A Timeline of Texts

My intellectual history is quite complicated. I wrote half a million words between 1986 and 1989, very little of which is currently available (but all of it indexed). Meditations on the Egyptian Ka and Coelum Terrae were both written on an IBM golfball typewriter in 1988, but most other stuff was written in longhand.  A study of Henri Frankfort's view of Parmenides is however available in longhand on this site. 

I was always focussed on ancient history, but I spent a long time studying the English and Italian renaissances as well, which taught me many things which were useful in the study of antiquity. Particularly how to read images.This work was done before I went off to study at UCL in September 1989-92.

I was writing before the advent of a useful internet, and Tim Berners Lee’s World Wide Web. I was aware that what I was writing was not fitted to the contemporary market (which is what most writers and scholars write for these days). This is part of the explanation for the sequence of the following list.

 In 1993, who was going to publish J.G Frazer and the Platonic Theory of Being? Frazer had been heavily criticized since his death, but no-one was looking at his work from my point of view. Most scholars would have agreed with Frazer’s view that a reductionist interpretation of Plato was the right one, even if they disagreed with his methods, and sometimes his interpretations. So that book was finished (over many evenings) in a third floor office in Devonshire Street, London, in 1993, and then parked, because there was nothing I could do with it. For a while at least.

I first gained access to the Internet and the Web in March 1994, at the computing services building in Oxford..I'd learned about what was now possible through a number of Internet magazines on sale in the Science Fiction bookshop in Oxford Street. After that I was always looking for Internet related jobs. I ended up working in Oxford on a Leverhulme funded project focussed on making an author's work available via the web. I wrote a report for the funders and the stakeholders, which mentioned in passing the copyright issues which would arise. That pretty much killed the project as it was originally conceived. But I’d learned a great deal along the way, including how to get Mac files into Word files.

I then moved to a newly minted Encyclopedia company in plush modern offices in South West London, where I built their first proper website. It was an odd sort of company, which attracted the attention of the UK government by not having any visible income at the time. It did eventually get a return on the project, but was initially bankrolled by a member of the government in the United Arab Emirates. I spent a couple of weeks in the UAE along the way.  

In 1997 I moved to the University of Bath as an internet magazine editor and scribe, as well as a manager of web pages and builder of websites. All the staff had personal webspace available to them. I created a website focussed on a well-known poet, and built it up over a few years. It was in existence from 1998 to 2005. Lots of traffic, and questions from students. The files still exist. 

Then in late 1998 I decided to make the book on Frazer available on the Web, partly in response to a request from a Catalan friend, who was (and is) an anthropologist. I didn’t get much feedback from him, which was disappointing, but the access statistics (which I still have) were pretty good. My future course was set.

After that I spent eight years or so as a project manager in Edinburgh, mainly working on institutional repository development, including business analysis and system design. I departed the university in July 2013 in order to write full time.  

Here's the production sequence:

  

Henri Frankfort (et al) on Parmenides. 1987 Unpublished

Meditations on the Egyptian Ka 1987. Unpublished

Coelum Terrae 1988 Unpublished.

Mirrors of the Divine 1991-2 Unpublished

J. G. Frazer and the Platonic Theory of Being 1993. Unpublished on completion. This version was available on the web in html format between New Year’s Day 1999 till September 2005

Magic or Magia? Plato’s Sophist 1994 Unpublished on completion. Available on the Web from 2018 in jpeg format.

The Sacred History of Being 2003-5 initial draft. Unpublished.

Ontology and Representation in Assyria and The Ancient Near East 2005-9. Unpublished.

The Sacred History of Being 2011-14 Published as an ebook in November 2015

J. G. Frazer and the Platonic Theory of Being. Published as an ebook in 2016

Understanding Ancient Thought Published as an ebook in 2017

Man and The Divine Published as an ebook in 2018

Echoes of Eternity Published as an ebook in 2020 (contains a revised version of Mirrors of the Divine plus many other essays written between 2004 and 2020)

Meditations on the Egyptian Ka. 1987 Available on the web in jpeg format in 2020 

Henri Frankfort (et al) on Parmenides. 1987  Available on the web as jpeg files, 2017

Ontology and Representation in Assyria and The Ancient Near East 2005-9. First section published 2021

The Death of Pan  Publication as an ebook in 2021 

The Keys of the Kingdom..Contains new material and revised chapters from The Sacred History of Being 2015, and from later books. Publication as an ebook in 2021.

Items marked in orange are publicly available in some form.Try searching on this site. A number of chapters and articles are also available from institutional repositories, often full-text.

