Sadly, I’m leaving tomorrow morning to fly back to the states, but all my work got done. Though we were deplatformed by the Betabreak group at the University of Amsterdam (now bleating that they really did it for “safety reasons”), the three of us plus a moderator managed to professionally tape our discussion on the Ideological Erosion of Science in a private and “safe” location. The discussion went well, and it should be on YouTube in about a week. My talk in Tilburg seemed to go okay, too, so the formal part of my commitment has been satisfied.
Today we went around downtown, which was crazy with tourists. It was a Saturday and a lovely day, but apparently there is no time of year now when Amsterdam isn’t overflowing with tourists: American, Asian, and European. If you come, get your tickets to the Rijksmuseum, Anne Frank House, and Van Gogh Museum as early as you can—preferably a few months.
I took a bunch of photos today, including Palestinian protestors in the citty, a “hidden” Catholic church built when Amsterdam was largely Protestant, a rubber duck shop, some typical Dutch food, and other marginalia. Those will be up when I get back home, so today I’ll show photos from yesterday. Much of the day was spent creating the discussion we were supposed to have at the University of Amsterdam on the Coyne and Maroja paper.
Setting up for the videotaping (photo by David Stam, standing on left). Seated to right: Maarten Boudry, a philosopher at the University of Ghent, me, Geert Jan van’t Land, one of my hosts and the moderator, and Michael Richardson, professor of evolutionary developmental biology at the University of Leiden. Standing at right, one of Stam’s taping assistants; I don’t remember his name. Maarten was a collaborator on the only philosophy paper I’ve ever written on anything.
Below: another Stolperstein I encountered walking to an evening concert. These, you’ll recall, are placed in front of the houses of people who lived there but were taken away by the Nazis and sent to their deaths in the concentration camps. So spare a thought for Victor Romun, taken away from his house on September 25, 1943 at age 56, sent to the holding camp at Westerbork in the Netherlands and then sent to Auschwitz, where he lived only four months, dying (or murdered) on January 31 of the next year.
Yesterday evening we went to a wonderful concert at one of the world’s great venues for classical music, the famous Concertgebouw. As for the building, Wikipedia notes:
The Royal Concertgebouw (Dutch: het Koninklijk Concertgebouw, pronounced [ətˌkoːnɪŋkləkɔnˈsɛrtxəbʌu]) is a concert hall in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Dutch term “concertgebouw” translates into English as “concert building”. Its superb acoustics place it among the finest concert halls in the world, along with Boston’s Symphony Hall and the Musikverein in Vienna.
The acoustics truly were superb. We had great seats about 15 rows back in the middle of the floor, and it sounded as if we were surrounded by music.
The Concertgebouw is in the Museum Quarter, and here’s a panoramic photo of the area, showing not only the concert building, but the van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum. You’ll have to click twice and scroll to see it properly:
The concert program, which was wonderful, with Vilde Frang, a young Norwegian violinist, doing the long Shostakovich violin solo. I loved the concert even though I’m no expert in classical music.
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on stage, ready to go. It’s considered one of the world’s finest orchestras.
On the way home I saw THE WORLD’S SMALLEST CAR, or at least one that appears to be. It holds only a single person, and I suppose could be seen as a covered motorcycle:
Finally, a typical Dutch food, Hagelslag, known in America as “sprinkles,” and used to top cakes and cupcakes. In the Netherlands, however, it’s a common topping for buttered toast for breakfast. Here’s what was in front of my plate. I had heard of it, so of course I tried it.
My crude translation of the Dutch, with some expert help:
“Did you know that Hagelslag is a typical bread covering in the Netherlands, and that it is not sold in other countries? And that in Belgium Hagelslag is known as ‘mouse turds’?”
I may be a bit off here, but not by far.
My morning toast with Hagelslag. It wasn’t bad at all, though I prefer jam:
That looks like a great concert. Not only did you get the mighty Concertgebouw orchestra [ the top four European orchestras are generally considered to be the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, the Concertgebouw, and the Bavarian RSO ], but you got the Russian Jewish Semyon Bychkov, now chief conductor of the Czech Phil. And the professional violinists I know all rate Vilde Frang very very highly — all consider her in the topmost tier of all the young/youngish violinists. They also say she has a reasonably distinctive sound, though I find this quality hard to identify. Certainly the 2-3 albums I have of her work are all outstanding. I would have loved to have heard what she made of the anguished candenza of Shos 1 VC.
It was plenty anguished!
Lovely concert hall. I can feel the acoustics just looking at it. Have a safe flight home.
That must have been a truly amazing concert. Three of my favorite composers all in one show!
