Archive for November/2007

Allegory

She’s a beautiful woman with opulent shoulders
Who lets her long hair trail in her goblet of wine.
The claws of love, the poisons of brothels,
All slips and all is blunted on her granite skin.
She laughs at Death and snaps her fingers at Debauch.
The hands of those monsters, ever cutting and scraping,
Have respected nonetheless the pristine majesty
Of her firm, straight body at its destructive games.
She walks like a goddess, rests like a sultana;
She has a Mohammedan’s faith in pleasure
And to her open arms which are filled by her breasts,
She lures all mortals with her eyes.
She believes, she knows, this virgin, sterile
And yet essential to the march of the world,
That a beautiful body is a sublime gift
That wrings a pardon for any foul crime.
She is unaware of Hell and Purgatory
And when the time comes for her to enter
The black Night, she will look into the face of Death
As a new-born child, — without hatred or remorse.

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

www.SantiagoIniguez.com

Last Thursday, Brett Steele, Director of AA (The Architectural Academy School of Architecture)

lectured at IE Business School on "Architecture and Innovation". It was a really enjoyable session that, unexpectedly, revealed many cultural aspects common to his institution and mine: the spirit of innovation, our orientation to market and the somewhat disruptive nature embedded in both schools. At the Q&A, we discussed about on-line methodologies, where he and I differed. Steele holds that, concerning education, the direct experience of interfacing within the same room –tight and crowded- can not substituted by the interaction through communication technologies, sophisticated as they may be. Our experience at IE, however, I sustained, tells the contrary. Our blended programs produce better results than conventional methodologies in terms of acquiring knowledge, developing interpersonal skills and enhancing networking. I further added that students who first relate to each other on-line may get a deeper knowledge of each other, more intellectual, "detached from the prejudices that our senses sometimes provide us". I was asked by some intrigued colleagues afterwards about what I meant by this, whether I was adhering to some pure conception of spiritualism and attacking the senses as a valid source of knowledge, or even pleasure. I will take this opportunity to explain myself further.

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Rolf Strom-Olsen

Since Miguel has given me the perfect introduction to prattle on about my own area of expertise, I feel I can indulge. The upcoming conference at the Carlos de Amberes foundation is a good reminder that when you learn how to throw a good party, people remember it for a long, long time. It used to be considered that the Dukes of Burgundy were the ne plus ultra  of medieval splendour and the lavishness of their ceremony was the last gasp of a medieval culture soon to be eclipsed. Jan Huizinga’s classic Autumn of the Middle Ages and Otto Cartellieri’s work on the Burgundian Court propagated this view most clearly and, to a degree, it still attains.

Nonetheless, many historians now view these ceremonies rather differently. The ceremony of the Burgundian court – the jousts, burials, Joyous Entries, baptisms, meetings of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and so on – are routinely examined as part of a complex semiotic landscape where symbols and gestures are mined for their ulterior significance and the role they play in expressing power. I certainly agree with this approach. It is also worth noting that Burgundian ceremony ended up anchoring later Spanish ceremonial practices. Indeed, lying in the Real Academia de la Historia is a collection of what might be termed "best practices" laying out Burgundian ceremonial protocol for the benefit of Spanish courtiers.

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Julián Montaño

El método socrático del que nos habla Santiago en su post pervivió en la cultura occidental en la forma de Escuela, el particular método de enseñanza y aprendizaje de la Edad Media y que se eclipsó con el comienzo de la ciencia moderna (Bacon en Inglaterra, el giro copernicano, los Kepler y los Galileo en todo el continente) y la decadencia de la Universidad. La desaparición de esta forma de aprender y enseñar (bueno se quedo en los subterráneos de las universidades inglesas y especialmente en las escuelas de derecho anglosajonas para resucitar en EE.UU. mucho más tarde) tiene que ver con un cambio en la idea de lo que es el saber. El cambio, que se produjo entre los siglos XVI y XVII es el cambio de una idea del saber o epistemología no fundacionalista a otra fundacionalista. El fundacionalismo en teoría del conocimiento (Epistemología) es uno de los dogmas de la cultura occidental moderna que más ha perdurado -tanto que en parte se ha incorporado al sentido común, o al menos al sentido común de las comunidades más letradas de la civilización occidental. Su padre es Descartes y ha estado vigente en filosofía y en las ciencias hasta hace poco y todavía mantiene su inercia.

El fundacionalismo consiste en sostener las siguientes premisas. Saber es tener una creencia verdadera y justificada. Tener una creencia justificada es que nuestra creencia se apoya (se deduce) de otra creencia más básica (anterior, o bien más general, o bien más particular y cercana a la experiencia, etc.) y así sucesivamente hasta llegar a creencia básicas en sentido estricto o fundacionales. Las creencias fundacionales son creencias tan evidentes que todo el mundo acepta o tan elementales como creencias cuyo contenido nos lo da la experiencia de los sentidos. El cuerpo del saber (bien sea una ciencia o bien sea mi conjunto completo de creencias, o sea todo lo que sé) es realmente conocimiento si guarda esta estructura arquitectónica (cuando se invento el fundacionalismo en el XVII a los filósofos les encantaba ese tipo de metáforas tomadas de las artes que estaban de moda: pintura y arquitectura, arquitectura en este caso): en la base creencias tan básicas que son justificadas por sí mismas (autoevidentes) o por la insoslayable experiencia y, como ladrillos que se apoyan unos en otros, creencias más complejas o más lejanas a la evidencia que dependen de las primeras. Si no se apoyaba así una creencia, aunque fuera verdadera, no estaba justificada, por lo tanto no era conocimiento (pongo la adversativa “aunque fuera verdadera” porque puedo llegar a tener una creencia verdadera por error o casualidad, como cuando acierto el nº de la ONCE).

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Felicia Appenteng

As we approach the holiday season and the end of the year, newspapers, magazines and blogs are publishing their lists of the best books of 2007.  Paper Cuts, a blog by The New York Times, has just featured an article about the top books of 2007.  I invite all readers to post their selections of their favorite books of the year.

Here are some other blogs which feature book reviews.

Literary Minded

ReadySteadyBook

Resolute Reader

Bookslut