Saturday, July 02, 2011

Music on My Mind



I do love Pearl Bailey. They just don't make entertainers like that any more. A little known fact: she had a bachelor's degree in theology from Georgetown University. She got the degree at the age of 67.

Comic Strips

In general comic strips try to have two attributes: funny and makes-you-think -- sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both. Comic strips are, after all, witticisms in pictures. And setting aside soap and adventure comics, which by their nature have only long story arcs over a number of strips, it has to be done, of course, in a few panels. This is a pretty difficult thing to do consistently, and yet amazingly there are strips that consistently do it -- the two grand masters, of course, being Watterson and Schulz. You can pick almost any Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts strip and it's one of the two, usually both. I was browsing some classic Peanuts recently and was struck by how funny they were -- not usually rolling-on-the-floor-laughing funny, but somehow funny. There was one (this one, in fact) which was very simple -- it consisted almost entirely of Snoopy being hit repeatedly by a water sprinkler -- but nonetheless just tickled me pink. It was funny precisely because it's the type of funny thing you might see a dog do in real life, and the strip just summed up that whole type of experience. And there are just endless numbers of things one could say about this Calvin and Hobbes.

There really should be some philosophical work done on comic strips in the way that people have done philosophical work on novels or horror movies -- not, I mean, philosophy inspired by them, but the philosophy of them, looking in more detail at what makes comic strips funny and thought-provoking. But I don't think I've ever come across it.

Friday, July 01, 2011

Omnibenevolence

John Wilkins had a post up with this comic at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal on theodicy and the "omniscience,omnipotence,omnibenevolence" approach to it. It does do a good job, albeit I think unintentionally, of showing that this way of stating the problem of evil owes more to rhetorical parallelism than real substance.

As I've mentioned before the 'omnibenevolence' leg of the stool has no real existence prior to the nineteenth century; nobody attributes the term "omnibenevolence" to God prior to that. Indeed, even in the nineteenth century, the term 'omnibenevolence' is usually used in ways that are too weak to formulate any sort of problem of evil, since the term originally seems to have meant merely, 'wishing everyone well' with all the vagueness and flexibility that can have, and which is, in any case, hardly a distinctively divine attribute. The first Christian I've found using it in definitely something like the sense in which it is usually used is Robert Browning, who has Guido argue, in The Ring and the Book:

Let the law stand: the letter kills, what then?
The spirit saves as unmistakably.
Omniscience sees, Omnipotence could stop,
Omnibenevolence pardons, — it must be,
Frown law its fiercest, there’s a wink somewhere.

(I have found a few prior to Browning, like William Penn; but in each case the force of the term is either ambiguous or obscure.) But, of course, it's still functioning in a different way: Guido's point is that "there's a wink somewhere", the claim being that Christianity is just paganism on the sly -- a higher moral tone, yes, but it's all a mask to allow sin loopholes. That is, we don't have the problem of evil here; we just have an argument (not Browning's own) that Christian doctrine is a breeding ground for hypocrisy. It's really only in the twentieth century that one finds any Christians using the term in a positive context and in a way that suggests its use in the argument from evil; and these are clearly backformations. The real source of all this seems to be Hugh MacColl shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, who, while not really read today, seems to be the only source who was widely read enough and who actually uses the formulation for the argument from evil. (MacColl also is the first to respond to the problem by arguing that evil is necessary, in particular for the progress of the universe; which, of course, was the whole point of his putting the argument this way, since progress as an 'omnibenevolent' objective would have been a relatively easy sell, even if the necessity of evil for it wasn't.) Even the freethinkers don't use the term for the argument from evil much earlier than the 1890's.

In any case, even if this isn't so, as it's not a traditional term, and as the root word, 'benevolence', does not generally convey any particular necessity or specific duty, the question does arise as to why one would think that anyone is committed to holding that God is omnibenevolent, at least in any sense that would cause a problem with regard to theodicy. Indeed, it's not even clear what the term means; it could mean 'wanting good for people in everything' or 'wanting what is best for each and every person' or 'wanting what is best overall for everyone' or 'always acting with a view to another's good', or any number of other things. In order to make the argument from evil work it has to be strong enough to establish a duty or obligation; but 'benevolence', as I've said, is a weak word as it is used colloquially, so it's not helpful for extrapolating any meaning. Why then does it persist? Because of the rhetorical parallelism: it makes it sound more distinctively divine, and gives the illusion that it is structurally parallel either to omniscience or to omnipotence -- an illusion because it is never explicated in a way that would actually make it so. The argument from evil is really the claim that, given the existence of any evil, every good is in some key way useless or ineffective; the parallelism conveniently hides the fact that the crucial issue in the argument is not one's account of God but one's account of good. It wraps it all up in what looks like a tidy and memorable package. Never mind that it isn't actually tidy when you start asking critical questions; packages that are memorable have a power to endure, as cognitive science shows us, and memorizing formulaic labels is easier than remembering entire theories of the good or of good will, which is what actually has to be doing the work.

In any case, as I've also said before, the intelligent person, faced with a relative neologism like 'omnibenevolence', will ask for the underlying account of the term, and only move on the basis of the account, not the similarity of the word to other words.

Two Poem Drafts

Unhand!

You catch my heart; yes, you presume
to catch my heart and my life doom
to love of you. Shall such demand
be satisfied? My heart unhand!
Be satisfied to know my smile,
in passing tarry but a while,
for never shall I know your brand.
Release me now, my heart unhand!

Faithless Summer

Fly from me, faithless summer, fly
and give me no more alibis,
but flee my wrath, and take your lie
to some sad soul more like to cry.

You shall not turn me, though you try;
I care not for your whats and whys;
your soft, persuasive arts go ply
on some sad soul more like to cry!

You said you'd love me till you died,
but sought to give me cuckold's sigh;
fly from me, O summer, fly,
to some sad soul more like to cry!

Rune of Roses

Sapientia Lunae
by Ernest Dowson


The wisdom of the world said unto me;
“Go forth and run, the race is to the brave;
Perchance some honour tarrieth for thee!”
“As tarrieth,” I said, “for sure, the grave.”
For I had pondered on a rune of roses,
Which to her votaries the moon discloses.

The wisdom of the world said: “There are bays:
Go forth and run, for victory is good,
After the stress of the laborious days.”
“Yet,” said I, “shall I be the worms’ sweet food,”
As I went musing on a rune of roses,
Which in her hour, the pale, soft moon discloses.

