Hume and time travel aka things that make you seem crazy in the library.

[janie_tangerine]

Thing is, for my class of Moral Philosophy (for which I have to take two exams) I have to make a sort of small thesis giving the second exam. Which isn't anything too crazy since I only have to find an article in English, summarize it and do a relation about it. Now, I could do it either about Hobbes, Locke or Hume. Goes unsaid that I picked Hume (and not for entirely shallow reasons, he's my favorite of the three anyways) and don't ask me why but I ended up deciding to do it about an essay he did where he talked about women's condition. Problem is, I have to bring three or four articles to choose from and on the net I could find only one. Result: I spent five hours in the library this morning going through an index of all the English philosophical publications in various philosophy magazines from 1971 until 2002 searching for articles about Hume and women and feminism and stuff. What's the funny thing about that?

At one point I was more or less around 1988 and I find an article in the index. Titled Time Travel and Panormal. Then after staring at it for five minutes, I go to the end where there was a recap of what the article was about and I find out that it said that for Hume time travel was pure nonsense. But it was written in response to someone that said the contrary, aka that Hume said that time travel could happen.

Now, the point isn't that the guy who wrote the response was right because the real Hume would have said that it was pure idiocy. The point is that it was damn hilarious. If only it wasn't an effort of epic proportions to get the librarian to fish out those two magazines I'd totally get a kick out of reading that stuff. I mean, Hume and time travel.

And now I'm back there to actually discuss the feminism/women stuff, hoping he's alright with it. Also because after finding four articles on the matter from 1971 to 2002 I'm not too eager to start again.

Comments

[lenina20.livejournal.com]

Wow. That sounds like fun. I'm procrastinating in the library, after reading article number 1 million on TGG and the wasteland. Fun! ;)

Good Luck with Hume. I barely remember his name from a course on Philosophy a long time ago. But I'm kind of refreshing that knowledge lately, with my course on English History. Good Luck!

[janie-tangerine.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I actually didn't need all the research I found out because apparently my first article of choice was a classic and good enough to do the paper but alas, it was fun. Even if it was scary. Oooh wastelands! Erm, sorry. I'm still totally in love with the word.

Hume is awesome. Really, there isn't a thing he said which isn't pure genius. Locke kind of is the whole contrary which is why I'm not ever doing papers about him but Hume, he's awesome.

[alemyrddin.livejournal.com]

Io sono arrivata alla conclusione che, se scavi abbastanza, scopri che i grandi scrittori/filosofi hanno scritto praticamente su qualsiasi argomento. Erano geni mica per niente. ;)
Però è comunque divertente quando trovi una cosa del genere... sarà un caso? O forse gli autori di Lost si sono davvero ispirati a qualcosa che Hume ha scritto sui viaggi nel tempo? Mah!

tra l'altro, sei sicura che non siano disponibili online? Sono molto vecchi? Perchè ormai le riviste scientifiche hanno digitalizzato molta parte anche degli archivi (ho lavorato in università per qualche anno e tuttora mi occupo di ricerche che spesso richiedono la consultazione di articoli, quindi sono abbastanza pratica, anche se si tratta di un campo molto diverso - economia)

[janie-tangerine.livejournal.com]

Posso provare a vedere se quella rivista è online.. erano di venti anni fa ma l'articolo che userò alla fine è del '79 e l'ho trovato su internet, ergo potrebbe pure darsi che riesco a tirarli fuori da qualche parte. E pure se non ci riesco magari faccio finta che ci devo fare la tesi sopra ;)

Da che ho capito io quello dell'articolo numero uno diceva che dato quello che diceva Hume sarebbe sostenibile che giustificasse viaggi nel tempo, quello del numero due gli rispondeva che era un cretino e che Hume si sarebbe messo a ridere ma dovrei darci un'occhiata seriamente.. certo che non ci posso credere, di tutto quanto giusto i viaggi nel tempo dovevo trovare *rolls eyes*, si chiamano seriamente coincidenze ;)

[elliotsmelliot.livejournal.com]

That's so funny! Worlds colliding. It would be interesting to see what those two articles said about time travel. Maybe the difference between them is because one was written after Hume actually time travelled! Conspiracy theory! Hopefully both Mr. Humes are okay with feminism!

When I was in Montreal a few weeks ago, I had to deal with a famous historian whose first name is Desmond. With professors I don't know, especially ones much more senior than me in age and status I usually address them as Dr. So and So or Professor So and So but nope, everyone calls him Des and that was a little weird!

Good luck with your paper.

[janie-tangerine.livejournal.com]

Quite so! Now I'll see if I wrote the name of the magazine somewhere so that I can see if they have the articles on the internet. If not I'll check tomorrow and try to get the librarian to find me those issues because I need to read that if only for personal amusement. The feminism article that I found on the net was actually alright so I could have avoided the work this morning but it was worth it if only to find out about that.

OMG that has to have been a sort of crazy thing! I hope he didn't wear a blue shirt ;) I'm already worried enough about discussing that paper because I know I'll say Desmond instead of David at least once but with a real Desmond in front of me that'd be definitely a weird feeling.