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Post 20

Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - 5:21pmSanction this postReply
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> I've almost finished Harriman's book and I can enthusiastically recommend it...Maybe I'll write a long review of it later.

Glenn, I hope you will, especially if it's meaty. I have just ordered the book....and a provocative review will bump it up on my to-be-read-in-due-course stack.

> I am stunned at the existence of those whose lives appear to be organized around criticizing Rand. When I started looking at this thread my intent was to suggest that we focus more on ideas and less on snipping at Rand or Branden, especially with this he-said, she-said stuff.

Steve, I completely agree.


Post 21

Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - 5:36pmSanction this postReply
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No, I mean snipping on this site. I don't bother with OL.

Post 22

Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - 10:06pmSanction this postReply
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For only 16 dollars I will buy and read Harriman's book: as soon as a legitimate physicist says it's worth reading.

Post 23

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 4:38amSanction this postReply
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Name some physicists whom you consider legitimate, Brant.

Engineering is mostly applied physics.

Would a licensed professional engineer count?

EDIT: Oops! I did not realize Glenn Fletcher has a doctorate in physics and lectures on the subject at Cornell. If that does not suit Brant, nothing will.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 7/14, 6:26am)


Post 24

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 5:49amSanction this postReply
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Brant:
For only 16 dollars I will buy and read Harriman's book: as soon as a legitimate physicist says it's worth reading.
It's done -- Glenn Fletcher (post 14). 

Amazon price: $10.88.

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 7/14, 5:56am)


Post 25

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 6:13amSanction this postReply
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Thanks, Merlin.  But I think by "legitimate" Brant means "high profile" and, most likely, "non-Objectivist".

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Post 26

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 12:25pmSanction this postReply
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Brant,

Would you read Rand's Intro to Objectivist Epistemology only if a "legitimate" (high-profile) philosopher (like John Searle) recommended it; or George Reisman's Capitalism only if a "legitimate" (high-profile) economist (like Paul Krugman) recommended it?

If not, then why not take Glenn Fletcher's recommendation? He is, after all, not only a professor of physics at a major university, but also someone who agrees with Objectivism and therefore, presumably, shares your philosophy.


Post 27

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 5:02pmSanction this postReply
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Okay, Bill. I can read it but not review it except to indicate if I find any value in it. I'm not a physicist. Besides, everybody seems to be very nice about it. Nicer than I've been.

--Brant
10.88--I don't think it's going lower


Post 28

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 5:25pmSanction this postReply
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Bill, it's not "high profile." Most of the examples you've given I can evaluate for reading before I purchase. I've been reading that stuff all my life. But physics qua physics? No. I was a personal friend of Petr Beckmann, but I couldn't deal with his mathematical physics or even his book "The Structure of Language." In the last case I could understand it, but not evaluate it. In the case of Rand's ITOE it came out while I was in Vietnam and I read it, if I recall, before I left (1966)--or most of it--and again or the rest of it and again when I came back (1967). I couldn't deal with it the first time and the second time to this time I cannot properly evaluate it in the broader context of epistemology. That doesn't bother me because I don't know why she bothered writing it. It's all very simple to me: reality and reason (the application of logic to facts and concepts plus creative processes) and I don't see the reason for the rest of it except for epistemologists talking to each other. Solving the "problem of Universals"? Concepts are in our heads--not out there? You don't have to write a book(lete) about it. I read it because she wrote it. That's exception making. I use to think it was important. Political and moral philosophy is important to me--and economics, history, psychology, scientific methodology, current events, ideas generally. Etc.

--Brant


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Post 29

Thursday, July 15, 2010 - 2:53pmSanction this postReply
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Rand read Nietzsche for herself.* It is clear from The Fountainhead that she also read Plato for herself. (Clear to readers who’ve studied a little Plato.) I’ll bet a Coke she read some Aristotle for herself, as well as Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Neither is all that difficult. Anyone who has actually opened the latter can see that it is as widely accessible as Kant had intended it to be. More here: a, b, c

There are indications that Rand knew a little more about the history of philosophy than average posters at these rather above-average internet forums.*.