Then said my voices: “Wherefore strive or run,
On dusty highways ever, a vain race?
The long night cometh, starless, void of sun,
What light shall serve thee like her golden face?”
For I had pondered on a rune of roses,
And knew some secrets which the moon discloses.

“Yea,” said I, “for her eyes are pure and sweet
As lilies, and the fragrance of her hair
Is many laurels; and it is not meet
To run for shadows when the prize is here”;
And I went reading in that rune of roses
Which to her votaries the moon discloses.

Dashed Off

As always, notes to be taken with a grain of salt.

We spend our lives learning how to understand and deserve the goodness of being alive.

putting temptation ten thousand miles away from your heart

We expel dangerous fancies and recollections by replacing them with things that are good and noble.

the first step of conversion: Lord, what will you have me do? (Acts 9:6)
the second step: The Lord is my strength (Ps 117:14)

The life of the beginner consists in finding the good things that purify.

We cannot love God on our own in a manner suitable to Him; and thus we must love God with God's own love.

"Let knowledge be used to erect the structure of charity." Augustine Ep. 55

Jesum quaerens in libris

purgative
(1) cultivation of discipline
(2) acquisition of prayer
illuminative
(1) preparation for infused virtues
(2) habituation to (consolidation of) prayer
unitive
(1) preparation for spiritual gifts
(2) simplification of prayer

study as a form of mortification

Plato's Cave & the Witch of the Green Kirtle

Proslogion II: not just 'quod sit Deus' but 'quod vere sit Deus'

Anselm tells us (Inc Verb vi) that he wrote the Mologion and the Proslogion in order to reply against those who, unwilling to believe what they do not understand, deride believers; and also to aid the religious study of those who humbly seek to understand what they firmly believe. And the remarkable thing is that, even if not in the way he hoped, his argumetns have fulfilled these purposes to an extraordinary extent. For it has touched off in believers many new ideas; and, often and repeatedly, those who have argued against Anselm have been shown to argue not from clear understanding but from the belief that the argument must be wrong somewhere. Over and over again Anselm has shown, in case after case, that we may believe in order to understand, and do nto always need to understand in order to believe.

As charity gives supernatural form to virtue, so also it gives supernatural form to honor.

The Spirit works through the words of a confessor who takes his task seriously and does what he ought.

We mortify the intellect directly by study and reflection (which dissipate ignorance) and indirectly by patience (which opposes diseased curiosity) and humility (which opposes pride).

three aspects of purity: intention, moderation, and mortification

Acquired virtues presuppose a power and by presupposed repetition come to give a tendency and facility to an operation; infused virtues give us a power and a tendency, but only give facility as a result of repretition that presupposes the virtue.

The radication of infused virtue has as an incidental result the acquisition of acquired virtues.

The Spirit makes the Son clear to us.

adapting Hume on causation as a theory of inquiry into certain kinds of signs

poetic, rhetorical, and dialectical forms of evidence

Ming is that which can proceed from an interior word, and zheng ming is the purification of these expressions so that they are appropriate.

cheng as truthfulness

the proper mean between Yang Zhu and Mo Di

correspondence to, supplementation of, and transcendence of Confucianism (Zhang)

Paul was given the privilege of writing more for the canon precisely because he had been an enemy (cf. Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat Lect 10.18).

divine energies : divine essence :: good (or true) : being

Music concerns itself with non-verbal analogies.

Nothing can be an organ unless it can be instrumental to an end; it is precisely this that allows us to identify something as one organ.

We should think not so much in terms of laws of nature as in terms of laws of natures.

One of the valuable features of Lent is that it provides you an opportunity for seeing how limited your will really is.

"In teaching the instructor often learns more than his pupils." Clement of Alexandria Strom.

Evolutionary theory concerns the generation and corruption of pluralities or populations over iterations of the generation and corruption of individuals. Obviously what is essential to this is reproduction and death, but the generation and corruption of populations cannot be reduce to reproduction and death because there are secondary changes that affect the generation and corruption of populations but do not reduce to reproduction and death: migration and isolation, for instance.

Harvey's omne vivum ex vivo rule

Psalm 4 as a prayer concerned with natural law (both St. Albert and Aquinas make this connection).

The market to which Smith attempted to appeal was a market ordered to public interest, and to the interest of sellers only in a secondary way, insofar as the latter could contribute to the former. This is why Smith is both pro-market and highly cynical and critical when it comes to business.

Ps. 38 as a sabbath psalm (Augustine)

Natural philosophy & moral philosophy are alike in the extent to which they consider contingent particulars.

Wholes and parts are explicable in terms of divisions and indivisions.

Time is not number abstracted from the numbered things but number in the numbered things.

light as it were the primum mobile

Humean psychology as the imagination in reminiscence

Natural philosophy gives fullness, and moral philosophy completeness, to the contemplation at the heart of philosophy.

The Johannine Gospel gives the beginning, the Johannine epistles the middle, and the Apocalypse the end.

Christ clings to the Church, His helpmeet, having descended from His Father to cling to her, and thus she becomes the mother of the living.

to observe & ponder in her heart is an essential capacity of motherhood

We understand mysteries by examination of analogies and of coherences.

True politics is simply ethics given cooperative social life and its tradeoffs.

Good catechetical instruction is seen in that it refutes not only the heresies of the day but also, as was said of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, later heresies "by a kind of foreknowledge."

Scientific inquiry is the cooperation of prudence and art to the end of understanding natural beings in their changes.

Skepticism requires holding that the relation between cognition and truth may be accidental.

Sacraments are more properly things we receive than things we do; it is especially important to remember this with reconciliation, matrimony, and ordination, for we are tempted to treat these things as though we did them rathern than as is the case, that we are showered with them.

eremitic life : monastic life :: celibate life : married life

I Sam 21:5 and the priesthood

The Old Testament (& Mt & Lk) shows that genealogy is extraordinarily important to covenant & thus to theology.

The laity are only sane when they largely follow such common sense as is rooted in the saints and hallowed by custom, making their aim not to bend the rest of the Church to their will but simply to be the Church, doing whatever they do. But flesh, the world, and the Devil constantly push to make it otherwise.

Every inference which is truth-preserving with negated premise (or conjunction of premises) & negated conclusion is falsity-preserving.

Scientists generally go wrong in philosophical matters when they fail to adequate means to ends properly. This typically occurs in two ways: either through excessive confidence in the means or, more commonly, through failure to distinguish ends that are in fact different.

