Karl Popper on Hegel

“In order to discourage the reader beforehand from taking Hegel’s bombastic and mystifying cant too seriously, I shall quote some of the amazing details which he discovered about sound, and especially about the relations between sound and heat. I have tried hard to translate this gibberish from Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature as faithfully as possible; he writes: ‘§302. Sound is the change in the specific condition of segregation of the material parts, and in the negation of this condition;—merely an abstract or an ideal ideality, as it were, of that specification. But this change, accordingly, is itself immediately the negation of the material specific subsistence; which is, therefore, real ideality of specific gravity and cohesion, i.e.—heat. The heating up of sounding bodies, just as of beaten or rubbed ones, is the appearance of heat, originating conceptually together with sound.’ There are some who still believe in Hegel’s sincerity, or who still doubt whether his secret might not be profundity, fullness of thought, rather than emptiness. I should like them to read carefully the last sentence (which is the only intelligible one) of this quotation, because in this sentence Hegel gives himself away. For clearly, it means nothing but: ‘The heating up of sounding bodies . . is heat . . together with sound.’ The question arises whether Hegel deceived himself, hypnotized by his own inspiring jargon, or whether he boldly set out to deceive and bewitch others. I am satisfied that the latter was the case, especially in view of what Hegel wrote in one of his letters. In this letter, dated two years before the publication of his Philosophy of Nature, Hegel referred to another Philosophy of Nature, written by his good friend Schelling : ‘I have had too much to do . . with mathematics . . differential calculus, chemistry’, Hegel boasts in this letter (but this is just bluff), ‘to let myself be taken in by the humbug of the Philosophy of Nature, by this philosophizing without knowledge of fact . . and by the treatment’ of mere fancies, even imbecile fancies, as ideas.’ This is a very fair characterization of Schelline’s method, that is to say, of that impudent and audacious way of bluffing which Hegel himself copied, or rather exploited and aggravated, as soon as he realized that if it reached its proper audience it meant success.” read more...

Please cite this article as: Eric (2022) Karl Popper on Hegel. BlogSophy. https://sophy.ca/blog/2022/06/karl-popper-on-hegel/

Hawking’s area theorem

I just read an article claiming that Hawking’s area theorem is observed to be true (see this: https://news.mit.edu/2021/hawkings-black-hole-theorem-confirm-0701 archived here https://archive.ph/qBjsk).

I would like to hear from you what you think about this recent “proof.” There are a few questions in my mind:

How can Hawking’s area theorem, i.e. ‘the area of the event horizon of a black hole should never shrink’ AND Hawking’s radiation be both true at he same time? Aren’t they contradicting each other? If one is true, wouldn’t some of the implications of the other be false? read more...

Please cite this article as: Bright, Eric. (2021) Hawking’s area theorem. BlogSophy. https://sophy.ca/blog/2021/07/hawkings-area-theorem/

A dollar per month contribution, and why LibreOffice needs it

By Eric Bright

We need your help here at The Document Foundation. LibreOffice needs your support. In this article, I am going to ask you for help. I am going to ask you for a commitment to a monthly donation to The Document Foundation.

If I am successful, at the end you will be convinced as to why LibreOffice needs your help, why even a small donation will help, and why a monthly contribution, even if small, makes a huge difference compared to a larger, one-time donation. Here is the story!

Costs! The old, ugly, familiar costs!

If I ask you to donate $1 CAD to The Document Foundation, you might ask yourself, “What? $1? What is that supposed to achieve? Are you kidding me?” read more...

Please cite this article as: Bright, Eric. (2020) A dollar per month contribution, and why LibreOffice needs it. BlogSophy. https://sophy.ca/blog/2020/09/a-dollar-per-month-contribution-and-why-libreoffice-needs-it/

I don’t “need” LibreOffice

By Eric Bright

I don’t need LibreOffice. I WANT LibreOffice.

I am not exactly sure if anyone really “needs” LibreOffice as a product. LO is more an idea, an ideal, than it is a product. For one thing we have had exactly zero customer since the time of OpenOffice all the way to today.

No one needs LO. I am almost sure about it. I, as one, already have MS Office 365 down my throat by virtue of teaching at a college here in Toronto, Ontario. I don’t “need” to use LO.

If you don’t have a ton of money to pay for an MS Office license fee, then you have many other options: read more...

Please cite this article as: Bright, Eric. (2020) I don’t “need” LibreOffice. BlogSophy. https://sophy.ca/blog/2020/09/i-dont-need-libreoffice/

LibreOffice – Designed by Committee

By Eric Bright

Tree Swing graphic by S Hogh 1993
Designed by Committee

Update 3 2020-10-10: 1- Typo corrected (thank you einpoklum for pointing that out) Update 2 2020-09-07: I stand corrected: 1- “ungraceful,” I am told I was, not “ungrateful” 2- The LO forked happened before AOO. That is true. Duly noted and corrected 3- There were many more reasons that lead to the eventual LO fork. Absolutely true Update 1 2020-09-07: I was informed by people involved with TDF that: 1- LO is based on “an extremely old, complex C++ codebase full of legacy stuff” [I knew that] 2- I was blaming the programmers for the issues the code has [not true. Read the post again] 3- I was being “ungrateful” [not true. Read the post again] 4- The LO does have some serious issues 5- The contributors have been trying to help and fix them [absolutely true] 6- I am “blaming developers for not doing more” and hence am getting in the way of those who are trying to help [really? ?] 7- I “mis-informed” my friend from whom I asked for insights [read the post and see if that is true] 8- I am advocating for more “committee” to fix the problem of something being “designed by a committee.” [conflating concepts, sarcastic, a red-herring/straw-man cocktail, playing with words. Read the ... What a wild-goose chase! This is exactly how the AOO’s BoD were reacting to all criticisms back in the days. I came to the same conclusion as those critics of AOO once did: There is no point in all these, since history repeats itself. read more...

Please cite this article as: Bright, Eric. (2020) LibreOffice – Designed by Committee. BlogSophy. https://sophy.ca/blog/2020/09/libreoffice-designed-by-committee/