“Do it right!!!” Coping with improving performance skills.

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Execute my projects with excellence, Prepare for drought and fire., QUADRIVIUM, Trivium

I’ve been writing this daily blog for ten years and the subjects have varied widely but always with the intent of discovering something new about how to improve the human condition. My writing skills have improved a little but are a long way from good, even from good enough.

I must try to clarify my writing and that requires studying what I should have learned in high school, but didn’t. Last evening I purchased a book at Dudley’s, here in Bend,  named Rules for Writers by Diana Hacker and on simply reading a few pages discovered that I need help. But I’m already buried in books such as Trivium and Quadrivium I desperately need to read if I am going to become a competent human being.

But all of that learning must be in the background to what needs to be completed now. What current accomplishment requires is execution and executing with excellence. Fortunately, the snow is deep enough that I can’t get on with my other major project, that of making my house as fireproof as possible. There was an amazing amount of flammable stuff on my property, like Ponderosa trees, that I have removed down to the ground level. I’m not paranoid! My neighborhood looks like Paradise, California,  before the fire totally destroyed it. Our city is now undergoing a major drought and this coming 4th of July will have pyromaniacs wandering the city with rockets and Roman candles. That’s the tradition here … to watch the professional fireworks from the top of Pilot Butte and then watch the butte catch fire even though there are fire trucks already in position at the top. Crazy!

My task presently is to execute my projects with excellence and to be prepared for the inevitable city-wide fire.

Quadrivium – The four classical liberal arts

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Evolution of math, Evolution of science, Evolution of thinking, Evolution of thought, Pythagoras, QUADRIVIUM, Survival of good ideas

Quadrivium is a method for cultivating human wisdom brought to us by Pythagoras in about 500 BC. It was developed for about two thousand years until the scientific method was discovered as a way to understand the universe we live within.
The difference between the classical method and our modern science seems to pivot on how one tests the truth of the assumptions made by an exploring mind. Science is tightly bound to physical reality by reproducible experiments testing assumptions. The ancient method was more dependent on creating beautiful concepts and then stretching them over the real world to find what fits best.

There is testability in both methods but science is presently providing a finer-grained approximation to reality. One thing becomes apparent when studying the ancient methods of thought: these people tried really hard to find beauty in their search for truth. They sought simplicity, symmetry, and elegance, and they found it in so many things. It is mathematical and musical, it is a harmony of the spheres that is very real and very beautiful. Perhaps in the not distant future, the scientific method will have discovered all that is measurable and with that knowledge integrated into our thoughts, we will return to the beauty of the Classic ways.

I love and fear the Quadrivium for its discovery of obvious truths, once perceived, and its obvious limitations, also once perceived.

Tao Te Ching versus Quadrivium

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DESIGNA, Fire prevention, QUADRIVIUM, SCIENCIA, Tao Te Ching, Wooden books

This wasn’t intentionally planned but I happen to be reading John Minford’s translation of the Chinese classic, Tao Te Ching, and the Classical education Quadrivium at the same time. They were both a major part of the education system of their respective countries in the year 400 BCE, and each of these cultures has had a major impact on the ancient world and even today’s world.

I am more familiar with the Tao Te Ching because I got deep into that worldview back in the late 1960s and 70s. Because of that previous involvement, I found numerous quibbles with this new rendition, but because of his frequent cross-referencing with other translations it is a pleasure to read. It gives a wider view than any given individual’s interpretation. They all got it wrong of course, but every reader would agree and have to say that. It is a spacious book.

The Quadrivium is almost totally new to me except for the fact that I just finished a Wooden books parallel publication, Designa. I so liked Designa that I immediately got Sciencia and Quadrivium. These are challenging books to read because you don’t really read them, you must study them. They are loaded with information that you sort of know already, but don’t. They are the background of seemingly everything we think and do but we have forgotten their roots. I am presently on a quest to regain my Western roots. From my DNA through 23andme, I discovered that I am 100% North European ancestry, yes, including the 4% Neanderthal, and 1% Finnish(?). And yet, even though I read a lot, I have lost my roots and it’s time to catch up. You might consider it too, but it is a challenge.

Aside from my reading, etc. I worked almost two hours on removing some Oregon Grape plants that have been growing under the eaves of the front of my house. They were full-grown when I moved into this house eight years ago and I got along with them just fine until my neighbors started firing off rockets on the 4th of July. I got worried about a forest fire and started removing flammable materials from around my house two years ago, but after the Paradise, California, fire eight weeks ago I got even more concerned. That city looks a lot like where I live. In a forest. It burned! Bend is in such a similar situation I have been stripping my property down to bare dirt near my house. The flammable yard will be replaced with decorative rock and other nonflammables come this spring.

It was a day of morning conversation with friends, walks with Debbie, being an amateur lumberjack, reading and now blogging.

DESIGNA followed by SCIENCIA and QUADRIVIUM

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Archimedes, DESIGNA, Evolution of thought, QUADRIVIUM, SCIENCIA, Volume of a sphere

Here is a pleasant way for an artistically inclined person who has also had a strong scientific streak to spend a month or more. It is to purchase and read  DESIGNA: Technical Secrets of the Traditional Visual Arts. Be warned that this isn’t reading a book in the usual way but requires considerable effort and endurance to weave your brain into and through the complex windings of Celtic artists and Muslim graphic designers’ images and minds. For me it was worth it, because I now appreciate much more what other people have created. With that experience in mind I purchased another of the Bloomsbury Wooden Books series – SCIENCIA: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Astronomy for All.

This is really dropping into an infinitely bottomless rabbit hole of mind-challenging reality. This book, as far as I have comprehended it, demonstrates our reality as it is rather than as some people wish it to be. On page 22-23 we encounter what made the Classic Greek Archimedes so happy he had it carved into his gravestone. It is a proof that the volume of a hemisphere equals the volume of a cylinder wrapping the hemisphere minus the volume of a cone that just fits inside the hemisphere: Πr³ − 1/3Πr³ = 2/3Πr³ (pi times radius cubed). This is only half of a sphere so if we multiply by two we get the volume of a sphere. Thus the volume of a sphere is 4/3 Πr³. That is the result of a few little problems that Archimedes figured out and are illustrated with a few drawings found in this book. It’s easy, so they say, but it does require following a tight argument. I have known that formula since high school but didn’t know how it was derived.

Apparently, I am a glutton for mental anguish because I ordered another book from the Wooden Book publishers – QUADRIVIUM: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, and Cosmology. This is an approximation of a complete Classic Medieval European education under one cover, and it took an intelligent person several years to complete a classical education.

I did do a passable job of reading DESIGNA and have made an acceptable beginning on SCIENCIA but it seems unlikely that I can squeeze QUADRIVIUM into my brain.