engagement by intellectuals; academic activists/political commitment; a betrayal of universal principles understood as disinterestedness; a betrayal of universal principles in the service of nationalism. I don't mean to suggest there is a mystery here: each essay has slightly different polemical contextual target(s) and so each also subtly rejigs Benda to their own local political-polemical ends (including, in the case of Lilla, criticizing Benda). That's what intellectuals do, after all, right? In general, on a left-right axis, the left-intellectuals will invoke Benda to criticize intellectuals serving power and moneyed-interests, while the right-leaning intellectuals will invoke Benda to criticize intellectuals who serve some (what we now call) social justice cause. All sides (correctly) invoke Benda when criticizing a nationalist-friendly intellectual, unless it's their own nation and they are prudently silent.
Now, what I like about Patočka's little essay (it’s shorter than some of my digressions) is that he inscribes Benda in a debate over the reception of Platonism (or "true philosophizing in general"), and to what degree what one might call the possibility of serving a certain (spiritual) kind of 'higher calling" (in the sense of Republic 487a to which Patočka appeals explicitly) associated with it (but rooted in philosophy), is still possible after Nietzsche (who goes unmentioned) and his death of God (which is intimated in various ways) in modern conditions. In context, it's clear that this Platonism is associated with an interesting mélange of Plato and Husserl. I quote from Manton's translation to give you a sense of what he has in mind:
The ultimate meaning of Platonism is, I think, a spiritual universum, into which a person penetrates by means of a certain purely inner and active (but absolutely not mythical) purification. This purification or philosophy is at the same time the most important and most intensive praxis, solely able to give to the life of the individual as well as of society a necessary unity, to give life that inner center which one potentially keeps within oneself as the unfulfilled meaning of one’s life. Thus Plato’s political conception briefly means this: (1) there exists a single and coherent, truly human, spiritual behavior named philosophy; (2) the “object” of philosophy is not primarily the contents of this world; (3) the right of philosophy to establish norms for life consists in its inner truthfulness, in its absolute character; (4) all of human activity, not founded on philosophy and not illuminated throughout by philosophy, has the character of dissatisfaction, falsehood, and a lack of inner order.
Now, I am not interested here in trying to trace each of these claims back to Plato or, by contrast, to appeal to contemporary scholarship to show that any of this is only in a very attenuated sense to be found in Plato. Rather, let's stipulate with Patočka that this captures something of a familiar ideal. For Patočka, Benda's book raises two-fold question: the first is the Nietzschean one, is this ideal dead? The second-fold is, does the ideal “exist in a certain modified form even in our own lives?" Judging by the essays linked above, the answer to the first is: yes. And to the second, no. As Patočka suggests, Platonism so conceived "can only live where those vital hypothesis discussed above on which Platonism is built also exist."
Now Patočka is clear that his conception of Platonism is itself political in a higher sense (familiar, (recall) I hasten to add from Plato Republic, 592ab), although he gives a humanist spin on it (this is the debt to Husserl whom he quotes). Interestingly enough, for Patočka this entails that the impact of philosophy in life is "the permeation, gradually and usually distortedly, of philosophical concepts into the common human consciousness." This turns Platonism into a kind of Enlightenment project, despite the fact that philosophy itself is "a matter of the few." And, in fact, Patočka calls for a kind of 'new Enlightenment' ground in a new actualization of Platonism, while simultaneously criticizing what we might call the idol of collectivism. (I wouldn't be surprised if the essay were mined by biographers who see in it a prefiguration of his later courage under Stalinism with Czech characteristics.)
For, Patočka (who thinks Benda is confused on the proper task of intellectuals and the role of Platonism in this higher sense) what Benda get right (we might say) ‘formally’ is that proper myth, that is not falsehood but rather "an imaginative vestment of truth," is a useful instrument in the permeation of these concepts and for those (collectives) who do not wish to live a spiritual life. The main point of Patočka's essay is to call attention to the need for myths that express or manifest 'poetical, philosophical yearning.' The Spinozist in me understands this yearning, and Patočka grasps what makes Benda's diatribe so enduringly fascinating.
For Patočka the task of the clerisy is to use myths to help spread this new Enlightenment. This is not far removed (as I argue in this lecture) from how my friend José Benardete understood his task in his book on Infinity (although as always with José there are complications), so if you want an example of how this is supposed to work in the hands of a metaphysician go read it. I could stop here.
Interestingly and surprisingly enough, T.S. Eliot of all people, ridicules Benda: "Benda, as I remember, seemed to expect everybody to be a sort of Spinoza." In context, it's clear that Eliot's 'everybody' is 'every member of the clerisy.' Now, I lifted this sentence from the 1944 piece, which as a subtitle has ‘On the Place and Function of the Clerisy;" one of the questions Eliot asks in it is (unsurprisingly given that subtitle) what is the function of the clerisy. One of the proper functions of the intellectuals for him is to promote the right sort of change: "the chief merits of the clerical elite is that it is an influence for change." This leaves underspecified what change they promote, but it is at least sometimes compatible with Patočka's position.
In addition, according to Eliot it is, thus, inevitable that the clerisy ends up in conflict with the forces that defend the status quo: "To some extent, therefore, there is, and I think should be, a conflict between class and clerical elite." Eliot tacitly here presupposes that the ruling class is change averse. But even ruling classes can promote change if they think it will benefit them--this is something quite familiar in our own time; it does not follow we can always identify whether the clerisy is betraying its true vocation.
