Academic Life

very touching
The extent to which bodily contact occurs between people depends very much on their age and the relation between them. There is a great deal of contact between mothers and infants, which declines as the child gets older. There is a certain amount between pre-adolescent children of the same sex, and rather more between adolescent and older opposite sex couples; it is fairly extensive between husbands and wives.

mea culpa
 … I am much indebted to conservations I have had with others over the years … I will not indulge in the conventional fatuity of remarking that they are not responsible for the errors this book may contain. Obviously, only I can be held responsible for these: but, if I could recognise the errors, I should have removed them, and, since I cannot, I am not in a position to know whether any of them can be traced back to the opinions of those who have influenced me.

cheese spread
The procedure of putting a lump of cheese on a balance and fixing the price by the turn of the scale would lose its point if it frequently happened for such lumps to suddenly grow or shrink for no obvious reason. This remark will become clearer when we discuss such things as the relation of expression to feeling, and similar topics.

translate into Greek
In a certain house, which has only one bath, live two young men, Xanthias and Orestes by name. Xanthias likes the bath, but Orestes is already washing in it. Xanthias says savagely to Orestes, ‘Get out of that bath, young man.’ Orestes, however, who is an insolent fellow and does not like Xanthias, does nothing but wash himself. Xanthias therefore seizes an axe with which he cuts off Orestes’ head. Thus Orestes dies and Xanthias washes himself in the bath. Phew! What young men!

guide to scepticism
If I know that I doubt whether I doubt, then I know enough to resolve the doubt. But this does not prevent me from doubting that I doubt, unless it is also the case that if I doubt then I know that I doubt. But if we can add the extra premise ‘If I doubt, I know that I doubt’, then we can show the indubitability of my doubt without appealing to the self-resolving nature of the doubt that I doubt. For if whenever I doubt I know that I doubt, then I cannot doubt whether I doubt, since one cannot doubt what one knows.

after Herodotus
Students of old Iranian at Cambridge read in classes almost everything which survives in Old Persian, which is one of the Old Iranian dialects and the language of Darius’ inscriptions. But they are still examined in unprepared translation, even though the examiner may have to write the piece. In the 1970 Tripos the Old Persian unseen was ‘after Herodotus’ – by nearly 2500 years. Whether this exam is held to surpass in fatuity the composition paper in Egyptian hieroglyphics depends on whether one prefers creativity in the examiner or the candidate.

gestation period
This collected edition of the Abinnaeus archive has had a long and at times precarious history. It was first conceived (I think by myself, though I am not certain of this) in the year 1916 during the First World War.

nothing ventured
I shall attempt to do no more …; what I say may be legitimately criticised as boring and unadventurous on that account, but I cannot be criticised as having failed to do more since I shall not have tried to do so.

gift of the stab
… if difficult things are ever made easy, it is either (ideally) by patience in exposition and care in the choice of words, or (usually) by a combination of mental coarseness with powers of obfuscation. These gifts are not Lord Russell’s.

a previously unpublished fragment from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations

694. Someone says, with every sign of bewilderment’ (wrinkled forehead, widened eyes, an anxious set to the mouth): ‘I do not know there is fog on the road unless it is accompanied by an illuminated sign saying “fog”.’
    When we hear this, we feel dizzy. We experience the sort of sensations that go with meeting an old friend one believed was dead. I want to say: ‘But this is the man philosophers are always telling us about! This is the man who does not understand – the man who goes on asking for explanations after everything has been explained!’
    (A sort of Socratic Oliver Twist. Compare the feelings one would have on meeting Oliver Twist in the flesh. ‘And now I want you to meet Oliver Twist.’ – ’But …!’)

695. Now I feel a different sort of excitement. I see in a flash a thought forming as it were before my mind’s eye – ‘This is at last the sort of situation which philosophers have always waited for – the sort of situation in which one as a philosopher can offer practical help!’

696. Imagine that the motorist said: ‘The trouble is, I can’t see the fog for the fog.’ We might understand this as a request for practical information, and try to answer it by showing him the definition of ‘fog’ in the dictionary. To this he might reply: ‘I can’t see “fog” for the fog.’ We respond by putting the dictionary an inch in front of his eyes. Now he says: ‘I can’t see the fog for “fog”.’

697. At this point a philosopher might want to say: ‘He sees the fog, but he does not perceive its fogginess.’ Ask yourself what could possibly be the object of saying this.

698. Now the man says: ‘I can see the fog perfectly well, but I don’t know that it’s fog.’ I feel an urge to say: ‘Yet you know it’s fog that you don’t know to be fog!’ (The deceptively normal air of paradoxes.) One can imagine his replying: ‘Naturally – it looks like fog.’ Or, if he is familiar with philosophical language: ‘Of course – I know that I am having fog-like sensations.’ And if one asked him what he meant by that, perhaps he would say: ‘It looks like what I see in places where I should know what I was seeing if it were labelled “fog”.’

