It’s Ceiling Cat’s Day and also Mother’s Day, and although neither Hili nor I are mothers, we are both children of Ceiling Cat, so all praise to Hir. My back continues to improve, it’s cold in Chicago; and it’s early. But we must be about our Father’s work. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the cat/d*g dialogue is enigmatic
Cyrus: New times are coming.
Hili: Do you think they will come from that direction?
In Polish:
Cyrus: Idą nowe czasy.
Hili; Myślisz, że przyjdą z tej strony?
The dialogue reminds me of Sherlock Holmes’s interchange with Dr. Watson in the story His Last Bow. Both men are standing on the cliffs of Dover, looking east, and Holmes foresees War One. Watson, befuddled, thinks that Holmes is talking about the actual wind:
“There’s an east wind coming, Watson.”
“I think not, Holmes. It is very warm.”
“Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.”
That Holmes quote is really awkward in hindsight when you consider the misery and death involved in World War One alone. Almost trivializing.
The Holmes quote smacks of “God’s purpose is unknown to us, and though people may die and suffer terribly, God has a plan for making the world better.” It’s Wilfred Owen’s “the old Lie, Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.”
Wikipedia, that Cesspit of Lies, indicates that the story was published in 1917, before WWI had ended. Of course many aspects of life in Britain improved after the war, but ACD can’t have known this would happen, and it doesn’t erase the suffering and carnage of “God’s own wind.”
And that the WWI was just weird to those who fought in it – they just did it because England told them to (many of the colonists took part simply because they were ordered).
I think this quote was also used in a Nigel Bruce/Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Holmes) film, but of course there the reference would have been to WWII.
Or am I misremembering? Anyone recall?
I think you’re remembering correctly, and it might be “Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror”.
When you consider what happened to Holmes’s creator, the story becomes rather sad. Arthur Conan Doyle published “His Last Bow” in September 1917. By then his brother-in-law had been killed in action, in 1914, and Doyle’s nephew was killed a year later.
Doyle’s son Kingsley had been seriously wounded during the 1916 Battle of the Somme, and died in October 1918 from pneumonia contracted during convalescence. Conan Doyle’s brother, Brigadier-General Innes Doyle, died from the same cause in February 1919. Shortly afterward, Doyle became a fervent Spiritualist. A year after his son’s death, he attended a sitting held by a medium and believed his son spoke to him from beyond the grave. The promise of speaking with the dead appealed to Doyle for obvious reasons.
With characteristic energy, Doyle became a fanatical proponent of Spiritualism, which he claimed to be “a natural extension of science.” He claimed Houdini had psychic powers and churned out books like “The Case for Spirit Photography”, “The Coming of the Fairies” (based on “photographs” of fairies created by cunning hoaxers) and “Phineas Speaks” (the collected thoughts, channeled through the psychic powers of Doyle’s wife, of his spirit guide, an Mesopotamian from before the time of Abraham).
All this from the creator of the greatest rationalist in literature! But to Doyle’s immense credit, he refrained from making Holmes share his beliefs. In “The Sussex Vampire,” published in 1924 (several years after Doyle’s conversion) Sherlock Holmes dismisses vampires and the supernatural: “Are we to give serious attention to such things? This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.”
Well, I don’t approve of the turn to mysticism, of course, but darn if he didn’t have the motivation! I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose close family to war, and I’m not sure I’d want to. And to think it was but a century ago, with an even bigger war in-between then and now.
I do admit I find it interesting that Holmes’ character wasn’t “affected”, but perhaps Doyle was just that committed a writer to keep his personal feelings separate from his fictional creations. I hope it helped him in some way, though I obviously can’t be sure.
I do like that Holmes quote you finished with, though. Hints of Laplace in those last two sentences, in particular.
Hi, Jerry.
A couple of points on a now-closed thread. They’ll fit as well here as anywhere.
1. If you still think that Scientism does not exist, then you need to inform the poor, benighted editors at the Oxford English Dictionary. who rightly include the term there, precisely because the concept and its idiotic proponents proliferate throughout the culture.
2. Are you still on the lookout, like Diogenes with his lamp, for other forms of acquiring knowledge apart from the scientific method, and that generate other forms of knowledge than the scientific? Leaving aside the fact that defining knowledge itself is a philosophical question, here are three, just off the top of my head:
A. Historical research, or any other form of research, for that matter.
B. Intuition.
C. Philosophical reasoning, which not only involves defining knowledge, but offers the added benefit of demonstrating why the notion that all knowledge must be scientific knowledge is self-refuting.
No, they don’t fit here as well as anywhere. I will leave them up, but let me say that I deal with all these issues in my book—every one of them. I don’t appreciate you snark in point 1. At any rate, we’re not having this discussion on a Hili thread. Read the Roolz.
I expect that readers will have something to say about 2A, B, and C. But you’ve clearly not read my posts on these issues over the last fw years.
Yes, the readers will.
A – I call this critical thinking which is really science in the wider sense.
B – No.
C – see A.
A succinct reply, and I agree. See my book if you want more information.
Rude and ignorant.
PCC closes threads? I’ve never seen that, except for that funny story contest I’m bound to win*.
* not really
Threads are automatically closed after 30 days as one of the default options. If readers want a different time limit, or no time limit, they should let me know.
A 30-day automatic thread closing option is perfect. Hell, probably even seven days would be good.
If you can’t get your point across in that time, you can’t get your point across. And it does nobody any good to have somebody doing drive-by comments on ancient posts.
b&
More reader’s response:
1. “Scientism does not exist”.
Depends on your definition of “scientism”. If it describes the idea that we get knowledge from empirical investigation (science) alone, it is amply supported by evidence.
2. “defining knowledge itself is a philosophical question”.
No, see 1.
Anyone else seeing a cat face on the d*g’s behind?
Maybe seeing the pic on a small screen helps, such as a phone.
*giggle* Yes, I noticed that right away!
I’m distracted by that weird shadow on Cyrus’s butt. I can’t figure where it’s from.
It’s the shadow of his very short tail. And staring at the picture is of no help – I can’t see any cat’s face there (:
Looking at the shadows of his legs, it seems to me the shadow of his tail must be out of frame to the right. The sharp shadow on his left hip is from the end of the handrail.
Below that, on his haunch, is a cluster of shadows that perhaps vaguely resembles a cat’s face if you squint. (To me it looks more like a bear.)
Everyday I’m blown away by the bond Hili and Cyrus have forged – their love is deep. Nothing personal Jerry but, it’s why I come here.