--- by J. L. S.
From wiki, "Dawkins"
"His 1998 book Unweaving the Rainbow takes John Keats' accusation that, by explaining the rainbow, Isaac Newton had diminished its beauty, and argues for the opposite conclusion."
--- cfr
Those dark clouds mean, "It will rain".
That rainbow means: "Keats!"
---
JLS
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I lived in Teignmouth for a time, where Keats also stayed, he has his blue plaque.
ReplyDelete"A thing of beauty is a joy forever (until Newton ruins it)..."
Who knew!
"Nature and nature's laws lay hid in Night./God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light" - Pope
Egsactly.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you've seen "Bright Star". I own a literary film club and will be showing very soon, I hope -- althought I haven't yet seen it!
Anyway, good he has his blue placque. Whenever I'm in Rome I make a point of going to Piazza Spagna just to feel the spirit, and have often been to Cemeterio Protestante.
We have to grant Dawkins that it was a good figure,
to UN---WEAVE (the bow).
My ref. to the Dark clouds make reference to some discussion with Kramer -- very good points raised by Kramer.
And also with Tim W. who also contributes to Grice Blog.
In discussing 'scare quotes' in the case of
dark clouds
or black clouds really
----
I suggested the rainbow thing, and so it was out there somehow.
Grice is discussing how ridiculous it would be to say,
"Those dark clouds meant "It will rain soon"".
He thinks dark clouds cannot mean thins in 'quotation marks'"
Cfr. Dawkins on smallpox and Grice on measles.
Those spots mean (insert name of virus for smallpox, measles, etc).
I have to learn about smallpox that Dawkins use. I did use the name for the thing that causes measles (Grice's example) in this blog, and title of post, too.
So, when playing with the dark clouds, I thought of the rainbow as meaning
"It has rained".
Thus 'refuting', gricefully, Grice's rather ungriceous point about Nature.
I HAVE to find the Keats poem. Dawkins is well read and I like his style. He has the gift of the gab and finds the right phrases to be rightly provocative, or provocative in the right way.
I mean, who else would encourage a doctor in divinity to write a book called "The Dawkins Dellusion"?
---
Keats _was_ exaggerating. We have to remember, as I did, in CLASSICS-L, that his rhymes in "Ode on a Gric... Grecian urn" leave a bit to be desired. Especially one or two which are not 'real' rhymes. Again, I'm playing the Disgusted Tunbridge Wells role (vide Sainsbury, etc.).
I don't think I'm familiar with that place you mention, but I keep at the Swimming Pool Library loads on Keats, from the House in Hampstead, and the Keats-Shelley association in Rome. What a genius!
Newton was genial in his little ways too! I have his little bio by a little-known scientist. And my prof. of modern philosophy, Margherita Costa, was CRAZY for him! ("Hypotheses non fingo!").
Light and rainbows were of philosophical interest for Grosseteste, or Robert Greathead, really, and I'm sure Newton learned from him as he unweaved the bow.
In other lingos, the 'bow' metaphor is not there.
Is just 'literal' "arc" in the vernacular (cf. Gould on San Marco).
And no mention of the rain. But we can work on different vernaculars for this, and quote Keats extensively.
And try to be charitable with Dawkins. I skipped his comment, pretty dogmatic, to the effect: "Surely Newton's thing is more beautiful!" -- But I don't know the exact context. Dawkins is sophisticated enough to let each have its standard of beholding the beauty of the beholden eyed bow of the rain, I hope.
Since Newton wrote in Latin, we should have loads of things in the lingo of Lit. Hum. for this, incl. Greek.
Newton was very conservative and he never knew his fallen apple would much such rounds. Philosophers of science love him, and Kant Kant Do without Him. Etc.
"In other lingos, the 'bow' metaphor is not there."
ReplyDeleteI thought of the 'bow' in rainbow as having something to do with bows in women's hair. Then I learned Spanish and found 'arco' and 'bow' are equivalent, so now I think of the bow as an arch, or of an archer.
But where are the arrows?
And here is a gem of a web page on Keats and Teignmouth, I believe he was there to look after his sick brother.
http://tartarus.org/~martin/readings/poem10.html
Excellent.
ReplyDeleteSo it was a totally MIXED metaphor: The cheek of Dawkins criticising Keats (the poet) and using a terribly mixed metaphor in the stead.
For he is thinking he is witty with his
unweaving the bow.
But this is NOT a bow. I think both 'bows' are not even 'etymologically' related. So I hope he explains all that in his book, with quotes from the OED, and all.
I hope he has a name for his trope, too.
Yes, arc, and arch, both spellings?
Good point about the arrow. Don't know. But we need to know if the arc existed first as weapon? I'm afraid it did. There's a bit about arcs as they deal with evolution as per Gould's comments on San Marco. There's a technical term for this. It's all in wiki under, I think, 'dawkins'!
I would think the rain-bow was thus called by the Germans (as the Angles were). So it must have been a term that the English brought from the Continent. What I call, idiotically, 'pre-historic', in that there is no record in rune or anything. We may need to compare with the German lingo, etc.
--- I will try and search for Classical Latin for rainbow and Greek for rainbow. And THEN we can do Keats! Etc. :)