699. Now the feeling of dizziness vanishes. We feel we want to say: ‘Now it seems more like a dull throbbing behind the eyes.’

700. Of course, one is familiar with the experience of seeing something ambiguous. ‘Now it is the Taj Mahal – now it is fog.’ And one can imagine having a procedural rule that anything ambiguous should be treated as the Taj Mahal unless we see that It is labelled ‘fog’.

701. The motorist replies: ‘What sort of rule is this? Surely the best guarantee I can have that the fog is fog is if I fail to see the sign saying “fog” because of the fog.’ – One can imagine uses for the rule. For example, to lure people to their deaths.

702. Still the man seems uneasy. ‘To be sure that the fog is fog because it is labelled “fog”, I must first be sure that “fog” is “fog”. Now, supposing, without its being perceptible to the naked eye; the top of the “o” were slightly open. How am I to be certain that it could not be accepted as a ”u”, so that the word was not “fog” at all but “fug”? Or how can I be certain that the first letter is really “f’ and not a grossly deformed but still meaningful “b”?’ So now we have to have a label for ‘fog’! And another label for the label of ‘fog’!

703. But we are not yet out of the wood! (Or, as one might say, out of the fog.) The motorist might object: ‘I still cannot understand. I see that the fog is’ labelled “fog”, and that “fog” is labelled “ ’fog’ “, and so forth. But how am I to know that “fog” means fog, or that “ ‘fog’ “ means “fog”?’ So we must qualify still further. We must expand ‘fog’ to read ’ “fog”, where “fog” means fog’.

704. Now imagine the motorist’s face. Imagine that the doubtful expression remains. Imagine that he says: ‘But how do I know that the expression “ ‘fog’, where ‘fog’ means fog” means “ ‘fog’, where ‘fog’ means fog”?’

705. What sort of game are we playing here? What sort of language are we using? I am tempted to ask, what sort of man am I being used by? I have a certain feeling that goes with grating teeth, a frown, flushed cheeks. I want to say: ‘My offer of help is being abused.’

706. One might try to provide the man with a mental picture, a working model of his position – as it were a map to enable him to get his bearings. I might say: ‘You are in a complete mental fog about the whole business.’ He seizes on this eagerly. He goes through the motions of assenting – nodding his head, pursing the lips, saying: ‘Yes, yes, that’s it exactly. I am in a complete mental fog.’ Now one asks: ‘But how do you know it’s a mental fog you’re in?’

707. At once he cries: ‘NOW I see! I see that I don’t know I’m in a mental fog at all! I need an illuminated mental sign saying “mental fog”.’

708. If a lion could speak, it would not understand itself.
 

how to fly

TZARA. Nowadays, an artist is someone who makes art mean the thing he does. A man may be an artist by exhibiting his hindquarters.

CARR. An artist is someone who is gifted in some way that enables him to do something more or less well which can only be done badly or not at all by someone who is not thus gifted. If there is any point in using language at all it is that a word is taken to stand for a particular fact or idea and not for other facts or ideas. I might claim to be able to fly … Lo, I say, I am flying. But you are not propelling yourself about while suspended in the air, someone may point out. Ah no, I reply, that is no longer considered the proper concern of people who can fly. In fact, it is frowned upon. Nowadays, a flyer never leaves the ground and wouldn’t know how. I see, says my somewhat baffled interlocutor, so when you say you can fly you are using the word in a purely private sense. I see I have made myself clear, I say. Then, says this chap in some relief, you cannot actually fly after all? On the contrary, I say, I have just told you I can.

authorised version
I know that it is customary in works of this kind to end with some formula whereby the person whose name appears on the title-page reveals that the book was in reality written by half it dozen other people, his own role being confined to distortion, plagiarism, and the insertion of a few false references. These formulae – possibly apotropaic in origin – attribute so much to so many that they have become almost meaningless.

People You Ought to Know About
There comes a time in every girl’s life when someone asks her ‘What do you think about So-and-so?’ and she does not know who they are talking about. It is to obviate this horrible dilemma that the following list has been made. I have not included people whom you about already, such as the Prince of Wales or Bing Crosby; but everyone else of any importance will be found here, and about anyone who is not included you can safely and rightly say ‘Oh, So-and-so? I’ve never heard of him.’ A star denotes that the person is handsome. A dagger means ‘modern’. 

     Beecham, Sir Thomas – Conducts operas. Doesn’t like people to talk.
  * Coward, Noel – Writes plays.
  † Einstein – Does mathematics.
  † Eliot, T. S. – Writes modern poetry.
  † Epstein – Did ‘Genesis’.
  † Freud – Wrote a book about dreams.
     Galsworthy – Wrote a book called The Forsyte Saga.
     Inge, Dean – A dean.
  † Lawrence, D. H. – Not the same as Lawrence of Arabia
  * Nichols, Beverley – A gardener.
     Priestley – Wrote The Good Companions.
     Shaw, Bernard – Wrote plays.
  * Walpole, Hugh – Writes classics.
*? Wells, H. G. – Writes classics.