Beach Haven

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, VOL 3
Translated By Malcolm C. Lyans
Penguin Books, 2008, 855 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
This is the third and final volume of the overall compendium. I reviewed the earlier volumes in previous editions of the BHP. The author is not known. The overarching thread is that each night Shahrazad tells a story to her husband the king. She doesn’t quite finish the story so he insists she continue it the next day. She does, but breaks into another, and the pattern goes on night after night. She tells these stories in order to dissuade the king from killing her in the morning. This threat comes because his original wife was unfaithful to him and he killed her. He then married a different woman each night and had her killed the next day because he believed all women to be unfaithful. By weaving her stories, Shahrazad manages to stay alive each consecutive day.

The result is essentially a book of short stories. The mix of stories include mystical, religious, historical, romantic, adventurous, and the like. They often depict interactions between Muslims and Christians as told from the Muslim perspective.

The stories tend to be prejudicial against non-Muslim, non-Arabic people, and at times depicts them in a very negative light. There are love scenes described that I wouldn’t describe as pornographic or erotic, but perhaps they are not suited for young readers.

Some nights include several stories at once. Some stories stretch across multiple nights. Often there are stories wrapped in stories three or four layers deep. For instance a character in a story tells a story to another character. Within that story the pattern follows of characters telling stories. It could take many nights to conclude the buried stories and finally return to the conclusion of the highest level story. The results can be confusing if one does not follow closely. This volume covers from night 720 through night 1001. The king has his faith restored and does not kill Shahrazad, but they live a Hollywood-like happy ending.

​This publication also includes the tale of Aladdin. This history appears after the Arabian Nights portion and serves as an add-on.  This original story is nothing like those I’ve seen in the movies over the years. Some of the characters carry the names made famous in the film versions, a few of the interactions among some characters are similar, but not much else seems the same. Aladdin gets the princess in the end, but not without some trickery, and a little subterfuge in revenge for similar acts on the part of the king. For instance, after the king betroths Aladdin to his daughter, he later does the same with the son of the vazir. Aladdin breaks up the wedding bed through magic from one of several gin he has access to.
 

MICHAEL POLANYI AND HIS GENERATION
By Mary Jo Nye
University of Chicago Press, 2011, 405 pages
​Review by Michael Beach
 
Through the personal history of Michael Polanyi, Mary Jo Nye helps readers through the growth of ideas around how science is influenced by society. The subtitle helps to understand this; ‘Origins of the Social Construction of Science.’

The idea of community relates to groups of people, and how people within the group influence each other. Nye, through Polanyi, makes the case for ‘social construction’. Social implies community. Construction implies group influence. Before reviewing Polanyi’s theoretical loss to Langmuir on the Nernst heat problem, Nye paraphrases Polanyi’s views on the outcomes. She depicts his views as a “controversial description of science as a community of dogmatic traditions and social practices rather than a march of revolutionary ideas and individual genius” (Nye 85).

The word community shares the word root of communication, which implies interaction. In the scientific world, individuals or groups of scientists communicate ideas through formal and informal methods. The community reflects back acceptance or non-acceptance (sometimes both) equally through formal and informal methods.

Chapter 3 in particular shows some of the downs in the up-and-down scientific career of Polanyi. It is probably fair to say he was surrounded by, and was part of, a community of some of the leading minds in chemistry and physics of his day, and of all time. The comment and reflection of that community not only influenced success or failure of his career personally, but also determined future directions of the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

A key example Nye gives is acceptance of Langmuir’s ideas of covalent and electrovalent polar and non-polar bonds over Polanyi’s adsorption theory. Several times she quotes Polanyi as he points to comments by Einstein, Nernst and others indicating that adsorption did not fit with new electron theories (Nye 109). This difficulty held true even given later “consistency of evidence with his new theory” (ibid). The community put more stock in ideas that supported the more recently accepted electron theories almost exclusively. Such was the power of scientific community.

Michael Polanyi’s work with Henry Eyring regarding a temporary transition state of chemical reactions might be seen as a foreshadow of his own transition state as he changed focus from chemistry, to economics and politics, finally settling on the philosophy of science.

The position taken by Polanyi and Erying defines the semi-empirical method in which experience is considered along with mathematical formulaic calculation. An element of probability is included in defining chemical interaction. Based on empirical experimentation, they posited when joining one chemical to a compound of two, the result is a different compound and chemical. They also asserted that during the transition process there is a temporary state in which a single compound composed of all three chemicals exists.