First Commandment: to revere God in our hearts
Second Commandment: to revere God in our words
Third Commandment: to revere God in our actions

We cannot keep the Sabbath holy by our Sabbath life alone.

praying that the saints' prayers for others may be effective

In the life of the Church, ritual and music provide the pattern for authority.

Who does not understand providence has no way of becoming a good bishop.

Ture authority is an activity of virtue.

philosophy as euporia with aporia

There are philosophical activities that are to what we usually call philosophical activities as flower arranging is to gardening; and, however limited and derivative flower arranging may be, a world without flower arranging is a world less congenial for gardening.

Liberty cannot be protected without protecting the home, for home is for most people the primary, or even the only, space for freedom.

How often people trade adamantine arguments for weak & watery feelings! But in truth the two must be conjoined, bright sentiment growing on rigorous reasoning like roses on trellises, or great vines on strong stone cliffs.

That poetry is more philosophical than history does not imply that history is in no way philosophical.

mythology in the service of ideas

experimenting with lightness & multiplicity in the search for truth (Novalis)

Who loves wisdom finds it everywhere.

God called His people to remember the Sabbath because of creation and to observe it because of salvation.

Exodus tells us not to bear false witness, Deuteronomy not to bear vain/empty/worthless witness.

Why was the Virgin immaculately conceived? That she might consent on behalf of the whole human race, and not merely on her own behalf.

Ritual derives from imitation of regularity and order in things
(1) in order to teach that regularity;
(2) in order to celebrate that regularity;
(3) in order to conform ourselves to that regularity;
(4) in order to imitate that regularity by serving as a stable background for other things.
It presupposes the ability to distinguish right and wrong with respect to that order.

Ritual and respect are closely related.

Authority is neighborly by nature.

music of Shao : kallipolis :: music of Wu : timarchy :: tunes of Cheng : oligarchy &c.

To make one's life a sort of music, balanced in its patterns and proportions, is a worthy task.

The body by the water partakes of the grace.

If we live in the light of God, from us, as if through crystal, every kind of goodness, justice, and truth will proceed, fruitful works pleasing to the Lord.

Dali was right about time -- it is not so mucht hat it flies as that it melts. All of our lives is time melting through our fingers, the world drooping and liquefying in a great sun that will never stop.

In one's mind one may both answer a fool according to his folly and not do it; and this is an aid to prudence. Outside the mind, of course, the solution is to avoid fools.

theological incentives in philosophy
-> analogy, parsimony & the like can be seen as philosophical incentives in experimental inquiry; likewise there are many ethical incentives in scientific work
-> incentives as such may or may not dominate, may or may not impede
-> incentives weight theories & approaches
-> incentives of this sort arise when a field of inquiry is considered in light of what would be most convenient in another field of inquiry

the prefinition of worlds (Eph 3 Douay-Rheims 1582)

heirloom seeds of tradition

Behind every error is a power for truth.

We see the sum in the cogito only because being is first in the apprehension of anything, even ourselves.

We know even indemonstrable principles by abstracting them from singulars.

The universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one can be saved, is that in which the Priest is the Sacrifice, saving by His body & blood.

What Vatican I actually defined with regard to infallibility is (1) that the Church itself is infallible in defining doctrine in faith and morals; and (2) that the Roman Pontiff understand conditions adequately represents the Church in this respect, as heir to Peter.

The Church rarely defines but always teaches.

Hos. 2:19-20 & marriage

Judas, Peter, & John as 3 types of Christian loyalty to Christ

the Rock that begot you, the God who birthed you (Dt. 32:18)

As active magisterium the bishops do not impose the truths of faith on the laity but educe them from the laity themselves, who already bear the potential. And both are required for the full magisterium of the Church as teacher of all mankind.

"Other effects only point out their causes in an oblique manner; but the testimony of men does it directly, and is to be consider'd as an image as well as an effect." T 1.3.9.12
-> Hume, of course, draws skeptical conclusions from this because of his account of causal inference; but a more robust account of causal inference can take this true insight in very different directions.
-> We have to be very careful about the sense in which testimony is an image; in effect this is handled by a proper theory of naming.

What gives a philosophical system force is both the coherence of its parts and the support for each part.

"'Tis evident an experiment in the past proves at least a possibility for the future." T 1.3.12.14

"beauty is such an order and construction of parts, as either by the primary consitution of our nature, by custom, or by caprice, is fitted to give a pleasure and satisfaction to the soul" T 2.1.8.2

(1) Not all causes are of the same kind.
(2) There is more than one kind of necessity.
(3) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
(4) From the effect we can form at least a partial idea of the cause.

Christ's prayer in Gethsemane was heard (Hb 5:7).

Practical deliberation is always a study of appropriate classifications.

Divine mission is divine principiation with appropriated temporal effect.

Psychology is a sort of philosophy of novels.

"Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them." Santayana

At the associative level of Scriptural study, anything may be juxtapose dwith anything else; this raises possibilities, questions, and puzzles. At the reflective level of Scriptural study, the results of association are sorted out dialectically.

Youth is very sincerely inauthentic.

Human joys and sorrows never stop to ask what year it is.

relevance under a notion
relevance intrinsic to the thing

The greatest delusion of economists consists in thinking that economic policy is or even can be governed primarily by economic reason rather than (from below) by the reasoning implicit in the social life of the people and (from above) by the reasoning implicit in the political structures and procedures of the nation.

the importance of developing more commodious arrangements and constructions of arguments

inquiries of light, of distinction, of fructification

Liturgy, taken in a broad sense, is the ecology of faith.

4 grounds for evaluating liturgy
(1) internal consistency
(2) relevance to love of God and neighbor
(3) symbolic adequacy to theology
(4) pedagogical force

Economics has no value for policy unless it provides ways to provision families better.

What does the City of God share with the City of Man? The mortal condition. But the relation between the understanding of this in each is analogical, not univocal.

(1) Knowledge of effects & their cause in the effects themselves
  (a) as to particular details
  (b) as to general character
  (c) as to participation in the cause
(2) knowledge of effects in universal causes
  (a) as to removal of impediments
  (b) as to action of cause
  (c) as to directive principle in cause
(3) knowledge of effects in the first cause
  (a) as to how effects considered in themselves participate divine ideas
  (b) as to how effects are in the divine ideas
  (c) as to how effects are in God as last end

Deuteronomic theodicy does not explain why troubles come, but why we cannot rise above them.

liturgy as memorative prenotion

Love casts out fear because faith casts out fear.

