595
feelings, is likely a universal, if conditional, quality of all sentience. Second, its
conditionality hinges upon predicates, timing, attitude, and the sheer individuality
of organismic biology that far outnumbers our capacity to investigate.
Analysis of the human organism has been, in every conceivable instance, and
according to a vast range of acknowledged variables, a stressful, unsuccessful enterprise. It is not mere Socratic skepticism that rages over the topologies of accumulated data. Ludwig Wittgenstein clarified the dilemma when he wrote, “A function
cannot be its own argument, whereas an operation can take one of its own results as
its base.”
10
Even a cursory examination of early philosophical considerations raised
in human self-awareness selects for doubt and discouragement. Socrates, it is said,
“saw the Athenian Government, though under the form of a Democracy, was yet
nearer to a Tyranny or Monarchy, or as himself professeth, being dissuaded by his
Genius from meddling in public affairs, which advices was his preservation, being
too honest to comply with the injustices of the Common-wealth, (and) to oppose
them was extremely dangerous, as he found experimentally”
11
(Fig. 62.1).
62.2 Do We Learn from Our Mistakes?
But it was Edward Gibbon’s masterpiece, echoing Socrates’ lament, that should
stifle our reason for being in the face of the very history from whose ranks we have
been jettisoned up until now. Writes Gibbon, “The disgrace of the Romans still
excites our respectful compassion, and we fondly sympathize with the imaginary
grief and indignation of their degenerate posterity. But the calamities of Italy had
gradually subdued the proud consciousness of freedom and glory. In the age of
Roman virtue, the provinces were subject to the arms, and the citizens to the laws,
of the republic; till those laws were subverted by civil discord, and both the city and
provinces became the servile property of a tyrant.”
12
These are the fundamentals of every age of humankind, too well known to ignore,
in the complacency born of hope (Nikos Kazantzakis’ “last temptation”) that is as
endemic to the incoherent power grabs of Athens or Rome as it is, so many centuries
later, even in the artful schizophrenia of Calif, the “Stranger,” son of the King of
Timur in Puccini’s “Turandot” (1926). In ecological terms of the present, these myriad inroads to total disruption, and a fated despair, are cached in such currents as
those characterizing the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (“PETM”) which is
10 Prototractatus – An early version of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Edited by B. F. McGuinness, T. Nyberg, and G. H. von Wright, with a translation by D. F. Pears
and B. F. McGuinness; an historical introduction by G. H. von Wright, Cornell University Press,
Ithaca, New York, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., edition, 1971, 5.00161, p. 139.
11 The History Of Philosophy: Containing The Lives, Opinions, Actions and Discourses of The
Philosophers Of every Sect, by Thomas Stanley, Second Edition, London 1687, Part III, p. 81.
12 The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, Volume VI,
London 1821, Chapter 36, pp. 227–228.
62.2 Do We Learn from Our Mistakes?
feelings, is likely a universal, if conditional, quality of all sentience. Second, its
conditionality hinges upon predicates, timing, attitude, and the sheer individuality
of organismic biology that far outnumbers our capacity to investigate.
Analysis of the human organism has been, in every conceivable instance, and
according to a vast range of acknowledged variables, a stressful, unsuccessful enterprise. It is not mere Socratic skepticism that rages over the topologies of accumulated data. Ludwig Wittgenstein clarified the dilemma when he wrote, “A function
cannot be its own argument, whereas an operation can take one of its own results as
its base.”
10
Even a cursory examination of early philosophical considerations raised
in human self-awareness selects for doubt and discouragement. Socrates, it is said,
“saw the Athenian Government, though under the form of a Democracy, was yet
nearer to a Tyranny or Monarchy, or as himself professeth, being dissuaded by his
Genius from meddling in public affairs, which advices was his preservation, being
too honest to comply with the injustices of the Common-wealth, (and) to oppose
them was extremely dangerous, as he found experimentally”
11
(Fig. 62.1).
62.2 Do We Learn from Our Mistakes?
But it was Edward Gibbon’s masterpiece, echoing Socrates’ lament, that should
stifle our reason for being in the face of the very history from whose ranks we have
been jettisoned up until now. Writes Gibbon, “The disgrace of the Romans still
excites our respectful compassion, and we fondly sympathize with the imaginary
grief and indignation of their degenerate posterity. But the calamities of Italy had
gradually subdued the proud consciousness of freedom and glory. In the age of
Roman virtue, the provinces were subject to the arms, and the citizens to the laws,
of the republic; till those laws were subverted by civil discord, and both the city and
provinces became the servile property of a tyrant.”
12
These are the fundamentals of every age of humankind, too well known to ignore,
in the complacency born of hope (Nikos Kazantzakis’ “last temptation”) that is as
endemic to the incoherent power grabs of Athens or Rome as it is, so many centuries
later, even in the artful schizophrenia of Calif, the “Stranger,” son of the King of
Timur in Puccini’s “Turandot” (1926). In ecological terms of the present, these myriad inroads to total disruption, and a fated despair, are cached in such currents as
those characterizing the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (“PETM”) which is
10 Prototractatus – An early version of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Edited by B. F. McGuinness, T. Nyberg, and G. H. von Wright, with a translation by D. F. Pears
and B. F. McGuinness; an historical introduction by G. H. von Wright, Cornell University Press,
Ithaca, New York, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., edition, 1971, 5.00161, p. 139.
11 The History Of Philosophy: Containing The Lives, Opinions, Actions and Discourses of The
Philosophers Of every Sect, by Thomas Stanley, Second Edition, London 1687, Part III, p. 81.
12 The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, Volume VI,
London 1821, Chapter 36, pp. 227–228.
62.2 Do We Learn from Our Mistakes?