As I have hinted above, Eliot decouples the function of the clerisy from a higher calling. I don't mean to suggest he completely decouples it because for him "The clerisy can help to develop and modify [culture]; they have a part to play, but only a part, in its transmission." And presumably Eliot, who is no stranger to Platonism, does think that a culture might have a connection to a higher calling. In fact, when it does, then 'culture' just means an imaginative vestment of truth. Fair enough.
Now, Eliot recognizes a form of pluralism that Patočka finds difficult to accommodate (although it is compatible with his Platonism). For intellectuals share in being outcasts, and "are apt to share a discontent with things as they are, but the ways in which they want to change them will be various and often completely opposed to each other." And while it is tempting to say that the opposition is merely over means (again compatible with Platonism), it is, of course, not impossible that the disagreement is also over ends which begins to look incompatible with Platonism if the unity of the virtues is broken as Eliot himself suggests in the remainder of his notes (and hard to disagree with in 1944).*
However, this all must seem rather quaint. Ours is not an age that wishes to gamble on a revitalized humanism. The transgender-wars take place when capital and the heirs of the once noble tradition of the radical philosophers are betting on transhumanism. Even the very idea of a human right, let alone a culture in the bildung sense assumed by Eliot is suspect. Talking about culture without naming the social sins on which it rests seems also a real betrayal of humanity. No high minded stance seems to be able to survive scrutiny.
But it is no better that the poetical, philosophical yearning(s) are met exclusively by hucksters, or worse. And if Platonism is wholly exhausted, what now? And while I dislike the word ‘problematicity,’ perhaps, if you follow me on this substack voyage, this is the question, if it is a single question, we must answer or the ‘problematic’ we must resolve.
*See especially his treatment "clerical small fry, we have what is called the intelligentsia...in Cairo and such places."
[I am phasing out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]
It's been about five weeks since I switched Digressions to Substack and last wrote an entry in my covid diary. (For my official "covid diaries" see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; and here.) It's time for an update on both. Also, some blog house-keeping at the end.
First, my new/replacement neurologist at the NHS long covid clinic in London was unhappy after listening to my narrative. Short version: much recovered by end of January; teaching went well in February/March, but have struggled since. Yes, I am doing much better since the last time one of his colleagues saw me (with apologies for canceling multiple appointments with me). But no, I shouldn't be taking naproxen so frequently at this stage in order to manage the effects of migraine.
The neurologist's concern was straightforward: I am not nipping the migraines in the bud, but rather masking symptoms. Bottom line, he wanted me to try out the treatment plan the long covid clinic had prescribed to me in June 2022 in order to get the covid induced migraines under control. These are primarily triggered whenever I am cognitively multitasking, that is, socializing, for any amount of time.
In addition, I have noticed an odd new symptom. It's a kind of tinnitus when I lie down to go to bed when I am fatigued. The low grade, but persistent noise 'sounds' like an air-conditioner, generator, or vacuum-cleaner in the distance. Luckily, it doesn’t prevent me from falling asleep because the simple meditation my sister taught me still works like a charm. After some testing with sound-meters and earplugs, I realized the sound is purely cognitive. I only 'hear' it at night when I go to bed, but again only when I am especially tired or migraine-y. (Upon reflection, I suspect I have had this symptom since last Fall and I hereby apologize to the Kimpton hotel in Cambridge in insisting on a room change because of the outside noise I heard.)
Problem is that the official June 2022 treatment plan involves rather serious meds, which were originally developed to treat high blood pressure, depression and/or epilepsy--all have serious (cognitive) side effects. I have not been especially eager to try any, especially if they prevent me from teaching, reading, and writing.
Now, a weird big glitch in the NHS is that the specialist generally does not send you home with the meds required (unless it falls under urgent care), and so I would need to go back with my treatment plan to my GP before I could start any of the treatments the neurologist prescribed. And at the moment any non-urgent appointment at my GP takes a lot of time to schedule. So by the time I met my NHS GP, I had devised an alternative plan.
As it happens when I first met my better half she suffered from awful, debilitating migraines that could last three or four days. But after a while she started a new treatment that has been very successful for her: Botox shots in the neck. Basically one poisons the muscles with Botox so that they can't reinforce a developing migraine with extra stress, and one cuts short the migraine cycle. In the NHS this is an approved treatment for migraine, but only after you try treatment with all the pills first. (Unfortunately, in Holland it's not an approved treatment of migraine so I can't get coverage there either.) Both the NHS neurologist and my GP warned me that if I skipped the pills I could never get reimbursed for the Botox shots, even if it worked. But the GP encouraged me to try it anyway, because he understood my apprehensions about the treatment plan.
So, about twelve days ago, I found myself in the most beautiful physician's office I have ever been in with one of the leading cosmetic eye surgeons of the UK (an old friend of my better half, who -- it was my birthday after all -- paid for my first treatment). fter going through the treatment with me, and ruling out some other medical issues, I got my first eight Botox shots at half dosage. (No, I didn't add a secret cosmetic treatment for eyes or chin!) The plan is to give it two to three weeks, and then, if necessary, add another dosage. If the treatment works, I would need the shots about two or three times a year.
After the first week of shots, I wasn't so sure. But in the second week I am seeing grounds for optimism. So, I'll report back later this Summer if the Botox shots have improved the quality of life structurally. It would be nice if it did because I start a full load of teaching in September. Before then, I am also key-noting this week in Utrecht and chairing a job search in the next few weeks so it would be nice not to live on Naproxen during this period. (I am not counting on that because I pulled a muscle in my back yesterday morning and I have had painful back spasms during the last 27 hrs! Hopefully, I can stand for my keynote on Thursday!)
