Copyright notice
All text and original images in this blog © 1990-2010 by William P. Coleman. Some rights reserved. You may reuse only as specified in the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License or by written permission.About me
If you'd like to know more about me, please see the About page. My qualifications for the scientific entries are in my CV.
I see no reason to segregate scientific and technical posts from humanistic ones. In my life, scientific concerns mix with ethical ones, and they shade into a philosophical interest in the nature of cognition and the nature of people. Doing science is as creative as writing fiction, and I get inspiration for both from the same gods.
You will find little here on current politics. I'm an activist, but not in symptoms. Experience in martial arts shows me that the sure way to lose is reactivity; but if you stay cool and remember your training and what you're there for then you achieve goals and, when conflict is unavoidable, you fight and win. The idea of the liberal arts I was brought up in is that broad understanding of cultures and ideas gives you deeper, better goals -- making success more likely and more satisfying. Negatively, the hysteria since 9/11 shows how a country frightened and reactive can destroy itself more than an enemy can. I'm trying to contribute by changing the terms of discourse. . . . As Allen Ginsberg wrote, "America, I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel."
One fact shouldn't require special mention, but it sometimes does: namely that I'm gay. This blog is not primarily about being gay, but the topic sometimes comes up. I'm proud of being gay and do not hide. Muse
Category Archives: Plato
Lao Tzu, Chapter 11
Tao Te Ching — The Classic about Ways And Instances Lao Tzu (Translated, with comments, by William P. Coleman) Chapter 11 Thirty spokes unite at a hub; it’s the emptiness there that makes the wheel usable. Shape clay to … Continue reading
Plato and Protagoras: “. . . of things that are, how they are . . .”
How can we know what Plato really thought? He never (almost never) spoke for himself. He wrote “dialogues” in which the only voices belong to the characters. We know what Meno, Protagoras, Theaitetos, and the others say — but what … Continue reading
. . . every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite
A post in the ongoing series Poetry in the Arts. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake wrote about the “doors of perception.” The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of … Continue reading
Politics, the Polis, aloofness, and involvement
Parthenon, North Frieze J. J. Pollitt’s The Art of Ancient Greece is a book that I’ve learned much from — and plan to write several entries about. I’m grateful to Pollitt. In one place in this book, though, he makes … Continue reading
Rupert Brooke’s “Tiare Tahiti”
Rupert Brooke Tiare Tahiti Mamua, when our laughter ends, And hearts and bodies, brown as white, Are dust about the doors of friends, Or scent ablowing down the night, Then, oh! then, the wise agree, Comes our immortality.
Socrates — running his hand through Phaedo’s hair
Plato’s Phaedo is one of the hardest dialogues for me to understand. The way some commentators present it seems uncompromisingly, patronizingly self-righteous. Yet, I think there are more humanistic ways to understand it.
William P. Coleman 