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Post 20

Friday, January 12, 2007 - 8:41amSanction this postReply
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Off thread slightly, on the art side... There's a curious thing about making art, which is that the artist frequently includes double images, quite unintentionally. The monster seen in the bed and wall may not have been placed there on purpose, but appears to the eye seeking double meanings. This is particularly apt to happen when the image is fanciful from the outset, although it also occurs in perfectly straightforward scenes. I have seen it often in my own work, too, and sometimes have to laugh at what I've unconsciously done.


Post 21

Sunday, January 14, 2007 - 5:52pmSanction this postReply
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Not only is the bed a monster, the open drawers to the sitter's left have a sinister look to them as well. The musical staff as abacus, written on the wall yet also floating in three dimensions is interesting. The platonic forms, plant, and alchemist's tools escape the chest like the plagues out of Pandora's box. And the woman appearing in the waterstain is, for those so inclined, none other than the Virgin Mary in blue, is she not? The painting is very reminiscent of Bosch, Dali, and Arcimboldi, as well as that dutch painter of winter scenes whose name escapes me. Is it Van Eyck?

I have considered buying this book on several occasions. So many books on mathematics end up blithely skipping off down the Goedelian path to self contradiction and mysticism that I am almost always disappointed. I rarely by books on physics or math nowadays. Can anyone strongly reccomend this book?

Ted

BTW This thread needed hijacking, slain by Rowland's timely counterpunch. Mr Howard should get back to work "running" Australia, and quit trolling.

Post 22

Sunday, January 14, 2007 - 7:57pmSanction this postReply
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There are parts of Psychology that are definitely science in that they depend on the means of verification and falsification to ensure the given experiments yield results and not just give a random slew of statistical data. Yet there are many concepts and propositions in Clinical Psychology, which even my teacher, who was a graduate student at the time studying Psychology of Decision Making, pointed out that most of the work in that field wasn't even falsifiable like the use of anti-depressants by Eli Lily (Zoloft and Prozac). Because of his opinion and the reasons, and facts, he gave for his opinion, it really put me on guard with Clinical Psychology, in that I'm far more critical of it than I am of Experimental Psychology and the like.

Then there's Psycho-Dynamics, which is complete garbage, with no means of verification or falsification. And so on.

-- Bridget

Post 23

Monday, January 15, 2007 - 5:35amSanction this postReply
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most of the work in that field wasn't even falsifiable like the use of anti-depressants by Eli Lily (Zoloft and Prozac).
Indeed. I remember reading an expert who was talking about anti-depressants failing to 'do their job' (outpace effects of a mere placebo) in about 2 thirds of the trials. Now granted, if a professional baseball player gets on base 1 third of the time (batting average = 0.333), we call him "successful" -- but medicine should be different than that.

Drugs that don't, in general, work -- ie. that don't work most of the time that we use them -- shouldn't get FDA approval (unless the situation is otherwise untreatable, of course). Yet they do get approved -- while much time and "public" money is spent telling us things we already know  (St. John's Wort ineffective for major depression; though "approved" in Germany for minor depression) -- in an effort to discredit the medicinal alternatives.

Ed


Post 24

Monday, January 15, 2007 - 2:23pmSanction this postReply
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Ted, I can definitely recommend that book. It is a history of the square root of minus one--where and when it first popped up (but was not noticed due to an error in arithmetic!), who first noticed it, how they reacted, where the notation i came from (Euler), and what the idea means. A lot of the math was too much for me, but I understood enough for my own purposes.

Post 25

Monday, January 15, 2007 - 4:12pmSanction this postReply
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     Reading all the stuff in this thread analyzing the 'cover'-art reminds me of the book Subliminal Seduction - Wilson Bryan Key (and his/it's sequels.) Actually, his critics aside, I thought he made a persuasive argument re 'intended' uses in advertising.

     Hey, at least the cover's not Freudian-oriented. (Not sure if that's a plus or minus.) Now, Jungian, o-t-other-h...Can one say Rorschach?

LLAP
J:D


Post 26

Monday, January 15, 2007 - 5:38pmSanction this postReply
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Rodney,

Thanks for the recommendation. I did in fact know what i is. I had to pass Calculus twice (a long story) to get my degree. I just was afraid that the book itself might be unpalatably touchy-feely. I read all of "Goedel Escher Bach" wondering when the long national nightmare would be over...

John,

I would not say a Rohrschach, just a bit surreal. What people have described as seeing does appear to be there intentionally. Perhaps my interpretations are personal, (Pandora, Mary) but the perceptions (Blue Woman, Objects in Chest) are not. I understand tha R's inkblots are purely abstract and that one must read in what is not there to interpret them. I also understand that R's actual images are a proprietary trade secret.

