Re: asymptote/hyperbola?

smw wrote:
> Michael Zeleny wrote:
>> smw wrote:
>>> Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>> smw wrote:

>>> ...

>>>>> Since my claim referred to the passage in question, your claim to have
>>>>> "refuted" anything is of the order of all your claims in this thread.

>>>> I have no interest in refuting anything in this matter. Your original
>>>> question pertained to the meaning of the math in Kleist's text. We have
>>>> achieved a rare consensus as to the likelihood of its meaninglessness.

>>> We certainly have a consensus that it doesn't mean what think it was
>>> meant to mean.

>> The subject of your subordinate clause has gone missing. Charity
>> mandates an interpolation of the first person singular pronoun.

> yawn

Feel free to stop any time you get tired of prevaricating. In fact,
feel free to stop any time. We are discussing your homework, not mine.
If you are unwilling or unable to evince a modicum of gratitude in
getting this lowest of all possible interlocutors to attend to your
business, there is no point in continuing.

>> Of course, I am operating on the assumption that you understand the
>> advantages of being corrected over being able to correct others.
>> (Gorgias, 458b)

> I do, I do. I urgently wish for the opportunity. It has not arisen in
> conversations with you yet. Try harder.

I would not know where to find the fulcrum of character fit to budge
you away from vapid persiflage. The strangest thing about it is its
pointlessness. I am led to the conclusion that asserting and defending
patently false readings is the only way you expect to distinguish
yourself.

>>>> At this point, the reader is warranted to withdraw the presumption of
>>>> charity from the author, inasmuch as the text lacks any markers of his
>>>> intent to describe a meaningless exchange.

>>> Nonsense. He's presenting a character who's talking math.

>> Not quite. His character is pretentiously gibbering math, which
>> suggests further eruptions of pretentious gibberish elsewhere, as
>> witness below his take on gravity and inertia.

> So?

So a responsible reading will account for this nonsense in at least one
of the two ways suggested. To take a parallel closer to your present
day experience, consider a dialogue that depicts its characters relying
upon unchallenged premises postulating a pseudo-scientific basis for
moral inferiority of the dark-skinned races. Once you account for the
conclusions that you would derive regarding the intellectual stature of
its author, kindly take into account that the stupidity expressed in
mathematical similes and physical hypotheses of Kleist's parables is
far more readily demonstrable than the intellectual failures of
racialism.

>>>> On the contrary, the absurd
>>>> passages that you cited bear a strong presumption of Kleist's intent to
>>>> suggest something of profound importance with his mathematical similes.

>>> Here he goes again... the passage I cited does no such thing. In
>>> essence, the dancer says "the relationship is complicated, like that
>>> between [etc.]." Anything you want to say about either the author or the
>>> dancer is pure speculation, born not by the text but by your (rather
>>> odd) desire that it be damaging. I think the point is "Zeleny would have
>>> known better than this silly old Kleist!" Hey, if it rocks your boat.
>>> Just don't pass it off as reading.

>> More revisionism on your part.

> Just trying to sink to your level. "Ziemlich kuenstlich" is a bit tricky
> to translate to my satisfaction, though.

Try harder. Translation is the foundation of every reading. For your
present purposes, I suggest bowdlerizing Kleist by omitting every term
for which your interpretation fails to account.

>> On your last hermeneutic occasion, you informed us that all the dancer
>> was saying with his mathematical similes is that the relationship
>> between the puppeteer's finger movements and the Marionette's limb
>> movements wasn't immediately obvious. It is undisputed that according
>> to him, this relationship is "rather artful" or "ziemlich kuenstlich".
>> So now you are watering down your reading even further in telling us
>> that the dancer means to say that this relationship is complicated.
>> There are at least two problems here.
>>
>> First off, the math the dancer cites is neither artful nor complicated.
>> If you claim the contrary, it behooves you to cite objective factors
>> that impute artfulness or complexity to the relations between a
>> hyperbola and its asymptote, or a number and its logarithm.