The Tedium of Immortality

Episode nine in the BBC R4 series (2016) 'A History of the Infinite' by the philosopher Adrian Moore) begins with a scene from the opera ‘The Makropulos Case’ by the Czech composer Janáček. The premise of the opera is simple: more than three hundred years earlier the heroine of the opera, Elina Makropulos, was given an elixir of life by her father, the court physician. She is now nearly three hundred and fifty years old. She has reached a state of utter indifference to everything, and her life has lost its meaning. In the opera excerpt she sings a lament: ‘Dying or living it is all one. It is the same thing. In me my life has come to a standstill. I cannot go on. In the end it is the same. Singing, and silence.’ Makropolos refuses to take the elixir again, and dies.

The opera raises some profound questions, about life, about death, about purpose, and about our finitude. But how should we understand our finitude? Human finitude has many facets. We live in a reality, which for the most part is quite independent of us. We are limited in what we can know, and in what we can do, but importantly, we also have temporal and spatial limits. Though it isn’t entirely clear what those actually are.  Moore asks, as an example, if he began to exist when he was born, or if he was himself when he was still a foetus. Another question concerns how big he is. He gives his dimensions and weight, but points out that you could cut his hair off, or even amputate his legs, without destroying him. Some philosophers would argue that who a person is, is represented principally by the brain of the individual in question.  And other philosophers might argue that we are not physical entities at all.

In any case, it is clear that human beings are not infinite in size.  And, unless there is an afterlife, there will come a time when we no longer exist. Is the prospect of our annihilation something we should fear, deplore, and does it reduce our lives to meaninglessness? The Greek philosopher Epicurus did not believe in an afterlife. But the Epicurians did not fear or deplore death. They did not see how they should be affected by something they would not be around to witness. They were of the view that death was not an evil to us, since we were not around to witness it. Lucretius, also an Epicurean, reinforced the point by saying that we didn’t exist before we were born, and the fact that we won’t exist after we are dead, is just a mirror image of that. Lucretius asked, ‘is there anything terrible there? Anything gloomy? It seems more peaceful than sleep.’

The twentieth century philosopher Bernard Williams went even further. Rather than dwelling on the innocuousness of being dead, he dwelt on the awfulness of being perpetually alive. He wrote a famous article which took both its theme and its title from the Makropolos Case. Its subtitle was ‘reflections on the tedium of immortality.’ He argued that a never-ending life would become what Elina Makropulous’s life had become – tedious to the point of unendurability. For Williams, it was about whether or not you could have a life of your own, if you could live for eternity. If you are going to live for eternity, it would seem that you would need to keep finding new things to do, or new ways to be satisfied doing the same things again and again.  Williams’ argument is that you can only talk about such a life as your own life if you remain reasonably close to how you started out. In other words, can it still be your life if it goes on for eternity? Williams’ answer was ‘no’. 

For some philosophers, it is straightforwardly obvious that annihilation, followed by nothingness, is a great and uncompensated evil. Moore quotes the American philosopher Thomas Nagel, who writes that being given the alternatives of living for another week or dying in five minutes would always (all things being equal) opt for living another week. If there were no other catastrophe which could be averted by his death. Which Nagel interprets as being tantamount to wanting to live for ever. He wrote that ‘there is little to be said for death: it is a great curse. If we truly face it, nothing can make it palatable.’ Moore suggests that the opposing points of view of Williams and Nagel may be the consequence of a temperamental difference, as much as an intellectual one.  Nagel also suggested the possibility that Williams might have been more easily bored than he is. Moore says this might have been the case. 

Calculus and the Infinitesimals: 'The Ghosts of Departed Quantities'

 

In this  episode of Adrian Moore's 'A History of Infinity' (BBC R4, 2016), the subject is the nature and development of the calculus. It begins with the observation that to divide zero by zero, or zero into anything at all, makes no sense. If you know anything about the calculus, it is clear what is being talked about in this episode, but the way it is discussed is lacking in the kind of precise description you might expect. 

A train is used as an illustration. Travelling a distance of sixty miles over an hour means that the train had an average speed of sixty miles an hour. However, the train might have been travelling at a much higher speed for half of the journey, and have been delayed by signal failure during the second half of the journey. So if you measure the distance travelled and the speed at a particular point in the journey, the result may be misleading. If the time period measured is very short, say close to zero, and the distance travelled is close to zero, then you will know nothing useful about how fast the train is going, and how long it will take to complete its journey.  

Calculus enables the accurate measure of quantities which are subject to change (which is why the inventor of the calculus as we know it today, Isaac Newton, referred to it as ‘Fluxions’). The episode makes clear how important the development of the mathematics of change has been ever since, and that much of the modern world depends on the use of calculus. The term ‘integration’ makes no appearance in this episode. 

