Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

 Many years ago, boys and girls, there were television commercials about the Keebler elves working to make their cookies inside a hollow oak tree. The commercials were probably as famous in their own way as the hucksterism of "Crazy Eddie" would become somewhat later.  Here's a link:  Keebler Elves in the Hollow Tree | 70s & 80s Tv Commercials | EL Fudge   The elves and their tree were first cooked up, so to speak, in 1968.  They got their boss and spokesperson, Ernie Fudge, two years later.  That's E.L Fudge.  E as in everybody -- L as in "loves" fudge.  The odd pointlessness of much of memory.  So: why did I illustrate this pointless memory with an image from the Sistine Chapel?  I just guess that as God is said to have created His world, we within that world create our own fictional worlds. Give the copy writers some credit. That it may have been just a day's work for some of those inolved does not make it uncreative. 

Gilles Deleuze, interpreting a passage in Arnold Toynbee, says that Toynbee "shows that nomads in the strict, geographical sense are neither migrants nor travelers, but on the contrary, those who do not move, those who cling on to the steppe, who are immobile with big strides, following a line of flight on the spot, the greatest inventors of new weapons. But history has never begun to understand nomads, who have neither past nor future." I like the literary (not a logical) paradox there. Yes, if we think of an American "snow bird," travelling every November from New York to Florida, traveling every April back to New York, then we can think of him changing his habitat and remaining constant in his habit. Year after year this comes to look less like travel than like immobility with big steps.  Toynbee was all about challenge and response. The Big Picture in his writings is that a civilization faces some crisis and either responds creatively or fails. If its ...

I wrote in early August of  Jonah Lehrer , and of the circumstances that led to his departure from The New Yorker. Briefly, he invented Bob Dylan quotations with which to fortify his thesis in his book, Imagine, about the neurology of imagination and creativity (two terms he uses as synonyms). I said in that post that I hoped this scandal would prove "a setback for the cause of contemporary neuroscience or for its prestige with the broader public." It now appears I may have had that wish granted. My evidence is a piece in a recent issue of The New Statesman , "Your Brain on Pseudoscience: The Rise of Popular Neurobollocks." (For those who don't know the Anglicism, "bollocks" literally means "testicles," and is used as a general term of exasperation. One of the Urban Dictionary's definitions for it is "unfathomable rubbish," which seems to fit.) Steven Poole, the author of this article, couples Lehrer with Malcolm G...

Jonah Lehrer has left his post at The New Yorker amidst a bit of scandal . Lehrer is the author of a non-fiction book on neurology, called Imagine, published in March of this year. The subtitle of Lehrer's book sounds a bit ironic now, "How Creativity Works." Lehrer uses Bob Dylan as one of his examples of a creative individual, someone whose creativity can be understood through contemporary neuroscience. Well, this is how creativity doesn't work: making up sh!t and attributing it to someone else. Michael Moynihan pointed out in the devastating article that forced Lehrer's admission and resignation at TNY, Lehrer had simply lied. He had invented some Dylan quotes out of thin air, and in other cases terribly distorted their significance to fit his broader neurological  narrative. Lehrer has now admitted as much , "The quotes in question either did not exist, were unintentional misquoations, or represented improper combinations of previously existi...