> You have the oddest assumptions concerning the work of literature. The
> text doesn't claim it's complicated, it presents the dancer as saying it
> is. It behooves me to point that out to folks who misread the text. I
> have met my duty.

The text makes no claim of complexity anywhere. This claim arises only
in your interpretation of the dancer's similes, and only as a result of
your refusal to account for their mathematical meanings, or lack
thereof. I am assuming that you can claim a more objective basis for
proposing this interpretation, than your personal impression of
complexity inhering in mathematical comparisons.

At the initial reading, the text presents the dancer arrogating some
kind of mathematical knowledge. This fact accords with your original
take seeking a clarification of the mathematical relations that he
cites. The experience of finding out that he is gibbering every time he
employs scientific terms such as hyperbole, logarithm, gravity, or
inertia, is readily available to every reader of this text. Either
Kleist intended it in composing his parable, or he allowed the
gibberish to creep in unintentionally. Which is it?

>> And when I
>> ask for objectivity in these factors, I mean to rule out the excuses of
>> mathematical ignorance to be expected of garden variety humanities
>> majors such as Kleist and yourself.

> Ask all you want, you continue missing the point of the passage in
> particular and of literature in general.

Perhaps I am unjustified in expecting minimal cogency in composition,
to the extent of accounting for absurdities in a purportedly profound,
programmatic parable. But you have given us no alternative
interpretation of the point of the passage in particular, never mind
any qualities of literature in general.

>> But more importantly, as reinterpreted in your latest way, the text
>> compresses the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of
>> thought. You are reading Kleist as a flatulent hack, your protestations
>> to the contrary notwithstanding.

> Cute. You force me to teach you the absolute basics of reading
> literature and then complain that no profundity has appeared.

Not quite. I am seeking to find out whether we have any common
expectations that would enable us to share an understanding of the text
in question. I grant that so far I have been drawing blanks, in so far
as you appear perfectly willing to discount manifest idiocy as a cogent
claim of complexity. I note that you take the very opposite tack in
interpreting deviations from political correctness as regards ethnic or
sexual minorities.

>>>> As I said, it causes a disappointment characteristic of attending to
>>>> productions by flatulent hacks, and a low grade thereof, at that. Not
>>>> only Goethe, but even Poe is devoid of howlers of this sort.
>>> I begin to see what you mean. Lady Macbeth left me deeply disappointed
>>> with Shakespeare's morals, too.

>> Surely you have been seeing my point for some time.

> Yes, I have. It's deeply misguided. Let's move on.

Don't let the door slam your arse on the way out.

>> Admitting it is
>> another matter. Stupidity is logically prior to morals. In other words,
>> an author that depicts stupid characters interacting stupidly in
>> matters of putative profundity is either pulling your leg or being
>> stupid himself. Which is it?

> He's been pulling your leg. As I said, the text's a jerk trap. It
> invites you to read text as structure, not as representation. Cf. Werner
> Hamacher, "Das Beben der Darstellung." Fine essay, mostly.

Please recall that my lack of scholarship and German literacy remains
undisputed in the wake of your denunciations. You can't have it both
ways. Let's hear it in your own terms. How does reading a text as
structure differ from reading it as representation?

>>>>>> As for the rest
>>>>>> of your claim, you are making the same mistake that you are trying to
>>>>>> impute to me. In free indirect speech, the speaker is the narrator
>>>>>> paraphrasing the remarks of the dancer.

>>>>> Nope. He's not paraphrasing, he's rendering his words in indirect
>>>>> speech. German has a mood for that.

>>>> So does English.

>>> Well, no. It has some rudiments.

>> As I acknowledged elsewhere, I misspoke in correcting your grammar.
>> Like English, German has only four grammatical moods: the indicative,
>> the imperative, the conditional, and the subjunctive. Unlike English,
>> German marks some indirect contexts with the subjunctive mood normally
>> restricted to the past tense of the main verb. The stock examples are:
>> 1. "Ich glaubte er wäre krank."
>> (I thought he be+3SG+IMPERF+SUBJ ill => "I thought he was ill.")
>> 2. "Er sagte er wäre krank."
>> (he said he be+3SG+IMPERF+SUBJ ill => "He said he was ill.")

