Dante protects his copyright.
. . Certainly no poet could any longer expect, as Dante Alighieri could, to hear his verses being sung. One day in Florence Dante had left the house after eating and while passing through Porta San Pietro, came upon “a smith who was beating iron on the anvil and singing Dante the way one sings a popular poem and mixing his verses up, shortening some and lengthening others, so that it seemed to Dante that he was receiving a great injury from the fellow.” Without a word Dante went into the man’s workshop and threw his tongs, his hammer, his balances. and all his other implements into the street. When the smith remonstrated loudly at finding himself stripped of the tools of his trade and blocked from exercising his own special skill, the poet replied, “You are singing from my work. But not the way I wrote it; I have no other art and you: are ruining it for me.”
Chiara Frugoni Frugoni, Arsenio., A day in a medieval city (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) P. 45
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Intelligent Design: Ritual vs. Science
The world looks so different after learning science. For example, the trees are made of air, primarily. When they are burned, they go back to air, and in the flaming heat is released the flaming heat of the sun which was bound in to convert the air into trees, and in the ash is the small remnant of the part which did not come from air, that came from the solid earth, instead.
These are beautiful things, and the content of science is wonderfully full of them. They are very inspiring, and they can be used to inspire others.
Another of the qualities of science is that it teaches the value of rational thought, as well as the importance of freedom of thought; the positive results that come from doubting that the lessons are all true. You must here distinguish -- especially in teaching -- -the science from the forms or procedures that are sometimes used in developing science. It is easy to say, "We write, experiment, and observe, and do this or that." You can copy that form exactly. But great religions are dissipated by following form without remembering the direct content of the teaching of the great leaders. In the same way it is possible to follow form and call it science but it is pseudoscience. In this way we all suffer from the kind of tyranny we have today in the many institutions that have come under the influence of pseudoscientific advisers.
Richard P. Feynman
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
The world looks so different after learning science. For example, the trees are made of air, primarily. When they are burned, they go back to air, and in the flaming heat is released the flaming heat of the sun which was bound in to convert the air into trees, and in the ash is the small remnant of the part which did not come from air, that came from the solid earth, instead.
These are beautiful things, and the content of science is wonderfully full of them. They are very inspiring, and they can be used to inspire others.
Another of the qualities of science is that it teaches the value of rational thought, as well as the importance of freedom of thought; the positive results that come from doubting that the lessons are all true. You must here distinguish -- especially in teaching -- -the science from the forms or procedures that are sometimes used in developing science. It is easy to say, "We write, experiment, and observe, and do this or that." You can copy that form exactly. But great religions are dissipated by following form without remembering the direct content of the teaching of the great leaders. In the same way it is possible to follow form and call it science but it is pseudoscience. In this way we all suffer from the kind of tyranny we have today in the many institutions that have come under the influence of pseudoscientific advisers.
Richard P. Feynman
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
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