Arquivo para a ‘Museology’ Categoria
World created beyond the imaginary
08
May
The story of Claude Shannon, who worked in a MIT laboratory
of Vannevar Bush and Alain Turing crosses through World War II, while working on secret projects, which were two sides of the same coin, unaware of one another’s project, the idea of passing the language to a human code, the System X that worked Shannon, and the one of Turing that was to decipher the code of the Machine Enigma capture of the German army.
Not being able to talk about his projects, speaking at lunches and gatherings in Gödel’s Incomplete Theorem, and the idea of creating a machine that could encode human thought, he said in a joke, “could be a mundane brain like that of the president of Bell Laboratories”, place of secret projects in development.
Bell Labs began as an AT & departament in Washington and later of independent labo of the project’s development (photo above).
The major obstacles to innovation initiatives stem from the mental blocks caused by unproven beliefs, prejudices and perceptions about the possibilities of technology, which are not only strongly alienating, but are inhibitors of creativity and can condemn processes of poor mental development. In spite of the irony of Shannon and Turing with the president of Bell Laboratories, there developed from the first valves, the first transistor that was awarded a Nobel Prize, the telephone systems in their most diverse versions arriving the dialed line and the use of the network for transmission over the internet, and the optimal fiber system, whose first test was done in Georgia.
Also lines of radio and television handsets, the development of the Linux precursor UNIX system, the first solar cells, several Nobel prizes and famous students passed by.
The challenge of pioneers is never simple, critics are always willing to devalue the human effort of progress, Bell Laboratories and other study centers, such as CERN and Research Institute around the world, Brazil has some of them as INPE in São José dos Campos, are central drivers of human creativity and project the future of man.
Clarify the clearing
03
May
Man always wanted the light, he always went in 
search of the “clearing”, the Myth of the Cave of Plato is nothing else, the light in the medieval chapels and arts, the clarification (Aufklärung) that Kant pointed out as the man’s exit from his minority and the current “clearings” of Heidegger and “clarifying” Sloterdijk glades, the plural is on my own.
In medieval art the “light” must be associated with art, although the texts of Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, Averrois and many others are worthy of reading and analysis, it was in the arts that the idea of luminosity was more present, an example, is the church Saint-Chapelle (photo) consecrated in 1248 AD, with example of the dematerialization of the walls and substitution by stained glass.
What should be the exercise of full freedom, the great bet of modernity, actually confined humanism to a dead end, enough to ask the question if we live in an enlightened age, opinions of all philosophical nuances will answer: it is not an enlightened time, so the pretense of enlightenment gave blindness and civilization crisis.
Heidegger’s answers about the “clearing” in the midst of this forest of questions (some think it is only information) was the resumption of being, certainly important, but Sloterdijk’s response to the letters on humanism puts it in question: that is “clearing.”
I do not have a definitive answer, as Sloterdijk is not, even if he points “the spheres” as the circles of imprisonment of being, of thought and I would say here, even religion.
My response contemplates Byung-Chul Han’s book “Expulsion from the Other,” the option for a massified, uniformed society and for that without values would destroy the human wealth of diversity, but it is precisely this diversity that seems to rebel, and may give fruits. Clarifying the clearing, in the face of the civilizing crisis of our time, can not find more answer, as in the past, in the idea of single thinking, diversity is now necessary.
Life: origin and destiny
26
Apr
To exist life is essential water and some other elements
in abundance: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, sulfur, potassium, sodium, chlorine and magnesium, so the search for inhabited or inhabited planets, scientist Arthur C. Clarke said, “Whether we’re alone in the universe or we’re not, either scenario is scary.”
As important as the origin of life, which is still an enigma, is to investigate the original societies that are submerged in the underground layers of our society, some are able to see these traits and understand that modernity is not the eternal destiny of men, others immersed in the conflicts of our time want to eternalize it as if it were the last human civilizing stage.
To understand what life is, it is also to understand where we came from, whether in the scientistic perspective of modernity we have to know whether we come from matter or not, and for this question I recommend Terrence Deacon’s book “Incomplete Nature: how mind emerged fom matter” (see our post), precisely because it unites the anthropological perspective with the cosmological word, in a broader sense that includes the cosmogonies of the diverse cultures and civilizations.