> Ouch. No. There's a _separate_ subjunctive for indirect speech. Er sagt
> er _sei_ krank. Or, from the text, "Er lächelte, und sagte, er _getraue_
> sich zu behaupten." It is true that in spoken speech, this has all but
> disappeared, to be replaced by your model.

Thanks, at last I see what you mean. As your example points out, in
German the special subjunctive, Konjunktiv I, differs from the general
subjunctive, e.g. for the verb "sein". Conveniently for our purposes,
the general subjunctive is often used in indirect discourse to express
doubts about the original speaker's veracity. This grammatical trait
should help you in rendering the doubts implicit in the narrator's
rendering of the dancer's speect in indirect discourse.

>> This aside, you are not catching up on my suggestion, presumably
>> confirmed by your own observation, to account for the markers in free
>> indirect speech, as per Leo Spitzer's analysis of pseudo-objective
>> motivation. If anything can save your obsequious reading of Kleist,
>> this just might be it.

> You've just demonstrated the extent of your competence in explaining the
> use of the present subjunctive in rendering indirect speech. Why not
> stop while you're behind.

>>>> "Gerade" and "ungerade" are terms of art in analytic
>>>> philosophy. I once had the pleasure of receiving Quine's gratitude for
>>>> correcting his published mistake in this matter.

>>> Thanks for sharing. It's good to know you're getting appreciated somewhere.

>> The pseudo-intellectual counterpart to the pilot fish of commerce is
>> the wannabe footnote to history. I am a footnote to Church and Quine.
>> Keep this up, and one day you might be known as a footnote to me.

> with the fantasies again.

Never far from them. Not that you can be expected to know their nature.

>>>>>> Whereas the passage with which
>>>>>> you began this thread involves an additional elaboration of the
>>>>>> mathematical gibberish, relating in direct speech

>>>>> Hey, you got something right! It is indeed direct speech!

>>>> Rereading this thread should suffice to demonstrate that what you took
>>>> to be my errors exist only as products of your hostile
>>>> misunderstandings.

>>> Sure. Like your clever discovery of the word "indeed"!

>> Would that be anything like your retrograde erasure of that word from
>> the translation that you so generously furnished for our consumption?
>> Was there ever an occasion of your honestly acknowledging your mistake?

> Huh? It wasn't my translation. I'm sorry I posted a lousy translation. I
> didn't expect anybody to mistake it for the original. Okay? So how about
> you acknowledge now that your argument based on the "indeed" was amusing
> crap?

Who cares whose translation it was? You implicitly endorsed a rendering
using the very term that you subsequently found objectionable. Is it
too much to expect that you furnish a replacement that you find
satisfactory?

>>>>>> the dancer's
>>>>>> contradiction of the narrator's initial assumption that mechanical
>>>>>> control of the puppets was "something quite mindless, rather like
>>>>>> turning the crank on a hand organ."

>>>>>>>> Let us see you weasel out of the agreement implicit in the narrator's
>>>>>>>> report of his interlocutor's pseudointellectual gibberish,

>>>>>>> "Agreement implicit"? You're a clown, Zeleny. Would that be like
>>>>>>> Shakespeare's agreement implicit in presenting us with Polonius?

>>>>>> At issue is the agreement between the narrator and his interlocutor.

>>>>> Again, very good -- to the extent that you now seem to grasp that the
>>>>> narrator isn't Kleist. The agreement part is still nonsense, of course.

>>>> I think not, but this is fairly unimportant.

>>> It was, in fact, at the basis of your claims concerning both the
>>> narrator and Kleist.

>> It was one piece of evidence among many. Would your eminence condescend
>> to turn your scholarly efforts towards a translation that satisfies you
>> at this sublime stage of your academic career?

> Funny you should ask. I was planning on checking translations in print
> and seeing whether there might be need for a new one.

