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The Nowning Process

~ BUFFY: How do you get to be renowned? I mean, like, do you have to be 'nowned' first?

The Nowning Process

Tag Archives: science

Humanities, sciences? Both, please

03 Tuesday Jun 2008

Posted by elrambo in books, life, literature, movies, nature, students

≈ Comments Off on Humanities, sciences? Both, please

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books, C.S. Lewis, education, humanities, movies, science

JMNR reminds us that the sciences need the humanities:

Knowing what a thing is made of, after all, does not tell us what it is.

. . .

Literature, the fine arts, theater, and music teach humans what it is to be good, true, and beautiful. They point to meaning. What does it profit a man to learn all mysteries of matter and energy if he does not have love? Science can only simulate or stimulate the feelings of love, but . . . cannot create one real passion.

That first sentence, as Reynolds very well knows, is a paraphrase from a conversation in C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

“In our world,” said Eustace, “A star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”

“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of….”

How I hope that the makers of the movie don’t lose or obscure that particular bit of wisdom!

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Sometimes skepticism is useful

07 Wednesday Nov 2007

Posted by elrambo in life, nature

≈ Comments Off on Sometimes skepticism is useful

Tags

Bedtime for Bonzo, language, movies, Return to Me, science

Generally, I would describe myself as favoring the “credo ut intelligam” approach to things (“I believe in order that I may understand”), but reason is also God’s gift and, used rightly, science reveals truth, as in this recent eSkeptic feature about experimental attempts to teach chimpanzees, etc., various types of sign-language, which shows that, just as many of us have always believed,

Descartes was right after all. Animals do not understand language.

In fiction, I’ll fall for a Bonzo or the signing gorilla in Return to Me as easily as the next person, but in reality, there’s no getting around it: humans are unique. Now if we can just live up to all that implies.

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Renowned?

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Random nowning notes

  • RT @Haunt1013: Happy #WorldPangolinDay! https://t.co/znuJ7ygTHH 1 day ago
  • RT @GrammarGirl: “Bemused” means "confused, bewildered, or baffled" and has nothing to do with amusement or humor or anything funny at all.… 2 days ago
  • RT @PublicMedieval: #KnightFight is @HISTORY’s new reality show where men beat each other to a bloody pulp in medieval(ish) armor. #whatcou… 2 days ago
  • RT @KSPrior: Weird. ⁦@RollingStone⁩ just published a transcript of a conversation I had in my office with a freshman comp student that I fa… 4 days ago
  • RT @CSLewisDaily: “When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is gett… 4 days ago
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“Nowning?”

BUFFY: How do you get to be renowned? I mean, like, do you have to be ‘nowned’ first? WILLOW: Yes, first there’s the painful ‘nowning’ process. (Buffy the Vampire Slayer 4.1 “The Freshman”)

Or Renowning?

And evermo, eternally,
They songe of Fame, as tho herde I: --
`Heried be thou and thy name,
Goddesse of renoun and of fame!' (Geoffrey Chaucer, The House of Fame 1403-6)

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