Palette Trouble

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In 1858, William Ewart Gladstone noticed something peculiar in Homer: Both oxen and the sea are compared to the color of wine, sheep are “violet,” honey is “green,” and, while the sky is described as starry, broad, great, iron, and copper, it’s never “blue.” He advanced the idea that “the organ of colour and its impressions were but partially developed among the Greeks of the heroic age.”

Building on this idea 20 years later in Nature, William Pole suggested that Homer might even have been color-blind. “It would be a most interesting fact in physiology and optics,” he wrote, “if we could show, in this way, that dichromatism was an early stage of human vision out of which the present more comprehensive and perfect faculty has been gradually developed in the course of some thousands of years.”

The truth awaited a more sophisticated understanding of the interplay of culture and language, one that’s still evolving. In a way that’s a shame — as Pole points out, if this oddity had been the unique mark of a particular writer, then we’d have “the strongest possible proof, by internal evidence, of the existence of a single author, to whom the whole of the poems are due.”

| Literature

Sanguine

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Henry is driving in the countryside with his son. For the boy’s edification, Henry identifies various objects on the landscape as they come into view. ‘That’s a cow,’ says Henry. ‘That’s a tractor,’ ‘That’s a silo,’ ‘That’s a barn,’ etc. Henry has no doubt about the identity of these objects; in particular, he has no doubt that the last-mentioned object is a barn, which indeed it is. Each of the identified objects has features characteristic of its type. Moreover, each object is fully in view, Henry has excellent eyesight, and he has enough time to look at them reasonably carefully, since there is little traffic to distract him.

Given this information, would we say that Henry knows that the object is a barn? Most of us would have little hesitation in saying this, so long as we were not in a certain philosophical frame of mind. Contrast our inclination here with the inclination we would have if we were given some additional information. Suppose we are told that, unknown to Henry, the district he has just entered is full of papier-mâché facsimiles of barns. These facsimiles look from the road exactly like barns, but are really just façades, without back walls or interiors, quite incapable of being used as barns. They are so cleverly constructed that travelers invariably mistake them for barns. Having just entered the district, Henry has not encountered any facsimiles; the object he sees is a genuine barn. But if the object on that site were a facsimile, Henry would mistake it for a barn. Given this new information, we would be strongly inclined to withdraw the claim that Henry knows the object is a barn. How is this change in our assessment to be explained?

— Alvin I. Goldman, “Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge,” Journal of Philosophy, November 1976

| Science & Math

Cost Cutting

“I am fond of the businessman’s paradox due to Lisa Collier: The president of a certain company offered a reward of $100 to any employee who could offer a suggestion which would save the company money. One employee suggested: ‘Eliminate the reward.'” — Raymond Smullyan

| Science & Math

The Lip-Reader’s Bane

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I can’t vouch for this — from I.J. Reeve, The Wild Garland (1865), “a Welsh englyn which in its four lines does not contain a single consonant”:

“On the Silkworm”

O’i wiw wy i weu ê â a’i weau
O’i wyau e weua;
E’ weua ei we aia’.
Ai weau yw ieuau iâ.

Translation:

“I perish by my art; dig my own grave;
I spin my thread of life; my death I weave.”

| Language

On the Job

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A revealing detail from the life of the 18-year-old Queen Victoria, newly crowned in 1837:

At twelve o’clock she presided at a Council, ‘with as much ease as if she had been doing nothing else all her life’; after which she received the archbishops and bishops, to whom she said nothing, but showed an extreme dignity and gracefulness of manner. This ceremony finished and the duties of the day at an end, she retired with slow stateliness; but forgetful that the door through which she passed had glass panels that allowed her retreat to be seen, she had no sooner quitted the council chamber than she scampered light-heartedly away, like a child released from school.

From Joseph Fitzgerald Molloy’s The Sailor King: William the Fourth, His Court and His Subjects, 1903

| History · Society

Table Talk

At a tavern one night,
Messrs. Moore, Strange, and Wright
Met to drink and their good thoughts exchange;
Says Moore, “Of us three,
Everyone will agree,
There’s only one knave, and that’s Strange.”

Says Strange, rather sore,
“I’m sure there’s one Moore,
A most terrible knave, and a fright,
Who cheated his mother,
His sister and brother–”
“Oh, yes,” replied Moore, “that is Wright.”

— Anonymous

| Language · Poems

Partisan Epitaphs

Through this inscription I wish to enter my dying protest against what is called the Democratic Party. I have watched it closely since the days of Jackson and know that all the misfortunes of our Nation have come to it through the so called party. Therefore beware of this party of treason.

— N. Grigsby (1812-1890), Attica, Kan.

He believed that nothing but the success of the Democratic Party would ever save this Union.

— Elisha Bowman (1832-1865), Pekin, Ind.

The Family of Robert T. Hallenbeck
None of us ever voted for
Roosevelt or Truman

— Elgin, Minn.

Kind friends I’ve
Left behind
Cast your vote for
Jennings Bryan.

— B.H. Norris (1849-1900), Montgomery City, Mo.

Sacred to the memory of Henry Devine
a native of Ireland,
who died in Port Gibson
November 7th, 1844. Aged 32 years.
During the protracted illness which preceded
his death the deceased often expressed a wish
only to live long enough to vote for Henry
Clay for the Presidency. His wish was granted.
The last act of his life was to vote the Whig
ticket having done which he declared that he
died satisfied.

— Wintergreen Cemetery, Port Gibson, Miss.

| Death

Unquote

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“We are terrified by the idea of being terrified.” — Nietzsche

“Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.” — Shakespeare

“Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.” — Defoe

| Quotations

School Reform

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A classroom contains 25 desks arranged in 5 rows and 5 columns. The teacher asks each student to move to the desk in front of, behind, to the left of, or to the right of her current desk. The students at the edges have limited choices — will every child be able to find a new seat?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Checking In

Letter from T.S. Eliot to Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Feb. 3, 1940:

Possum now wishes to explain his silence
And to apologise (as only right is);
He had an attack of poisoning of some violence,
Followed presently by some days in bed with laryngitis.

Yesterday he had to get up and dress–
His voice very thick and his head feeling tetrahedral,
To go and meet the Lord Mayor & Lady Mayoress
At a meeting which had something to do with repairs to Southwark Cathedral.

His legs are not yet ready for much strain & stress
And his words continue to come thick and soupy all:
These are afflictions tending to depress
Even the most ebullient marsupial.

But he would like to come to tea
One day next week (not a Wednesday)
If that can be arranged
And to finish off this letter
Hopes that you are no worse and that Leonard is much better.

| Literature