Ted

Post 27

Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - 5:02pmSanction this postReply
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The book, if I recall correctly, assumes the reader knows what i is, and goes on from there.

Post 28

Wednesday, January 17, 2007 - 8:36amSanction this postReply
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Ted:

     Yeah, maybe I went overboard referring to Rory; still, surrealism-style can almost be such. Ntl, I agree that much was 'intended' there. --- Still, everone's talk about that background bed/hutch/shelf-set makes me wonder. Woe is i.

LLAP
J:D

P.S. Psychology IS a 'science', but, presently, only on the calibre of physics in the turn of the 18th century. Now, when one discusses Psycho-therapy, the application of it...maybe sales-people are the ones more knowledgeable re dealing on/with motivations.


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Post 29

Thursday, January 18, 2007 - 3:50amSanction this postReply
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Just weighing in quickly.

[quote]It is interesting to me that in Ms Rand’s novels, there is very little psychological insight into her main heroes. We see easily into the minds of Peter Keating and James Taggert and Elsworth Toohey, but rarely into the minds of Howard Roark or John Galt. We see Hank Rearden’s thoughts, but not Francisco’s. One exception would be the very first pages of The Fountainhead where we do see into Roark’s mind - it is a glimpse of happiness. But it is an exception and I wonder if Rand was somehow aware that psychological views into the minds of others are nearly always disrespectful and so she was artistically hesitant to treat her heroes with such presumptuous familiarity.
[/quote]

I pretty much figured that this is because we needed insight into their thoughts because their thoughts didn't match their actions. Look at Roark and Galt. Every action they take is based on a thought. With Francisco it would have given away the whole novel if we had gotten inside their heads. With Reardon his actions didn't match the kind of man he was a lot of the time, which is why she told us his thoughts. With Keating, James Taggart, and Toohey, their thoughts were necessary to convey because not enough of their action was shown from their perspective/a third person perspective following them to tell us what they were thinking by reading their actions.

If anything this is a refutation of your argument that psychology is not a science because it means that Rand thought that when shown enough of their actions you could tell what was happening in a person's mind.

Post 30

Thursday, January 18, 2007 - 12:37pmSanction this postReply
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Jeff,

Ayn Rand was discussing writing fiction and, perhaps it was in response to a question, she said she could only remember one thing that helped her to write her novels that she received from her formal education.

She mentioned being given an assignment to read Eugene Onegin's Alexander Pushkin and to make a list of what did she know about each characters and listing what the author wrote that enabled her to know that.

I don't remember where I read that, but it impressed me as an excellent way to build those writing skills, but also a good way to force oneself to think deeper on motivation and character relative to actions.

Post 31

Thursday, January 18, 2007 - 2:20pmSanction this postReply
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One last comment on the cover to the book on i.  I was skeptical myself that the bed and windows formed a face, until I looked at the rest of the painting.  Given the double imagery elsewhere, I concluded that this was a double image as well.

As for the mere assertion, of course psychology is a science, if one looks at cognitive psychology and neuropsychology and what has been learned, as well as psycho-epistemology or concept formation, etc.  These branches of the science are all based on at least fairly well-defined concepts and are subject to experiment and disproof.  Psychology may be an infant science, but it is certainly not a pseudo-science.  As for psychiatry, that is more of an art at this point, an applied practice like medicine that varies widely in its effectuality depending whether it is practiced by the analogs of M.D.'s, homeopaths or witch-doctors. 

My limited interaction with psychiatrists has left me wary of their authority, given the very uneven nature of their understanding.  I once had visual and auditory hallucinations due to a combination of drugs that I was being given in a hospital.  (My grandmother, I found out, had the same atypical reaction to the same medications when being treated for a different physical condition than mine.) I was taken to speak to a "doctor" who turned out to be the staff psychologist, an M.D.  I explained that I was lucid, realized I was hallucinating, and that I saw the rug pattern crawling and heard peoples voices as if they were floating about in the air.  She asked "and what are those voices telling you?"  I said that I was not "hearing voices" but that people's actual speech was simply being perceived as if it were floating in the air.  The voices weren't "telling" me anything.  Lucky I knew what she was getting at, or I would have been sedated or worse.  The meds I was on were discontinued or changed and the problems ended that evening.  Afterwards I told her she should try shrooms once, so that she might know what her patients were experiencing, and advised her not to be so quick to jump to conclusions.  She was very skeptical, but I was glad of the opportunity to give the feedback.  The floor superior took my criticisms a little more seriously. 


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