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Monday, October 24, 2022

Time lines

TL;DR -- The U.S. and its time lines and those of the world. Our timeline was prepared by the pre-school  of colonial life. This was unique when viewed properly. And. New England, in this sense, has a long reach which we have been discussing. The 400ths will allow us some markers with which to organize the information by, arbitrary as such might seem. 

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This post covers an area of concern that will be in focus for a long while. We will mention Immanuel Kant, for one thing. That is 200 years ago, or so. One thing we will do is put events and people into perspective with regard to the 400 years on these shores. This will cover the broad scope due to the influence of New England and the U.S., but we have already started with mathematicians and philosophers. Those folks are of interest since the military and political people get lots of attention. And, we are picking up technology as our area of focus. We summarized part of this in our Gairdner Foundation post. Incidentally, both types deal with thinking and being smart humans with the math'ians being more practical many times, as mathematician, philosopher and cousin Charles Sanders Peirce showed. His work in logic is still very much apropos to this day and age's problems, as is the pragmatic view.  

Then take Spinoza, for instance. He has been mentioned in three of our posts: Spectral issues, Web'ing, and Origins and Motivations. Also, we mention Descartes and others. Mention? As in, name dropping? Nope. The mechanized age (though, Einstein showed us relativity) of the computational idiocies has thrown out the old timers. Why? Oh, digitize all of text, parse, model, and then spit out what humans will marvel at. 

We are not kidding, folks. This is what is happening. 

Any human knows the power of words; others know that that power does not come from mere textual manipulations even if what we see is somewhat syntaxy in mode. Consider that a brief reminder, like a blurb from advertising - oh, those folks, of something that needs serious attention. 

Paul Carus
Which brings us to the main theme, Kant. We will address this from one of his translators whose native tongue was German but who came over here and let down roots. That is, Paul Carus (introduced to C.S. Peirce by Judge Francis C. Russell - New England name) not only did a good job on Kant's Prolegomena, his commentary contributes to the discussion. Mind you, we are talking over 100 years ago. That is ancient to the Silicon Valley mind, it seems, though Stanford University (and Berkeley) is right there. 

If you look at Prof. Carus' profile on Wikipedia, one name pops out: C. S. Peirce (mentioned above). There was another name that we saw from New England with respect to translating Kant, Henry Cabot Lodge. BTW, earlier, we noted that young folks liked to translate Spinoza's Ethics which was written in Latin. One of those? George Eliot who worked from a German version. One New England contact there is R.W. Emerson who had been influenced by Kant. 

This post deals with occurrences before and around that which the 250th will commemorate. Kant's life was from 1724 to 1804. We will look at the generations that he spanned. Too, though, we can go back and look at things of influence. We already mentioned Winthrop's 1630 arrival as one milestone to use. Before that was reconnaissance according to the writer of Albion's Seed. And, we can come forward toward the explosion of knowledge and ability leading to the 21st century and its marvels.

But, with hapless souls, one might think, looking around. Using the timeline of the U.S. and its pre-school time, we can relook and learn, perhaps, things that were missed; or, we can recover things lossed in the shuffles that are always the case. 

Note: Carus' overview of Kant's look at his 2nd Critique is a good example of Kant's influence. It seems that you either love Kant or hate the guy's thoughts. 

Note: This is apropos. We will put a link to recent article that listed Americans (norte, U.S.) who are related to the Queen (QE II). There are two lists (more are possible) given in the article. One is of those who have common ancestors (the list is long, having families like Washington, Lee and too many to list). The other list? Those who are closer as a U.S. ancestor is shared with the Queen (QE II) and King Charles, in some cases, Lady Diana, too. Ann has ancestors on both lists. This happened as a colonial (or someone later) went back. For instance, Downing's Street namesake is a cousin-in-law. 

Remarks: Modified: 10/24/2022

10/24/2022 -- 

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