Since truth coheres, sciences interpenetrate, sometimes in conclusions, sometimes in methods; and sciences admit of analogies even in many of the facets in which they differ.

propositional dynamic logic as a calculus of strategies

It is poets & artisans who most properly exercise human dominion over the world.

realism about the beautiful ont eh basis of truth as congruence of mind and thing

Note association between circumcision & purification of the mother in Lev. 12 (& also the redemption of the firstborn Son)

Whoever claims that sexual reproduction is merely a biological function has clearly not given much thought to the amount of planning and practical adjustment required for having children.

the experience of skin as a limit of ourselves

We cannot even consider a thing as a possible miracle without considering it as being possibly a means to an end.

Pr. 31:10-31 describes a woman's life in heroic terms (note vocabulary especially).
->It is a woman's might, not beauty, that is lauded.

the ecclesiology of Pr. 31:10-31
-> Then Pr. is bookended by the call of divine Wisdom & the Church as wise Bride working the world in response to this call.

The proper language of poetry is the common language of people who read poetry.

3 forms of participation
(1) by intimate possession (reception/imitation)
(2) by knowledge (reflection)
(3) by subordinate action (aspiration)

Light is a more general feature of the background of human life than the sun is; light precedes the sun in dawn and outlasts it in dusk; and light goes where the sun does not reach. Indeed, there is no feature of the background of human life that is more fundamental or more far-reaching.

In moral life our liabilities exceed our culpabilities.

Original sin is privation of suitability as a candidate for beatific vision.

effects of original sin
in person
  (1) four wounds
  (2) death
between persons (distributive)
  (1) complicity
  (2) imitation
in persons as a society (collective)
  (1) pleonectic deterioration
  (2) corruption of the world

original sin as languor of nature (ST 2-1.82.1)

Pelagianism confuses effects for causes.

Torah as pure image of truth is changed into Logos as pure and incorruptibel truth.

It makes sense of a Kantian to say that cause & effect do not apply beyond the (broadly) empirical (cf. CPR B 705) because cause & effect are in his view a principle governing temporal order (although not necessarily temporal lapse) among empirical appearances. BUt this is not essential to all ideas of cause & effect.

A precondition for justice in society is unity of heart.

convalidation of rationalization (sanatio in radice of post-hoc reasoning)

Etiology is always telic or tychic or a mixture of the two.

The blues are an echo of gospel music in a world of sin and sorrow.

All of secular philosophy is merely a surface volume and facet of the tesseract of Christian thought.

What matters in Buddhism is not the answer to the question but the openness of the mind when faced with the question.

The avoidance of surprise is an irrational object for a mutable intelligence in a mutable world.

Marriage is a peculiar sacrament because it was instituted as a sacrament in stages; thus, for instance, marriage under the Mosaic law was sacramental, but not as completely so as under the New Law, since it did look toward Christ's passion & the church, but only confusedly and by figure, and, so to speak, by mediation of God's covenant with Israel, itself a holy prefiguration of the New Covenant. Unlike any other sacrament, matrimony was constructed in stages over millenia.

We receive reason as a gift from God, and reason gives itself to others in communication. Practically everything in reason's activity intimates its communicative meaning.

the munus of conscientious scholarship & the officia to God, self, and others that follow on it

On Peirce's account of abductive inferences, they only preserve possibility, not truth -- i.e., from two or more true premises we get a possible conclusion (problematic or conjectural) as our strongest conclusion. Givent eh truths, the conclusion is not ruled out -- it si possible, but no more. Contrariwise, everything in the conclusion is in the premises, but not so as to be formally truth-preserving, i.e., the conclusion is in the premises but only qua possible.

The power of personality depends on the capacity of others to remember.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Three Poem Drafts

Visions

With words, and O! such words! we dream,
with gestures born of consolations
and hopes that capture sunrise gleams
to bloom upon the all-creation.
And shall we shirk to dream such shades,
as if in shame to shrink from lie?
Nay; rather for these dreams are made
all human hearts, our minds and eyes:--
no human souls their promise know
save where such gilded visions glow.

Psalm 98

Sing a fresh psalm to God, doer of wonderful deeds,
with right hand, with holy arm, winner of victory.
God has revealed his liberation, His justice to nations;
He has recalled His kind steadfastness to Israel's household.
From end to end the earth has seen our God in liberation.
Rejoice before God, all of earth, burst out in song, sing praise!
Sing praise to God with harp; with harp's melodious hymn,
with trump, with sounding horn rejoice before our King.
Let sea and all within resound, the world and its indwellers,
let rivers applaud with hands, hills give harmonious shout,
before God who is coming, who comes to judge the earth:
with justice He governs the earth, with fairness its peoples.

Psalm 19

The skies proclaim God's splendor,
the height His artistry;
day tells day, night teaches night,
speechless and tongueless,
with unheard voices,
their witness throughout the earth,
their message runs to World's End.
There He has pitched the sun's tent,
that bridegroom springing from his chambers,
rejoicing, an athlete after races.
His procession is from the sky's edge,
His course is to its very end,
and nothing escapes his heat.
God's Torah is complete, refreshing life;
God's decree stable, making the simple wise;
God's precepts right, rejoicing the heart;
God's commandments pure, illuminating eyes;
God's reverence clean, lasting forever;
God's judgments steadfast, utterly just.
More alluring than gold, than much pure gold,
sweeter than honey and nectar.
Your servant is enlightened by them,
in keeping them is great reward.
Who finds failing? Cleanse from the unknown,
restrain your servant from the voluntary,
that they never dominate me,
that I may find blamelessness before you,
that I may be free of grave defect.
Let the words of my mouth have your favor,
the thoughts of my heart be before you,
O God, my rock, my rescuer.

Webological Time

I thought I would extend the geological time metaphor as far as it could possibly go, so here is the whole of webological time. Some caveats: (1) I've included rough starting points for each, but boundaries of Epochs, Eras, and Eons, are approximate, and delibarately so; (2) the events listed under each era of time are not necessarily in order, some of them occurring very late and some of them very early, but are just indicators of the sort of thing that happened in that era if we consider a wide-range of blogging-related things; (3) I tried to hit highlights from a blogging point of view, but there are obviously lots of things I didn't put in, so I welcome any suggestions in the comments, although I won't promise actually putting any of them in unless they really strike me. One of the things I find interesting about this exercise is that it shows how ephemeral much of it is. If anyone had imagined today's internet thirty years ago, they would have thought it would be a lot of really cool newsgroups and bulletin board systems. And in a sense they wouldn't be wrong, since blogs and social networking sites do a great deal of what newsgroups and bulletin board systems did, functionally speaking; but just think of how misleading that extrapolation would have been.