So do it already. You are the one making the objection to what you take
to be the basis of my claims concerning both the narrator and Kleist.
Enough with the insinuation. Kindly give us your version of the
passage.

>>>>>>>> as expressed
>>>>>>>> in its adverbial characterization, "indeed".

>>>>>>> Lol. The text's written in German. There is no "indeed" anywhere in
>>>>>>> sight. There is a "zwar" (look it up), part of a sentence reported in
>>>>>>> indirect speech.

>>>>>> It does not take a profound insight into German syntax to infer that,
>>>>>> as reported in indirect discourse, Kleist's "zwar" appears to play an
>>>>>> assertoric role similar to the use of "à cause de" by Charles-Louis
>>>>>> Philippe,

>>>>> It wouldn't take profound insights into German either to infer that
>>>>> "zwar" refers to the green cheese of the moon. Neither would it be
>>>>> correct. While "zwar" can mean many things, here it's best translated as
>>>>> "on the one hand."

>>>> Kindly refer your beef with translating "zwar" as "indeed" to the
>>>> translation that you furnished earlier.

>>> I assumed you'd be sufficiently familiar with the pitfalls of literary
>>> translations available on the Internet. My apologies. As long as we're
>>> clear that "zwar" neither means "indeed" nor conveys the paraphraser's
>>> agreement. Which leaves you with nothing more than a literary character
>>> making a very lose comparison between finger-line and limb-curve on the
>>> one hand and asymptote and hyperbola on the other hand which is not in
>>> itself a mathematical claim of any sort. See, if you were capable of
>>> checking your unbecoming arrogance, your first assumption would be that
>>> a smart guy like Kleist who studied math at Frankfurt for a while may
>>> not lay claim to mathematical genius, but is entirely aware of the fact
>>> that the relationship between finger-movement and limb-movement cannot
>>> be the same as both the one between numbers and their logarithms and
>>> asymptote and hyperbola. To assume otherwise cannot reflect on anyone
>>> but yourself.

>> I make no assumptions here. On the other hand, it is hard to avoid the
>> observation that the relation of a number to its logarithm varies
>> inversely and out of proportion to any relation obtainable between the
>> respective motions of the puppeteer's fingers, of the puppet's center
>> of gravity, and of its extremities.

> Indeed. So, what were you doing imputing such avoidance to Kleist?

I was running out of ways to impute an awareness of basic facts of math
and physics to underlie his composition. Perhaps the analogy I outlined
above will suffice to inspire your understanding.

>> Likewise, it hard to see what any
>> of them have in common with the relation between asymptote and
>> hyperbola. And inasmuch as that is the case, it is hard to avoid the
>> conclusion that Kleist is

> "that the dancer is"

One could stop there. Apparently you have done so. But if your claim is
that Kleist intended to depict the dancer as blowing smoke, you can no
longer justify interpreting his mathematical similes as meaning merely
that the relationships at issue are rather artful, or somehow complex.
In saying that they are somehow like certain mathematical relations,
the dancer is telling his interlocutor that he is ignorant of math and
science in the matters being discussed. Once again, is it your
contention that Kleist must have known that that was the case, based on
his study of these subjects?

> ...>
>>>>>> i.e. ascribing a certain general applicability to life that
>>>>>> we are to take for granted. (At the risk of presuming too much about
>>>>>> your education, you must have been examined on your knowledge of Bally
>>>>>> and Spitzer.) Even so, I am willing to defer to your authority of a
>>>>>> native speaker, if you imagine this point to be dispositive in our
>>>>>> matter. Is it your contention that the narrator does anything but agree
>>>>>> with the dancer's mathematical postulation?

>>>>> It is my contention that Kleist throws suspicion on the dancer's theses
>>>>> throughout, sometimes in subtle ways that wouldn't emerge in a casual
>>>>> reading of a translation. The narrator, by contrast, is marked as a
>>>>> polite conversationalist throughout, certainly not as someone who agrees
>>>>> unconditionally. "I laughed. Indeed, I thought, mind cannot err where
>>>>> there is none." More importantly, however, Kleist takes care to portray
>>>>> the narrator as an old man -- "there is someone still alive now who
>>>>> witnessed this strange and unfortunate event."
>>>>> ...

