Transcript
Inside Plato’s Cave
Prof. AlvaradoMDST 3703
3 September 2013
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Review
“Programming is about choices and constraints, and about how you choose to model some select slice of the world around you in the formal environment of a computer. This idea of modeling is vital, and what I think was missing from those early undergraduate courses I took. If only someone had told me I wasn't learning to manage a hardware store, I was learning to build models.”
Kirshenbaum, “Hello Worlds”
What did we model in studio?
So, computers are media for the representation of “worlds”
Programming is more about creating models than it is about
“computation” per se
“Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.”
Plato, The Republic, Book VII, Paragraph 1
What does this remind you of?
Plato’s cave is a metaphor of the unknown and ignorance.
Plato’s cave illustrates that reality is personal and contextual.
The nature of any person’s reality is such that it is fabricated in their own head from electronic signals relaying information gathered from imperfect sensory equipment.
The freed prisoner’s emergence from the dark into the light reminds me of myself leaving a small rural town for UVa.
Plato’s cave ultimately seems to be about the effects of education, specifically higher education, in our lives and society.
Plato’s cave reminds me of how people sometimes react to new developments in technology.
But what does the image of the cave itself remind you of?
What does the apparatus remind you of?
This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I'm offering is the truth – nothing more.
If the cave is an allegory, what do the parts map onto?
Shadows, Fire, PuppetsSlaves, Puppeteers
The Sun, above ground …
Plato’s Theory of Forms
• Plato believed that experience is a reflection of an unseen world of forms– All things in the world are imperfect copies of ideal
forms– For example, circles and points in geometry
• Art and poetry are bad because they are imitations of imitations– For example, a painting of table is a corrupt version
of a real table, which is already a copy of a form
“Beds, then, are of three kinds, and there are three artists who superintend them: God, the maker of the bed, and the painter.”
Plato, The Republic, Book X
The model of knowledge for Plato appears to have been geometry
Instead of poets and artists, the good society should have mathematicians
and philosophers
Shadows = Art and poetrySlaves = Regular peoplePuppets = IdeasPuppeteers = Artists and poetsAbove ground = The FormsThe Sun = GodPhilosopher = Geometer
Shadows = Art and poetrySlaves = Regular peoplePuppets = ArtifactsPuppeteers = Artists and poetsAbove ground = The FormsThe Sun = GodPhilosopher = Geometer
Shadows = User interfacesSlaves = Regular peoplePuppets = CodePuppeteers = Programmers
Paradox: Programming is like geometry and art
It is the basis for generating “shadows” but is grounded in Plato’s
ideal form of knowledge
Enter Aristotle
Aristotle’s Poetics
• A response to Plato’s challenge at the end of The Republic for someone to defend poetry
• “Poetry” includes the arts of imitation• Aristotle argues that all knowledge is based on
imitation (even geometry)• The Poetics shows how and what drama
imitates
The Poetics can be read as the first essay in media studies
It situates drama within the entire field of “modes of imitation” and defines
them by medium, object, and manner
A key move in the text is to define poetry not as text that rhymes but text that imitates
There is another art which imitates by means of language alone, and that either in prose or verse—which, verse, again, may either combine different metres or consist of but one kind—but this has hitherto been without a name. For there is no common term we could apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations in iambic, elegiac, or any similar metre. People do, indeed, add the word 'maker' or 'poet' to the name of the metre, and speak of elegiac poets, or epic (that is, hexameter) poets, as if it were not the imitation that makes the poet, but the verse that entitles them all indiscriminately to the name. Even when a treatise on medicine or natural science is brought out in verse, the name of poet is by custom given to the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common but the metre, so that it would be right to call the one poet, the other physicist rather than poet. On the same principle, even if a writer in his poetic imitation were to combine all metres, as Chaeremon did in his Centaur, which is a medley composed of metres of all kinds, we should bring him too under the general term poet. So much then for these distinctions.
Aristotle, Poetics, Chapter I, Paragraph 5
This is the key passage
A: So-called poetryB: Art that imitates by means of language alone
Focus of the Poetics
• Aristotle is concerned to explain tragedy– Part of a larger work that included comedy, now
lost (and the basis for the book, The Name of the Rose)
• Aristotle always locates his subject in a hierarchy (“the order of nature”)– Imitation “Art without a name” Drama
Tragedy• Tragedy was a high form of art for the Greeks
Theater of Segesta (restored)
What do these images remind you of?
(Which we just discussed)
In fact, real shadow theater exists . . . Javanese shadow plays
So what, then, does drama imitate?
i.e. what is really going on in the Cave?
Tragedy . . . is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.
Aristotle, Poetics, Chapter VI, Paragraph 2
What is action?
“Action” is for Aristotle the way people behave, the way events
unfold in life
It is closely tied to the concepts of “probability” and “possibility”
These terms refer to the cultural logic that governs social life
What are the parts of a tragedy?
What are the devices used to represent action?
Aristotle Identifies 7 Elements
1. Plot – the sequence of events2. Character – the people and their natures3. Thought – the ideas expressed in the drama4. Diction – the language used5. Song – the accompanying music6. Spectacle – the set, stage craft, special effects
What is least important?
Spectacle
What does Aristotle consider to be the most important part of tragedy?
Plot is the “soul of tragedy”
What are the parts of plot?
Elements of Plot
• Complexity• Recognition• Reversal (of the Situation)– Both Recognition and Reversal based on “surprise”
• Suffering (pathos)• Purginng (catharsis)
Cinderella
Aristotle’s reformulation of Plato’s distinction
Where does code fit in?
Literary Organism
The structure of Part One of On the Road visualised using a simple tree structure that has been worked with manually in order to give it a more organic feel. Here, Part One divides into chapters, chapters divide into paragraphs, paragraphs divide into sentences, and sentences divide into words. Everything is colour-coded according to key themes in On the Road.
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