Word of the Day: lampadophory

Camaraderie is a wonderful thing, I suppose.  I was reading Hugh Trevor-Roper's The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century (which is available for free from the wonderful folks at the Online Library of Liberty), and I came across an unfamiliar word: lampadophory.  I used the not-so-trusty-but-incredibly-handy Oxford New American dictionary on my computer.  Not terribly surprisingly, it was not there.  So, I googled it, but while I was waiting for the page to load, I realized my folly-- why bother to google it, I *know* that I'm going to look it up in the OED, no matter what I find on the internet.  But, in a strange coincidence, the first hit for the word was this blog post that was about the process of reading Trevor-Roper in the library, and wondering what this strange word meant.  Well, I now know that I am not the only one who stumbled on this particular word!

Oh, and for all the people who might stumble on this page while looking up 'lampadophory' while they too are reading Trevor-Roper, the word comes from the Greek lampadedromy:

A torch-race; a race (on foot or horseback) in which a lighted torch was passed from hand to hand.

There, saved you a trip.

quotation of the day

“I also met at Gorice a Count Cotonimi, who was known in learned circles as the author of some Latin treatises on diplomacy.  Nobody read his books, but everyone agreed that he was a very learned man.” - Casanova, Memoirs, VI

Reading Latour "Matters of Fact, Matters of Concern"

And the best quotation of the night is the following:

‎The problem with philosophers is that because their jobs are so hard they drink a lot of coffee and thus use in their arguments an inordinate quantity of pots, mugs, and jugs-- to which, sometimes, they might add the occasional rock.

I'm no philosopher, but I do appreciate a profession that requires drinking a lot of coffee (or throwing rocks at relativists, also a good use for a rock).


Another notable tidbit:

Do you see now why it feels so good to be a critical mind? ...You are always right! ... Isn't this fabulous!  Isn't it really worth going to graduate school to study critique!  'Enter here, poor folks.  After arduous years of reading turgid prose, you will always be right, you will never be taken in any more; no one, no matter how powerful, will be able to accuse you of naïveté, that supreme sin, any longer.

I do like the sound of always being right.  I don't like the reading turgid prose part though.... Can't I always be right, and leave the purple prose to the professionals?

Cardano's Cosmos Review

Grafton, Anthony. Cardano’s Cosmos: the Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

The world will end in 2012.  So it is foretold in the stars— on 21 December of 2012, the December sun will line up with the plane of the Milky Way on the winter solstice with disastrous consequences for life on earth.  Or, at least, that’s what some believe.  Claims like these, and the astronomical data that buttress them, are mostly met with scorn or amusement today, but they were no laughing matter in the sixteenth century.  Anthony Grafton’s marvelous work on the life and works of Girolamo Cardano—a true Johannes-of-all-trades—explores the study of sixteenth century astrology with great sensitivity to the notion that this was very serious stuff indeed for Cardano and his contemporaries.  Despite the central importance that the stars had in the lives of sixteenth century men and women, there have been (or at least in 1999, there had been) precious few studies that took astrology as their contemporaries did, as a serious, empirical science.  Cardano, Grafton tells us, is an excellent choice to bridge the gap between two different historical interpretations of astrology: the first treats the subject on a social and cultural level, the second dwelled in the more internal, nitty-gritty world of endless calculations. The former usually could not find its way around a deferent, much less the complicated computations that went into a geniture, but the latter often could not dwell in the complicated social reality that made these astrological predictions so crucial in the first place.  Never before had the twain met, but these two roads of inquiry converge at Cardano; at a place where his writings and commentaries upon them abound. 

In Cardano’s Cosmos, Grafton recreates the world and the works of a typical sixteenth century astrologer—and we have no reason to doubt that Cardano was anything but typical (even if his store of writings and personal introspection was certainly unusual).   The book also goes into great detail about Cardano’s biography, and traces his published works from his first treatise on astrology, the 1534 Prognostico, the 1538 Libelli duo, and in the last chapter, Cardano’s own autobiography.  In chasing down Cardano’s life and astrological practices, Grafton shows how the man’s astrological prognostications were the end result of a system of knowledge that was both highly empirical and critical, and was indispensable for a Renaissance man or woman’s understanding of their world and themselves.

The work also touches upon several aspects of importance to early modern history.  It adds an interesting addendum to the already voluminous chapter of the rise of print culture, since Cardano exploited the new media to disseminate his ideas, and he in effect made his career by bringing into print a realm of materials that had only been in the manuscript tradition before.  However, Grafton is quick to point out that this is not a story of the triumph of print over manuscript, but that even in the post-Gutenberg west, the manuscript tradition was alive and well, and in fact, the first few printed horoscope collections were of far inferior quality and low technical level.  While print quickly became the preferred media for things like almanacs and astronomical tables, the media for horoscopes, which were so personal, and so dependent upon interpersonal connections, remained the manuscript and the conversation, but they were but one example out of many of texts whose manuscript forms remained standard until well after the advent of print.  The work also maps the place of the astrologer in late Renaissance society, and the perils and pitfalls that concerned anyone offering advice in a world of politics, fickle patrons, and great rivalry between practitioners. 