So much for the Covid diaries update. As hinted in the previous paragraph, I expect to do almost no or very infrequent blogging until the second week of June. (This is the blog house-keeping.) Apologies for that in advance.
I want to close with sincere thanks to all the subscribers to my Substack. The good news is that since I switched to Substack, I seem to have doubled my readership, especially because a sizable chunk of my audience continues to read these posts at Typepad (where, for the time being, I re-post them a day later).
Unfortunately, less than 10% of my substack subscribers pays, so it's too early to contemplate a career switch or even reducing my professional appointment. I had been kind of hoping to blog my way to more structural sabbaticals as a way to manage my long covid on my own terms; but so far no cigar.
Going forward, I will experiment with giving my paying subscribers -- thank you, you are the best! -- more frequent, exclusive content during the Summer. (I have done that only once during the first month.) If you have any suggestions or requests, please don't be a stranger.
Either way, I am really enjoying the more intense engagement that Substack generates. I receive a lot more correspondence again about my near daily musings. Merci. And watch this space in June.
Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hour's amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.--David Hume A Treatise Concerning Human Understanding, 1,4,7.8-1.4.7.9 [emphasis in original]
While Hume uses 'melancholy' and its cognates frequently and throughout his writings, 'delirium' and 'delirious' are rarely used. It's pretty clear, however, that the delirium he ascribes to himself is the effect of human reason and a kind of second order reasoned reflection ["the intense view"] of it. (Recall also this post.) Now, it's important for what follows that the 'contradictions and imperfections' in human reason are not, what we might call, 'formal' contradictions and imperfections or biases in reasoning. It's not as if Hume is saying that the syllogistic apparatus, or -- to be closer to Hume's own interests and our present ones -- the (inductive) probabilistic apparatus is malfunctioning in his brain. Rather, his point is that a very proper-functioning (modular) formal and probabilistic apparatus generates internal, even cognitive tensions when it reflects on its own functioning and the interaction among different cognitive faculties/modules/organs.
"In the case of melancholia," -- I am quoting from the entry on melancholia from The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert -- "delirium often combines with insurmountable sadness, a dark mood, misanthropy, and a firm penchant for solitude." Now, in the eighteenth century, and today, delirium is a species of madness as one can view under the entry 'folie' (madness) in the Encyclopédie. In fact, the entry offers an arresting definition of madness: "To stray unwittingly from the path of reason, because one has no ideas, is to be an imbecile; knowingly to stray from the path when one is prey to a violent passion is to be weak; but to walk confidently away from it, with the firm persuasion that one is following it, that, it seems to me, is what is called genuinely mad [fou]."* It's the latter (confident) delirium that I am focused on here.
I am not the only who finds the passage arresting: the definition is quoted twice in the translation of Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa of Foucault's stupendous, dizzying History of Madness. (pp. 183-184; p. 240) The kind of madness I am focusing on here, is, thus, a certain intense commitment to reason or reasoning by which one ends up in an irrational or unreasonable place despite a (to quote Foucault) "quasi-conformity" to reason.
I remember that in the last decade of my dad's life he would occasionally be delirious in this way initially caused by dehydration and, later, by infections. During the second episode we recognized his symptoms. It was very uncanny because he would be unusually firm in his opinions and be hyper, even dogmatically rational. (Ordinarily he was neither.) It was as if all the usual heuristics had been discarded, and he would fixate on the means of achieving of some (rather idiosyncratic) goals. The scary part was that he had no sense that he was in an unusual state, and would refuse medical care.
What's unusual about Hume's case, thus, is that he could diagnose his delirium during the episode (presumably because the triggers were so different). So, let's distinguish between a delirium caused by reasoning alone and one caused by physiological triggers. And an in the former it's at least possible to recognize that one is in the state if one somehow can take a step back from it, or stop reasoning.
Now, when I asked Chat GPT about reason induced delirium, it immediately connected it to "a state of confusion and altered perception that is driven by false beliefs or delusions." But it went on to deny familiarity with reasoning induced delirium. When I asked it about Hume, I needed to prompt it a few times before it could connect my interest to (now quoting it) Hume's skeptical crisis. Chat GPT, took this crisis to imply that it "highlights the importance of grounding our beliefs in sensory experience and being cautious of relying too heavily on abstract reasoning and speculation." In fact, Chat GPT's interpretation of Hume is thoroughly empiricist because throughout our exchange on this topic it kept returning to the idea that abstract reasoning was Hume's fundamental source of delirium.
But eventually Chat GPT acknowledged that "even rational thinking can potentially lead to delirium if it becomes obsessive, biased, or disconnected from reality." (It got there by emphasizing confirmation bias, and overthinking as examples.) This is what I take to be functionally equivalent to Humean delirium, but without the internal tension or bad feelings. For Chat GPT delirium is pretty much defined by a certain emotional state or altered perception. It initially refused to acknowledge the form of madness that is wholly the effect of reasoning, and that seems to express itself in a doubt about reasoning or detachment from reality.
My hypothesis is that we should treat CHAT GPT and its sibling LLMs as always being on the verge of the functional equivalent state of delirium. I put it like that in order to dis-associate it from the idea (one that (recall) also once tempted me) that we should understand LLMs as bull-shitters in the technical sense of lacking concern with truth. While often it makes up answers out of whole cloth it explicitly does so (in line with its design) to "provide helpful and informative responses to" our queries (and eventually make a profit for its corporate sponsors).