Pliocene Epoch of the Neogene Period of the Cenozoic Era (about six months ago)

* Mozilla Firefox 4.0 is released
* The Great Blogger Outage

Miocene Epoch of the Neogene Period of the Cenozoic Era (about two years ago)

* Blogger introduces its auto-pagination feature, thus driving everyone crazy.
* Movable Type 5 is released.
* Yahoo! shuts down GeoCities.

Oligocene Epoch of the Paleogene Period of the Cenozoic Era (about three and a half years ago)

* Facebook overtakes MySpace.
* Six Apart releases Movable Type 4.
* Netscape line of web browsers ceases to be supported.
* Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is released.
* Google Chrome is released.
* To avoid worries about child pornography, and for business reasons, many services begin shutting down access to newsgroups, in particular, their Usenet services.

Eocene Epoch of the Paleogene Period of the Cenozoic Era (about five and a half years ago)

* Internet Explorer 6.0 is released.
* Mozilla Firefox 2.0 is released. Second Browser War heats up.
* Blogger migrates users to Google servers in a major redesign.
* Twitter is launched.

Paleocene Epoch of the Paleogene Period of the Cenozoic Era (about seven years ago)

* Siris begins!
* Google initiates its Google Books project.
* Mozilla Firefox 1.0 is released, beginning the first rumblings of the Second Browser War.
* Google buys out Pyra Labs, and thus acquires Blogger.
* Six Apart changes its licensing terms on Movable Type 3.0, leading to a massive migration from Movable Type to WordPress. (This change is later reversed, but too late to stop the migration.)
* Six Apart acquires LiveJournal.
* Facebook is launched.
* YouTube is launched.

Late Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era (about ten years ago)

* LinkedIn is launched.
* MySpace is launched.
* The Typepad blogging service, based on Movable Type, is launched.
* WordPress, based on b2/cafelog, is released.
* Mozilla 1.0 released.
* Google buys out Deja News, creates Google Groups.
* Internet Archive introduces the Wayback Machine.
* Six Apart releases Movable Type 1.0.
* Drupal becomes open source.
* Lulu print on demand service is founded.

Early Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era (about fourteen years ago)

* Ramanathan Guha invents Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
* Pyra Labs launches Blogger.
* The terms 'weblog' and 'blog' are created.
* Brad Fitzpatrick starts LiveJournal.
* PayPal is created.
* Netscape releases most of the Netscape Communicator as open source, which will eventually lead to the release of the Mozilla line of web browsers. This is also a convenient point from which to date the Open Source movement.
* The Early Cretaceous is dominated by the First Browser War: Internet Explorer 3, 4 and 5 versus Netscape Navigator 3 and Netscape Communicator 4. Internet Explorer dominates.
* The Early Cretaceous is also the Age of the Dot-Com Bubble.
* Yahoo! buys GeoCities.
* Google is founded.
* Internet Archive is founded.
* WorldCom buys CompuServ from H&R Block and sells it to AOL.
* General Electric sells GEnie to Yovelle, which becomes Genie; after attempts to modify it, it is closed due to Y2K issues.
* The NCSA officially discontinues development and support on Mosaic.
* BBS begins a sharp decline.
* Apple's Quick Time 3 introduces Progressive Download, making it massively easier for websites to host video.

Jurassic Period of the Mesozoic Era (about twenty years ago)

* The CompuServ/AOL wars begin.
* GeoCities is launched.
* Amazon.com is founded.
* Deja News Research Service begins a new approach to online discussion.
* The Usenet Eternal September begins: AOL begins offering Usenet access to its customers, leading to a massive and continual influx of new disruptive participants (previously usually only seen in Septembers when new college freshman first gained access to the network). This is sometimes regarded as a point at which newsgroup networks began to deteriorate seriously.
* Internet Explorer 1.0 is released.
* Netscape Navigator is released.
* The first search engines (Archie, Gopher, and others) are developed.
* The Mosaic web browser is developed at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA).
* AOL for DOS is released.
* The Erwise and ViolaWWW web browsers are developed.
* The High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 is passed. Senator Al Gore had begun to put together the bill in response to Kleinrock's report to Congress.

Triassic Period of the Mesozoic Era (about twenty-five years ago)

* General Electric starts the GEnie online service.
* Tim Berners-Lee begins introducing the idea of what he calls a "WorldWideWeb".
* Launch of LISTSERV.
* CompuServ begins to offer limited Internet connectivity in its email systems.
* CompuServ buys out The Source and discontinues it, ending a longstanding rivalry between the two online service pioneers.
* ARPANET officially decommissioned.
* Leonard Kleinrock delivers the report, "Toward a National Research Network," to Congress.

Permian Period of the Paleozoic Era (about thirty years ago)

* Prodigy online service is founded.
* FidoNet BBS system founded.
* First TCP/IP Protocols, including NNTP for Usenet.
* MILNET is split from ARPANET.
* H&R Block acquires Compuserv.
* Usenet begins and is connected to ARPANET shortly after, initiating the Age of Newsgroups and the real beginning of internet communities.
* Packet radio, the first stage in wireless internet, takes its first steps.
* The Smartmodem becomes available, allowing automatic dialing and multiple modem functionalities, thus massively easing people's ability to get online.

Carboniferous Period of the Paleozoic Era (about thirty-five years ago)

* Apparently I was born in the Carboniferous Period of Computing. How often does one get to say that?
* The microprocessor is invented.
* Jobs and Wozniak launch Apple.
* The Age of Online Services begins: Compu-Serv becomes CompuServ and launches MicroNET (soon changed to CompuServ), its information service for the broader public. Likewise, The Source information service is launched; Isaac Asimov calls it "the start of the information age".
* Early Newsgroup experiments.
* The first public dial-up Bulletin Board System (BBS) becomes available.
* ARPANET officially declared operational.

Devonian Period of the Paleozoic Era (about forty years ago)

* Compu-Serv Network is founded.
* The Norwegian Seismic Array is connected to the ARPANET by satellite, the first non-US node
* ARPANET establishes a permanent network.
* Charlie Klein sends the first message on ARPANET; he attempts to send the word 'login', but the system crashed and the only message that actually gets sent is 'lo'. About an hour later they manage to get the whole word out.