Post 30

Thursday, July 15, 2010 - 4:52pmSanction this postReply
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Why do you say The Fountainhead shows that Rand was familiar with Plato?  I never noticed this.

Post 31

Thursday, July 15, 2010 - 7:35pmSanction this postReply
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Peter,

Give this little article of mine a read. Then if you like I’ll mention a couple more connections to Plato in Fountainhead.


Post 32

Friday, July 16, 2010 - 6:53pmSanction this postReply
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You could make a much stronger case that the ideas you cite show the influence of FLl Wright.  He repeatedly drew analogies between esthetic and personal integrity and between good design and the functionality of a living organism, as did Roark (though Wright used plant rather than human imagery).  He said at even greater length that a building should suit its site, that the match should seem inevitable and that the one should feel incomplete without the other.  The TAS site has an article about this which quotes the same description of Monanock as yours did.

What you establish about Rand and Plato is that they both talked about virtue and both used analogies to do this.  Plato drew an analogy between city and soul, while Rand drew one between building and soul.  Wright drew an analogy between building and soul while Rand drew one between building and soul.

In addition to being more clear and detailed, the Wright-Rand connection has more biographical support.  Rand read little or no philosophy between college and the mid-1940s, and what she said explicitly about Plato suggests that she knew only his theory of forms.  On the other hand, her letters and diaries show that she made an extensive study of Wright in her preparations for The Fountainhead.


Post 33

Saturday, July 17, 2010 - 10:12amSanction this postReply
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> Rand read little or no philosophy between college and the mid-1940s

Peter, I'm not saying this is incorrect, but I'm curious how you know this with certainty?

Post 34

Saturday, July 17, 2010 - 12:55pmSanction this postReply
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Thanks for the information about Wright.

From the cited article:*

    In Republic Plato developed an analogy between city and soul. In Fountainhead Rand develops an analogy between building and soul.
    . . .
    Ellsworth Toohey (elsewhere, elseworth) is a collector of the souls of others. He suggests sacrilegiously his corrupt form of “wealth” is premised on Jesus’ dictum: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” (ET IX 318; Mt. 16:26).

    Before there was the New Testament, there was the Republic. Plato has Socrates set out early on that the soul has certain functions such as ruling and deliberating (353d). That which enables a thing to perform its function(s) well is called virtue. The virtue of the soul is justice (353e).

    Socrates contends that justice is something good both because of itself and because of what comes from it. An investigation ensues of what is the power of justice in the soul, leaving aside the external rewards that may come from it (358b). “The investigation we’re undertaking is not an easy one but requires keen eyesight. Therefore, . . . we should adopt the method of investigation that we’d use if, lacking keen eyesight, we were told to read small letters from a distance and then noticed that the same letters existed elsewhere in a larger size and on a larger surface” (368d). Justice is found in a single man and in a city (a city-state). Seeing what is justice in the city is to facilitate grasping more of what justice is in the individual soul.

    The concept Plato is forging with his city-soul analogy is justice (proper ruling). The concept Rand is forging with her building-soul analogy is integrity. One broad thesis of The Fountainhead is that there is a type of egoistic individualism that is good and just; altruistic collectivism is evil and unjust. The argument focuses not so much on what is just as on what is good. Such are independence, reliance on reason (one’s own), honesty, creative achievement, love of one’s work, and courage (HR II 559–60, XVIII 739–40). A concept of justice will make human life and happiness impossible if the concept ignores the uniqueness of individuals and the unity and self-sufficiency required by the preceding virtues (HR II 559–60, XVIII 740). Integrity is the overarching virtue pronouncing this unity and self-sufficiency (PK XIII 166, HR VIII 625-28, XVIII 742).


To sell her new egoistic conception of integrity, Rand does the see-saw dynamic back and forth between building and soul to import what people will buy from the one into the other and vice-versa. This was Plato’s technique as well between the structure of various kinds of city and the structure of corresponding kinds of souls.

