Portland Free Philosophy Lectures and Discussions

In our April 30 meeting we’ll continue our look at the revolution in optics in the early 19th century. We will particularly look at how the shift from the corpuscular to the wave theory changed the practice of physics. As Robert Silliman put it, what was happening here was a ’sloughing off the conventions of natural philosophy’. Please read Robert Silliman’s ‘Fresnel and the Emergence of Physics as a Discipline’. If you need a copy of the article send an email to kachelme@gmail.com with ‘send Silliman article’ in the subject line.

Where we’re going in the longer term: For the immediate future we’ll follow up on the revolution in optics. The shift from the corpuscular theory of light to the wave theory concluded in the first half of the
19th century. We will follow some of these developments, culminating in the work of Young, Arago, and Fresnel. But rather than then continuing to follow optics through the 19th century, we’ll back off. In following turns in optics we will have set aside other developments, including those in mathematics and probability, mechanics, thermodynamics, geological sciences, and biology. And we’ll do a little catch-up.

Here is a list of some of the optical-related articles we’ll be covering. There may be small changes, and likely additions, but at least this will give a general idea of where we’re headed:

Geoffrey Cantor, ‘The Reception of the Wave Theory of Light in Britain: A Case Study Illustrating the Role
of Methodology in Scientific Debate’
Thomas Young, ‘The Bakerian lecture in the theory of light and colors’
Thomas Pesic, ‘Thomas Young’s musical optics: Translating sound into light’
In a few weeks we’ll break the optics sequence and begin Ian Hacking’s ‘Representing and intervening’.
When we come back to the 17th
– 19th century, we’ll widen our purview and first take a look at Newton’s
concept of force. We’ll then proceed into mathematical developments and the different ways mechanics
was formatted in the 18th and 19th century. Readings will include:
Jan Rychlewski,
‘The origins of Newton’s mechanics. mass, force, and gravity’
Sandro Caparrini and Craig Fraser, ‘Mechanics in the Eighteenth Century’
Helmut Pulte, ‘Jacobi’s Criticism of Lagrange: The Changing Role of Mathematics in the Foundations of
Classical Mechanics’
Ivor Grattan-Guiness ‘The Varieties of Mechanics by 1800’
Niccolò Guicciardini, ‘Newton's Mathematical Legacy in the Eighteenth Century’
Selected chapters from William Newman’s ‘Newton the alchemist’

This group is more historical and less philosophical (we can even be anti-philosophical at times). Much of the ground we’ll be covering will be in the spirit of Thomas Kuhn. We will be working our way into the 20th century, starting from the 17th century. Enroute they will be plenty of opportunity to look at larger perennial issues such as cause, law, mechanism, and experiment. A previous incarnation of the group made it as far as considering the work of Ernst Mach. In this incarnation we intend to make it further into the quantum world. Neither of us is an expert in the history of science. We come at this with a lot of curiosity and a desire to avoid platitudes, and bring to the group our complementary perspectives from the social and physical sciences.

This critique group is kept private to preserve the privacy of critique submissions. Most don't RSVP on Meetup.

To join, please email Erik at tigurini@protonmail.com and include in your message: (1) A description of your current writing project(s), (2) Your goals for joining this writer's critique group, (3) And a brief history of yourself as a writer, including past projects, education, and related. Your message doesn't have to be anything fancy. We just wish to make sure that you're serious about observing and that your intentions/projects are a good fit for this critique group.

About:
As the title suggests, we critique writing that is speculative (sci-fi, fantasy, horror, surrealism, slipstream, etc.), philosophical (idea-driven, writing with a message, etc.), and experimental (unusual language, visual/musical aspects, transgressive, etc.). All writing submitted for critique should fit at least one of these categories. We are happy to include work in all formats (poetry, prose, playwriting, screenplay, libretto, graphic novel, and hybrid) and for any audiences (adults, YA, and kids).

Some Example Works:
Of course, the written works and authors that inspire us may vary, and widely. Nonetheless, here's a list of some written works and authors that have inspired us, and which we might use as an (incomplete) list of the kind of writing that could be submitted to this critique group.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Ice, Anna Kavan; Blade Runner, Philip K. Dick; The Waves, Virginia Woolf; The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin; The Street of Crocodiles, Bruno Shulz; Stories of Your Life, Ted Chiang; The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser; The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa; The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath, H. P. Lovecraft; Don't Bite The Sun, Tanith Lee; Illuminations, Arthur Rimbaud; The Rings of Saturn, W. G. Sebald; The Three Body Problem, Liu Cixin; Moby Dick, Herman Melville; Kindred, Octavia E Butler; The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood; The Divine Comedy, Dante; The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle; A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen; Les Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire; Blindsight, Peter Watts; The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Leguin; Sweat, Lynn Nottage; The Song of Maldoror, Comte de Lautremont; Solaris, Stanislaw Lem; Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy; Dune, Frank Herbert; Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon.

Critique Group Structure:

• Meets weekly Thursdays from 6:00pm-7:30pm PT / 9:00pm-10:30pm ET
• Submission length maximum: 20,000 words (many submissions are shorter).
• Back-to-back weekly submissions for novelists + long form writers are encouraged.
• Participants are expected to closely read the submission and arrive prepared to discuss it in depth for 1.5 hours.
• If, for whatever reason, a participant can't read the submission in time for our meeting and/or can't attend our meeting, that participant is urged to provide a written (or audio recorded) summary of feedback to the submitting writer through DM on our Discord.
• Active participation is required to ensure all members' best interests. A member can be removed from the group if found absent in critique sessions for more than 3 months. Should one wish to rejoin the group, please message me directly either in Discord or via email.

Community:
We're a serious yet fun group of writers with eclectic projects and tastes. We're always looking to meet new friends and grow our community, so we hope you'll consider observing a critique group - and if we're a good fit for one another, continuing to hang out with us Thursday evenings!

We meet on the Blinding Cyclops Discord server. Join link: https://discord.gg/urPBsNTWuK

You can read our full syllabus under the category "Writer's Critique Groups." The rest of the writer's critique group channels are kept hidden to preserve the privacy of critique submissions, but will be opened up to you when your observation has been confirmed.

Commitments:
This critique group's structure expects a weekly attendance commitment, so it's only right for writers who are committed to writing and critiquing.

Many people today reject the notion of "objective truth" and argue instead that "truth" is socially constructed and varies fro one culture or community to another. Indeed, the establishment of such a conception of truth is supposed to be one of the principal achievements of "postmodernism", as is skepticism about the ability of modern science to transcend such limitations of subjectivity and of culture. This book defends the idea of objective truth and attempts to show that doing so is a matter of considerable political importance. We will consider Chapter 6 plus roughly half of Chapter 7 (up to Section IX, Hawkesworth) in Challenging Postmodernism by David Detmer. (available to read on Internet Archive)