Author: Nat

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My comment on Errol Morris’s 4th installment of “The Ashtray” ran over 5,000 characters

 

I finally hit my limit today, and I had some time, so I wrote a comment on Errol Morris’s 4th installment of his  “Ashtray” series on the Times web site.  Comments are limited to 5,000 characters and the site cheerfully informed me that I had minus 1520 characters remaining.  So here it is in its entirety:

There is apparently yet another Thomas Kuhn here, one I don’t think he would have ever anticipated: the Thomas Kuhn who threw the ashtray.  Speaking as his son I have to say that, try as I might, I just can’t get myself to believe that he threw that ashtray.

I am not someone to take the ramparts to defend my father against every allegation.  He was a complicated guy and he did a lot of things.  Many were admirable.  Some were absolutely indefensible.

What we’re seeing here is not a rejection of his views; it’s a rejection of a caricature of his view.  He never believed in any sort of relativism that says there is no truth other than the point of view people take on it.  He believed very much in truth, but he also knew that understanding what it is to be true is much more complicated than it might first appear.

He certainly made mistakes, and I certainly heard him say things that I knew to be false but that he believed based on his own distorted point of view.  But I don’t believe I ever saw him say anything that he knew to be untrue.  He believed in truth, and he believed in truthfulness.  He had a bad temper at times.  He could be angry, he could yell, he could behave quite badly, but I never, ever saw him be violent, threaten violence, or throw anything, not even the pencil that was perpetually tucked behind his ear.  I’m prepared to believe quite a few unflattering things about him, and to say some myself (though mostly in private), but I just can’t get myself to believe that he threw that ashtray, and neither can anyone I’ve talked to who knew him well—among whom there is quite a spectrum of overall opinion about him.  (I should say here that, as a few commenters have noted, he could also be generous, helpful, understanding, encouraging, and more.)

Continue reading “My comment on Errol Morris’s 4th installment of “The Ashtray” ran over 5,000 characters”

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“The Legacy of Thomas Kuhn”

 

Errol Morris, whom I otherwise greatly respect, is in the midst of posting a five-part series on the New York Times web site entitled “The Ashtray” about my father, their vexed relationship, the nature of truth, etc.  The series is by turns…  well, I’m hoping to write more about it here later—we’ll see whether that happens.

In the meantime, it reminded me of some remarks I made at a November 1997 “Symposium on the Legacy of Thomas Kuhn,” at MIT’s (late) Dibner Institute, in response to another former student of his who had suggested in a presentation that the most sensible way to account for the widespread dissemination of Kuhn’s ideas was because he had Narcissistic Personality Disorder (as defined by the by-then-already-outdated revised 3rd edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of…]). Never mind the fact that most people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder don’t get their ideas disseminated very far. Continue reading ““The Legacy of Thomas Kuhn””

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The first armband!

Well, I did wear the armband to Fenway.  Many thanks to my wife, without whom this would not actually have happened.

Somewhat the worse for wear at the end of the day, but you get the idea.

There was a long line for blood donations, so I was there for about two hours.  No one said a word to me about it.  But I’m guessing some people did notice it, and thought about it.

I heard a chunk of Tom Ashbrook’s On Point today, which was a show on Islam in America.  It included a good discussion on the diversity of opinions and beliefs among muslims in the US and around the world.

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Does the 9/11 Qur’an-burning make you sick? Here’s something we can DO!

7pm Thurs 9/9 update: So the media are reporting that the Qur’an burnings are off (this may link to the Times article, or not, due to some “issues” at nytimes.com), though the pastor in question has made a questionable claim that he obtained an agreement to move the mosque.  I’m still planning to wear my armband, and I hope other folks will, too.  This is a lot bigger than one guy in Florida.