Astrology, Grafton writes, was an art that had persisted over centuries, but the application of tools of the trade “depended on the changing needs and situations of their users and their clients and readers” (198).  Astrology, then, as now, has always had its critics.  In the sixteenth century, the specter of Pico della Mirandola’s debunking of the origin myths of astrology hung over the whole enterprise, yet it lived on; Cardano is a testament to that.  But, he also participated in the humanistic endeavor to reform astrology, but his reformation took on the two-pronged approach typical of medical humanists of the day.  He sought to re-examining the ancient sources, and attempting to recreate the Imperial astrology which Ptolemy based his Tetrabiblos on, but he also collected new genitures and subjected them to minute scrutiny in hopes of reforming the practice through his own observations.  Grafton stresses that, when looked at in its social, political, and intellectual context, astrology was not simply superstitious hokum, but a system of knowledge of the most empirical sort. Cardano’s Cosmos brings to light this interesting chapter in the history of early modern science, and steers the reader on an intriguing journey in the life and times of a supremely fascinating man. 

Department of Spell Check

Another very surprising omission from the MS Word spell-check dictionary: scry. I thought at first I had  misspelled the word, so I typed it out again.  Still misspelled.  I typed it out again. Still misspelled.  Then I had a moment of paralyzing doubt:  maybe this word doesn't exist.  I think it does.  But maybe since it's late, my mind is playing tricks on me.   I had to cut-and-past from my document into the dictionary to ascertain that I was not, in fact, losing my marbles.  Besides, I've been scrying in my crystal ball.  I won't loose my marbles for at least another three months.

a meditation on bread

I love the smell of baker's yeast.  There is something so comforting, so welcoming about it; not to mention the fact that it's a harbinger of good eats to come soon.  When I used to have a bit more time on my hands, my Sunday morning ritual was to bake a challah, and while the dough was rising, I would leisurely do various chores about the house, basking in the delicious scent that comes with that type of bread.  Times change, of course, and though I know in my heart that I can squeeze the time in to bake a loaf or two every once in a while, I haven't for such a long time.  I'm too busy, to tired, to stressed, it's too late.... The excuses come so easily, and my willpower slips away even easier.  Now, my chores are done at a breakneck pace, twenty minutes every day, with more substantial time spent on saturday mornings, in between putting laundry into the machine and rushing off to do my weekly grocery trip as soon as the Trader Joe's opens, in order to beat the weekend crowds.  Sure, I get more done when I'm not kneading dough, or endlessly peeking at my work in progress, wondering if it's time to punch it down, if it's time to put it in the oven, if it's going to burn on top, and perhaps should I put some foil on it....  I tell myself that if I wanted a loaf of bread, I am lucky to have quite a good bakery in town, where the loafs--made fresh every morning by an elderly Frenchman-- are much better than my own.  No matter how good the bread is, however, it doesn't give my apartment that wonderful smell that can only come with lots of yeast, doing what it does best.

Tonight, I came home from a long day at the library, shaking my head at the fact that I am really quite lucky in having the opportunity to do what I do, and yet wondering if I was wasting my life by spending my Friday nights alone with my books.  And I was exhausted; both physically and mentally drained.  From what?  I sat at a desk, putting together a reading list for one of my generals fields.  I agonized over it: over what books to include, and what books to leave off.  I agonized at the thought of having to meet with a professor later that day, wondering how I could presume to do this field, when I knew next to nothing about it.  I met with the professor, and agonized at my attempts to make semi-intelligent conversation about this field, agonized over the obvious books I didn't know to include, and agonized at the thought of all the work that needed to be done before the semester ended.  Then I went back to the library, and tracked down all of the books I needed for the field.  A few trips down into the bowels of the building, weaving in and out of the stacks, and trotting up and down the stairs with my load of books.  And then I read.  And I read. And I read.  And by the time night had properly fallen and I decided to call it a night, I was bone tired. Tired, when the most strenuous thing I did today was agonize. It's like my life is a Woody Allen movie, but it's not any of the good ones.

When I got home, all I wanted to do was loose myself in the comfort of the kneading, kneading, kneading that comes with making bread, but alas, it was too late to start on a loaf.  And tomorrow-- well, there is laundry to be done, and the oil to be changed in the car, and taxes to be figured out, and groceries to be bought, and books to read, and papers to be written, and languages to be learned.

But I did start a loaf of no-knead bread. It's not nearly the same as a proper challah, but a pale echo of the real thing is better than nothing.  And there will be bread tomorrow.

Department of Spell-Check

Another day, another set of reading notes, and another word not found in the MS Word dictionary: plagiarization.  As in, a good number of pamphlets on everything from astrological prognostication to the best way to grow cabbages were simply plagiarizations** and cut-and-pastings of other, earlier works.  The OED has quotations for this noun form starting only in the rather late nineteenth century, with the latest quotation taken from the Economic Times from 2003, to wit: "Plagiarisation has become a habit with today's music directors and it probably existed before I was born. There's nothing wrong in it." Well, it certainly has existed for quite a while, in all aspects of creative life, but as to the fact that there is nothing wrong with it, well....

Plagiarism has indeed had a long and venerable history blah blah blah Adrian Johns' Piracy*** blah blah blah.  Now back to my regularly scheduled readings.


** Though, to be fair, I just google-booked the word inside of the book I just read, and the word doesn't appear there either.  But, the OED says it's a word, so I'm running with it.  I like it better than plagiarism in the context in which I have written it.

*** Really good book, and my 'blah's really don't do it justice.