50 years ago: The death of Bertrand Russell

On February 2, 1970, British philosopher Bertrand Russell died of influenza at the age of 97. Professor Russell was one of the founders of analytic philosophy, and was regarded as one of the 20th century's foremost logicians. His most famous book, written with Alfred North Whitehead, was the three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910-1913). Prof. Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950 "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought." Prof. Russell was known for campaigning against nuclear arms, but it was less well-known that for several years in the late 1940s he advocated a pre-emptive nuclear strike by the U.S.A. against the U.S.S.R.

On the subject of religion, Prof. Russell said, in 1947: "Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line." He was a member of the Advisory Council of the British Humanist Association and President of Cardiff Humanists until his death.

Rabi Maharaj, in his autobiography Death of a Guru (1977, p. 129) offered the following comment on one of Prof. Russell’s best-known books: "Why I am Not a Christian had turned out to be a disappointment...Russell’s arguments were weak and contrived, and the more I read of why he had not become a Christian, the more convinced I became that I must become one--the evidence demanded it." Malcolm Muggeridge said of Prof. Russell: "He had no heart at all." Paul Johnson included a chapter on Prof. Russell in his book Intellectuals (1988), which I recommend.

Scientists use computer to "prove" the existence of God

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Romans 1:20

As the passage above indicates, God has already given us the ability to know that He exists, apart from any mathematical theorems. A backlog item, as reported by Zachary Stieber in The Epoch Times, October 30, 2013 (updated October 31, 2013) (link in original):

Two scientists believe that they have proven that God exists.

Analyzing a theorem from the late Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel with a Macbook has proven that God exists, say the two scientists–Christoph Benzmüller of Berlin’s Free University and his colleague, Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo of the Technical University in Vienna.

Gödel’s theorem is based on modal logic, a type of formal logic that, narrowly defined, involves the use of the expressions “necessarily” and “possibly,” according to Stanford University.

The theorem says that God, or a supreme being, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding. If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God must exist.

Paleo and Benzmüller say that they have proven that the theorem is correct, at least on a mathematical level.

In their initial submission on a research server, “Formalization, Mechanization and Automation of Gödel’s Proof of God’s Existence,” the pair say that “Goedel’s ontological proof has been analysed for the first-time with an unprecedent degree of detail and formality with the help of higher-order theorem provers.”

They add: “The following has been done (and in this order): A detailed natural deduction proof. A formalization of the axioms, definitions and theorems in the TPTP THF syntax. Automatic verification of the consistency of the axioms and definitions with Nitpick. Automatic demonstration of the theorems with the provers LEO-II and Satallax. A step-by-step formalization using the Coq proof assistant. A formalization using the Isabelle proof assistant, where the theorems (and some additional lemmata) have been automated with Sledgehammer and Metis.”

Benzmüller told Der Spiegel that it’s fascinating how the theorem could be analyzed through mathematics.

“It’s totally amazing that from this argument led by Gödel, all this stuff can be proven automatically in a few seconds or even less on a standard notebook,” he said.

The mathematicians say that their proof of Gödel’s axioms has more to do with demonstrating how superior technology can help bring about new achievements in science.

“I didn’t know it would create such a huge public interest but (Gödel’s ontological proof) was definitely a better example than something inaccessible in mathematics or artificial intelligence,” Benzmüller said. “It’s a very small, crisp thing, because we are just dealing with six axioms in a little theorem. … There might be other things that use similar logic. Can we develop computer systems to check each single step and make sure they are now right?”

The scientists believe that their work can benefit areas such as artificial intelligence and the verification of software and hardware.

Click on the link for the original submission Formalization, Mechanization and Automation of Gödel's Proof of God's Existence by Christoph Benzmüller, Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo, August 21, 2013, last revised September 10, 2013.

200 years ago: The birth of Soren Kierkegaard

May 5, 2013 marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Mr. Kierkegaard has been called the father of existentialism, and his ideas tremendously influenced the 20th century strain of pseudo-Christian liberalism known as Neo-Orthodoxy. He believed that truth was subjective rather than objective, and that one comes to knowledge of God through mystical experience. As Francis Schaeffer argued, "Through a "leap of faith" one must try to find meaning without reason...optimism will now always be in the area of non-reason." (How Should We Then Live?, 1976, p. 163).

Mr. Kierkegaard, who died on November 13, 1855 at the age of 42, is one of the figures profiled in Dave Breese's book 7 Men Who Rule the World from the Grave (1980) and in Brannon Howse's book Grave Influence (2009).

