...struggled to reach the observation deck. Unfortunately the overhang was too smooth for his legs. I would have loved to help him, but I wasn't sure how. Maybe in the future he will focus more on his wings.
@shutterbug49 Yes, it actually was. I watched him for a long time with his unsuccessful efforts. On the one hand, I admired him for putting so much energy into his efforts, on the other hand, I felt sorry that he couldn't make it.
@golftragic Thank you for your nice visit, my dear friend.
Animal behavior is often humanized. We use it to create a relationship. I do that too. Ultimately, it is - in my opinion - about nature in its own idea and strength. And what we humans could be in it. I never cease to be amazed.
@jerome BTW if you're into word meanings, humanising animals and their behaviour is called 'anthropomorphism' in case you'd like to add that mouthful to your dictionary. Comes from two 18th-century Greek words 'anthropos' meaning 'human being' and 'morphe' meaning 'form'. And no, I didn't know all that off the top of my head, I knew it was from the Greek, was curious and looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary.
@golftragic Thank you for your hint! I am very interested in word meanings.
After completing my studies, I took a course in ancient Greek - but I didn't keep going until the end. I especially wanted to become familiar with the Greek alphabet and to be able to read and pronounce words. Quotations from ancient Greek appear again and again in philosophy books. I wanted to become more independent of the authors' interpretations (which are sometimes one-sided). The culture of the ancient Greeks - their way of thinking, their view of the world, their architecture, their concept of aesthetics and technology are still decisive for me. They had a great “idea”. Their spiritual heritage is immense. In my opinion, it is about penetrating through the outside and discern the inside underlying idea, then interpreting it in a new and contemporary way.
I know exactly what you mean about the loss of the finer nuances of meaning when a language is translated. I studied a fair bit of history of ideas and epistemology in my final undergraduate year, and lots more for my PhD where I had to read a lot of books translated from German, eg Jürgen Habermas. My principal supervisor came from what was Königsberg in East Prussia and was great with history of ideas and the like. As you know, I'd studied German at school but was not very good at it, bar vocabulary. But that helped me understand, for instance, the distinctions in German for the one word 'power' in English, and she made sure I'd grasped those distinctions!
@golftragic I am very interested in the history of ideas. With Habermas I share his idea of human self-determination through the political participation of all citizens and his doubts about value-free science. For him, truth is the result of a discourse with well-founded arguments. Much could be said about this.
In any case, what remains in my view: an open discourse on the basics of human existence - regardless of space and time. This must be followed by the question of an interpretation in the individual and in the present, in the here and now.
Being such a well-read man in this area of philosophical thinking I hardly dare to ask if you've read Max Weber on the whole notion of value-free observation and theories of knowledge. Of course you have, and in the orginal too. As for universal political participation, no nation or people in the world seems to have managed to accomplish this feat in practice yet, despite the varied discourses and rhetoric across the whole political spectrum purporting to claim such a thing. Gosh Jerome, I haven't thought about some of these fascinating things for ages now, you've really got the rust flying out of the cogs in my brain. I need to think about this whole matter, then I'll email you.
July 24th, 2020
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Animal behavior is often humanized. We use it to create a relationship. I do that too. Ultimately, it is - in my opinion - about nature in its own idea and strength. And what we humans could be in it. I never cease to be amazed.
After completing my studies, I took a course in ancient Greek - but I didn't keep going until the end. I especially wanted to become familiar with the Greek alphabet and to be able to read and pronounce words. Quotations from ancient Greek appear again and again in philosophy books. I wanted to become more independent of the authors' interpretations (which are sometimes one-sided). The culture of the ancient Greeks - their way of thinking, their view of the world, their architecture, their concept of aesthetics and technology are still decisive for me. They had a great “idea”. Their spiritual heritage is immense. In my opinion, it is about penetrating through the outside and discern the inside underlying idea, then interpreting it in a new and contemporary way.
In any case, what remains in my view: an open discourse on the basics of human existence - regardless of space and time. This must be followed by the question of an interpretation in the individual and in the present, in the here and now.