--- by JLS
----- for the GC
The idea of conversation, alla Landor -- I take from Jones, with whom we have a pdf (forever in progress), "CarnapGrice" by "JonesCarnap" -- which features "a conversation" in this conversational sense.
While Grice spoke of Eddington's table (made of wavicles), I'll have him sit on Eddington's chair and see how he behaves.
From Chapman ("Grice", p. 177):
"In his notes from around this time, [Grice] compares
the vulgar and the learned with reference to what he"
--- and zillions more --
calls 'Eddington's Table' and 'the vulgar table'"
I have assimilated that to the Heideggerian 'chair' -- where you sit -- a mitsein --.
Chapman:
"Grice's reference is to"
what Bayne has online -- and which we've discussed to tears in his beautiful site for the history of analytic-philosophy.
Apparently it was late at night when Eddington wrote that.
----
Chapman reports that "as he sat down to write [Eddington]
was"
in a sort of schyzophrenic sort of phrenic
"confronted with not ONE but TWO tables."
------
Chapman tries to rationalise Eddington:
"Tere is the ordinary, familiar"
or as I prefer, family
"table".
'a commonplace', Eddingto has, 'object of that environment
which I call the world."
----
Chapman:
"There is also a scientific table, an
object which he has become aware only
comparatively recently."
Blame it on Einstein and Heidegger and Bohr and all the continentals.
Chapman goes on:
"Whereas the ordinary table is substantial,
the scientific table is mostly emptiness, while"
to quote directly from Eddington,
'sparsely scattered in that emptiness are
numerous electric charges rushing about
with great speed; but their combined
bulk amounts to less than a billionth of
the bulk of the table itself.'
--- I warned you it was late at night.
Chapman goes on:
Eddington argues that the two different descriptions
of the table are discreet and serve
distinct purposes."
One is to eat, -- as a chair is to sit.
Chapman:
"Although they might ultimately be said to
describe the same object"
or thing as I prefer [Ding-an-sich for Kant]
"the scientist must keep the two
descriptions separate"
--- and keep both in his room. A real chair also helps.
Chapman:
"In efect, ignoring the 'ordinary table'
and concentrating on the 'scientific table'."
except for eating or sitting purposes.
------
Chapman:
"Grice's brief notes suggest that he is happy to
accept both the vulgar and the learned
descriptions of the table. There is, he notes, 'no
conflict ... Scientific purposes and everyday
purposes are distinct'"
----- ref. is to the Grice collection, note 52, ch. "Metaphysics and Value."
CITATION DETAIL:
H. P. Grice, "Notes on 'vulgar' and 'learned'", The Grice Papers, BANC 92-135, Bancroft, UC/Berkeley.
---
And that was exactly Eddington's point.
At Bayne's site, we were considering various things, including the OED2's great debt to Eddington! Call him 'unfamiliar' and 'unordinary' but his need to coin 'wavicle' now showed that his intentions were hardly unGricean! Griceful, even!
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Fascinating!
ReplyDeleteI began reading Eddington at the University of London in 1959 (I was born in 1938), and at the age of 71 I still read Eddington. I am now on page 2 :>) No, I jest about being on page 2. His book, "The Mathematical Theory of Relativity", Cambridge University Press 1922, 1948, etc., was the first one on General Relativity (Einstein had the first paper on it a few years before). It is much clearer in several important respects than the two main later works by (a) Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler in 1973, (b) Steven Weinberg in 1972 (although Weinberg comes close to Eddington and has some other advantages). Misner et al have some geometric advantages, although I don't recommend it for philosophers in general or non-geometers. In fact, between Misner et al and mainstream Game Theory (that is, both of them), one can rapidly go insane - perhaps one of the fastest ways to go insane. I myself, however, am immune to that (possibly due to frequent enough semi-insanity or quasi-insanity :>)
Osher Doctorow
Yes, Eddington can be very clear. His references to the Jabberwocky as he coins 'wavicle' -- which I have reported elsewhere at Bayne's "History of Analytic Philosophy" are a gem.
ReplyDeleteGrice should give more credit to Eddington. Those lectures were in fact the Gifford lectures that Eddington gave in Edinburgh. Philosophical prestigious lectures, also given by Ayer (and pubished as "Central questions of philosophy, in Ayer's case -- a handy Penguin paperback).
Grice was getting obsessed about defending the man-in-the-street and he HAD to say something about the two tables of Eddington. It IS a very visual way to illustrate the invisible (so-called).