The Art of Tetman Callis

“The hacks of academe (new generation) have put it about that everything is political, especially textual analyses of great literature that reveal, through the application of emancipatory ideology and subversive wordplay, that the past was even less enlightened than the present. Besides allowing critical minnows to patronize artistic whales, this approach frees academic literary intellectuals […]

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“However far you extend a horizontal, it will not turn vertical.” – Timothy Williamson Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“There is something unbearably poignant about the human desire to know and be known, eternally at odds with the need for privacy and self-protection. We each are separated from one another by the things we keep secret or are unable to express; that distance, no matter how slender, imparts a loneliness to our existence that […]

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“To feel for someone with whom you fundamentally disagree takes a certain amount of perseverance.” – Averil Dean, The Undoing Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Everyone is stuck inside a doorless room. No one gets into anyone else’s head. Nobody can ever really get out of their own.” – Averil Dean, The Undoing Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“You can tell the quality of a piece by the parts that aren’t supposed to show.” – Averil Dean, The Undoing Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Sexual ambiguity was an ethic of sorts—a knight’s move in the face of the fixed options of straight (and possibly also gay) identity.” – Brian Dillon, “Notes on Bowie” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Why not lay aside questions of ultimate meaning for as long as there is unnecessary suffering in the world? I don’t mean necessary suffering, like disappointed love or the infirmities of age. I mean wholly unnecessary suffering, like undernourished, illiterate, or malarial children. When there are no more such, then let us begin asking again […]

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“The burden of freedom, the responsibility of finding—or creating—one’s own purpose and meaning without the guidance of authoritative inherited creeds and values, is too heavy for all but a few. The rest of us cannot endure for long the tensions of uncertainty. We must, at some point, stop questioning, quiet our doubts, turn away from […]

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6.1 Compare all the known data. 6.2 Determine whether the data support the hypothesis. 6.3 In the event that there are data that contradict the hypothesis, examine the data for credibility. 6.3.1 If the data that contradict the hypothesis appear credible, formulate a new hypothesis and begin the process again. 6.4 If all known credible […]

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“All soldiers wanted to get the war over without being killed or wounded too seriously, but in the infantry this goal was especially difficult. Most quickly realized that once on the front line, the only way to leave while the war lasted was by stretcher.” – Robert Sterling Rush, Hell in Hürtgen Forest Share this… […]

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“Soldiers became so tired that they drifted into sleep at the slightest slackening of effort, and leaders, themselves exhausted, found one of their greatest problems was keeping them awake. Soldiers could not remember what happened the previous day and found events blurring into one another. Even with their well-being dependent upon remaining alert, the soldiers […]

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“The soldiers of the regiment had been in the forest for twelve days. Their miserable existence consisted of dripping rain through the trees, endless mud, staying in wet clothes, never getting warm, no hot food, not enough sleep, and laying awake at night shivering, wrapped in raincoats in foxholes filled with cold water. Then, of […]

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“The interest and utility of close reading do not vanish in the face of digital libraries or ubiquitous computation. On the contrary, in the century upon us, where channels of communication are not only increasingly computerized but also increasingly corporatized and where texts of all kinds are turned to manipulative ends with digitally multiplied effectiveness, […]

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“The developments to which scholars were responding during the twentieth century were quite significant. Literary study was one thing when a small number of Christian men were teaching the professionally aspiring sons of fellow professionals. It became another when members of an expanding professoriate were teaching students from middle- and working-class families or, later, when […]

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“Full-dress close readings, now as ever, can be showy or strained. They can also be dim, thin, derivative or pedestrian and, when motivated by a history of injury, sulky or venomous. But, now as ever, they can offer those who hear or read them potentially illuminating engagements with regions of language, thought and experience not […]

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“Five hundred years ago, slavery was the most natural thing in the world. So was the torture of criminal suspects, convicts, and heretics. So was the virtual ownership—and regular physical chastisement—of women by their fathers or husbands. Most of us (I hope) now abhor these things, but anyone time-traveling back to that era who informed […]

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“A descent into the depth will be indicated when the light of truth has dimmed and its symbols are losing their credibility; when the night is sinking on the symbols that have had their day, one must return to the night of the depth that is luminous with truth to the man who is willing […]

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“Only in the shelter of the myth can the sectors of the personality that are closer to the waking consciousness unfold their potentiality; and without the ordering of the whole personality by the truth of the myth the secondary intellectual and moral powers would lose their direction.” – Eric Voegelin (quoted by John Bussanich in […]

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“The myth itself authenticates its truth because the forces that animate its imagery are at the same time its subject matter. A myth can never be ‘untrue’ because it would not exist unless it had its experiential basis in the movements of the soul that it symbolizes.” – Eric Voegelin (quoted by John Bussanich in […]

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“We still are living in the reality of the cosmos and not in the universe of physics, the brainwashing propaganda of our scientistic ideologues notwithstanding.” – Eric Voegelin (quoted by John Bussanich in “Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy of Myth”) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“In a very deep sense mythical symbols are unavoidable for humans because reality transcends all types of representation and because our formulations cannot dispense completely with concrete phenomena. . . . Although over time particular symbols and myths may become referentially opaque, the realities symbolized do not cease to exist, which is evidenced by the […]

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“No more than the truth of myth can the truth of reason be conveyed by information; it must be acquired by an act of meditative articulation.” – Eric Voegelin (quoted by John Bussanich in “Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy of Myth”) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Every concrete symbol is true insofar as it envisages the truth, but none is completely true insofar as the truth about being is essentially beyond human reach.” – Eric Voegelin (quoted by John Bussanich in “Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy of Myth”) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Accumulating evidence is the scientific community’s method of self-correction and is the best available option for achieving that ultimate goal: truth.” – Open Science Collaboration, “Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The scientific process is not ideological. Science does not always provide comfort for what we wish to be; it confronts us with what is.” – Open Science Collaboration, “Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Scientific progress is a cumulative process of uncertainty reduction that can only succeed if science itself remains the greatest skeptic of its explanatory claims.” – Open Science Collaboration, “Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Innovation is the engine of discovery and is vital for a productive, effective scientific enterprise. However, innovative ideas become old news fast. Journal reviewers and editors may dismiss a new test of a published idea as unoriginal. The claim that ‘we already know this’ belies the uncertainty of scientific evidence. Deciding the ideal balance of […]

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“German division commanders in the Hürtgen sector issued emphatic orders to their soldiers not to retreat. Many of their soldiers followed the letter, if not the spirit, of the orders by surrendering at the first opportunity.” – Robert Sterling Rush, Hell in Hürtgen Forest Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“There is nothing like live ammunition during a training exercise to get the heart pumping.” – Robert Sterling Rush, Hell in Hürtgen Forest Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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