>>>> Again, you are welcome to your credit as a native speaker to claim any
>>>> sort of subtlety that perishes in translation. I cannot see anything of
>>>> the sort.

>>> You cannot see that "there is someone still alive today who witnessed"
>>> is not the language of a young man?

>> No, not that. I cannot see Kleist throwing suspicion on the dancer's
>> theses. Doubtless my failure is due to the lack of subtlety in my ways,
>> the casual nature of my readings, and my reliance on the translation
>> that you supplied.

> Yes, that should about cover it. So read "Aesthetic Formalization."
> Another partially fine essay, even though de Man cheats abominably
> towards the end.

Once again, please spell out what you insinuate. By coming here to ask
for help in elementary math, you have lost your professorial
prerogatives to assign unsolicited homework, all the more so to assign
it to a character of my undisputed obtuseness.

>>>> Certainly the reappearance of bogus math in the conclusion,
>>>> with a gratuitous and erroneous reference to infinity traversed by
>>>> intersecting lines, is of a piece with earlier abuses of reason.

>>> You are referring to "der Durchschnitt zweier Linien, auf der einen
>>> Seite eines Punkts, [findet sich] nach dem Durchgang durch das
>>> Unendliche, plötzlich wieder auf der andern Seite," I presume. What do
>>> you take that to mean? And if you take it to mean gibberish, why would
>>> it reflect on anybody but the dancer? Note that the narrator responds
>>> "somewhat distractedly," "ein wenig zerstreut." Hardly a rapturous
>>> audience.

>> I take it to invoke infinity gratuitously.

> Why gratuitously?

Because it does not figure anywhere in the referenced geometrical
arrangement. But you tell me. What work do you take the mention of
infinity to perform?

>> I note also that the
>> narrator extends the metaphor to postulate "that we would have to eat
>> of the tree of knowledge a second time to fall back into the state of
>> innocence." Distracted or not, he seems to play along with the dancer's
>> affectation of mathematical reasoning by dignifying it with a Biblical
>> allegory.

> More likely, the dancer presents as a casual reader of Schiller's _Naive
> and Sentimental_, the text's main reference after _Anmut und Wuerde_
> (Grace and Dignity). You're familiar with the three-partite model of
> teleological history in vogue back then, I assume. For Kleist's final
> commentary on the topic, cf. _Earthquake in Chili_.

If you are referring to first and second causes, what do you take to be
their relevance to this text? In any event, why would you want to delve
into historiographic matters before accounting for the historical bases
of the tale?

Take the story of the fencing bear. What is the possible relevance of
identifying Herr von G- as a Livonian nobleman? How likely is it for
a character of this sort to have raised a bear on his estate? What sort
of tricks would his guests expect from a pet bear? How does the
contemporary technique of foil fencing prescribe lunges, feints, and
parries? What is their connection to affectation that appears when the
soul (vis motrix) is located at any point other than the center of
gravity of a movement?

>>>>>> Incidentally, you are absurdly misreading the text in concluding that
>>>>>> the strings of Kleist's hypothetical marionette are not fastened
>>>>>> anywhere but at a single point, which is its center of gravity. Aside
>>>>>> from the fact that neither the dancer nor the narrator makes any claims
>>>>>> to this effect, this arrangement is mechanically ineffectual. In order
>>>>>> to control the puppet's center of gravity, the puppeteer has to suspend
>>>>>> its body at least at three points, as demonstrated in the construction
>>>>>> manual referenced earlier by Lew Mammel.

>>>>> Lew thinks like an engineer, i.e. in lovely and useful ways. However,
>>>>> these marionettes are hypothetical ones. The dancer explicitly states
>>>>> that each movement has "one" point of gravity; he explicitly states that
>>>>> the threads are _not_ fastened to the limbs. Lew, I think, was referring
>>>>> to a point at the knee. The dancer makes fun of a movement reigned from
>>>>> the ellbow. More importantly, we are clear that the marionettes are
>>>>> allegorical figures, yah? We are also clear that the problem discussed
>>>>> is self-consciousness? Doubling?

