The Poet Knows Something They Didn't

Poetry is what gets lost in translation. - Robert Frost

Jessa Crispin at Bookslut links to an interview with poet and translator Jonathan Galassi, who points out that the significance of good art in general, and poetry in particular, does not lie in being accepted at the moment. The Economist blog, Prospero:

Poetry has a vital place in society, whether it's granted one or not. It exists; it is something people perversely do. Whether it gets formal acknowledgment or is provided an established role is really not the ultimate point. There’s a lot of energy and money spent on trying to make a place for poetry in society; I'm all for it, and I work on this myself in various ways. But I don’t think it has anything to do with the art. Poetry is anti-establishment by nature—except when it's not, of course, and then it tends to be of little interest. True poetry gets absorbed ex post facto, when people understand that the poet is seeing something, knows something, that they didn't. And that is the poet's ultimate reward: to change perception, to enter the language, to matter. There's nothing more mainstream than that. And it's something you can't buy, can't force. It just happens.

I just like the idea that some things are inaccessible to our matrixed and Google-optimized culture, that "the poet is seeing something, knows something" that can't be contextualized on the spot.

Wayne

Philosophy is pointless, Stephen Hawking edition

Should Stephen Hawking be more interested in a philosophy of his chosen field, theoretical physics?

By way of explaining its relevance to science, philosopher Tim Maudlin argues in The Atlantic that philosophy can help science extend its reach into the domain of what.

For example, the probabilistic nature of the quantum world and its bizarre behavior should not be an end to the discussion about that inscrutable reality, he says, and, as he does in this Big Think video, goes on to suggest that perhaps philosophy is regaining its traditional role as the original science by contributing carefully framed questions to the current disciplines. Because as the agent for these questions, humans want and need to know at a deeper level.

In addition to offering a nice summary of why an apple falling on the head of Isaac Newton should have been so revolutionary in the history of physics, Maudlin's discussion in The Atlantic raises some "what" questions related to contemporary cosmology, as well as, for example, describing the kinds of mistakes often made when thinking about the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. Hint: it may not be intelligent.

As for the question about whether Hawking should be more interested philosophy and physics - he's recently said that philosophy was dead" -  "he's just not well informed" according to Maudlin. And in true philosophical fashion, Maudlin says the better question would be "how do philosophy and foundational physics come apart," not how they might fit togeher.

The Atlantic piece is entitled "What Happened before the Big Bang?", a question also broached by CalPoly theoretical physicist Sean Carroll in the 2010 IdeaFestival Conversation embedded here.

Wayne

Good ideas? Give them time

Even the most brilliant minds fall flat. Writing yesterday in Wired, Jonah Lehrer describes one good way to separate the good ideas from the bad. Take a break from the creative process.

How can the rest of us get better at identifiying our best ideas? One key lesson from this research is that distraction and dilettantism come with real benefits, as they give the unconscious a chance to assess its new ideas.

So the next time you invent something new, don’t immediately file a patent, or hit the “publish” button, or race to share the draft with your editor. Instead, take a few days off: play a stupid video game, or go for a long walk, or sleep on it. Unless you take a brief break, you won’t be able to accurately assess what you’ve done.

Wayne

Daniel Tammet on aesthetic judgement and knowing

Asking for forgiveness if he does not put on a "one man savant show" for the audience, Daniel Tammet goes on to defend a thesis born of his own experience. Do our aesthetic judgements, rather than thought and abstraction, guide the knowing we get? It's an intriguing idea with roots in human biology, and his synesthesia, the "cross talk" between his senses, provides him with a perspective on an answer continually exploited by poets, for example.

Expanded, this intimate connection to the world has dramatically changed how experimentors' - to take another example - now approach the development of artificial intelligence. If thought is embedded in all of human biology, not just our brains, we know more than we can tell. "Our bodies," as Sir Ken Robinson has memorably said, "are not just transport for our heads."

The questions, of course, are inevitable and asked at the 2010 IdeaFestival what the color of a rather large, made-up number might be, he paused and with a comic's timing answered "red, white and blue" - because "everything's bigger in America."

Video of him at the IdeaFestival may be seen here, a brief interview, here. 

Wayne

1,700 miles, 90 fewer pounds, one awesome beard

Condor's PCT Adventure in 3 Minutes from Kolby Kirk on Vimeo.

Via Andrew Sullivan's blog - Seventeen hundred miles hiked. Ninety pounds lost. One inspiring beard.

My father thru-hiked the Appalachian trail at the age of sixty-five, and has since hiked large sections of the Pacific Crest Trail and the Intercontinental Divide Trail, so this video, in addition to introducing me to some new music - seriously go check it out - stirred the emotional pot. Like him, I love a good long walk. Unlike him, I don't have the miles to my credit. But spending several months hiking through some of the most gorgeous scenery this country has to offer confers on the explorer perspective-changing, head-clearing, two-feet-standing sense that is comparable to few things in life. The beard, truly epic, almost makes up for the body odor.

Wayne