Vilde will be performing with the CSO this fall.
https://cso.org/performances/24-25/cso-classical/tchaikovsky-swan-lake/
Dear Mr Coyne, as a Dutchman I felt embarrassed by the cancellation of you discussion in Amsterdam. But fortunately I was able to attend your presentation in Tilburg. Great job, but two remarks. 1. Your slide on the negative impact of religion showed three Islam related incidents (Van Gogh, bataclan, Rushdie). Sure, Islam is an issue, but we had crusades, catholic priest abuse, Chinese uygurs etc. 2. And I did not have time to ask you this question on Thursday in Tilburg: what about the focus on IDF in your blog? Does that not stimulate people to react and cancel?
Ps a statistic on the religiousness of the Dutch came out this weekend. 42 % is religious and I guess a lot of them are Islam.
Thanks for the compliment, but I’m not sure what you’re getting at about Islam. I had one slide about Islam and the rest of the slides were mostly about Christianity (remember that I followed the slide of Islam with a list of bad tenets of the Catholic Church, including child abuse?). So if you’re implying that I was too hard on Islam, I have to say that you are wrong. Right now I’d say that Islam is the religion that does the most damage to societies it dominates compared to other faiths, but Christianity and Catholocism had their day.
p.s. I don’t know what you’re getting at by discussing my focus on the IDF, either. And as for the religiousness of the Dutch, I understand that only 5% of the Dutch are Muslims, so if you subtract those, you still get a very high percentage of Dutch that are religious (more than 50% believe in a God or a higher power at least part of the time).
But your friend Maarten Boudry published this article the other day about people from Islam going through the washing machine of the enlightenment. We all hope that refugees from the Middle East will ‘see the light’ and leave their faith. But it is easier to attract bees by honey than vinegar (Dutch saying) . And in your audience in Tilburg, some were clearly Muslim. Why not attract them by the positive of facts instead of focusing on the negative of faith?
I don’t know what Maarten Boudry wrote and just because he’s my friend doesn’t mean we share the same opinion about everything. If you think I would have converted some Muslim women to other faiths by telling them how wonderful their faith is, then you are sadly misguided. And the tenets of Islam are not wonderful. Do you think I could convert Geert Wilders to being left-wing by telling him how wonderful his politics are now? What you’re suggesting is just as risible.
I suspected that you want me to leave Muslims out of the discussion altogether, which is ridiculous because it’s one of the three Abrahamic faiths that I said I’d discuss.
Why not end this discussion now. That is a strong suggestion.
That is interesting. Is this information available on the internet? This is all I could find: https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2024/20/vooral-oudere-mensen-zeggen-deel-uit-te-maken-van-geloofsgemeenschap
That says
RC: 17%
Protestants: 13%
Islam: 6 and 6.4
Other: 6 and 6.4
I like the Belgian mouse turds! Along with Sprinkles, Hagelslag are also known as Jimmies in parts of the US and “Hundreds and Thousands” in the UK.
Yes, could have really been for safety reasons as I have read several independent reports on disorder at the University v Amsterdam. But you still got your formal discussions done and as a bonus we all get to see the Coyne/Maroja paper one. That is some concert hall; I am closing my eyes and imagining the sound. Thanks for bringing us along again and safe travels back.
Jim, respectfully, I would argue these cowardly organizers are abusing the idea of “safety” – safe for them, yes – but true public safety comes from somewhere else, right? Certainly PCC(E) was not intimidated in the least – in fact, the discussion did take place without incident – and without the need for Betabreak’s “safety” wizardry.
#fearmongering
#manipulation
I’m glad your visit was so positive, on balance. Good friends, respected colleagues, two excellent public conversations, great music, some fabulous food and a story you can eat out on for months. All in a beautiful country filled with mostly historically tolerant people. A great few days. I have an idea, probably one of my occasional terrible notions/brain farts. I have a mind picture of you standing next to one of the commemorative golden stones you shared as you introduce your talk on YouTube. Not to insult or anger anyone, just as an ironic nod to some relatively recent results of ethnic and religious animus. Obliquely covers your canceling and more directly covers the mayhem done to “the other” under the guise of religion and other theologies throughout much of human history. Liked the image so ty for listening and have a safe and easy trip home.
Hearing music in the Concertgebouw performed so well is a great way to appreciate Amsterdam. Regrettably the program included what is IMHO one of the worst pieces I have ever heard….and I have been listening to classical music my entire life, including years playing the piano. This is the Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances which coincidently I heard on the radio a week or so ago. It was so confused and
disordered, with cacophonous content that I made sure to listen to the whole piece to make sure that somehow, perhaps, it might improve. No such luck. I withhold comment about Shostakovich.