>>>> You are fixating on truisms to infer a trite misreading.

>>> Zeleny, it's you who's forcing me to state the obvious so there can be
>>> at least some semblance of a shared ground for conversation here. I
>>> certainly lay no claim to having said anything even slightly un-obvious.
>>> Yet, in talking to someone who's earnestly trying to elucidate, nay
>>> correct!, a passage about a marionette both hypothetical and allegorical
>>> with reference to a construction drawing of an actual puppet, it is no
>>> longer clear what needs to be said and what does not.

>> True enough. At this point, it seems worth observing that hypothetical
>> constructions are nowise exempted from the criteria of feasibility,

> Is that right? No, it's not. Okay, so now that we've cleared this up.

I see that ex impossibile quodlibet no longer holds in WeineckWorld.
This failure of hypothetical syllogistic explains a great deal about
your mindset.

>> whereas allegorical readings depend on support from literal meanings:
>> Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria,
>> Moralia quid agas, quo tendas anagogica.

> Mais non, allegories are famous for doing nothing of the sort. "Hello,
> I'm Mrs. World!"

Setting aside the question of your royal cosmopolitism, can we have a
more elaborate example of allegory famous for its literal
meaninglessness?

>>>> Each object
>>>> has but a single center of gravity. Each object depends on its center
>>>> of gravity in its path through a trajectory. The net effect of gravity
>>>> on the dancer, as on the dancing puppet, is the same as if it were only
>>>> acting at the center of gravity, and not on all of its moving parts.

>>> Refer yourself to the hypothesis of the "antigrav" puppet, please.

>> Do you mean this passage?
>>
>> Zudem, sprach er, haben diese Puppen den Vorteil, daß sie _antigrav_
>> sind. Von der Trägheit der Materie, dieser dem Tanze
>> entgegenstrebendsten aller Eigenschaften, wissen sie nichts: weil die
>> Kraft, die sie in die Lüfte erhebt, größer ist, als jene, die sie an
>> der Erde fesselte. Was würde unsre gute G... darum geben, wenn sie
>> sechzig Pfund leichter wäre, oder ein Gewicht von dieser Größe ihr
>> bei ihren Entrechats und Pirouetten, zu Hülfe käme? Die Puppen
>> brauchen den Boden nur, wie die Elfen, um ihn zu _streifen_, und den
>> Schwung der Glieder, durch die augenblickliche Hemmung neu zu beleben;
>> wir brauchen ihn, um darauf zu _ruhen_, und uns von der Anstrengung des
>> Tanzes zu erholen: ein Moment, der offenbar selber kein Tanz ist, und
>> mit dem sich weiter nichts anfangen läßt, als ihn möglichst
>> verschwinden zu machen.
>> -- Heinrich von Kleist, Über das Marionettentheater
>> http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/kleist/marionet/mario002.htm
>>
>> "In addition," he said, "these puppets have the advantage of
>> countergravity. For they know nothing of the inertia of matter, which
>> of all properties is the most obstructive to the dance: for the force
>> that lifts them into the air is greater than that which pulls them to
>> the ground. What would our dear Madame G- not give to be lighter by
>> sixty pounds, or for a counterweight of this size to help her with her
>> entrechats and pirouettes? Puppets, like elves, require the ground only
>> to touch on, and by that momentary obstruction to reanimate the spring
>> of their limbs; while we require it to rest on, and to recover from the
>> exertions of the dance: a moment which is clearly not dance in itself,
>> and with which there is nothing to be done except to make it disappear
>> by all possible means."
>> -- translated by Philip B. Miller
>> http://www-class.unl.edu/ahis498b/parts/week9/puppet.html
>>
>> I confess being daunted by the task of explaining the sub-Arindamian
>> stupidity embodied herein. To do no more than scratch its surface:
>> 1. The puppets cannot enjoy the advantage of "countergravity" /
>> "antigrav" unless they are located in orbit, or experience free fall.
>> 2. Under no physical circumstances can they "know nothing of the
>> inertia of matter", which is determined by their mass, not by their
>> weight.