Much of the rest of the programme discusses the invention of calculus, and the bitter dispute which arose between Isaac Newton and the philosopher Leibniz, who developed a similar approach to the mathematics of change quite independently. Newton appears to have begun to develop the mathematics for ‘fluxions’ early on – perhaps as early as the 1660s. The chronology is not clearly established, but Leibniz may have developed his version some ten years later. 

Newton did not publish any information about the mathematics involved in the calculus until many years later, preferring to share a few details with his friends and colleagues. Newton was aware of Leibniz and his work, not least because he too was a member of the Royal Society. Eventually he wrote to Leibniz with some limited details of the calculus (Moore suggests that Leibniz could not have understood these details since they were in code). Newton became aware that Leibniz had developed similar mathematics to deal with change, and a long dispute ensued, mostly conducted via intermediaries. Leibniz was often travelling, and so correspondence sometimes took months to reach him. Newton launched attacks on the integrity of Leibniz, accusing him of plagiarizing his ideas. Leibniz was bemused by his attacks and the force with which they were made. But Newton had decided that Leibniz was his enemy, and that was that.

Eventually it was proposed that a report be prepared by the Royal Society to establish who had the prior claim to the invention of calculus. This sounds fair, except that the President of the Royal Society wrote the report, and the President was Isaac Newton. As Moore says, ‘not Newton’s finest hour’.

The philosopher George Berkeley makes another more substantial appearance in this episode, since he wrote a criticism of what he called ‘the analysts’ (The Analyst: a Discourse addressed to an Infidel Mathematician (1734)). His criticism was based on the general lack of rigour with which calculus was often used at the time, and argued that scholars who attacked religious and theological arguments for lack of rigour were being similarly careless. The criticism revolves around the limitations of the technique already  mentioned, when the quantities and measures chosen are too small to produce intelligible results.

The most famous quotation from this book describes infinitesimals as ‘the ghosts of departed quantities’. The book seems to have been aimed particularly at the mathematician Edmund Halley, who is reported to have described the doctrines of Christianity as ‘incomprehensible’, and the religion itself as an ‘imposture’. Moore references the fact that the technique of the calculus lacked technical rigour until the early nineteenth century, until the idea of the limit was introduced (in fact Cauchy, and later Riemann and Weierstrass redefined both the derivative and the integral using a rigorous definition of the concept of limit. But that is another story). 

Moore concludes the episode by saying that:

precisely what such precision and rigour show, is that the calculus can be framed without any reference to infinitely small quantities. There is certainly no need to divide zero by zero. What then remains is a branch of mathematics, which is regarded by many, in its beauty, depth and power, as one of the greatest ever monuments to mathematical excellence.

A Sense of Divinity - Descartes and Kant

The fourth programme of Adrian Moore's 'A History of the Infinite' (BBC R4, 2016) discusses the views of Rene Descartes in the sixteenth century, and also the views of philosophers from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. I haven’t added up the number of centuries of thought which have not been discussed at all, but so far argument has been drawn from the sixth century B.C.E. (Pythagoras) fourth century B.C.E. (Aristotle, Zeno), the third century C.E. (Plotinus), the 13^th century C.E. (Aquinas), and the 16^th century C.E. (Bruno). Which is a journey of around twenty centuries. 

It isn’t that there is nothing to say about the idea of infinity during those long centuries, but that where Moore is going determined his selection of evidence and argument. He wants to talk mainly about the role and history of infinity in mathematics and in physics, and the fascinating paradoxes and problems which later investigation has thrown up. And a little about religious faith and the infinite. The first episodes are therefore a necessary introduction to set the scene.  

As he puts it in the text introduction to this episode, 'we have arrived at a time where people think about these things as we now do.' A telling statement, which hints at the richness and strangeness of the unexplored territory between the sixth century B.C.E. and the sixteenth century C.E., and that most of it is best skipped over as quickly as possible. It also lets us know that he has a normative view of human thought, and that what he thinks is rational and reasonable is mostly to be found in modern times. His is the Enlightenment agenda, which he mentions during this episode. 

Descartes famous ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’ (‘I think therefore I am’) is mentioned in the context of Descartes massive reduction of all the ideas and beliefs which he could accept unequivocally as true. He engaged in this reduction in order not to rely on tradition and authority, but on the intellectual resources available to the finite human mind. The question of whether the infinite can be grasped at all by the human mind is discussed, since we cannot see it or touch it. It is hard for us to know it, because it is the infinite. Descartes is quoted as saying that you cannot put your arms around a mountain as you can around a tree. So our knowledge of the infinite is necessarily less intimate than our knowledge of finite things.  