I don't have the desire or energy to do a long-winded post on Mr. Kierkegaard, but I recommend the books mentioned above (as well as Francis Schaeffer's book Escape from Reason (1968)) for further information on Soren Kierkegaard and his effect on modern Western philosophy and theology.

20 years ago: The death of John Cage

On August 12, 1992, American composer John Cage died at the age of 79, just a few weeks short of 80. Mr. Cage was known for “compositions” such as 4’33” (four minutes, thirty-three seconds) (1952) that illustrated his belief in the existence of an impersonal universe and blind chance, rather than an infinite and personal God. American musicologist and critic Sigmund Spaeth, in his book The Art of Enjoying Music (1949), defined music as “the organization of sound toward beauty,” thereby implying that there is such a thing as beauty that we can appreciate. Mr. Cage’s “compositions” wouldn’t qualify as music according to Mr. Spaeth’s definition.

Francis Schaeffer, in his book The God Who is There (1968), devoted several pages to Mr. Cage as an example of modern mysticism:

If God exists and we are made in His image we can have real meaning, and we can have real knowledge through what He has communicated to us. If this is taken away we are left only with man and his finite self-expression. At his point all one has is the expression of the individual man. But Cage quite logically sees that this will not do, and so he carries man’s dilemma further, smashes self-expression and leaves chance speaking. This is the basis of his music…

…Back in the Chinese culture long ago the Chinese had worked out a system of tossing coins or yarrow sticks by means of which the spirits would speak. The complicated method which they developed made sure that the person doing the tossing could not allow his own personality to intervene. Self-expression was eliminated so that the spirits could speak.

Cage picks up this same system and uses it. He too seeks to get rid of any individual expression in his music. But there is a very great difference. As far as Cage is concerned there is nobody there to speak. There is only an impersonal universe speaking through blind chance.

Cage began to compose his music through the tossing of coins. It is said that for some of his pieces lasting only twenty minutes he has tossed the coin thousands of times. This is pure chance, but apparently not pure enough; he wanted still more chance. So he devised a mechanical conductor. It was a machine working on cams, the motion of which cannot be determined ahead of time, and the musicians just followed this. Or as an alternative to this, sometimes he employed two conductors who could not see each other, both conducting simultaneously; anything, in fact, to produce pure chance. But in Cage’s universe nothing comes through in the music except noise and confusion or total silence. All this is below the line of anthropology. Above the line there is nothing personal, only the philosophic other, or the impersonal everything.

There is a story that once, after the musicians had played Cage’s total chance music, as he was bowing to acknowledge the applause, there was a noise behind him. He thought it sounded like steam escaping from somewhere, but then to his dismay realised it was the musicians behind him who were hissing. Often his works have been booed. However, when the audience boos at him they are, if they are modern men, in reality booing the logical conclusion of their own position as it strikes their ears in music.

Cage himself, however, even though he continues to compose such chance music, is another example of a man who cannot live with his own conclusions. He says that the truth about the universe is a totally chance situation. You must live with it and listen to it; cry if you must, swear if you must, but listen and go on listening.

(pp. 71-73)
Mr. Schaeffer then quotes from a profile of Mr. Cage by Calvin Tomkins in the November 28, 1964 issue of The New Yorker where it states that Mr. Cage had become so interested in the mushrooms growing near his home that he had become one of the best mycologists in the United States. Mr. Cage admitted that when it came to identifying mushrooms, he couldn’t approach them according to his ideas of chance, because it would kill him. Mr. Schaeffer comments:

In other words, here is a man who is trying to teach the world what the universe intrinsically is and what the real philosophy of life is, and yet he cannot even apply it to picking mushrooms. If he were to go out into the woods and begin picking mushrooms by chance, within a couple of days there would be no Cage!

We have said before that the ideas of modern man are destroying what man is himself. But not only that, their views cut right across what the existence of the form and structure of the external universe would indicate as well. As we see in the dilemma of Cage and his mushrooms, they cannot live on the basis of a consistent application of their views in regard to the universe, any more than they can in regard to man.

However, while Cage is forced into a hopeless dichotomy with his mushrooms, with his music he has continued to live consistently with is position, even though his music is nothing more than noise or silence. He has resisted the pressure to dress up impersonal Being in connotation words or sounds. Most modern men have not had this much courage.

(p. 74)

Beauty may be returning to art

As time has gone on, people in Western culture have become surrounded by an almost monolithic consensus. That is to say, the same basic dichotomy—in which reason leads to pessimism and all optimism is in the area of non-reason—surrounds us on every side and comes to us from almost every quarter. In the various disciplines, the first place this perspective was taught was in philosophy…Then it was presented through art…

…as art became the vehicle for modern man’s view of the fragmentation of truth and life.

