Thanks for your comment. I did mean it in a light-hearted way, more making a link between two outcomes of curiousity than being entirely correct about the wheel.
I'd want to go back and read Engels on the transition from ape to man. I'm not sure one can, scientifically, choose one and ignore the other. 'Necessity' means something is felt by us humans to be an urgent requirement. Such as taking parts of nature, and making them circular, to our advantage. Move something from A to B can be a subjectively-felt need. But solving the problem of how to do it can only be done by creativity, inquiry, experiment. Necessity is the mother of invention, hmmm... perhaps necessity is instead the mother of us as inventors, and then we invent the solution, rather than it being automatically given as a result of a need. Needing transport doesn't mean we wake up one day and there it is, surely?
"Man makes History, but not in circumstances of his own choosing", says Karl Marx. Fidel, Che and other young rebels led the revolution against capitalism in Cuba, but it was and is necessary everywhere. Yet it doesn't happen automatically. What was decisive was the self-activity, character and resolve of those specific men and women.
I recall Engels saying that if some bands of apes started to bcome human and other bands didn't, then we have to thank the most "gregarious' bands.
Isn't 'gregarious' a great word?
But you make me want to go back and re-read that stuff. Thank you!
"we only ask such questions as we ourselves are capable of answering."
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if necessity is the mother of inventors, and inventors are the mothers of solutions, who is the mother of necessity? we are. and we are the result of inventions. 'which each time creates a new, more complex and advanced need.
*
I recall Marx saying that he felt that historial materialism doesn't fully apply to poetry.
That what he called "poetic inspiration" is not bound by the felt needs of the specific society it is written in. He loved the "utopian thinkers and dreamers", and said that future times would give them the recognition their own times would not.
James P. Cannon says a similar thing, that the activity most ridiculed as impractical and useless by the capitalists, poetry, will in the future be the most revered of all vocations. He speculated that in the future, we would move more out, into outer space, and then we would finally get to the greatest collective exploration of all. into Inner Space. Who are WE?
At that point, of course, we would be in the realm not of necessity, as we presently understand it, but in the realm of freedom. I.. think. Not sure, actually.
I think poetic ispiration (in the here and now of any era) can express truths far ahead of what is known in our societies in any scientific way. Perhaps, in regarding an artistic creation, a scientist can declare something to be a truth, a knowledge, ( ie, not a theory), without it being in any way currently 'provable' a true.
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Philosophy, on New Years day! Or, rather, the ending of philosophy! Bloody hell! Hey, Ma, is the objectively-existing turkey ready yet?
This is a great day to decide to study more in 2008. I have a felt need to get really curious!!
Good for you Martin ~ studying more is an endeavor worth while. In a Utopian society, forgiveness would reign supreme. Embracing likenesses would outweigh skeptically noticing our differences. Harsh words would never be spoken and bridges would never be burned. Friendships would last forever, even through difficulties. But Christ! It has just occurred to me that one man's Utopia could be another man's Idaho. I guess I was just dreaming.
6 comments:
Curiosity didn't invent the wheel - necessity did.
Thanks for your comment. I did mean it in a light-hearted way, more making a link between two outcomes of curiousity than being entirely correct about the wheel.
I'd want to go back and read Engels on the transition from ape to man. I'm not sure one can, scientifically, choose one and ignore the other. 'Necessity' means something is felt by us humans to be an urgent requirement. Such as taking parts of nature, and making them circular, to our advantage. Move something from A to B can be a subjectively-felt need. But solving the problem of how to do it can only be done by creativity, inquiry, experiment. Necessity is the mother of invention, hmmm... perhaps necessity is instead the mother of us as inventors, and then we invent the solution, rather than it being automatically given as a result of a need. Needing transport doesn't mean we wake up one day and there it is, surely?
"Man makes History, but not in circumstances of his own choosing", says Karl Marx. Fidel, Che and other young rebels led the revolution against capitalism in Cuba, but it was and is necessary everywhere. Yet it doesn't happen automatically. What was decisive was the self-activity, character and resolve of those specific men and women.
I recall Engels saying that if some bands of apes started to bcome human and other bands didn't, then we have to thank the most "gregarious' bands.
Isn't 'gregarious' a great word?
But you make me want to go back and re-read that stuff. Thank you!
A little moor.
"we only ask such questions as we ourselves are capable of answering."
*
if necessity is the mother of inventors, and inventors are the mothers of solutions, who is the mother of necessity? we are. and we are the result of inventions. 'which each time creates a new, more complex and advanced need.
*
I recall Marx saying that he felt that historial materialism doesn't fully apply to poetry.
That what he called "poetic inspiration" is not bound by the felt needs of the specific society it is written in. He loved the "utopian thinkers and dreamers", and said that future times would give them the recognition their own times would not.
James P. Cannon says a similar thing, that the activity most ridiculed as impractical and useless by the capitalists, poetry, will in the future be the most revered of all vocations. He speculated that in the future, we would move more out, into outer space, and then we would finally get to the greatest collective exploration of all. into Inner Space. Who are WE?
At that point, of course, we would be in the realm not of necessity, as we presently understand it, but in the realm of freedom. I.. think. Not sure, actually.
I think poetic ispiration (in the here and now of any era) can express truths far ahead of what is known in our societies in any scientific way. Perhaps, in regarding an artistic creation, a scientist can declare something to be a truth, a knowledge, ( ie, not a theory), without it being in any way currently 'provable' a true.
*
Philosophy, on New Years day! Or, rather, the ending of philosophy! Bloody hell! Hey, Ma, is the objectively-existing turkey ready yet?
This is a great day to decide to study more in 2008. I have a felt need to get really curious!!
I like the repeated image of the arms/branches in these pictures!
Good for you Martin ~ studying more is an endeavor worth while. In a Utopian society, forgiveness would reign supreme. Embracing likenesses would outweigh skeptically noticing our differences. Harsh words would never be spoken and bridges would never be burned. Friendships would last forever, even through difficulties. But Christ! It has just occurred to me that one man's Utopia could be another man's Idaho. I guess I was just dreaming.
Anthropology...
Forgiveness? In any society that embraces sincerity, there is never anything to forgive!
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