Things we do early are of great interest. Where we show a natural propensity to do something - if we seem, so to speak, programmed to do it - the inference is that the behaviour is both ancient (to have become so ingrained) and important (to have persisted so long). The obvious example here is … Continue reading The Games We Play
Author: jfmward
Author, bicycle enthusiast
An Age without a Name, 2: Progress or Digression?
Myths are stories we tell to explain how we see ourselves and our place in the world. One of the dominant myths of the current age is that of progress, which sees the human story as one of continual improvement over time, with that tendency accelerating in recent centuries, particularly the last. (It is worth … Continue reading An Age without a Name, 2: Progress or Digression?
An Age without a Name, 1: adopting the Anthropocene
‘Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! throughout the sensual world proclaim one crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name’ You may have your doubts about the sentiment - a bit juvenile for my taste, but then I am no longer young - but the curious fact is that we … Continue reading An Age without a Name, 1: adopting the Anthropocene
Seeing Better
‘See better, Lear!’ is the admonition Kent gives his King after he has petulantly banished his youngest daughter, Cordelia, because she ‘lacks that glib and oily art’ to flatter him as her false sisters have done. Sight and blindness is a central theme in King Lear, as is its corollary, deception, both of others and … Continue reading Seeing Better
10 (on the Beaufort Scale)/The Storm
I was reminded of this story by a conversation with Cecilia Hewett (of Cecilia's Hand-spun Yarn) and Matthew Abercrombie in which the Beaufort Scale came up. I originally wrote it for a man who was compiling an anthology of 1000 word tales, but he seemed to think the honour of being published by him was … Continue reading 10 (on the Beaufort Scale)/The Storm
Eastward Reconnoitre, Glorious First of June
In a somer seson, whan softe was the sonne, I shoop me into shroudes as I a sheep were, In habite as an heremite unholy of werkes, Wente wide in this world wondres to here. Actually, I put on shorts and a hat against the strong sun, it being a glorious day, … Continue reading Eastward Reconnoitre, Glorious First of June
Should we talk about Art?
(my thanks to Wayne redhart, whose comments on But is it REAL? Is Art a Joke? Five Funny Things stimulated this response) Let us suppose two people - for ease of storytelling, we’ll make them a man and a woman, though that is not significant. They have become acquainted in the virtual world of social … Continue reading Should we talk about Art?
Stone-sucking, or what matters
If you read this page aloud it will strike you that there is nothing in your speech corresponding to the white spaces on the page that separate the words. Word separation is not a feature of every script - some Asiatic ones do not use it even now - and it has been accomplished in … Continue reading Stone-sucking, or what matters
Heart-thought
When I was young and studying philosophy at Edinburgh University I remember becoming excited about the figurative use of prepositions; they seemed to crop up everywhere, openly and in disguise as Latin prefixes, in uses that clearly were not literal. Reasoning from the fact that the meaning of any preposition could be demonstrated using objects … Continue reading Heart-thought
‘These great concurrences of things’
One of the main ideas I pursue here is that the invention of writing has radically altered the way we think, not immediately, but eventually, through its impact on speech, which it transforms from one mode of expression among many into our main instrument of thought, which we call Language, in which the spoken form … Continue reading ‘These great concurrences of things’
COMPLEAT TROWZER 