This evening’s seminar was excellent. For me, it was arguably one of the best of the year. Thucydides is also, so far, one of my favorite writers. There’s a bit of drudgery involved when reading The Peloponnesian War, simply because of the painstaking attention to detail in some of the finer military points (Thucydides was an Athenian general). But not taking into account the density of the reading, the fruit therein is exceptional, and we’re only into the first fifth of the work.
The word justice came up more than once in our seminar tonight, but the reality of what was discussed was an illuminating thing for me. I had my eyes opened again, as during Herodotus, to the actual framework of the world and of politics outside of the “armchair speculation” undertaken when studying such writers as Plato. As brilliant as Plato was, it’s easy for me to lose my touch with reality if I spend too much time down the roads he paved.
Speaking of reality, I’m also enjoying the new movement into what’s conventionally called “science” in my lab tutorial. This move out of natural philosophy into biology and embryology over the past few weeks has not been without its bumps and bruises, and I think I’d yet be lost without the lecture on quantum mechanics, but it’s definitely enlightening. I have a deep, newfound respect for science—that is, theory gained from observation as opposed to philosophy (in the crude, un-Socratic sense of the word; not φιλοσοφια), which is more like observation used to support theory.
This is my lab journal from today. I’m also working on a paper due next Monday.
I’ll try to give an update tomorrow of various happenings on campus, but I can’t guarantee it. I have a fair amount of work (not too much), mostly because I anticipate a few extra hours spent on this section of seminar reading.
God bless y’all. Toodles.
The word justice came up more than once in our seminar tonight, but the reality of what was discussed was an illuminating thing for me. I had my eyes opened again, as during Herodotus, to the actual framework of the world and of politics outside of the “armchair speculation” undertaken when studying such writers as Plato. As brilliant as Plato was, it’s easy for me to lose my touch with reality if I spend too much time down the roads he paved.
Speaking of reality, I’m also enjoying the new movement into what’s conventionally called “science” in my lab tutorial. This move out of natural philosophy into biology and embryology over the past few weeks has not been without its bumps and bruises, and I think I’d yet be lost without the lecture on quantum mechanics, but it’s definitely enlightening. I have a deep, newfound respect for science—that is, theory gained from observation as opposed to philosophy (in the crude, un-Socratic sense of the word; not φιλοσοφια), which is more like observation used to support theory.
This is my lab journal from today. I’m also working on a paper due next Monday.
I’ll try to give an update tomorrow of various happenings on campus, but I can’t guarantee it. I have a fair amount of work (not too much), mostly because I anticipate a few extra hours spent on this section of seminar reading.
God bless y’all. Toodles.
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