Silurian Period of the Paleozoic Era (about forty-five ears ago)

* The Mother of All Demos: Douglas Engelbart gives his presentation, "A research center for augmenting human intellect," at the 1968 Joint Computer Conference, in which he demonstrates a number of very experimental computer technologies, including the mouse, email, and hypertext.
* Integrated Electronics Corporation, later called Intel, is founded.

Ordovician Period of the Paleozoic Era (about fifty years ago)

* ENIAC is patented, but Honeywell v. Sperry Rand invalidates the ENIAC patent, putting the electronic digital computer in the public domain.
* Leonard Kleinrock develops the underlying theory for packet networks for his PhD.

Cambrian Period of the Paleozoic Era and beginning of the Phanerozoic Eon (about fifty-five years ago)

* Laserdisc technology, the forerunner of CD's and DVD's, is invented.
* The United States creates ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency.
* Sputnik launched.

Proterozoic Eon (about two hundred fifty years ago)

* Commodore Portable Typewriting Company is founded in Toronto.
* ENIAC
* Zuse series of computers
* Geophysical Services and its successor Texas Instruments are founded.
* Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation, later International Business Machines, is founded.
* Turing develops the underlying mathematical theory of computing.
* Multiplexers, and their later successors, modems, are invented.
* First the telegraph, then later the telephone, are invented.
* Hoe invents the rotary printing press.
* Babbage creates the Differential Engine and designs the Analytical Engine.

Archean Eon (about three hundred fifty years ago)

* Pascal invents the Pascaline mechanical calculator.

Hadean Eon (long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, at least as far as blogging goes)

* Gutenberg builds a printing press.
* Carolingian Reform leads to development of Carolingian miniscule and the foundation for the practices of medieval scriptoria.
* Writing is invented, thus allowing for offline communication and storage, mailing systems, and extensive calculation.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

You Know You're an Ancient Blogger When...

...you were on Blogger before it belonged to Google.

...you remember The Truth Laid Bear and were a member of the Ecosystem before the Days of the Service Outages.

...you remember the days when all you had to do to find anyone who had linked to you was run a search on your blog at Technorati.

...you remember the Movable Type licensing brouhaha that led to the ascendancy of WordPress.

...you remember the SiteMeter scandal.

...you recall the days when all the stupid internet memes and quizzes were on blogs, not Facebook.

All of which are true of my seven years of blogging, which of course is like seventy million years in blog years, give or take ten million blog years. That puts me in the early Paleogene period of the Blogging Cenozoic, or maybe the very tailend of the Blogging Mesozoic. So I'm Paleocenic or possibly late Cretaceous.

Of course, there are a few who are older as bloggers. Most are only slightly older, but some people predate WordPress, from the earlier Cretaceous of early Movable Type. A few very rare surviving early Jurassics, like Jerry Pournelle, arguably were blogging prior to newfangled words like 'blog' and 'weblog' that distinguish the late Blogging Jurassic from the early Blogging Cretaceous. In Jurassic days, people called their blogs 'zines' or 'daybooks' or 'online diaries' or any number of other things.

[ADDED LATER: Thinking through the timeline more carefully, Google had already acquired Blogger by the time I signed on; but it hadn't done any of the major renovations, the most important of which was migrating Blogger to Google servers. It was those I was thinking of.]

O'Hehir on Michael Bay's Evil Plan

Andrew O'Hehir's review of Transformers: Dark of the Moon is almost a work of art in its own right (ht):

While the relentless, inflated bombast of cinematographer Amir Mokri's images and Steve Jablonsky's score indeed suggest a self-mocking blend of surrealism and underground film, Ehren Kruger's screenplay is more like a mashup of every possible Hollywood story ingredient. "Dark of the Moon" is a little bit "X Files" and "X-Men" and "Watchmen" and "Men in Black," a little bit "Meet the Parents," a little bit every one of the 873 movies where the doofy hero has an inexplicably hot girlfriend and has to keep her away from a richer and better-looking guy, and way too much of "Lord of the Rings," with LaBeouf as Frodo and his yellow Mustang Transformer sidekick Bumblebee as Sam....

I couldn't decide whether Nimoy's presence pissed me off or was oddly ingratiating, but either way it's part of Bay's own evil plan, which is to absorb all existing pop-culture science fiction universes -- Lucas, Tolkien, "The Matrix," "Star Trek," probably "Babylon 5" and "Space: 1999" -- and subjugate them to his stupid robots.

Usually these attempts by critics to be clever fail miserably, but the rough-and-tumble nearly-stream-of-conscious outpouring here somehow makes it work.

Feast of SS. Peter & Paul

For these are the men, through whom the light of Christ's gospel shone on you, O Rome, and through whom you, who wast the teacher of error, wast made the disciple of Truth. These are your holy Fathers and true shepherds, who gave you claims to be numbered among the heavenly kingdoms, and built you under much better and happier auspices than they, by whose zeal the first foundations of your walls were laid: and of whom the one that gave you your name defiled you with his brother's blood. These are they who promoted you to such glory, that being made a holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal state, and the head of the world through the blessed Peter's holy See you attained a wider sway by the worship of God than by earthly government. For although you were increased by many victories, and extended your rule on land and sea, yet what your toils in war subdued is less than what the peace of Christ has conquered.

Leo the Great, Sermon 82. St. Leo, of course, is right: the rise in eminence of the bishops of Rome is closely associated with the fact that Rome was seen as the location of the martyrdom of both Peter and Paul under Nero; not only did this more closely link the See of Rome to Peter than other sees associated with Peter, it (combined with the relative ease of getting to Rome and the sheer number of saints who had been martyred at Rome in that and other persecutions) made Rome a primary pilgrimage site, and also made the bishops of Rome take seriously the role of successor to both Apostles -- they could hardly avoid being reminded of it. Thus we have symbolic association, lines of influence, and motivation to exercise influence. All that needs to be added is longstanding reputation for orthodoxy and the collapse of the Empire in the West to have the full suite of factors that builds the medieval papacy; and it quite literally all starts with Peter and Paul and what rippled out from their deaths.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Passing Beyond the Angels

John, therefore, did distinctly foresee the first "resurrection of the just," and the inheritance in the kingdom of the earth; and what the prophets have prophesied concerning it harmonize. For the Lord also taught these things, when He promised that He would have the mixed cup new with His disciples in the kingdom. The apostle, too, has confessed that the creation shall be freed from the bondage of corruption, into the liberty of the sons of God. And in all these things, and by them all, the same God the Father is manifested, who fashioned man, and gave promise of the inheritance of the earth to the fathers, who brought it forth at the resurrection of the just, and fulfils the promises for the kingdom of His Son; subsequently bestowing in a paternal manner those things which neither the eye has seen, nor the ear has heard, nor has it arisen within the heart of man. For there is the one Son, who accomplished His Father's will; and one human race also in which the mysteries of God are wrought, "which the angels desire to look into;" and they are not able to search out the wisdom of God, by means of which His handiwork, confirmed and incorporated with His Son, is brought to perfection; that His offspring, the First-begotten Word, should descend to the made, that is, to what had been moulded, and that it should be contained by Him; and, on the other hand, the creature should contain the Word, and ascend to Him, passing beyond the angels, and be made after the image and likeness of God.

Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus Haereses, Book V, Chapter 36, section 3. He is thought to have been born in Smyrna. The young Irenaeus was a priest during the persecution under Marcus Aurelius; his predecessor in the episcopacy of Lyons (Lugdunum, as it was called at the time) was martyred toward the end of that persecution. As a new bishop he had to perform the hard work of consolidation, which he did admirably. He wrote a number of works, all in Greek, but of the original Greek only fragments remain. His major works, Against Heresies and Proof of the Apostolic Preaching are, however, known in very early Latin translation. His tomb was completely destroyed in the sixteenth century by the Huguenots. It was at one charged against him that he exaggerated in his descriptions of the Gnostics, which Against Heresies criticizes, erecting straw men to knock down, but repeatedly he has been vindicated by later discoveries; he seems to have been very scrupulous about getting them right. Today is his feast day in the West.

Jesuit Jokes

I've posted some of these before, but Jesuit jokes never grow old.

(1) One day a priest was visiting one of his parishioners, and, asking about her teenage son, discovered that she was worried about what career he would choose. The priest said he could tell by a simple test. He put on the coffee table a Bible, a wallet, and a bottle of scotch.

"If he chooses the Bible," the priest told her, "that's a sign he's destined for the priesthood. If he chooses the wallet, he's called to be a banker. And if he chooses the bottle of scotch, he's bound to become a bum."

The teenager came in and the priest told him he could have any object on the table. The boy picked up all three.

"Oh no!" the priest shouted. "He's going to be a Jesuit!"

(2) The Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Jesuits were having a meeting when suddenly all the lights went out. Without a moment's hesitation, the Franciscans all took out their guitars and began to sing. In the next moment, the Dominicans all stood up and began to preach. In the next moment, the Jesuits all sighed, then went to the basement and replaced the fuse.

(3) A Dominican and a Jesuit were arguing about whether the Dominicans or the Jesuits were more favored by God. Finally, they decided that the only one who could settle the matter was God. So they prayed, the heavens opened up, and a piece of paper came fluttering down. When they picked it up, this is what it said,

My children,

Please stop quarreling about such absurd and trivial matters.

Sincerely,
God, O.P.


(4) A Jesuit and a Franciscan were eating a meal together, and after dinner, they treated themselves to leftover pie. Alas, there were only two pieces left, one much larger than the other. Without any hesitation, the Jesuit reached over and took the larger piece.

"St. Francis always taught us to take the lesser piece," the Franciscan said reproachfully.

"And so you have it," the Jesuit replied.

(5) A Franciscan and Jesuit were walking in a forest, and the Jesuit noticed that there was an echo. Thinking to play a prank on his companion, the Jesuit shouted out in Latin:

"Quod est Franciscanorum regula?" (What is the rule of the Franciscans?)

And the echo replied:

"Gula, gula, gula." (Gluttony, gluttony, gluttony)

In a heartbeat the Franciscan shouted out:

"Fuitne Judas Jesuita?" (Was Judas a Jesuit?)

And the echo replied:

"Ita, ita, ita." (Yes, yes, yes.)

(6) A Jesuit, a Franciscan, and a Dominican were playing golf, and got stuck behind a group of golfers who played extraordinarily slowly. A bit frustrated, they went up to the group in front asked why the group was moving so slowly.

"We are part of a program for golfers with visual impairments; they pair off with sighted golfers who help them line up the shot and keep track of where the ball is," said the leader of the group.

The Franciscan was touched to the heart by this, apologized for any rudeness, and declared that he would join up with the program at the next opportunity. The Dominican also apologized, and said that he would mention the program when next he preached.

The Jesuit also apologized, but took the leader aside and said, "You should keep up the excellent work. But don't you think it would make more sense for them to play at night?"

(7) At a conference discussing various religious orders and societies, the Jesuit representative was asked how Jesuits managed to maintain their vow of obedience.

"It's easier than you would think," the Jesuit replied. "Our superiors just ask us what we want to do and then direct us to do it, so that takes care of most of the problems."

Then someone asked about people who don't know what to do.

"Even easier," the Jesuit said. "We make them superiors."

(8) A miser had three sons, one of whom became a Dominican, one of whom became a Franciscan, and one of whom became a Jesuit. On his deathbed he called them in and told them that he wanted each of them to place a thousand dollars in his casket to be buried with him.

At the service, the three went up and the Dominican said, "This is a waste of money, Dad, but since you are my father and I owe you your last wishes, I've gotten permission from my Order to fulfill them." And he place a thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills in the casket.

The Franciscan said, "Dad, it eats me up inside, but there is so much good that could be done with that thousand for people who need it more that I just can't do it: I will not waste it on something so frivolous."

The Jesuit behind him clapped him on the back. "Don't worry, brother, I have you covered." Then he took the Dominican's thousand out of the casket, pocketed it, and replaced it with a check for three thousand dollars.

(9) A man walked up to a Franciscan and a Jesuit and asked, "How many novenas would I have to do in order to get a Maserati?"

The Franciscan asked, "What's a Maserati?"

The Jesuit asked, "What's a novena?"

(10) And my very favorite Jesuit joke. A Jesuit and a Franciscan were involved in a car accident. Hurriedly they got out to make sure the other person was OK, each insisting that it was probably his own fault.

Then the Jesuit, very concerned for his fellow religious, said, "You look very badly shaken up. You could probably use a stiff drink." At that he produced a flask, and the Franciscan, who was indeed a bit shaken up, took it gratefully.

"One more and I'm sure you'll be feeling fine," the Jesuit said, and the Franciscan took another. Then the Jesuit took the flask and put it safely away.

"You look a bit shaken up yourself," the Franciscan said. "Are you sure you don't want to take a bit?"