As philosophy had moved from unity to a fragmentation, this fragmentation also carried into the field of painting. The fragmentation shown in post-Impressionist paintings was parallel to the loss of a hope for a unity of knowledge in philosophy. It was not just a new technique in painting. It expressed a world view…

…The historical flow is like this: The philosophers from Rousseau, Kant, Hegel and Kierkegaard onward, having lost their hope of a unity of knowledge and a unity of life, presented a fragmented concept of reality; then the artists painted that way. It was the artists, however, who first understood that the end of this view was the absurdity of all things. Temporally these artists followed the philosophers, as the artists of the Renaissance had followed Thomas Aquinas. In the Renaissance it was also philosophy, followed by the painters (Cimabue and Giotto), followed by the writers (Dante). This was the same order in which the concept of fragmented reality spread in the twentieth century. The philosophers first formulated intellectually what the artists later depicted artistically.

Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? (1976), pp. 183, 184, 190


And now, for some good news: It seems that beauty and realism may be returning to art. As reported by Evan Mantyk in The Epoch Times, March 7, 2012:

NEW YORK—A new vigor for classical arts, like another Renaissance, is in the air at the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art, in Manhattan, where the lifelike sculptures of Sabin Howard are now on exhibit through March 22.

“Real art uplifts you, it transforms you,” said award-winning novelist Traci L. Slatton, who is also Howard’s wife.

Under the various banners of classicism, realism, and art that is simply “uplifting,” Slatton and other accomplished professionals from the art and literary world gathered on March 2 to celebrate Howard’s works—many of which depict gods in the Greek and Roman tradition and took Howard years to create.

“Looking is the point, beauty is the point, mastery is the point,” said Slatton in an opening speech that condemned the highly conceptual direction of abstract and contemporary art today. “Sabin Howard’s pieces lack irony; this is a deliberate choice.”

The event was not simply an exhibit but a call for a revival of traditional techniques and uplifting subject matter.

Stefano Acunto, chairman of the Italian Academy Foundation, which hosted the exhibit, implored, “Let us work to build upon the work of the greatest achievers, to improve upon it, and to develop it organically—much as Sabin Howard is doing.”

To this end, Acunto, who is also an honorary vice consul of Italy, released a new 10-point art manifesto at the event. A few of the points include “demand elevation, not degradation in subject matter and focus”; “seek reason and clarity, instead of celebrating unreason and emptiness”; and “cultivate devotion to the classics in every form.”

Lamenting the current state of the art world, Acunto said, “Our art spurns reason in a tipsy, self-inebriated and self-anointed binge of self-expression, attempting to capture the soul of our age by holding up a mirror of its very emptiness.”

One Hundred Years
Some of the speakers said the contemporary art world has been off-track for as long as 100 years.

Slatton pointed to artist Marcel Duchamp, who was known as a Dadaist and Surrealist. Duchamp’s 1917 work “Fountain” is, at least, on a superficial level, a urinal hoisted on a pedestal.

“It would have been fine for five or ten minutes of intellectual entertainment or shock value, but it’s 100 years later and art is still being flushed down the toilet,” Slatton said. “I’m here to tell you, the emperor has no clothes.”

James E. Cooper, editor of American Arts Quarterly, puts the point of initial decline somewhere between World War I and World War II, with the decline gradually becoming more pronounced. He said he could see the change when he was attending the Pratt Institute. At first, he said such art institutions had it right.

“The idea of discipline, of the academy, of tradition, of virtue, of morality, of excellence, of beauty, of God, of spirituality, of inspirations, were structured into an art education,” said Cooper.

Then Cooper went away to fight in the Korean War for three years and returned to find things had changed at the Pratt.

“All over the walls were white paintings, black paintings, just a white square [in the painting], a black square, a white square in a black square, a black square in a white square, ad infinitum,” he said.

Cooper said he understands the original intent of such works. Artists in Europe felt like they couldn’t trust people who ran their countries, so they used art as a form of protest. But questioning tradition only goes so far, he found.

“There’s one thing that the modernists didn’t truly understand because they were so full of dedication and promise to changing the future. They didn’t realize that without a story, without a myth, without a sense of history, without a sense of philosophy, without a tie to Western civilization, or whatever civilization, you cannot create great art,” Cooper said.

‘Morbidly Inflated’
Today, after decades of modern art that has run counter to what Cooper has called “great art,” a large portion of the art market has begun to thrive on such modern art.

“The art market is self-generating, like an inflated economy, the currency is essentially morbidly inflated,” Acunto said. “I’m telling you what you know but what is simply not said.”