The subject is too broad for a post, so I tell an experience being in Portugal, I went to visit one of these small Portuguese towns Coruche, it is not the villages that are even smaller, and there I came across vestiges of the prehistoric men in the region, the first signs of Western civilization: Roman columns, the one believed to be the first bell of Portugal and also the beginning of Christian evangelization in the region, the Church of Our Lady of the Castle has this name because it was made on the ruins of a castle.
So one civilization buries the other, the city also lies in a border region between the Kingdom of Portugal and that of Al-Andaluz, where Arab Muslims lived and where the origin of the Portuguese tile designs is.
I felt that all this was composed in a civilization originating from unknown Portugal, and we grandchildren of this original civilization. It does not fail to have, as in all Portugal the fields of vines, almost every place has one. As it is written in the museum of Coruche on the city: “The sky, the earth and the men”.
See and believe: feeling the real
06
Apr
Contrary to common sense thinking, the virtual does not oppose
the real, but it points to a path, digital technologies already under development as augmented reality, virtual reality and holograms are virtual not in the sense of unreality, but of potentialities. What may come out of them still depends on some technological advances, but the development of these artifacts, such as to create 3D holograms tested at Brigham Young
Researchers of Bringham Young University (see our post) published in the January issue of Nature, will still depend on technological advances to market in the near future, this is its virtuality. In an information society, reading plays a central role, not incidentally it is linked to the printed artifact, the so-called Gutenberg Galaxy, however one can imagine that oral culture has little to do with it, or only compose with it , but this is not a fact.
Oral culture, seeing is linked to listening, may seem curious or strange in this culture is essential to listen, and speaking means a certain authority, were thus with the oracles, prophets and masters in Afro cultures, one must have the gift to tell in them the myths occupy a prominent place, that is why we develop here: seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not listen. It might be the opposite, if we think of photography, TV and the Cinema, but the so-called “society of the spectacle”, which Guy Debord defined the spectacle as the set of social relations mediated by the images, but these are only modern artifacts; cave paintings would then be what?
The line of analysis that although it criticizes seems more coherent is that of Paul Virilio, that the modern society walks with “speed” for the new media, and the dance and the theater would be the real resistances to this speed, But Virilio surrenders to the claim that technological innovations transform, modify, alter geographical space at all scales (local, national and global), does not say this, however, it is necessary to humanize them, and this process will be increasingly is inherent in these media. An example of oral culture is in Thomas’s famous passage, which is interpreted in the culture of information as saying that it is seeing to believe, it is wrong, it is to feel to believe, reread the passage of John 20: 25-27.
“Then the other disciples told him,” We have seen the Lord. “But Thomas said to them,” If I do not see the nail-mark in your hands, if I do not put my finger on the nail-marks, your side, I will not believe “…. and Jesus said, Put your finger here and look at my hands.”
Jesus appeared and asked that he also touch other passages Jesus appears and only when he speaks, and breaks bread is “seen,” modern man must touch and feel.
Seeing do not see
05
Apr
Listening already wrote here, is the fact of owning the hearing aid,
listening is something for mental processing. what you have heard, you can not do it without some attention and some knowledge, at least of the language in which you are listening.
I imagined in Portugal, that in all the Iberian Peninsula, had already seen in Spain, there is some culture linked to the vision, something similar to oral tradition, even more primitive, yes because the cave paintings are previous to writing and probably originating from oral culture .
I discover asking about the cultural importance of the Caldas da Rainha City, relatively close to Lisbon, the figure of Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (1846-1905), inventor of Zé-Povinho (in certain sense: little person), also a journalist of the engraving, a pencil leaflet, a graphic chronicler, a failed ceramista, cartoonist, ahed of time, Republican (in Portugal it happen in 1910), one of pionnering in satirical cartoons, and it may have convulsed his country in the late nineteenth century, still a monarchist, but already strong republican ideias. ,
His ceramics that did not avenge in his time, today are works of art spread in the interior world, in Brazil we have already seen those pots shaped like pine, cups (Portugal cups) and other crockery (utensils in the terrinha), made in format fruits and decoration, made much more like the “zé povinho” than the royal dishes of the Portuguese aristocracy.
Just as listening requires a training, the look requires a double training, because the artist wants to give the public something beyond the conventional and for this reason does this or that nuance in its artifacts,
Perhaps the very expression of Zé Povinho, also used in Brazil, owes to him, also here as here the expression can denote a pejorative sense.