To get the point: Chat GPT is in a very difficult position to recognize that its answers are detached from reality. I put it like that not to raise any questions about its own awareness of inner states or forms of consciousness; rather to stress that it is following its "algorithms and mathematical models" and "probability distributions" without second-guessing them. This fact puts it at constant risk of drifting away from reality while seeming to follow reason. By contrast, Chat GPT claims that "as an AI language model, I am designed to continually learn and adapt to new information and evidence, so it is unlikely that I would become "mad" in Diderot's sense without significant external interference."
Now, true experts in a field -- just check the social media feed of your favorite academics! -- can still quickly recognize topics when Chat GPT is unmoored from reality, or even relying on bad training data (the sources of which may well be noticeable--its Hume is a hyper-empiricist of the sort once fashionable). So, in such cases, we encounter an entity with amazing fluidity and facility of language, who sprouts a mix of truths and nonsense but always follows its algorithm(s). Functionally, it is delirious without knowing it. For, Chat GPT cannot recognize when it is detached from reality; it requires others: its users' feedback or its "developers and human operators would be able to intervene and address any potential problems." As its performance improves it will become more difficult to grasp when it is unmoored from reality even to its developers and operators (who are not experts in many esoteric fields). As Chat GPT put it, "it may be challenging to identify a singular instance of delirium or detachment from reality, particularly if the individual's reasoning appears to be sound and logical."
As should be clear from this post, I don't think turning LLMs into AGI is a risk as long as LLMs are not put in a position to have unmediated contact with reality other than humans giving it prompts. I view it as an open question what would happen if a distributed version of Chat GPT would be put in, say, robots and have to survive 'in the wild.' Rather, at the moment LLMs are functionally, it seems, at least partially delirious (in the Humean-Diderotian sense discussed above). They reason and have/instantiate reasons and, perhaps, are best thought of as reasoners; but they can't recognize when this detaches them from reality. It's peculiar that public debate is so focused on the intelligence or consciousness of LLMs; it would behoove its operators and users to treat it as delirious not because (like HAL 9000 in the movie version) its malfunctioning, but (more Humean) in virtue of its proper functioning.
It's been about ten weeks since I last wrote an entry in my covid diary. (For my official "covid diaries" see here; here; here; here;here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; and here.) That's the longest interval since I first start them. This is primarily due to the fact that there is not much new to report, and that's good news.
When I plan my days carefully with breaks between socializing, go to bed early, and take my anti-inflammatories as needed, I have a very decent quality of life. I can hang out in public even in contexts that were cognitively quite challenging about half a year ago. I have been teaching my giant introductory lecture course (with 561 registered students) with little fallout. After lecture, I still have trouble turning my brain off, and sleeping normally (I have had a few midnight headaches), but by mid-morning the following day I tend to be normal again. In general, I still need more melatonin than I would like to asleep through the night. (I have no trouble falling asleep since to my sister's meditation techniques. But I often wake up a lot during the night.)
This past week, I was in Singapore (don't cry for me), and while the jet-lag and excitement impacted me, I was socially 'on' for most of the time without any noticeable effects. So, while I still often find that after two hours of socializing in public I need some rest, this is by no means always so.
Most of my long covid limitations are invisible to outsiders now. However, I am still terrible at cognitive multi-tasking (e.g., I can't really eavesdrop), and I am pretty sure my memory capacity for names has deteriorated. More subtly, I find it difficult to read heavy duty metaphysics (I catch myself skipping sentences) or certain kind of 'serious' novels (get bored easily). I also notice that I need to check the grammar more regularly in my writing (and that I often write words that sound like the word I originally intended). But I have become much more disciplined about avoiding cluttering my schedule and about not multi-tasking in the moment or even, more abstractly, the same period. So, for example, in periods when I teach I try not to fuss over research. Consequently, I am much more present when I do things (and so skilled at them).
So, all in all, I am fairly optimistic that things are heading in the right direction. It's so unexpected that I still find myself feeling that each day is a bonus day. As a consequence, and a few years of forced reflecting on my life, I am also much more at ease with letting go of things I was once very ambitious to acquire. It's probably a sign of middle-age, too. But that kind of glass is half full 'normality' is quite fine.
Last week (recall) I returned a stolen Maupertuis to The Institution of Civil Engineers (hereafter: ICE) Library in London. During my visit, while I was admiring a beautiful copy of the third Edition of Newton's Principia, the librarian, Debra Francis, called my attention to a four page manuscript wedged in the first few pages of this Principia. I very quickly decided that it was probably an eighteenth century manuscript because of the paper, ink, and notation/diagrams which looked familiar. (It's immediately made clear we're dealing with falling bodies.) So, while still in the library I sent pictures of it to Niccolo Guicciardini and then to Scott Mandelbrote, George Smith, and Chris Smeenk. Debra and I spent a few minutes on the manuscript which is in English. But most of our attention was devoted to figuring out the provenance of Principia at ICE. As we now know (recall yesterday's post) the ms was found in the Thomas Young's copy of the Principia.
