The Globe on 9 July

Interesting trip to the National Maritime Museum and the Globe Theater on Thursday--first, we were treated to an hour-and-a-half of traffic stoppage on the M11, making us very late to the NMM. However, Richard Dunn and Gillian Hutchinson took time out of their busy schedules (and, I suspect, their lunch hours) to present their lectures anyway. Though we were in a low-security part of the museum, and didn't see the instruments and maps that we normally see, the presentations were excellent and the students were interested.

We'd intended to drop the students at the Embankment and let them make their various ways through London to the hostels that some of them planned to stay in over the weekend. However, with the time crunch, we dropped them at the South Bank and essentially guarded their luggage at the Globe until curtain time. Given the size of some of the student bags, it was probably technically not allowed for them to take the bags into the theater (but there was no cloakroom either). But they weren't stopped or forced to leave.

The performance was A Midsummer Night's Dream, a parallel one to last year, but much different. Last year's performance tried for more emotional tension and had more special effects. This one used few special effects and a very small cast, doubling and even tripling the parts. Some of the doublings were standard: Theseus/Hippolyta/Oberon/Titania, Philostrate/Puck; others less so (doubling the mechanicals and the lovers).

The performance was set in a sexy version of the 1920's, which fit at some level, given the general modernist and yet Freudian mood of the period. Puck, played by a woman, was especially--um, how do I say this?--seductive. She did, however, use the kewpie-doll flapper voice for both her rude mechanical character (Snout, the lion), and Puck.

I figure I'll just post a couple of pictures of us in the audience, since we weren't supposed to take pics of the performance . . .

Continuing Thoughts on Worldview

Continuing thoughts on worldview: During the nineteenth century, the concept of worldview was used, under different nomenclature, by both idealists--phenomenologists, who believed that some kind of objective look at the world was possible--and existentialists, who believed that human action created meaning in the world. The phenomenologists-—Dilthey in the nineteenth century, Husserl and Heidigger in the nineteenth and early twentieth century—-wanted to see worldview as subordinate to a “scientific” philosophy, which could put forth an objective sense of what the world was “really” like, apart from particular perspectives on it. Such an approach continues to be attempted, for example by the modern textbook writer Ninian Smart in Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs. The existentialists of the nineteenth century who are more direct precursors of twentieth century post-modernism-—Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche-—both stressed the irreducibility of worldview as a category of thought and action, with Kierkegaard calling it a “lifeview” more often than a “worldview.”

Positivist attempts to construct an adequate epistemology failed in the early twentieth century. David Hume’s critique of causality, which comes down to the challenge to “show me what a cause looks like,” has never really been refuted. All one can assert from an empiricist point of view is that events follow one another with more or less regularity. This makes inductive reasoning merely probable instead of indubitable. Phenomenological attempts to construct an objective “scientific” philosophy failed in much the same way.

The stage was set for Ludwig Wittgenstein, who essentially discarded phenomenological attempts to fix the referent of language somewhere “objective.” In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein attempted a rigorous account of reference, in the vein of what Bertrand Russell was attempting for mathematical reference in the Principia Mathematica. In the Philosophical Investigations, however, Wittgenstein abandoned thinking about reference, and instead began considering language as human action. Languages are structured as games, language-games, in fact (Wittgenstein’s nomenclature), whose rules are determined by “forms of life.” For Wittgenstein, forms of life create “world pictures,” his analogue to worldviews. Since Wittgenstein grounds everything in the human action of language (“meaning is use”), forms of life and world pictures are strongly language-dependent. That has led to questions about whether worldviews are completely dependent on the language in which they occur. But languages are inter-translatable, and people do modify their worldviews without necessarily changing their languages.

Let me just throw one more shrimp on the barbie (wait, no, that's Australian) . . .
I mean, I'm always impressed by the tradition of the Cambridge colleges, and Saint Catharine's (founded 1473) has its share. More of that later, but I did want to post a picture of the globe owned by the college that had been given to them by Sir Isaac Newton (housed in one of the common rooms--the globe, not Newton). This is just one of the close-ups to history that we enjoy here.

The Opening Dinner

I haven't been able to catch a few minutes on the blog for a few days because I'm still waiting for a wired connection in my flat. Today is the last class day for the week; tomorrow is my excursion to the National Maritime Museum.

We've had a relatively smooth opening, with just a few glitches. The major ones have been lost luggage, and some issues with the small kitchenettes at the main college site. Because we have some students there who didn't want meal plans and had been switched from Chad's, there's some inconvenience with the closed-off rooms. But our common room is taking up the slack.

For now, just some pictures of our opening banquet. Everyone dressed up, and the food was very good. The weather also cooperated, for a nice reception in the main quadrangle.

Nathan's Visit

In a special treat for Chris and me, our son Nathan, who was in England visiting Oxford University (yes, the "other" one!), spent yesterday with us before his flight from Heathrow this morning. It was great to see him, and great to realize that he and his wife Tana are now situated for housing in Oxford (she has been accepted into the Oxford MBA program). In a further "interesting" connection, he and Peter, our student from the 1997 version of the program, had a chance for a little 12-year reunion. Both were younger students on the program, just old enough to be allowed into student housing at St. Chads 12 years ago.

Here are Chris and Nate in our flat. I also thought I'd put in a picture of my desk in Flat 7 of Chad's Old House. Though I haven't caught that many town Cambridge pictures yet, the view into Chad's garden from my office window is always inspiring (and inspiriting, as I just typoed).

The Fifth of July

It's interesting to be in Britain on the Fourth of July for the second year in a row. We have actually heard fireworks both times, so I guess the British don't mind their colonial cousins and their independence as much as they used to. Also, we heard music for most of the night, muted in our bedroom, and hopefully also in the bedrooms of others. I don't think it was coming from Saint Chads.

Students continue to trickle in, while those of us who came in on Friday get oriented. Chris did her practical walking tour of Cambridge yesterday for about 10 students. Since I forgot my camera, I have no photo record of the tour, which I realize I haven't recorded since we started doing the program.

Besides our students from ASU, we have at least two students from NAU, and one student from Whitworth University (that I know of so far). Besides that, we have a graduated returning student from ASU and Boston University who has elected to go on the program once again. I would say "ironically," but instead I believe "interestingly," this student last attended the program in 1997, when both Diane Facinelli and I were teaching, as well as Paul Hartle. So he felt as though little had changed (except my specific subject matter).

England Arrival

Once again, from Cambridge--

Chris and I arrived yesterday afternoon (Cambridge time) in Cambridge, after a flight that was alternately easier and harder than our previous trips. The flight itself was easier because the nonstop BA flight from Phoenix is really the way to go--leave in the evening and arrive in Heathrow early the following afternoon. With coffee and Advil, it can all be easy . . .

Until one gets to the ground to face 1) a student's lost luggage and subsequent complications in the terminal (we got off half an hour late), 2) unseasonably warm British weather, which caused a really uncomfortable time on the coach, and 3) the traffic out of London.

But we got in (maybe an hour and a half after schedule) to Cambridge, to find it as quaint and welcoming as before. Dr. Hartle was on hand with both computer information and preparations for our flat (basically ferrying the kitchen utensils that he had stored for a year to our flat), the porters were great and efficient, and the coach driver even was able to drive us straight up to St. Catharine's.

It looks like a good group of students this year, and our dinner at the Granta pub was less crowded than other years near the market square. Today, Nathan was in town, en route from Oxford, and Chris gave the students a tour of town, focusing on the practical information they would need about food shopping and directions.

We heard Evensong at King's College chapel, always a good way to begin the term. Though I've taken a couple of pictures, I haven't uploaded them yet.