But the speakers found hope in works like those of Sabin Howard that embrace tradition and are still selling well. Howard’s newest series of sculptures are selling in the six-figure range, and his prospective buyers include the likes of Elton John.

Peter Trippi, editor of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine and former director of the Dahesh Museum of Art, confirmed this trend.

“There is a market there, and it’s definitely getting healthier,” Trippi said.

Trippi also said that art education around the country is slowly changing, with many students seeking out traditional arts outside of universities.

“Rest assured, there are energetic and really talented young people out there who want to make art like this,” he said, pointing to Howard’s sculpture.

Instead of going to universities to get regular bachelor of fine arts degrees, many students are instead opting for earning certificates at ateliers that specialize in classical arts.

“The good news is those programs are working out really well. Slowly we are seeing the universities offer programs that resemble those ateliers because they know where the bread is buttered, and they know that they have to keep an eye on that market of young people,” Trippi said.

‘You know if it’s great’
Laz Avlon, a fashion model and blogger attending the presentation, said it made sense to him. “I think most people agree but they don’t feel like saying anything,” Avlon said. “They go into the art galleries, they see things, but they don’t feel it’s their place to criticize.”

“The speakers [at the presentation] use the word ‘discern’; most people don’t discern anymore.” He said people go into an art gallery, and they all scratch their chins and muse, but they know in their hearts.

He related a recent experience when he went to an art viewing in the Lower East Side, and the piece on view was simply a carpet rolled up. “It wasn’t even a rug. … It was just a carpet,” Avlon said.

“When you see something, right away you know if it’s great,” he said.

As reported by Zachary Stieber in The Epoch Times, May 11, 2012 (updated May 17, 2012):

NEW YORK—Patricia Watwood and two other artists came together at the Forbes Galleries, where she currently has an exhibition through June 9, to espouse the virtues of contemporary classical realist art while searching for clarity about the oft-misunderstood field.

“Our work is not usually ironic, overly self-reflective, morbid, or nihilistic,“ she explained. “It’s based in traditional methods, it embraces beauty as an emotional and rhetorical language, it uses naturalistic representation, and it is built on the twin cores of Western art—nature and design.”

Many portraits are featured in Watwood’s exhibition, including her daughter, lost in a Harry Potter novel while waiting for dinner; a female Middle Eastern neighbor, depicting how all cultures are human; and two self-portraits, one done while she was pregnant.

The figures provoke contemplation and evoke sensitivity. A fair number are nudes, painted in a similar fashion to what one might see at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., circa the 13th and 14th centuries.

Her highest aspiration is to create artworks that bring a magical and spiritual energy to the viewer.

She said that she and the two other artists “haven’t seen any need to overthrow traditional forms.” “These traditional forms continue to work exactly, perfectly well, to wrestle with this idea about what does it mean to be human, how do we address that in art—that’s what we’re interested in,” she added.

People may have a perception of realism that it is just looking and painting. The process is “actually a complete transformation of looking, thinking, meditating, creating,” Watwood said.

She then read a quote from Sabin Howard’s and her former teacher: “I try to make art which reaffirms to the viewer that there is a value in human life. It should fire the sense that one is not alone, and that one is part of a group with similar needs, longing, hopes, dreams, fears, desires, which transcend time.”

“There is time enough for the things we value: time to craft a painting, to study, to learn, to enjoy, to sit still, and to contemplate a picture and the world it contains,” Peter Trippi, art historian and editor of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine, quoted Watwood in his introduction to the exhibition.

Trippi added, “Beyond their sheer beauty, what excites me the most [about the paintings], is their enveloping stillness...”

...Through her art, Watwood said she wants to communicate and make people care about the world and the subject in the painting. In her notes, she expressed a desire for her paintings to connect spiritually with both subjects and viewers and also to be “visual poems awaiting your interpretations...”

...Myths and legends—which many traditional works are based on—provide excellent opportunities to express different ideals about what it means to be a human being, spirituality without being stuck in a certain religion, and the big questions of our time, Watwood said. She and Howard noted the shift back toward heroism in popular culture, several days before “The Avengers” came to the theaters.

Howard often sculpts Greek gods, using the mythology as a springboard to evoke visceral reactions from people.

“When you do it correctly, it’s so complicated, a painting or a sculpture, that it mimics the rest of the universe because you have this system of hierarchy where all the smaller parts fit correctly into the larger parts,” he said.

“That visual complexity triggers something in you in a visceral way that there’s no way you can stop it. This is a new wave that’s starting to fall and it’s shifting in a way that I really believe is unstoppable,” Howard said.