> Really! The physical circumstance of their mindlessness would not exempt
> them from knowing?

So now you revert to the literal meaning of a dead metaphor? Please
make up your mind: either the description of this allegorical puppet is
exempt from such banaustic constraints, or it is entirely determined
thereby. Or is there a middle ground?

> But again, your insistence on debating the dancer and trying to
> convince him that you know more about math than he does is very
> endearing, but what does it have to do with Kleist or the text?

That is what we are trying to find out. See above.

>> More grist for the mill. The dancer is a supercilious ignoramus.

> Quite possibly so. As I've been trying to tell you for quite a while now.
>> How is
>> this fact reflected in the text? To relate this to another cultural
>> icon that has oh-so-much in common with the persona you affect
>> hereabouts, unless we are laughing with Kleist, we are laughing at him.
>> But Kleist does not seem to be laughing.

> I'm sure he killed himself precisely because he anticipated your
> devastating reading.

I prefer to believe that he felt mortified by an anticipation of your
servility.

>>>> The puppet suspended at a single point is a mostly undamped driven
>>>> pendulum, with its center of gravity freely oscillating directly below
>>>> its point of suspension. Its rotation around the axis of its point of
>>>> suspension to its center of gravity cannot be controlled. As I read
>>>> Kleist's text, it contains no suggestion of deviating from the normal
>>>> pattern of suspension referenced by Lew. Rather, his point is to
>>>> downplay the need for minute individual manipulation of the strings
>>>> controlling the puppet's limbs.

>>> "Da der Maschinist nun schlechthin, vermittelst des Drahtes oder Fadens,
>>> keinen andern Punkt in seiner Gewalt hat, als diesen: so sind alle
>>> übrigen Glieder, was sie sein sollen, tot, reine Pendel, und folgen dem
>>> bloßen Gesetz der Schwere"
>>>
>>> "Since the machinist now has no other point in his power than this, via
>>> the wire the string: so all other limbs are what they ought to be,
>>> dead, pure pendula, and merely follow the law of gravity."

>> As Lew repeatly pointed out, this gives you no reason to believe that
>> Kleist is referring to anything other than normally constructed
>> marionettes, as opposed to the technique of their manipulation.

> Well, yes, it does. Dead, pure pendula. Not being moved themselves, as
> they would have to be if a string was affixed to them.

Have you even seen a puppet in operation? Why do you imagine all of its
strings to be drawn taut all the time? It suffices to slacken the
string that controls the limb to turn it into a pure pendulum within
the range circumscribed by its stretch.

ObMovie: Team America

>>>> http://monet.physik.unibas.ch/~elmer/pendulum/index.html
>>>>
>>>> In the event, the net effect of the forces imparted by the puppeteer's
>>>> gross manipulation is to cause its center of gravity to deviate from a
>>>> trajectory that is at the most a second order curve, albeit a parabola
>>>> rather than Kleist's ellipse. But in denying that each member of the
>>>> puppet, in the various motions of its dance, has to be placed and
>>>> pulled individually by the puppeteer, the dancer does not deny the
>>>> existence of threads fastened to its limbs, let alone the need for
>>>> multiple threads to control its body.

>>> "keinen anderen Punkt," "no other point." "Drahtes," wire (sg.),
>>> "Fadens," string (sg.). You can quibble with his take on construction
>>> all you like (you're not the first, after all...), within this text, it
>>> is what it is. It is clear that the narrator has his doubts as well.
>>> When the dancer begins to talk about the wonders of artificial limbs,
>>> the narrator challenges him "jokingly": "Ich äußerte, scherzend, daß er
>>> ja, auf diese Weise, seinen Mann gefunden habe. Denn derjenige Künstler,
>>> der einen so merkwürdigen Schenkel zu bauen imstande sei, würde ihm
>>> unzweifelhaft auch eine ganze Marionette, seinen Forderungen gemäß,
>>> zusammensetzen können." "I said, jokingly, that he had found his man
>>> that way. For the same artist/artisan, who was capable of building such
>>> a remarkable thigh/calf, could, without doubt, build him a whole
>>> marionette according to his demands." The dancer reacts by looking at
>>> the floor "betreten" (embarrassed).

