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  • [Tears] Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

    From James Nicoll@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jun 30 13:13:23 2024
    Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

    A lucky survivor of the pandemic that nearly annihilated humanity
    resolves to rebuild civilization, with the help of fellow survivors
    and his own lack of applicable skills.

    https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/purple-mountain-majesties
    --
    My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
    My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
    My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
    My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

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  • From Don@21:1/5 to James on Sun Jun 30 16:00:28 2024
    James wrote:
    Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

    A lucky survivor of the pandemic that nearly annihilated humanity
    resolves to rebuild civilization, with the help of fellow survivors
    and his own lack of applicable skills.

    https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/purple-mountain-majesties

    Excerpted from your review:

    2: Until I looked up Berkeley to check the spelling, which
    I invariably get wrong, I did not know it was named for
    /that/ Bishop Berkeley.

    Catholic Berkeley's Notebook contains this intriguing passage:

    N.B. my Abstract & general Doctrines ought not to be condemn'd
    by [Francis Bacon's] Royall Society [of London].

    In regards to Berkeley's Relativity, the Wikipedia article you cite is a
    hot mess. Something about Berkeley's attitude seems to anger both
    Bacon's Royal Society of London and Wikipedia. Here's Berkeley's
    pertinent thoughts on Relativity:

    Absolute Space and Motion

    Absolute motion and absolute space are not understood
    realistically or instrumentally by Berkeley. He recommends
    that natural philosophers dismiss the concepts. Relative
    space and motion will more than adequately serve the
    purposes of physics. The debate about absolute motion and
    space has a long and complex history. Berkeley’s critique
    is often regarded as an anticipation of that of Ernest Mach.

    <https://iep.utm.edu/george-berkeley-philosophy-of-science/>

    Berkeley's Relativity anticipated Einstein's Relativity, in other words.
    This topic was last broached by me in rec.arts.sf.written about a decade
    ago. And at least one regular back then acted insulted and promised to
    have the last word on Wikipedia. ROTFLMAO.

    Danke,

    --
    Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``. https://crcomp.net/reviews.php telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,. Walk humbly with thy God.
    tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' Make 1984 fiction again.

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  • From John Savard@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jul 1 00:59:07 2024
    On 30 Jun 2024 13:13:23 -0000, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll)
    wrote:

    Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

    A lucky survivor of the pandemic that nearly annihilated humanity
    resolves to rebuild civilization, with the help of fellow survivors
    and his own lack of applicable skills.

    https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/purple-mountain-majesties

    It was definitely informative for you to note that the author also
    wrote several other, much less well-known, works which had related
    themes. This helps in understanding what his actual goals were in
    writing the book, among other things.

    John Savard

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  • From John Savard@21:1/5 to Don on Mon Jul 1 01:05:03 2024
    On Sun, 30 Jun 2024 16:00:28 -0000 (UTC), Don <g@crcomp.net> wrote:

    In regards to Berkeley's Relativity, the Wikipedia article you cite is a
    hot mess. Something about Berkeley's attitude seems to anger both
    Bacon's Royal Society of London and Wikipedia. Here's Berkeley's
    pertinent thoughts on Relativity:

    Absolute Space and Motion

    Absolute motion and absolute space are not understood
    realistically or instrumentally by Berkeley. He recommends
    that natural philosophers dismiss the concepts. Relative
    space and motion will more than adequately serve the
    purposes of physics. The debate about absolute motion and
    space has a long and complex history. Berkeley’s critique
    is often regarded as an anticipation of that of Ernest Mach.

    <https://iep.utm.edu/george-berkeley-philosophy-of-science/>

    Berkeley's Relativity anticipated Einstein's Relativity, in other words.
    This topic was last broached by me in rec.arts.sf.written about a decade
    ago. And at least one regular back then acted insulted and promised to
    have the last word on Wikipedia. ROTFLMAO.

    That classical mechanics doesn't distinguish between states of
    constant motion is well known. But what I recall from the standard
    textbooks I was exposed to is that knowledge of this fact was credited
    to Newton himself.

    Einstein's achievement was to put together such partial insights as
    Lorentz contraction to show that relativity, the equivalence of all
    inertial frames of motions, could _still_ be the case after Maxwell's
    equations were added to physics. No one from the distant past could
    have anticipated _that_ until after Maxwell's equations existed.

    John Savard

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  • From Don@21:1/5 to William on Tue Jul 2 02:51:09 2024
    William wrote:
    Don wrote:
    James wrote:
    Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

    A lucky survivor of the pandemic that nearly annihilated humanity
    resolves to rebuild civilization, with the help of fellow survivors
    and his own lack of applicable skills.

    https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/purple-mountain-majesties

    Excerpted from your review:

    2: Until I looked up Berkeley to check the spelling, which
    I invariably get wrong, I did not know it was named for
    /that/ Bishop Berkeley.

    Catholic Berkeley's Notebook


    Anglican.

    You are correct. Bless you for motivating me to procure permanent
    protection from wikipedia pathogens.

    Berkeley was a good bishop. As bishop of an economically poor
    Anglican diocese in a predominantly Roman Catholic country,
    he was committed to the well-being of both Protestants and
    Catholics.

    <https://iep.utm.edu/george-berkeley-british-empiricist/>

    In Joseph Stock’s account of the life of the Bishop we read
    that Berkeley addressed a letter to the Roman Catholic Clergy
    of Cloyne in 1745 and in 1749 another to the clergy of that
    persuasion in Ireland under the title a Word to the Wise. It
    was written with so much candour and moderation as well as good
    sense that those gentlemen, highly to their honour, in the
    Dublin Journal of 18 November 1749 thought fit to return ‘their
    sincere and hearty thanks to the worthy author, assuring him that
    they are determined to comply with every particular recommended in
    his address to the utmost of their power’.

    <http://cloyne.ie/about/george-berkeley-bishop-of-cloyne/>

    Beware: wikipedia's hot take is another hot mess. ROTFLMAO.

    Danke,

    --
    Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``. https://crcomp.net/reviews.php telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,. Walk humbly with thy God.
    tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' Make 1984 fiction again.

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    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)