Blog #4

Sophie’s World Response:

            At this point in time, I have just finished reading “Berkeley”. It is constantly engaging, but becoming almost frustrating because we have become tantalizingly close to finding the truth about Hilde and her father, but haven’t quite reached it. It is like an asymptote in math, getting closer and closer to the boundary, without ever touching it (sorry, wrong subject…let me put my philosophy brain back on… OK good).

            While I was reading this, I kept thinking about a couple of the questions on the Scale of Doubt Quiz I took in class. The questions were “Do you believe that things should be admitted as evidence in establishing reality?” And, “Do you believe that the world is not completely knowable by science?”  What I found interesting, and even ironic, while reading the book was that Sophie has been learning these philosophical ideas, to try and interpret the world what goes on in it. The strange thing that is with all the Hilde things going on, the world is presenting her with things that are completely beyond science, reason, or explanation. A talking dog. A random cross appearing by her pillow. An airplane saying “Happy Birthday Hilde”. It is like the world is throwing her curveballs, and Sophie is unprepared. At the end she tells her mother during the storm, “It’s like a bad dream.”  It is similar to Inception, it is like Sophie is waiting for the train (the secret to Hilde), she doesn’t know where it will take her, or if it will arrive, but she has to find the idea to know what really is going on with Hilde, to explain these strange occurrences.

Real World Application:

           

            During my Scale of Doubt Quiz, I thought about the question “Do you believe that the world is not completely knowable by science?”  I believe in God, but I also believe in science, and science can be very useful to explain the things we see on Earth. What I wonder about is how we were able to discover the things we know. Some scientific things can be easy to measure, like gravity, but some of the more intricate things make me wonder. How were we able to find out so much about atoms, or protons and electrons when they’re so freaking small? How could we know so much about other galaxies and when they’re so far away! I believe that atoms and other planets exist, but it is incredible to find out so much about things seemingly beyond our grasp.

            In my health class last year I saw the movie And the Band Played On. It starred Matthew Modine was based on the true story of how we discovered AIDS. It was a disease that was killing people left and right, seemingly impossible to predict or keep track of. Modine’s team spent years in the lab, and in different countries and spend millions of dollars trying to find solutions. They had taken all that risk, and in the end, it could’ve all been for naught, to a danger that they had no idea of. Lo and behold, the team eventually found information and we as a society have made a lot more progress on fighting AIDS than 30 years ago. We have gained knowledge on a seemingly unknowable thing. We will never know everything about the world, but we are making good progress.

Response #3

Sophie’s World Response:

I haven’t read much farther in Sophie’s World at the moment, so here are some more thoughts on the parts I have read.

The first thing I am going to say doesn’t really have anything to do with the plot, but how does Alberto manage to rattle off giant blurbs (“And then came along the English physicist Isaac Newton, who live from 1642 to 1747…”) about these different philosophers and ideas? It’s unbelievable. I understood when he typed things in a textbook-type format and sent them to Sophie, but when he sees her, it’s like he is the textbook. There’s no way he could remember all that without preparing what he says first, or else he has an IQ of around 9000.

My other thought is that I think something major is about to happen. I think that Hilde’s dad will make an appearance soon, or Hilde herself will be revealed, or that all these shenanigans could be all part of a learning experience between everybody. I also think that Alberto is all part of this, as much as he is displeased by the actions of Hilde’s father. He has already called Sophie “Hilde” a couple of times, and he always seems to run into the traps of Hilde’s father, and I think it could be intentional at this point. Of course, maybe Alberto is trying to get away from him, but he is running out of places to hide. I mentioned No Country for Old Men in my last post, and at this point in the book (through “Descartes”), it’s gotten to the point where Hilde’s father has infiltrated Alberto’s computer. I think like Llewelyn running away from Anton, Alberto is being foolish trying to outrun a force that he can’t escape from. 

Real World Response:

It seems to be an ongoing trend for me to try and find philosophical things in every movie that I watch, so when I stumbled across The Usual Suspects on HBO, it was inevitable that I was going to write about it here.