The Jesuit replied, "Oh, I certainly will; but I think I'll wait until after the police arrive."

Monday, June 27, 2011

More Toying with Google Ngrams

Some other interesting Ngrams.

* Comparing the occurrences of the phrases "ontological argument", "cosmological argument", and "teleological argument", which are Kant's three labels for pure-reason arguments for God's existence.

* Comparing three different names for design arguments.

* Kant's three Critiques.

* Comparing Hume's two best-known works.

* "Summa Theologiae" vs. "Summa Theologica".

* Given the relative difficulty of accessing the underlying data, the primary usefulness of the viewer seems to be the identifying of rough beginnings and endings of name uses, as well as fads and fashions in labels and classifications. (Rough because nothing registers in the Ngram Viewer unless it has more than forty mentions.) Here is the Ngram for "Bridgewater Treatise" and "Bridgewater Treatises".

* A more interesting example. One often finds the atheistic argument from evil summarized as being the inconsistency of the existence of evil with the combined attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. But this is a little peculiar; everyone who knows anything about it knows that "omnibenevolence" is not an especially traditional label for anything. And, indeed, the Ngram for it shows this quite nicely, and gives us (one more) good reason to demand to know what people mean by the term.

* Here are three nineteenth-century friends and how their names fared in the twentieth century. William Whewell is on a slow, uneven ascent for much of the twentieth century. John Herschel, on the other hand, is plummeting at the beginning of the century, and it is not difficult to see why. In the nineteenth century, John Herschel was one of the most eminent scientists of the day, and the son of one of the most eminent scientists of the generation before; his name was virtually a household word in many parts of the world. Indeed, if you do the Ngram for the three names in the nineteenth century, Herschel's name spikes so high that you can hardly tell what the other names are doing. This was unsustainable; only a very small handful of scientific names are commonly bandied about, while the rest get crowded out by more contemporary names. Herschel's name peaks shortly after his death in 1871, and goes into decline from then on. With Babbage things are different. He starts seeing a substantive rise between 1940 and 1950; the Computer Age does the courtesy of at least mentioning Mr. Analytical Engine. The change is very visible when you look at him alone, although in absolute terms we're still talking a fairly modest rise.

* The Ngram for "aesthetics". We see its first introduction into English (from the German) and increasing use.

* "Gestalt" becomes an English word.

* The word "scientist" spreads out from William Whewell. But note the differences in the American English corpus and the British English corpus. It somewhat confirms what is usually held on other evidence, namely, that despite the British origin, it caught on a bit more quickly in American English due to people like C. S. Peirce.

* "Agnosticism" is advocated as a label by T. H. Huxley and becomes a common word.

* Science fiction becomes a genre.

* Feminist philosophy begins to cohere as a philosophical topic. Ditto with philosophy of sport
. Modal logic becomes a field. People begin to talk about predicate calculus.

* People start talking about a "problem of induction". And also about the problem of evil.

* "natural theology" vs. "philosophy of religion"

* It becomes more common to speak of "parapsychology" rather than "psychical research".

* Kant is translated into English and "categorical imperative" spreads.

* The contrasting fates of "non sequitur" and "petitio principii" as labels for fallacies.

* The twentieth century nearly loses the common term, "moral providence", and "Christian Evidences"
declines as a field of philosophy. Casuistry also declines as a field of philosophy.

* "secularism" becomes a common term, as does "scientism".

* The notion of "artificial intelligence" begins to spread.

* People start talking about determinism (before some time in the last half of the nineteenth century, people talked about the doctrine of Necessity rather than about determinism).

* Higher Criticism.

* Thomism returns to visibility. Catholic Theology of the Body spreads under the influence of John Paul II.

* "the whole shebang" vs. "the whole nine yards"

* WWII makes people notice the importance of airplanes.

* "anarchist" and "communist" and "terrorist"

* Communism vs. Capitalism.

All in all, of course, interpretation of the results always requires knowing things that aren't on the graphs; and the whole thing has a fair number of false positives and false negatives, whatever you do, so precise shapes of curves and lines can't be trusted. But still fun to play with.

ADDED LATER:
* Leo thought up another really good one: sublime, its ascent and descent.

* Here's another one: picturesque.

* And, going off a suggestion by Bruce: moral values, which is very much a phrase for the twentieth century.

* And the slow decline of talk about duty and duties.

* Mariology,ecclesiology,pneumatology.

* dogmatic theology vs. systematic theology.

EVEN MORE:

* justification by faith alone

* "King James Version" vs. "Authorized Version"

* Fundamentalism becomes a common term.

* Our Father, Paternoster, Lord's Prayer

* "I think therefore I am" vs "cogito ergo sum"

* Pascal's Wager

* paradigm and falsifiability (paradigm so far outstrips falsifiability you can't put them together).

* beautiful people

Every Event vs. Every Effect

I've been toying with the Books Ngram Viewer at Google Labs. The Ngram Viewer graphs uses of phrases in the Google Books library, which holds about 5.2 million texts, and thus, according to Google, at least, about 4% of all books that have ever been published. There are biases, of course -- very heavy slant toward English language works, and the farther back you go the more difficult the texts to read properly. But it includes text not available to anyone online due to copyright issues. In any case, it's fun to play with. Here's an interesting example, on the relative frequencies of the phrases "every effect has a cause" and "every event has a cause". Click for larger view.)


The Ngram Viewer is case-sensitive, so here's "Every event has a cause" and "Every effect has a cause" (with 'Every' capitalized):


I've talked before about my interest in these two variations; 'event' and 'effect' were originally synonyms, but at some point ceased to be so, and this, I think, has affected a number of philosophical discussions, including discussions of determinism and, of course, causation.

Joyous Kingdom of Play and of Semblance

In the midst of the fearful kingdom of forces, and in the midst of the sacred kingdom of laws, the aesthetic impulse to form is at work,unnoticed, on the building of a third joyous kingdom of play and of semblance, in which man is relieved of the shackles of circumstance, and released from all that might be called constraint, alike in the physical and in the moral sphere.

Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Wilkinson and Willoughby, trs., Letter 27.8. The 'fearful kingdom of forces' is the physical world, in which everything works by physical laws; and the 'sacred kingdom of laws' is the moral world understood in Kantian terms, in which everything works by imperatives; the two are governed by necessities, albeit of different kinds. But our aesthetic impulse, or play impulse, as Schiller also calls it, is devoted to free play; as he puts it in the next paragraph, "To bestow freedom by means of freedom is the fundamental law of this kingdom."