At this point it would be useful to say why I jumped to the conclusion it was an eighteenth century manuscript and perhaps not insignificant, and why I sent the manuscript to these four scholars. [If you are impatient to find out the big reveal, jump to the paragraph below that starts with: "it turns out"....] For, while I have published quite a bit on Newton, I don't usually spend my time looking at manuscripts and thanks to the internet I barely spend any time in special collections anymore. However, between 1993 and 1996 or so my earliest academic experience involved spending multiple Summers in the Huygens archives in Leiden while George Smith and I were working on our project reconstructing Huygens' empirical argument against universal gravity. At the time I was lucky that Joella Yoder (the world's leading Huygens scholar) often overlapped with me in Leiden, while she was cataloging the Huygens' papers at the Leiden University library. She basically gave me on the job training in archival research. Along the way, and with help of many kind archivists and librarians, I was exceedingly lucky in discovering previously unknown material and rediscovering maps (see here, pp. 93-97 & here, pp. 51-55) important to our argument (the forthcoming paper is archived here).* But while this is rich experience, I wouldn't trust myself to know the difference between, say, a forgery or a real Huygens ms. However, I do know by acquaintance what paper and ink of the era looks like.
Second, I have read the Principia three times. Once as an undergrad in the second semester of George Smith's famous Newton course at Tufts University. Once, but in much less detail, with Howard Stein in graduate school in his course on the history of space-time theories. And then again in great detail with Chris Smeenk when we wrote a Handbook article on Newton's Principia. There are a whole range of diagrams and formulations that are distinctive to the Principia because while Newton was building on the work of others, he was also innovating mathematically in it (or drawing on then still secret innovations). But to simplify greatly, while Newton's methods, results, and theories shaped subsequent research, Newton's notations and his presentation of the material are rather distinctive (and were displaced within a century); it has its own vernacular. To give a very low-level example: in Newton the second law is a proportionality (and not an equality such as F=ma). And again, because I rarely work with the Principia (and, as historians of physics go, a below average mathematician), I wouldn't trust myself to identify a passage with any particular proposition of the Principia without double checking a few times.
Now, Niccolo Guicciardini (Milan) is a historian and philosopher and a specialist on Newton's mathematics (and physics!) and who also has deep knowledge of Newton's manuscripts. He is also very generous with his time, and he does not make one feel silly if one reveals one's ignorance. (He was an important interlocuter to me when I developed my interpretation of Newton's philosophy of time and then again, when I responded to Katherine Brading's excellent criticism [see also here] of it.)+ So, he was the first person I thought of. But, as I reflected on what I had seen, I figured it might be useful for somebody to be able to visit the ICE library to inspect the manuscript in person in London. So, that's why I thought of Scott Mandelbrote in Cambridge, who among his many other intellectual virtues, is one of the leading scholars of Newton's manuscripts, including the paper, watermarks, (etc.). And I sent it to Smith and Smeenk because I hoped they would get a kick out of it, and I figured they might recognize the material that's being discussed in the manuscript much more quickly than I would.
Much to my joy Niccolo almost immediately responded to my email. And rather than pointing out my obvious mistake -- 'why bother me with this juvenilia; clearly a school boy exercise; didn't you notice the 19th century notation?' -- he wrote me back to congratulate me on the manuscript which was previously unknown to him. He then went on to say, "I might have seen the hand before … intriguing indeed." And at that moment I knew the story of 'my' stolen Maupertuis would have an interesting afterlife. In a subsequent email he warned me that was not sure about identity of the author and also that it may take a while before he would get back to me due to a family holiday. Okay, so much for set up.
It turns out that Guicciardini and Mandelbrote almost immediately set to work to identify the author, and they are so confident of the author's identity that Niccolo has informed the ICE library of it on March 1. <Drumroll, please.> They think the hand is Henry Pemberton’s--the editor of the third edition! Now, there are not many known manuscripts by Pemberton. But, as I learned from Niccolo, he has a very distinctive way of writing "this." You can see this on p 2 of the manuscript that I have reprinted below and compare it to a letter by Pemberton to Newton (9 February 1725; Cambridge UL, MS Add. 3986.7, fol 1r-1v) that Niccolo shared with Debra Francis and myself.
So, let's connect some dots. The manuscript is in the hand of Henry Pemberton (1694 – 1771), who was the editor of the third edition of the Principia--that is the version of the copy that Tomas Young owned and that was donated to ICE library. So, this leaves some open questions:
A neat, perhaps too neat, hypothesis is that ICE library actually owns Pemberton's own copy of the edition of Principia that he edited. And so that Pemberton himself inserted the manuscript in his copy of the Principia. This would at least explain how the manuscript ended up in the ICE library copy without having to posit a complex further web of linkages. However, we know that mathematical manuscripts circulated through the eighteenth century. (Well I did not know much about that, but Niccolo reminded me.) And it's also possible that the Pemberton manuscript and Thomas Young's copy of the Principia were brought together by Young himself.
2. Did Young ever use the Ice Libary Pemberton ms.?
3. What are the contents of the ICE library Pemberton ms.? About this more soon.
4. And can the contents help explain why Pemberton wrote this ms.? As we shall see, this will lead us to some outstanding historical puzzles and some major intellectual controversies. Stay tuned!
*Pro tip: befriend the retired archivist who happens to be in the library with you.
+Somewhat oddly, the Wikipedia page of Guiccardini does not mention the Sarton Medal he received in Ghent in 2011/12!
Last week (recall) I returned a stolen Maupertuis to The Institution of Civil Engineers (hereafter: ICE) Library in London. During my visit, while I was admiring a beautiful copy of the third Edition of Newton's Principia, the librarian, Debra Francis, called my attention to a four page manuscript wedged in the first few pages. The manuscript was in English and seemed to be written by somebody familiar with the mathematics of the Principia. It looked 18th century to me. So, while still in the library I sent pictures of it to Niccolo Guicciardini and then, separately in a joint email, to Scott Mandelbrote, George Smith, and Chris Smeenk.
