There's a wonderful (but poorly edited) interview with philosopher/novelist Rebecca Goldstein at Edge, mostly about the implications of Gödel's Incompleteness theorem and its relation to logical positivism, Wittgenstein, and postmodern theory. I can't resist this rather long quote:
I like to think that the shallower aspects of the intellectual scene of the last century have played themselves out. I mean in particular the assaults on objectivity and rationality, which often take the form of attacks on science. There's nothing less exhilarating than reducing everything to social constructs and to our piddly human points of view. The pleasure of thinking is in trying to get outside of ourselves—this is as true in the arts and the humanities as in math and the sciences. There's something heroic in the idea of objective knowledge; the farther away knowledge takes you from your own individual point of view, the more heroic it is. Maybe the new ideas that are going to revitalize the arts and humanities are going to be allied with the sciences.
The current post at Verse online is the Metrical Poetry Feature from the last issue of Salt. Since the editor is Annie Finch, it's no surprise to find a truly eclectic and mostly excellent selection in technique, style, and attitude — but I didn't think I'd ever see work from Kasey Mohammad and Mary Agner on the same web page. BTW, Kasey — Thor in a poem on the Ramones? Ain't that the wrong mythology for them?
I'm off to North Carolina tomorrow, and we may head to the beach, depending on when my mandolin returns from Vermont and when my new 20" iMac arrives. Yes, I'm spending too much money — but the point is I probably won't post again until next week. Be well. Write well.
7:23:15 PM
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