So despite Gen. Petraeus’s pleas, the Florida “pastor” says he will go ahead with his planned burning of the Qur’an on September 11th.  But somehow allowing a moderate Muslim to erect a community center near ground zero is a “desecration”?  I never expected that Michael Bloomberg would show up on my list of American heros, but I’m glad someone is showing up. Continue reading “Does the 9/11 Qur’an-burning make you sick? Here’s something we can DO!”

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Logicomix!

Every so often I read a book and think, “I wish my dad were around to read this.”  The most recent is “Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth” by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou—a graphic novel centered around the life of Bertrand Russell and detailing the “Quest for the Foundations of Mathematics” through the development of the discipline of mathematical logic.

I found it on one or two “ten-best” lists and gave it to my son Ben for Christmas.  On the way to wrapping it I picked it up and started to read it (being as careful as I could not to break the spine).  I enjoyed what I read and kept going.  To my surprise, I wound up loving this book. Continue reading “Logicomix!”

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The Taming of the Shrew

Yesterday I saw the Boston-area Actors’ Shakespeare Project‘s production of The Taming of the Shrew.  It was the first production of theirs that I’d seen; I’d heard great things about them and it didn’t disappoint.

But what are we to make of a play that so unabashedly supports male dominance of marriage?  I saw the play on Sunday afternoon, and that performance had a brief question-and-answer session with the cast.  I asked them how they dealt with the issue, ending up by saying (in jest, mostly), “How do you look at yourself in the mirror each morning?”  Clearly, it was something that they all struggled with, and how could they not?  One actor said that while it is true that the play is patriarchal, it’s not true that the play is misogynist, that they’re not the same thing.  True enough.  The woman who played Katharina, said, if I’m recalling correctly, that she tried to look at the play mainly as a love story and she was glad that while she was playing the character she didn’t have to think about the broader implications.  She did a fantastic job, so I’m glad she didn’t have to look at them while she was at it either.  I don’t mean to be getting down on the cast here in any way, incidentally: they did a great job with a play that can’t be anything but deeply troublesome these last forty years or so.

In any case, there’s no need to needle the cast: how can I look at myself in the mirror after acknowledging that at the end of the play, Katharina’s apparently total subjugation to Petruchio felt to me to be not merely acceptable, but happy and even necessary?  After such feelings, what forgiveness? Continue reading “The Taming of the Shrew”

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Pandora is changing my life

OK, I have a bunch of music.  Mostly it comes from CDs that I own (really!).  At one point I ripped it all to mp3 files, set up a server, and had two Squeezeboxes that I could listen to anything in my collection any time I wanted to.  I made some play lists that played over and over in my office waiting room.  When I had a party, I would (sometimes) make a big play list and play it as background music.  Other than that I hardly use it.

About a week ago, I downloaded Pandora for my Android phone.  Pandora bills itself as “internet radio,” but it’s radio only in the sense that it plays a stream of songs that you are not choosing one-by-one, the way you do when you make a playlist.  You create a “stiation” by starting with an artist or a song you like, and it goes from there, finding something similar.  Every time it plays something, you have the option of saying you like it, or don’t like it, or skipping it without rating it, or just listening without rating it.  Based on the songs you do rate, it refines its search.  There are some variations but that’s the basic idea.

So I made stations starting with Theonious Monk, Crosby Still Nash & Young’s “Carry On” (don’t ask me why), romantic period string quartets, oh yeah, and Louis Armstrong.  I am hooked.  I’m listening to the Monk channel right now and a lot of the rest of the time.  I don’t listen to it while I’m working because I don’t think my patients would like that, and I don’t listen to it at dinner, but lots of the rest of the time. Continue reading “Pandora is changing my life”

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Where the Wild Things Are

There has been a trend in recent years (thank God) toward kids’ movies that adults will enjoy.  “Where the Wild Things Are” seems to have brought this trend to its ultimate conclusion: a kids’ movie that adults enjoy and kids don’t like.

We saw it last night.  Claudia and I loved it, but Sydney (11) and Ben (16) didn’t.  Rainer (13) said she did, but I’m not sure… Continue reading “Where the Wild Things Are”