Hi Lorna,
you and I would probably have some interesting ‘hard core’ music chats if we regularly sat next to each other at orchestral concerts! Intrigued where you would rank Rach’s last orchestral work and the Shos VCs in relation to my stygian depths such as Leonardo Balada’s ‘Steel Symphony’ and Khachaturian’s 3rd symphony with its deranged multi-octave organ cadenza and its 12 or is it 16 trumpets.
When I was at the Concertgebouw hall last year it dawned on me why it is such an exemplary hall. One major reason is its incredibly low noise floor, assuming the audience isn’t bronchial. The floor is carpeted, and the seats are bolted to the floor and very sturdy, which means the noises of audience shuffling in the seats etc is almost nonexistent. This allied to its shoebox shape is probably the major combination. The very low noise floor means its dynamic range between loudest and softest sounds is extremely high.
“Royal Concertgebouw”
Oh wow – I’m so happy to hear this!(…pun unintended)..! I was wondering “gee, is he going to look at the Concertgebouw” and not only that, heard a concert!..Wonderful!
What a splendid trip – including, unfortunately, the ideological sparring which, IMHO, PCC(E) and Boudry won gracefully.
Who’d have thought a religion v. science talk would be fine, but not ideological subversion?!
I’m so glad you got to see (hear?) a concert at the Concertgebouw. The last time I was in the Netherlands I was in Leiden but added an extra day in Amsterdam so that I could go to the Concertgebouw.
I have had the privilege to attend a number of concerts at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. It is a special classic concert space with excellent sight lines and acoustics.
For your next ontbijt (breakfast) you should try gestampte muisjes which are aniseed sprinkles similar to chocoladehagelslag. Gestampte Muisjes roughly translates to “stamped mice” or “smashed mice” The Dutch have a wry sense of humor… 😊
On the way home I saw THE WORLD’S SMALLEST CAR, or at least one that appears to be. It holds only a single person, and I suppose could be seen as a covered motorcycle:
Neither a car nor a covered motorcycle. It’s a Traveso mobility scooter for the disabled.
Great recapture of your last day(s) in the Netherlands before heading back to the US. As a side effect, it reminded me of the cultural sites and events that people with a normal life get to enjoy in almost any urban area one travels to.
Wishing you a safe trip back and hopefully not a bout of “culture shock” when settling back in on your home turf. Thanks. Fly safe!
Will read your philosophy paper with great interest – actually feed it to the AI to deconstruct 🙂 You can have the new ChatGPT4o deconstruct stuff it appears, “deconstruct mathematics and logic” and get all the usual postmodern gender race and cultural stuff.
My rambling reaction to Derrida:
Derrida’s undefinable, mystical ‘différance’ sounds like an innate mental capacity to differentiate and distinguish objective entities from their background creating a dichotomy. That’s why it cannot be defined as an object of consciousness itself, the undefinable basis of perception, the power of discriminate observation, the knower. By the way, notice how the impulse for rational reductionism, reducing a thing to it’s ultimate irreducible components and their interactions creates finer and finer divisions; how rationality distinguishes, identifies, labels, categorizes more and more items – breaking down the world into something like an extremely complex control panel, something that breaks down a process to it’s fundamental controllable parts, like the dash of a 747 – a sometimes overwhelming array of possibilities that can take years to gain experience and master control of; that greater and greater emission of intellectual thoughts covering every discernible aspect of objective reality – THAT is what creates the impulse to simplify, to chunk items together into manageable forms, to group and reunite divisions, to pull all the disparate rationally discovered elements back together again into a congruent whole, to tie it all together again, which is the basis of the word ‘religion’. Just like organisms take material from their environment, break it down into component nutrients and reassemble them into organic forms, the brain takes in it’s learned environment of identified objects and reassembles it unconsciously into a picture, literally. Just consider optical illusions, the fact that that patch appears different, but is actually the same shade and color when masked shows the unconscious pre-processing that goes on before reaching consciousness. Even the act of reading or listening to a speech is a marvelous complex of fine tuned recognition processes being activated to create a mental image, reassembling the parts into a personally meaningful picture and narrative. Now that that powers of scientific truth discovery has covered the universe from the neutrino to dark matter, from the big bang to the foreseeable future, people want and need to reassemble that corpus into a sensible, meaningful narrative that a 5 year old can pick up on.
So, free your mind from such logo-phallus-centric traditional power hierarchy obstacles as “two plus two is four” and see the world in a new light.
Speaking of AI and deconstruction – this is pretty cool 🙂
https://deepai.org/chat/jacques-derrida