In the next part, the relationship between Descartes confidence in his own existence and capacity to think (expressed in the ‘cogito’) and his understanding of the infinite nature of God, is less than clear. It is true that Descartes suggested that he might have an idea of an infinitely perfect, infinitely powerful God because God put that idea into his mind. That might be the case. Alternatively, it may be that you as a finite being do not have to have an intimate acquaintance with the infinite in order to understand what you are talking about.  

Moore does not use the expression which Descartes employed to explain why it was not necessary to have intimate knowledge of something in order to have a useful and intelligible idea of what it is. He used ‘clear and distinct’ idea to indicate when he had such a useful and intelligible notion of what he was talking about. Later, Bertrand Russell would reformulate the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description (in his Problems of Philosophy). So, by ‘clear and distinct ideas’ about God Descartes is relying on a description of what is, which means that he could be sure what he meant, and that his idea of God was a rational idea.  

In fact, Descartes idea of his own finite reality was dependent on his certainty of the reality of an infinite God. If he could conceive of such a God clearly and distinctly, then it was likely that such a God was real. 

Moore skips on to the second half of the eighteenth century, mentioning Berkeley (‘there is no such thing as the 10,000 part of an inch’ is all that is said), and Hume also, in connection with the indivisibility of reality (the disappearing inkspot when seen from sufficient distance, which is a matter of perception and experience rather than indivisibility per se). Berkeley was an idealist philosopher, who held that the only reason the world is perceptible is because it is held in the mind of God. He also denied materiality, at least as a metaphysical concept. 

Finally Moore discusses a narrow aspect of Kant’s understanding of the idea of infinity. This final part of the episode represents a highly misleading understanding of Kant. 

Moore argues that Kant agreed with Descartes that we have a clear idea of the infinite (the nearest he gets to the Cartesian formulation ‘things which are clear and distinct’). But that our idea is limited to what we can experience and perhaps what we can invest faith in. Really? I don’t think it is.  Did Kant say that knowledge is confined to the five senses? And if we don’t understand knowledge this way, we leave solid ground and end up in metaphysics? That is what seems to be suggested at this point in the series. 

One of Kant’s principal interests was metaphysics, and how we apprehend things and have knowledge of them. Hume’s empiricism was one of the things which impelled Kant to write some of his most important works (The Critique of Pure Reason, and The Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics which may Present itself as a Science). It isn’t the case that Kant thought our ideas are limited to what we can experience in terms of the senses, but instead what is intelligible to us is interpreted through the categories of our understanding. He sought to understand shape and form without these things being associated with form possessing scalar values and spatial angles, which are matters of experience. In that he was very close indeed to Plato’s understanding of the Platonic forms. 

Kant, a figure so important to the concept of reason, is quoted as saying that ‘I go beyond knowledge to make room for faith’. It is true that Kant had the idea that rational thought and reason did not have to exclude a life of faith. It had space in which to exist. But it does not mean that Kant thought that faith was important to the life of reason. For Kant, like Pythagoras and Plato, knowledge is not gained through knowledge of sensible things, but is acquired by the contemplation of things which have a transcendent reality. This isn’t something which everyone can do, or will ever be able to do. Since there is an equation between the Divine and the Infinite, what Kant is doing is leaving space for some sort of understanding of the Divine for those who will never have a genuine understanding of transcendental reality and the Infinite. He is not arguing that faith creates a functional connection with the Infinite.

Karl Lōwith wrote that, in his book Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant had

interpreted the whole history of Christianity as a gradual advance from a religion of revelation to a religion of reason…. It is the most advanced expression of the Christian faith for the very reason that it eliminates the irrational presupposition of faith and grace.    

Moore then turns to Kant’s conception of the moral law. Aspects of the life of the mind which put us in contact with the infinite are about our reason, our rationality. Our reason enables us to grasp the moral law, which gives us infinite dignity (since we are rational beings). He says that “the moral law is what ought to direct us in all we do, with infinite respect granted to fellow rational beings”.

Which explains little. The origin of Kant’s moral law may be the idea that the life of reason, and rationality itself (as he defined it) is about connecting with the infinite. If man is truly rational, then he is connected with the Infinite (the ancient concept of the soul, as discussed by Plato, is related to this idea). But we need to accept Kant’s understanding of what reason is, and not distort it by saying knowledge is obtained through the five senses. Through this distortion, what Moore is left with is the Calvinist notion of a ‘sensus divinitatis’ (sense of divinity).  Which is a poor substitute for the kind of engagement with divinity which was understood to be possible in the ancient world. Such engagement was not achieved through knowledge of the world of the five senses or space and time.