The fact of the vision in the artistic sense, so much can resort to mythical figures, winged horses and onicorns, mule without head and saci Pererê in popular legends, with mystics in the sense even of anticipation of the reality, many artists were ahead of its time.
A visionary of our time can not refuse the media and social networks, being redundant, it is lack of vision.
The Parable of Plato’s Cave
06
Mar
The first thing is that it is not a myth, if we understand mythos what is what would be
a simple narrative, but if present in the popular imaginary can be beyond then it is a parable, a metaphor where the cave would be a place of “knowledge ” or simply a dark environment, that we deprived of light, this light being the light of truth.
This “myth” is in the work of Plato entitled “The Republic,” book VII, where it seeks the light of the theory of knowledge, lead men to language and education to an ideal state, so it refers to the Greek polis in its formation initial.
In a cave people walk and through the shadows on the walls observe the way their bodies cast shadows, and in them the objects they carry.
Imagine that the prisoners were freed and forced to look at the fire and the objects that made the shadows, they would awaken a new reality, a new knowledge, but unaccustomed to the light would hurt their eyes and they initially would not see well.
Plato did not seek the essence of things in the simple Phýsis, as did, for example, Democritus and his followers, influenced by Socrates, he sought the essence of things beyond the sensible world, and this is the true allegory of the cave.
Dialogue is metaphorical, metaphorical dialogue always in first person talks between Socrates and his interlocutors: Glaucus and Adimantus, the younger brothers of Plato.
In dialogue, the emphasis is on the process of knowledge, showing the worldview of the ignorant, living common sense, and the philosopher, in his eternal search for truth.
It can be said that, at least in the West, this is the first essay on “truth.”
The zeal of the House and the “temple” reconstruction
02
Mar
In the biblical passage where Jesus expels temple merchants, vendors, and other traders of religious relics
of his time (Jn 2: 13-16), it is more common to remember the rope whip than the next passage that says (John 2,19 ): “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it,” which seemed absurd since the temple was built in 46 years and how it would do it in 3 days.
The first part is best remembered by exegetes because there was the prophecy about what messiah that “Zeal for thy house shall consume me” (Psalm 69: 9) and therefore, in Jesus this prophecy is confirmed.
It is true that he spoke of his body rebuilding in 3 days, since it dies during the Jewish Paschua, which now due to the calendar does not always coincide with the Christian, but Jesus dies on Thursday when a lamb should be killed to eat it at the end of the Friday night, and at Christian Easter he is himself the lamb slain.
There is no doubt that the Battle of Guernica (1937), painting by Pablo Picasso is a symbol of our time, the war that shatters the BEING.
Seen as a sign of the times we must think that also the destruction and reconstruction of societies and cultures in our time have shortened, if this was done in more than a generation, today both destruction and reconstruction are fast and can take only hours.
The speed of information, which is often disinformation can destroy and build quickly, typical of the present times, is usually remembered only to deconstruct, a term used in philosophy, but there is also the construction in many areas of knowledge and sociability.
The Internet from the late 1970s to the 1990s changed the sociability of communication, the Web became popular content in 15 years, from 1990 to 2005 when Web 2.0 came on, and now IoT promises to change more deeply in a short time, but Has society changed? these are considerations of language and structure, but the “temple” is that of the “Being”, ontologically established and this is before any technology continues to be, with anguish and hopes.
It is a temple of reconstruction of the “temple” of being, but this means changing the structures, the form in which the content is expressed and “in-form”, in it will live the “Being” of our new time.
Desconstruction is not destruction
28
Feb
While the lay public thinks of the so-called postmodern malaise; or the non-being of postmodernity, since it only declares non-existences, absences and impossibilities, it is ultimately the recognition that is already in postmodernity, that something must be overcome.
But this new type of nihilism, the misleading and sometimes superficial understanding of deconstruction is not destruction, let alone “the end of history,” since it is always affirming, as in our previous posts, within Anglo-Saxon thought the the connection of deconstruction with literature and the way of reflecting Munslow’s historiographical work.
On the writing of history does not mean that it can not be performed to inform us the reading of Balzac helps to understand revolutionary France and antimonarchic thinking, as well as on the past and the mythical cultures that preceded current ones, part of the structuralist thought helped to understand better what followed the thought of modernity,.