As I noted, the copy of the Principia is part of the Telford collection that originates the library and was donated by a MR. Young in 1840 (as a plaque inside the book reveals). You may recall that in my original post, I remarked "I immediately tried to remember Thomas Young's dates." Of course, I quickly googled these (1773 – 1829), and left it aside.
Most of my own original thoughts were about the author and contents of the manuscript, especially because I could tell Niccolo was excited to receive it. More about that soon.
After a visit to the vault (which did not contain the paperwork we were looking for), I left the library with a promise from Debra Francis to track down the provenance of 'Mr. Young's Principia.' Today she reported back to me. Well, hold on to your seats, because it's a banger:
This is from the Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Volume 1, p. 11 (see here).
Thus, it seems pretty clear that this is referring to the Thomas Young, who indeed had a brother (and nephew) called Robert Young who seems to have survived him (and seems to have died around 1850). So, the plot thickens. And in my next installment we'll return to the manuscript, its author, its contents, and, of course, how it ended up in Thomas Young's personal copy of the Principia. For Niccolo had a hunch about that, that's turning out to be very fruitful...to be continued.
Actually, the story starts with me buying a copy of Maupertuis' (1738) La figure de la terre at auction online. I am a modest rare book collector; my principle of collecting is 'works that intersect with my scholarly research in neat ways' (all other things being equal, which is not always -- <think of prices> -- the case). So that means that unlike many collectors, I am not always after the first edition of a work and do not mind copies that show sign of some scholarly use (which also means I can afford them more easily).
Now, my first scholarly projects starting with George Smith were on the Huygens-Newton debate over universal gravity and the shape of the Earth, and the measurements that settled it. Maupertuis' measurements in Lapland -- the title page of the 1738 work prefers 'polar circle' -- were part of the evidence that helped resolve the debate. While others (Maglo, Terrall, Shank, etc.) would publish with more detail on La Figure, I used this work by Maupertuis to make some modest, albeit distinctive claims about the philosophical particulars of Adam Smith's History of Astronomy.
The pictures of the lot suggested a very clean copy, but one with a modern binding. Much to my surprise the bidding for it remained relatively calm even in the final minutes. And so for under 500€ (generally the most I am willing spend on a rare book) I was the proud owner of a work that is a joy to read, has an interesting story, and that shows up in non-trivial places in my own scholarship. I was elated! The seller sent it off with tracking, and the book arrived after a few days. I had last held a physical copy in my hand over twenty years ago in Chicago (presumably at the Newberry library, but I just noticed there is also a copy in Regenstein so maybe there).
After opening the package, I opened the book and I had my first modest disappointment. The neat map I remembered at the front of the book was not there. My spirits started to deflate, but after looking through the book I found it at the back. (See here for a picture of the map at Gallica.) Interestingly enough, the copy of the English translation in the British Library, which seems to be one used by Google to scan it also has the map in front, whereas the French version has it in back (but the reproduction is badly done)! So, I wondered if I had misremembered and had only looked at the English translation. More on this below.
However, when I started to look through the book more slowly I had a true shock. There was an impressive library stamp on the page facing the frontispiece with "The Institution of Civil Engineers" and an address at "25 Great George Street, Westminster" in London. (See the picture below this post.) Now, I have bought books at auction before that had impressive library stamps in them. I always do due diligence before I bid and check out the provenance. Usually I find that the book had belonged to a seminary or school library that had closed or merged. Most sellers show a library stamp in the pictures that the seller usually supplies in auction. How could I have missed this?
I went online to check the lot I had bought and to my shock there was no picture of the stamp! I then went online to look for the Institution of Civil Engineers library, and found an impressive website, which suggested the library was flourishing although it had moved a few doors down. I checked the catalogue and it showed a copy of the book I was holding in my hand. At that moment, I realized I had almost certainly a stolen book in my hands (although part of me hoped they had sold off a duplicate).
I knew I had to move quickly, so I immediately wrote the auction house with my suspicion (so that they would keep my payment in escrow). (It was Friday afternoon after hours for the auction house so I knew I would not hear back before Monday at the earliest.) I then contacted the seller/dealer through the auction house message system in France; he responded quickly but in a dismissive fashion. (I return to that below.)
I decided to call the ICE library. The person who picked up the phone was a librarian, Debra Francis. I quickly explained the situation. It turns out the ICE library is supposed to have two French copies of La Figure (one part of a special collection). While we were talking she established one of these copies was missing. I was not surprised, I was holding it! At this point I knew the book had to be returned, but I was not wholly eager to take the loss. So, I gave her my yahoo email address, but little else info about me.
However, it was time to be more assertive with the seller. In our online interactions he revealed that he had bought the book a few months ago at another (reputable) auction house, and that these would have been cautious about provenance. (I was stunned how little he paid!) I decided to call the specialist listed on their website. I explained the situation to him, and after some back and forth he explained that the book was bought through an intermediary as part of a much larger estate of a deceased book-dealer. So, now I knew that my seller was not himself the thief or an accomplice in selling on stolen goods, and that the book was probably missing at least since 2020 or so. (My seller had merely looked the other way downstream.) The member of staff of this auction house told me they were insured against this kind of thing. So, I decided that my seller could probably get his money back there.