During his time in Budapest and Berlin, Polanyi was focused primarily on chemistry, but there was always some smaller amount of his time in which he considered, and wrote about, economics and politics. After moving to Manchester, the balance of his attention shifted the other way. Others in the chemistry department complained about this attention shift. He put less and less time into the daily lab effort. He even used a concocted chemical apparatus of a vacuum-containing glass to make a graphic explanation of his ideas on Keynesian economics (Nye 159).

Nye argues that Polanyi’s economic preoccupation was a “bridge to his sociologically inflected philosophy of science” (Nye 176). If this ‘bridge’ idea is true, then the original state might be thought of as science, since chemistry is a branch of science. It could be argued that both economics and politics have sociological and philosophical foundations. The mix of all of these areas of contemplation led to the final state of his new ‘intellectual compound’ within the discipline of the philosophy of science. During his 'transitory state', Polanyi was not fully based in science nor the social sciences, but some shifting level of each. The resultant ‘compound’ of the philosophy of science was not the same as the beginning ‘substance’ of science nor the transitory ‘compound’ of science, economics and politics.
​

CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY
A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION
By Simon Critchley
Oxford University Press, 2001, 149 pages
 
In the discipline of the philosophy of science and technology, two major schisms have evolved, Continental Philosophy and Analytic Philosophy. In this introductory work, Critchley leads the reader through the historical evolution of the ideas of the Continental school, and those who are its leading proponents. The book is laid out as if a series of lectures, one per chapter. Perhaps that was the author’s use or intent.

An example of one focus of the work would be an examination of to whether Continental and Analytic fundamentals represent an unbridgeable divide or are somewhat complimentary. If truth and wisdom (or meaning) are not the same thing, and according to John Stuart Mill (as depicted by Critchley) a difference in the search of each led to such a strong division among generations of philosophers, then why would some philosophers such as Critchley argue the necessity of both rather one over the other?

This ‘why’ question asked includes several premises spoken of throughout the work; the existence of the two schools, the difference of focus for each, the division of rhetoric between them, and attempts by some to enhance or lessen the division. The question asks for opinion, yet would require a respondent to share some data to give credence to their conclusion. To answer the question with evidence would presume some examples of philosophical debate that either seeks to depict difference, or show complementarity between the Analytical and Continental approaches.
The question itself is a short ‘why’, but the prelude lays out a more complicated compound list of premises to show motivation to the question. A respondent may consider whether each or any of the premises are true, or even if any philosophers (including Critchley) actually made the argument asserted.

One such as Critchley considering a response, could approach the answer as a cynic. They may think nobody really argues in favor of complementarity, and seek to disprove that assertion. They might alternatively be a believer. In which case their answer may seek not only to show examples of publicized papers in favor of complementarity, but also argue the position themselves. In an attempt to lay out an introductory approach, Critchley does both.

The goal of the question may be provoking, as it depicts an assumption of philosophers either seeking separation or coexistence. The answer would lead the answerer to take sides around the idea of whether separation or complementarity exist, and why the respondent tends to agree with one, or at least why they feel Critchley agreed with one. The question skews toward complementarity over division since proponents of complementarity, like Critchley, are the focus. Perhaps the question then is leading toward a future seeking more cohesion in the academic discipline of philosophy.

SAINTS
1815-1846
THE STANDARD OF TRUTH
Long list of editors and writers
Intellectual Reserve, Inc., 2018, 699 pages
 
For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the major historical events reviewed in this book will be familiar. The writers also included are many details lost to most of us who are not focused historians. The macro-timeline is woven together with micro-histories of individuals both central to, and on the periphery of, depicted events. The book is very factual, but written in a way for the lay reader to move along with the story.
 
Though the work is historically weighty and heavily researched by a cadre of academics, the read does not feel daunting. For me, there are many particulars included that help better understand why the people involved may have taken positions and actions they did. Their stories seem more humanized. The editors’ efforts at keeping larger regional, national and international contexts in the narrative also made the story more understandable for me.
 
The work begins with the early life of Joseph Smith and the larger Smith family. It ends just after his martyrdom, and that of his brother Hyrum. Whether one ascribes to the doctrine or organization of the church, the book offers valuable insight into a critical time in American history. It also may help the reader better understand the appeal of a church that has grown globally from very humble beginnings.