>> Der Vorteil? Zuvörderst ein negativer, mein vortrefflicher Freund,
>> nämlich dieser, daß sie sich niemals _zierte_. - *Denn Ziererei
>> erscheint, wie Sie wissen, wenn sich die Seele (vis motrix) in irgend
>> einem andern Punkte befindet, als in dem Schwerpunkt der Bewegung.* Da
>> der Maschinist nun schlechthin, vermittelst des Drahtes oder Fadens,
>> keinen andern Punkt in seiner Gewalt hat, als diesen: so sind alle
>> übrigen Glieder, was sie sein sollen, tot, reine Pendel, und folgen
>> dem bloßen Gesetz der Schwere; eine vortreffliche Eigenschaft, die man
>> vergebens bei dem größesten Teil unsrer Tänzer sucht.
>>
>> "The advantage? First of all, my good friend, a negative one: namely
>> that it would be incapable of affectation. For affectation, as you
>> know, appears when the soul (vis motrix) is located at any point other
>> than the center of gravity of a movement. Now because, with his wires
>> and strings, it is this very point and no other that the puppeteer
>> controls, all remaining members are, as they should be, dead, pure
>> pendulums, which follow the basic law of gravity -- a marvelous
>> quality, which we look for in vain in most of our dancers."
>> -- translated by Philip B. Miller
>>
>> Once again, "it is this very point and no other that the puppeteer
>> controls" is a matter of his technique, not of his puppet's
>> construction.

> You are free to claim that the vis motrix theory mocked here in fact
> postulates a plurality of forces.

I claim nothing of the sort. Why would you make this leap?

>>>> Yes, the upshot is to reflect a watered-down rebuttal of the Cartesian
>>>> ideas of the unitary self, presumably derived from the arguments in the
>>>> Paralogisms. Further, you might be able to read it as a reaction
>>>> against Kant's own postulations and conclusions within the tradition of
>>>> homo duplex. I just cannot see it as very profound. But to my mind,
>>>> Kant's proper place on the scale of intellectual merit does not go
>>>> beyond scraping *** off Descartes' boots.

>>> As I said, if that posture rocks your boat -- wouldn't want to spoil the
>>> pleasure.

>> How unlike you to you sell yourself short.
>> "My main amusement is to piss people off."
>> -- Silke-Maria Weineck, 2003/07/11
>>
>> That is the problem with you as a would-be German ironist. The only
>> ones worth their salt, as witness Henri Heine and Karl Kraus, have a
>> little Jew in them, and clearly not in the manner that you claim to
>> have in yourself. The rest of you are powerless to overcome the
>> cultural predilection that I referenced earlier.

> No attempt at irony. Just bored dismissal of the "Kant is crap" posture.

As referenced by Georg Cantor, the dismissal of Kant's legacy was a
prerequisite for the first substantial advance in metaphysics since
Plato. But surely your expert reading of the mind-body problem
encompasses all that already.

>> Just as Hattie unwittingly corroborates every misogynistic cliché, so
>> you take pains to embody every Teutonic stereotype. What do you think
>> Winnie meant in telling that the Hun was either at your feet or at your
>> throat? He was calling you a nation of lackeys. Replace the serviette
>> with the sword to turn the servant into the soldier "just following
>> orders". The ethos of scholarship is nowhere to be seen in your realm.
>> And that is where you act so happy to make your home.

> What could be a clearer admission of defeat than recourse to the ethnic
> slur?

I see your point: Churchill was clearly admitting his defeat by the
Hun. But I am scarcely surprised to see the legacy of the Nuremberg
Laws in your equation between culture and ethnicity.

Michael Zeleny@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://larvatus.livejournal.com/

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