Basically what happens is that five conmen (McManus, Keaton, Fenster, Hockney, and Verbal) are arrested, but are eventually released. They decide to take revenge on the police by performing a bunch of different operations, and while doing so, the get on the bad side of a man named Keyser Soze, an absolutely insane, evil person ever known, almost to the point of urban legend. The movie eventually leads to a boat shootout, where Verbal is one of only two survivors. The police interrogate Verbal in a quest to find out who Keyser really is.      

            What I realized watching this was that the idea of Pantheism is displayed in the movie, where Keyser Soze was connected in everything, like Giordano Bruno believed that all things were connected by the spirit of God. As quoted by Verbal:

“Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.”

“He lets the last Hungarian go. He waits until his wife and kids are in the ground and then he goes after the rest of the mob. He kills their kids, he kills their wives, he kills their parents and their parents' friends. He burns down the houses they live in and the stores they work in, he kills people that owe them money. And like that he was gone. Underground. Nobody has ever seen him since.”

While God certainly isn’t as evil as Keyser Soze, they have a similar influence on people. Like God, there are people who believe or don’t believe in Keyser Soze. And in the movie, the people that do believe in him believe that he could be anywhere, and connected with everything, like the idea of Pantheism with God, where everything was connected through Him. I wonder if the makers of the movie ever thought of it that way.

(And like that, poof, the analysis is gone!)

Response #2

Sophie’s World Response:

Having read through “The Baroque Era”, I don’t really know what to think. On one hand, the philosophy parts of the book have been informative. It was interesting seeing how the major religions have similar philosophical ideas (on that note, it seems a little strange that Jews, Christians, and Muslims have been constantly fighting even though all the religions share Semitic cultural ideas). It was also cool to read about the scientists from the Renaissance, like Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. I recently learned about them in physics, so it was nice to see their ideas in a different, philosophical context.

On the other hand, the narrative of Sophie’s World has gotten stranger and stranger (like the officiating of the Lions-Cowboys playoff game, sigh). Some of the events are just plain bizarre. For example, when Sophie sees Hilde in the mirror and all the postcards from Hilde’s father. Some of the events make me wonder if they are no longer coincidence and instead part of something bigger, (like Sophie finding the cross under her pillow, or the money on the street, or the officiating of the Lions-Cowboys playoff game, double sigh). I mentioned in my last post how Sophie, Alberto, and her mother are symbolic of early philosophers. At this point in the book, Sophie’s mom is less involved, but could Hilde’s father have something to do with it. Could those three be like river mentioned in “Two Worlds”, “The Middle Ages” and “The Renaissance” where they “are together, split apart, and come together”? If so, why is Alberto trying to hide from Hilde’s dad? Will the three converge at some point? If they do, could it all just be a big, happy learning experience? Could Alberto be slipping by calling Sophie “Hilde”? I have no idea. Strange indeed.

Real World Response:

            Over break I saw the Coen Brothers’ movie No Country for Old Men. It was dark, violent, but also slightly funny. It was also an excellent movie. Being the budding philosopher I am, I noticed some interesting parallels between the main characters and the four Hellenistic Philosophies we learned about. The simplified version of the plot is this. In West Texas, a man named Llewelyn is out hunting deer when he comes across a drug deal and shootout. He finds no survivors but a briefcase with money. He takes the money and runs. Unfortunately, a cold-blooded, ruthless hitman named Anton learns about this and pursues Llewelyn. While this game of cat and mouse develops, sheriff Ed, tries to pursue the both of them, but is always a step behind.

            More than anything else, this movie was about the clashing styles and philosophies of the main characters. Llewelyn was an Epicurian, he was carpe diem, he took the money and ran. Epicureans believed in maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, which was what he tried to do. As it became apparent that it would be nearly impossible to escape from Anton with the money, he focused on simply making sure he survived each hour. Anton was more of a skeptic. We don’t know any of his motives except to get the money. Like Skeptics, he was materialistic, what you saw was what you got. He only killed the people he had to, and the others, he left to pure chance, flipping a coin at some points, “This is the best I can do…The coin got here the same way I did.” Lastly, Ed the sheriff was a Stoic. As much as he wanted order and control of the area, he realized that it was impossible to get. He wanted to stop Anton and save Llewelyn, but he realized that he was always one step behind and getting too old, so he just had to get out of the way and let things happen.