Author: Walter

later…

I did say I’d keep a travelogue here, and we are on our way,but no, I am keeping this more psyber. However I do have a weblog, more private, and will send you the URL if you like, just email me. This does look like the last post here for a few days though as we travel up the Californian coast.

Chinese Calligraphy

The evaluation of calligraphy thus clearly had an obvious social dimension, but it also had an important natural dimension that should not be overlooked. For example, early critics and connoisseurs often likened its expressive power to elements of the natural world, comparing the movement of the brush to the force of a boulder plummeting down a hillside or to the gracefulness of the fleeting patterns left on the surface of a pond by swimming geese. Writing also would frequently be described in physiological terms that invoked the “bones,” “muscles,” and “flesh” of a line. In short, while calligraphy involves the Confucian emphasis on the social, this cannot be separated from a more Daoist emphasis on the workings of nature.

Found this as part of my reflection about writing on a computer.

http://home.netvigator.com/~kwongkf/4070pg01.htm

For some reason this is the only way this url will go into blogger? What’s going on here? See the earlier post about this essay.

Home Page

“Let us first make an announcement to the gods, saying that we are not going to investigate about them, for we do not claim to be able to do that.” [Socrates, 469-399 BC. Plato, Cratylus

A lot more good quotes to humble an aspiring psychological writer on the same page. Looks like a good site.

Black Rose Books

MCS: Marshall McLuhan Articles.
McLuhan Reconsidered — Jim Andrews
Marshall McLuhan Meets William Gibson in “Cyberspace”
Paul Grosswiler Links to his artiles, including MM and dialectics.

Link

Ta’wil: In the same way as the term mutashabih was understood in contrast with the term muhkam, ta’wil is also to be understood in contrast with tafsir. The simplest meaning of tafsir is that it is a science of understanding the Qur’an or explaining the meanings of God’s words in the Qur’an within the limits of human capacity. [7] The word ta’wil derives from awl in the sense of returning and reverting to something. [8] Both tafsir and ta’wil have been used in the Qur’an in the sense of exposition and explanation (Furqan, 32). Muhammad Hadi Ma’rifat is of the opinion that the word ta’wil occurs seventeen times in the Holy Qur’an;

1. five times in the sense of the ultimate outcome (ma’al; 4:59; 17:35; 7:35 twice; 10:39);
2. eight times in the sense of interpretation of dreams (12:6,21,36,37,44,45, 100, 101), and
3. four times in the sense of interpreting the mutashabih (3:7, twice; 18:78,82).

Some scholars consider ta’wil to mean foregoing the literal meaning of a text for its metaphorical sense without violating the norms of Arabic language for metaphorical usage, and in consonance with metaphorical relations, such as referring to a thing by the name of something similar to it or by its cause or that of something which is closely associated with it. [9] Some have held ta’wil to mean interpretation of mutashlibihat and the finding of a second meaning for the text which is called its inward or esoteric sense (batn) as opposed to its apparent and literal meaning (zahr).

I am following up here to a reference made in an earlier post, where Hillman relates Ta’wil to epistrophe.