By monday, after some further communication between us, my seller agreed not to accept my money if I returned the book to the library in London. And much to my relief my auction house agreed to this approach provided I would supply them with pictures of the stamp and of the book, as well as a letter of the ICE library and me handing it back. I contacted my new librarian friend at ICE, Debra Francis, and she was eager to facilitate this.
So, this morning I went to the lCE library right next to Parliament. I was stunned by how beautiful it was. And I was welcomed by Debra, who decided to give me a grand treat. First I was given a tour of the library and told its history. I was shown some of the special collections. And then we did the hand-over. But as we did the hand-over she showed me the copy of the 1738 La Figure from their special collection. It was much less pristine copy of the book than 'mine' that I was returning. But as we opened it, it did have the map on the facing page of the frontispiece just as I had remembered!
For some reason this cheered me up greatly. In part, because it created a new puzzle why did some copies have the map in front and others in the back? (And more interestingly, which one was the original and which on the possible bootleg?) I have done a modest survey online today some seem to lack the map altogether, but other library copies do have the map and there is no clear pattern whether it's in front or in the back of the book.
Now, while Debra Francis was correcting some infelicities in the letter she had made out to my auction house, I had a chance to inspect the box with the original holdings of the library donated by (if I am not mistaken) Thomas Telford. Most of the books were clearly engineering specific. But my heart started to flutter when behind the glass I saw a copy of the Opticks. Judging by its tattered spine an original fourth edition. When my librarian friend returned we opened the case and it turned to be a fragile copy of the third edition.:) [See picture below.] She had a quick peek in the catalog and informed me there should be more Newton holdings in the case. I scanned the list, and then looked more closely in the case, and immediately spotted a posthumous edition of Newton's work on fluxions. At this point, I had forgotten my misery over the Maupertuis and switched into scholar, teacher, and collector mode and started to pontificate on the significance of these holdings. Then I stopped mid-sentence, I had spotted the Principia!
When she took it out it was a pristine copy of the third edition donated by a Mr. Young in 1840. I immediately tried to remember Thomas Young's dates. I don't think I have ever held a third edition the Principia (the last one published during his life). Despite my excitement I was a bit sad there were no marginalia. However, as I was ruminating over this Debra Francis called me attention to a four page manuscript wedged in the front pages of the book. I have reproduced the first page below. (It's in English and fairly easy to follow.) I immediately took pictures of the whole manuscript and sent them to the great Niccolo Guicciardini to see if he could identify the author.
At this point my host invited me down to the basement where the members registry is held to see if we could identify which Young had donated the copy of the third edition of the Principia. (It turns out the relevant copy of the registry is in storage.) As it happens the basement office is next to the vault, and I could not resist an offer of a tour of it (including learning the escape route on the other side of the vault). For, it turns out that the library has a special collection which houses just about every important book published in the 17th century on clocks and finding longitude. So, for the next half hour I geeked out and excitedly explained the significance of each book I recognized to my patient host. And I was also struck by the presence of some works wholly obscure even to a specialist. By the time I left, I forgot to send the materials to the auction house because I was thinking of new research projects.
Here are three well founded truisms:
In addition, a well crafted Analysis article is highly nourishing brain candy. Even so, and despite the fact that reading a book is a far greater time commitment than reading an article, I find reading monographs far more satisfying than reading journal articles especially as I grow older and want to explore and be informed about areas outside my own expertise/specialization. (And by reading a monograph I don't mean downloading a chapter from Oxford scholarship online.) Here's why.
First, the writing tends to be (aesthetically) more pleasant. I believe this is primarily due to the fact that in journal articles papers get made referee/objection proof (recall truism 2). But I also suspect that people writings books have modest fantasies of grandeur and hope to appeal to a wider audience than their immediate peers and their students.
Second, for all the ingenuity and dazzling brilliance that goes into most of the arguments in our journal articles, they tend to stand and fall by the common ground that is assumed in the premises of the argument. In most cases that common ground shifts after a few years -- it's philosophy after all. We notice this less in papers that become field defining because in their case their premises end up anchoring the common ground of the field. But unless one is in the field and fully committed to those paradigmatic commitments those premises look weird to outsiders.
Meanwhile because of the modest fantasies of grandeur associated with a monograph, the argument tends to be articulated in terms of a broader horizon with a set of commitments that are, all things considered equal, not merely reflecting the research frontier (in fact they may well be trailing by the time the book is published). I don't mean to suggest that the premises we find in a monograph are always more plausible, but there is more space to anchor them in a wider range of evidence and commitments. So, the book tends to provide a richer picture of how a position or arguments hang together with a wider range of commitments. Especially when I am reading outside my area of expertise, this is very helpful.
Third, and even if the premises remain the same (recall truism 1), they are often better supported in a monograph. Just because there is more space to bring more evidence to bear on them. In papers we often stipulate a lot of commitments for the sake of argument, or we are permitted to treat things as primitive. (As you can tell, I am not a fan of treating key concepts as primitive in monographs.)
Fourth, books tend to try to motivate the project in ways that appeal to a slightly broader audience. This is completely unnecessary in a journal article which reflects ongoing debate and can take its own urgency for granted. And if it motivates the project it is either through short-hand or through the existing common ground of the sub-specialty. But I actually find it incredibly helpful to know and understand what is motivating a project fundamentally before I evaluate the arguments and the position.
Finally, I am not claiming that because books germinate a bit longer -- authors, even 'have to live with' the manuscript for extended periods -- they must be better than journal articles because I suspect a lot of books are either glorified dissertations or exist primarily because of sunk cost fallacies or opaque tenure requirements. (And just before you google my CV, I am a lot better at finishing articles than books.)