So even in Anglo-Saxon thought deconstruction is a way of reflecting on historiographical work, on the process of transforming evidence and information from history into history, but it is now inevitable the historical questioning, the current work of historians to understand and explain the past through evidence facts, will help build the future.
If there is a clear demand for change, there is a clear need for a change of mentality and thinking about the very way of looking at history, of rereading literature, and especially of pointing out new solid paths to change, understanding deconstruction as destroying culture and favoring the general disinformation is part of the barbarism and not the seed of the ongoing change.
The arts and adamic myth
20
Feb
We quote the work of Eça de Queiroz: Adam and Eve in paradise, but a work that seems to reflect very much
the Adamic symbol is the work of Ernest Hemingway, it seems the voice of a human experience, which seeks after the adamic fall of struggle against evil, to incorporate a search for redemption, thus symbolizing the mythical structure of the concept of original evil, the evil Adamic.
In other words, a new Adam, not just the figure of Jesus, but the recovery of a false “wise innocence,” a quest for simplicity of language, a second Adam.
What this has to do with the current reality, almost everything, is part of this asceticism of the “here and all its problems are solved”, and this movement in both philosophy and literature is a conscious or subconscious way of using an apology to the Adamic myth.
Character archetypes: Schorer, Murray and Frye are a comprehensive demonstration of this hypothesis, which was studied at Rice University by master student Anna Gayle Ryan, and can be extended to other archetypes used by Hermingway.
The author also wrote “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” about the Spanish Civil War, where an American soldier Robert Jordan fights alongside the International Brigades that support democratic government, with him is a group of guerrillas / gypsies, of Pilar, a woman with extraordinary courage, the dangerous Pablo and the beautiful Maria.
Despite the novel written in Cuba, it is possible to see a connection figure with the insertion of Americans almost in all the wars of the planet, not rarely taking the place of protagonist, as in Vietnam, in Korea, in the Middle East, etc.
The work was stamped on film, in the 1943 film was directed by Sam Wood, with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman (picture) in the main roles, which apparently is a revolutionary work hides American interests and the idea of an Adamic paradise represented by democracy , today it is possible to make this relationship.
It is the asceticism of the exercises, it carried to the extreme of the wars, and that impel an ideologies and a false “lost the Paradise” of democracy and others modern symbols.
The good between Plato and Aristotle
31
Jan
The reason for this theme from classical antiquity to contemporaneity is the recognition for
various interpretations of everyday practice for the highest theorizing that our thought is still intricate from this idea of good.
Hans-Georg Gadamer in his book “The Idea of Good between Plato and Aristotle” (2009) disassembles from the beginning of the text “ideal and naive comparisons, such as” Plato, the idealist “,” Aristotle, the realist “” ( p.2) and affirms that this is the testimony of partiality “in the field of idealistic consciousness.” (idem).
He demonstrates this with Plato’s interpretation of Plato by Paul Natorp in approaching Plato and Galileo, where he interpreted “the idea” as “the natural law,” and who had been alerted by the break-up of Nicolai Hartmann with this kind of idealism, and (Robin, Taylor, Ross, Hardie, and Hicks) who showed the unity of the philosophy of the Logos with all “the conceptuality of Western thought” (page 3).
He recognizes that the knowledge that enjoys wide recognition is tekhné, while the knowledge that is most important to man: “on the Good it seems of another kind, unlike all known knowledge …” (p. 25), then this type is even more important for our day, as the “banality of evil” of Hanna Arendt or the “fragility of the goodness” of Martha Nussbaum, the theme is back.
How can this be said more directly: corruption, violence, terrorism, hunger and various types of intolerance demonstrate our ignorance even today on the subject.
In dense and complex analysis, Gadamer shows the Western foundation of this theme,
The author points out, from the Republic of Plato, that the idealized world of the State by the authors of Classical Antiquity, thought that this idea of State would harmonize society.
Plato in life observed the corruption of the Greek polis, Gadamer cites his Seventh Letter of the Republic: “unless a reformation of incredible dimensions occurred” (70),
There is the question of Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom quoted by Gadamer: “Does Plato intend anything more than to characterize the conflict between theory and politics?” (p. 72), Gadamer’s answer will go (in a complex way) to an collective arete but we think that a true idea of the “common good” still needs to be made explicit with a reform of “incredible dimensions”.
GADAMER, H.G. O bem entre Platão e Aristóteles (The good between Plato and Aristotle). São Paulo: WMF Martins Fontes, 2009
