Author: Tetman Callis
“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 a sizeable number of faculty were women and a sizeable number of their students were from racial and ethnic minorities. And the field is yet another thing now, when faculty and students are more likely to encounter texts on screens than anywhere else and everyone is scrambling for positions, funding and status in a shrinking quarter of the academy.” – Barbara Hernnstein Smith, “What Was ‘Close Reading’?”
“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 otherwise commonly encountered.” – Barbara Hernnstein Smith, “What Was ‘Close Reading’?”
“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 a slaveowner, torturer, or wife-beater that his behavior was shameful would have been met with incomprehension, perhaps even indignation.” – George Scialabba, “The Life You Can Save”
“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 to seek for it. The depth is fascinating as a threat and a charm––as the abyss into which man falls when the truth of the depth has drained from the symbols by which he orients his life, and as the source from which a new life of the truth and a new orientation can be drawn.” – Eric Voegelin (quoted by John Bussanich in “Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy of Myth”)
“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 “Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy of Myth”)
“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 “Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy of Myth”)
“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”)
“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 fact that invalidated myths and symbols are replaced by new or revitalized ones.” – John Bussanich, “Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy of Myth”
“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”)
“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”)
“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”
“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”
“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”
“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 resourcing innovation versus verification is a question of research efficiency. How can we maximize the rate of research progress? Innovation points out paths that are possible; replication points out paths that are likely; progress relies on both. The ideal balance is a topic for investigation itself. Scientific incentives—funding, publication, or awards—can be tuned to encourage an optimal balance in the collective effort of discovery. Progress occurs when existing expectations are violated and a surprising result spurs a new investigation. Replication can increase certainty when findings are reproduced and promote innovation when they are not.” – Open Science Collaboration, “Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science”
“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
“There is nothing like live ammunition during a training exercise to get the heart pumping.” – Robert Sterling Rush, Hell in Hürtgen Forest
“Groups of civilians scheduled for induction gathered in their towns and, at least in 1941 and early 1942, typically received a sendoff from town dignitaries and boarded the bus or train to the induction station. Here they joined others from surrounding communities in qualifying for induction into the military. After being read the Articles of War, they were lined up alphabetically, given a cardboard tag to hang around their neck, and began processing. High school graduates took tests to identify psychoses and neuroses and then began their medical processing, while the others took a general literacy test. About fourth grade level was considered passing. Those who passed then formed the line behind the high school graduates, while those who failed were given the ‘Group Target Test’ to determine if they could follow instructions. If they passed, they fell in the medical line behind those who passed the literacy test. Those failing the literacy and Group Target Tests were individually interviewed and if not found malingering were sent home.” – Robert Sterling Rush, Hell in Hürtgen Forest
“You may not be interested in the Revolution, but the Revolution is interested in you.” – Leon Trotsky
“The U.S. soldiers who fought in World War II had the great Depression as their defining experience. Men aged twenty-one in 1941 were nine when the depression began and, regardless of locale, had been through a soul-searching experience along with their families. This period was marked by a dramatic fall in the value of stocks; hundreds of thousands of businesses failed; millions of savings accounts were lost; wages fell an average of 60 percent; and unemployment rose from 9 to 25 percent, which left fifteen million people without jobs. Professional people often took laboring jobs in mills, if they could find them. Or they went door to door trying to sell life insurance for which the insured paid twenty-five cents a week, provided the agent came to the door every week to collect the twenty-five cents. Medical doctors and lawyers were scrounging for ‘nickels and dimes,’ the majority of them barely making a living. Engineers could not find jobs. Occasionally they would be hired, work a few months, then be laid off. Farmers were ‘dirt-poor.’ Salespeople in department stores waited all day for customers who often did not show up. One store had only Ph.D.’s as salespersons. They often worked on commission and frequently had to ask the boss for an advance so they could eat. For those unskilled and undereducated, it was a disaster, as they found the labor-intensive positions they once had filled by those more knowledgeable. Many breadwinners lost faith in themselves and in their government. Because of the widespread poverty, many of those coming of age had dropped out of school to help feed their families. Those who had finished high school and even those who went on to college scrabbled for any work. Many of those who could not find jobs enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps for a dollar a day plus room and board or received jobs through the Works Progress Administration, both products of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.” – Robert Sterling Rush, Hell in Hürtgen Forest
“The most interesting thing for an artist is to pick through the debris of a culture, to look at what’s been forgotten or not really taken seriously. Once something is categorized and accepted, it becomes part of the tyranny of the mainstream, and it loses its potency.” – David Bowie (interviewed by Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times)
“Eternal involvement is the price of democracy.” – George Scialabba, “Only Words”
“The invasion of Iraq was initially portrayed as a response to threats to American security. When these were exposed as nonexistent (indeed, fabricated), a new marketing strategy, ‘democracy promotion,’ was devised by the government and eagerly swallowed by a docile intelligentsia. Meanwhile, the occupying forces moved immediately to accomplish the invasion’s real goals: construction of permanent bases for future Middle East military interventions; exploitation of Iraq’s energy resources; and conversion of the country into a wholly unregulated investors’ paradise. It was a perfectly plausible, entirely cold-blooded imperialist project, though unexpectedly, it failed.” – George Scialabba, “Only Words”
“God’s Word is no longer grace, and grace itself is no longer grace, if we ascribe to man a predisposition towards this Word, a possibility of knowledge regarding it, that is intrinsically and independently native to him.” – Karl Barth, The Church Dogmatics
“Religion’s essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling.” – Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion
“Apart from good life-conduct, anything which the human being supposes that he can do to become well-pleasing to God is merely religious delusion and counterfeit service to God.” – Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason
“People are impressed with numbers, but the mere existence of data that can be quantified and manipulated is no guarantee of valid results.” – John J. Lentini, Scientific Protocols for Fire Investigation, Second Edition
“Any progressive aspects present in capitalist societies stem from resistance to the dependency-creating, de-skilling logic of capitalism, and from ideological, legal, political and physical resistance to capitalist excesses.” – Spencer Dimmock, “The Eastern Origins of Capitalism?”
“It is from the behavior of the stronger that the weaker learn either respect or contempt for the law.” – George Scialabba, “Facing Orwell’s Way”
“Pinned down by the shelling, TF 2 suffered twenty-three casualties during the course of the day [August 11, 1944]. . . . The Americans were desperate enough to ask the local civilians for volunteers willing to go aloft to pinpoint the hidden German batteries. A carpenter from St.-Barthelemy, Victor Guerinel, answered the call. Guerinel, who had secretly wanted to be a pilot for most of his adult life, was overjoyed by the fact that he was finally going to do battle from the air. He was transported by jeep to le Mesnil Rainfray, where he boarded an L-4 artillery observation plane. Flying over the ridges overlooking the beleaguered troops of TF 2, Guerinal spotted eight hidden artillery positions by identifying irregularities in the terrain. As the location of each German battery was confirmed, American artillery began engaging them. . . . Thanks to the courage of the intrepid thirty-nine-year-old Frenchman, the Americans at le Mesnil Tove lost significantly fewer men to incoming shells than during the previous two days.” – Mark J. Reardon, Victory at Mortain
“The flame spread rating of a piece of kiln-dried spruce might be twice that of red oak, but it is exceedingly difficult to ignite, say, a 2 x 4 with anything short of a large fire. Just try lighting a piece of timber with a blowtorch; it goes out when the flame is removed.” – John J. Lentini, Scientific Protocols for Fire Investigation, Second Edition