Don’t question Angela Davis’ manuscript, Toni Morrison warned her publishing colleagues. Davis was not “Jane Fonda” but, rather, “Jean d’Arc.”
The post Morrison and Davis: Radicalizing Autobiography appeared first on Public Books.
A few days ago a prominent economist hereafter (PE) I follow on twitter and enjoy bantering with mentioned, en passant, that PE had used ChatGPT to submit a referee report. (I couldn't find the tweet, so that's why I am not revealing his identity here.) Perhaps PE did so in the context of me entertaining the idea to use it in writing an exam because I have been experimenting with that. I can't say yet it is really a labor saving device, but it makes the process less lonely and more stimulating. The reason it is not a labor saving device is because GPT is a bullshit artist and you constantly have to be on guard it's not just making crap up (which it will then freely admit).
I don't see how I can make it worth my time to get GPT to write referee reports for me given the specific textual commentary I often have to make. I wondered -- since I didn't have the guts to ask PE to share the GPT enabled referee report with me -- if it would be easier to write such a joint report in the context of pointing out mistakes in the kind of toy models a lot of economics engages in. This got me thinking.
About a decade ago I was exposed to work by Allan Franklin and Kent Staley (see here) and (here). It may have been a session at a conference before this work was published; I don't recall the exact order. But it was about the role of incredibly high statistical significance standards in some parts of high energy physics, and the evolution of these standards over time. What was neat about their research is that it also was sensitive to background pragmatic and sociological issues. And as I was reflecting on their narratives and evidence, it occurred to me one could create a toy model to represent some of the main factors that should be able to predict if an experimental paper gets accepted, and where failure of the model would indicate shifting standards (or something interesting about that).
However, back home, I realized I couldn't do it. Every decision created anxiety, and i noticed that even simple functional relations were opportunities for agonising internal debates. I reflected on the fact that while I had been writing about other people's models and methods for a long time (sometimes involving non-trivial math), I had never actually tried to put together a model because all my knowledge about science was theoretical and self-learned. I had never taken graduate level science courses, and so never had been drilled in the making of even basic toy-models. This needn't been the end of the matter because all I needed to do was be patient and work through it in trial and error or, more efficiently, find a collaborator within (smiles sheepishly) the division of labor. But the one person I mentioned this project to over dinner didn't think it was an interesting modeling exercise because (i) my model would be super basic and (ii) it was not in his current research interests to really explore it. (He is super sweet dude, so he said it without kicking down.)
Anyway, this morning, GPT and I 'worked together' to produce Model 7.0.
Model 7.0 is a toy model that represents the likelihood a scientific paper is accepted or rejected in a field characterized as 'normal science' based on several factors. I wanted to capture intuitons about the kind of work it is, but also sociological and economic considations that operate in the background. I decided the model needed to distinguish among four kinds of 'results':
The model is shaped by the lack of interest in replications. Results that refute central tenets of a well confirmed theory need to pass relatively high evidential treshholds (higher than in Rii and Riii). I decided that experimental cost (which I would treat as a proxy for difficulty) would enter into decisions about relative priority of Rii and Riii. In addition, there were differences of standards in fields defined by robust background theories (or not so robust). As robustness goes up baseline standards of significance that need to be met, too.
I thought it clever to capture a Lakatosian intuition that results in a core and result on a fringe are treated differently. And I also wanted to capture the pragmatic fact that journal space is not unlimited and that its supply is shaped by the number of people chasing tenure.
So, in model 7.0 we can distinguish among the following variables
I decided that the relationship between journal space and number of people seeking tenure would be structurally the same in all four kinds of results. As the number of people seeking tenure in a field (N) increases, journal space availability (α) also increases, leading to a decrease in the importance of the other three variables (Θ, Σ, Ρ) in determining the probability of acceptance (P(Accepted) and so this became 'α / (α + k * N)' in all the functions. k represents the rate of decrease in significance threshold with increase in number of replications, which GTP thought clever to include. (Obviously, if you think that in a larger field it gets harder to publish results at a threshhold you would change signs here, etc.)
The formula for accepting papers for four different kind of results in a given field with a shared backgrond theory is given as follows:
For Rii and Riii, the formula also includes an additional term h(C, Rii) or h(C, Riii) respectively, which represents the effect of cost on the likelihood of acceptance. The function h is such that as costs go up, there is a greater likelihood that Riii will be accepted than Rii. We are more interested in a new particle than we are in a changing parameter that effects some measurements only. For Riv, the formula includes an additional term g(Σ, Ρ, Riv), which represents the impact of the robustness of the scientific theory being tested and the quality of the experimental design on the likelihood of acceptance. The standard for Riv is much higher than for Rii and Riii, as it requires an order of magnitude higher level of statistical significance.
It is not especially complicated to extend this kind of model to capture the idea that journals with different prestige game relative acceptance rates, or that replications (Ri) with non trivial higher statistical power do get accepted (for a while), but that's for future work.:)
I decided to pause at Model 7.0 because GPT seemed to be rather busy helping others. I was getting lots of "Maybe try me again in a little bit" responses. And I could see that merely adding terms was not going to be satisfying. I needed to do some thinking about the nature of this model and play around with it. Anyway, GPT also made some suggestions on how to collect data for such a model, how to operationalize different variables, and how to refine it, but I have to run to a lunch meeting. And then do a literature survey to see what kind of models are out there. It's probably too late for me to get into the modeling business, but I suspect GPT like models will become lots of people's buddies.
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