Additional heritage of Plato(-Socrates) that Rand writes into The Fountainhead:

Wynand to Dominique – “One doesn’t love God [the Good] and sacrilege impartially. Except when one doesn’t know sacrilege has been committed. Because one doesn’t know God [the Good]” (476). In this novel, Rand plays with the arguments of Aristotle with Plato over how, if at all, one can know the good, yet choose against it. (The topic began with Andrei in We the Living and continues to Rand’s final approach in Atlas Shrugged; this is a study waiting to be done.) Dominique to Toohey: “If you can see what you’re talking about, you can’t be what you are” (281).

So far as I have noticed, Rand held to Plato’s concept of courage throughout her works. Early to late, courage amounts to continuing to see the good.

The idea that the pursuit of power in the manner of Wynand leads to his bondage is from Republic.

I do not know the relative weights of material from Wright and Plato that are present in Fountainhead. I’m persuaded the latter is substantial, in either case. As to the relative weights of material in this novel from Plato and Nietzsche, the greater weight goes to Nietzsche (A, B, C, D, E).

By the way, I am 23 years older than Rand was when she finished writing The Fountainhead. I still recall quite a bit from my undergraduate philosophy courses four decades ago. Without some special reason to conclude otherwise, I expect Rand remembered as well as I when it comes to philosophical views.


Post 35

Monday, July 19, 2010 - 4:45amSanction this postReply
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A person with a name familiar to many on RoR wrote an Amazon review of Harriman's book.

Post 36

Monday, July 19, 2010 - 6:26amSanction this postReply
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Thanks for the link, Merlin.

I agree with Ted's positive evaluation of the book.  I don't know anything about the "linguistic" example he gave, so I ignored it.  However, he did say something that I disagree with.  Near the end he objected to Harriman's criticism of Einstein's general relativity.  Ted said: "I find that to be a gross and misleading oversimplification of a theory which in no way deviates from explaining observational phenomena."  [Italics added.]

The way he stated this (and he may not have intended it this way) is a perfect example of what Harriman has been criticizing for years, and does so in this book.  Explaining the phenomena ("saving the appearances") is not enough.  The theory must be derived ultimately from observation and experiment, through a process of induction.  And general relativity was not derived this way.  It is a top-down theory, to use Einstein's own terminology (also used by Ted in his review).

Thanks,
Glenn


Post 37

Monday, July 19, 2010 - 6:38amSanction this postReply
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Thanks, Glenn. On Objectivist Living, Neil Parille said he thought Harriman's attack on Descartes was unfair. Did Harriman say anything about Descartes' inventive work in analytic geometry? That would qualify as a "logical leap" in my view.

Post 38

Monday, July 19, 2010 - 9:05amSanction this postReply
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Merlin,
Harriman uses Descartes as the best example of a rationalist.  Here's a quote:
He [Descartes] made no observations, did no experiments, and engaged in no reasoning from effects to underlying causes.
Harriman has a quote from an historian of science [A. Rupert Hall in From Galileo to Newton]:
Descartes left nothing untouched. ... The Principles was a triumph of fantastic imagination which happens, unfortunately, never once to have hit upon a correct explanation.
Harriman claims that Descartes was an "excellent mathematician" but didn't use much math in his physics.  He doesn't mention specifically Descartes' contributions to math.
Thanks,
Glenn


Post 39

Monday, July 19, 2010 - 12:55pmSanction this postReply
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Re #33: my inferences about Rand's reading comes from her published letters and diaries, in which she often talks about this.  In one of her letters to Paterson from the mid-40s, she talks about a project of getting acquainted with the history of philosophy, and she describes various philosophers as if she were seeing them for the first time.  From this and the fact that her earlier letters and diaries don't talk about philosophical readings, I conclude that she hadn't been spending much time on the subject in many years.

Re #34: after I questioned Rand's Platonic influence I remembered an example that looks stronger to me than the ones you cite.  In the Gorgias he makes the point, just as Rand later did, that what is vulgarly called selfish behavior really isn't and that if we identify what our real interests are we'll come to see that virtue and self-interest coincide.  Since he wasn't the only one to say this before Rand, this is not enough to convince me that she got it from him.


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