On Disc Golf

My home course is Becker . I try to play there at least twice a week. I record my scores (usually about 7 or 8 over par) and frequencies of good/bad drives/midranges/putts. I work (very occasionally) on my putts with my practice basket. I have hoped that disc golf would be a sport I could play well into my sixties or even seventies--my knees are bad, and I need activities that don't stress them too much. I take disc golf semi-seriously, but how seriously should I take it? Or, to put it differently, I've reached a plateau in my level of play, and so raising that level would take more time and more focused effort. Is that effort worth it?

In a larger sense, this is a question of priorities. Disc golf, cooking, reading--these are my primary hobbies. But there are secondary hobbies, like surfing the net, writing little essays about the books I read, and photography. Getting better at disc golf, or cooking, would require more time on those hobbies, and so less time on other things.

This is tied to the idea of a learning curve, although I've never been clear on the axes of a learning curve. If time is on the vertical axis and knowledge on the horizontal, then the steep part of the learning curve is there is little reward for much time, and so people quit when the learning curve gets steep. But if time is on the horizontal axis and knowledge on the vertical, then the steep part is much reward for little time, and is the easiest part. The idea of a plateau, as I mentioned above, works with time on the horizontal and knowledge on the vertical, so I'll go with that conception of a learning curve--knowledge approaches 100 percent along a horizontal asymptote.

And so, I'm at a height where a little knowledge in disc golf or cooking costs a lot of time. And where should that time come from? My life may have so much slack in it that I can find the time without cutting out too many other things I like to do, but I think not. SCSU has gone through a round of firings of tenured faculty, and my seniority is not so great that I feel bulletproof. I have to spend much more time on research than I have in the past, because I need to be able to get a job if I get fired. And that means picking up on mathematical research, not math history. But I need to publish the math history projects I'm working on, too.
So I have these sorts of priorities for work: research, teaching, service. Luckily for me, my chair has given me large lecture classes, which really cuts down on teaching time. And then for outside of work, there's K and then hobbies, like disc golf, cooking, reading, writing, photography. Intensive web surfing will have to go, which is a pity, because I liked being `the well-informed guy'.

And now I have over 500 words, which will have to be enough for this entry.

On the Name of this Blog

Blogging strikes me as a useful exercise in writing. If I am to be a historian, then writing has to be second nature. Drafts must flow from my fingers as water down the hills of the Lake District. Yet that is hard. I tinker so much with my writings that getting to a publishable state seems fantastical. So, perhaps, by writing a thousand (or so) words a week, I can become more fluid as a writer.

What will I write about?

Whatever happens to be on my mind, I guess. Looking forward to this fall, that means cooking, baseball and football, and cultural history. With Maureen, I'll be working on translating the prefatory material from 15th and 16th century math texts from Latin into English, so there might be more of that than would seem needful.
And, of course, I have giant rants in my mind about all sorts of things that I read on the net, so there'll be that. An unrepresentative diary of sorts.

Below is the inspiration for the name of this blog, an article from the lamented Journal of Irreproducible Results . I think the journal, as I knew it in high school and college, has died. Someone (who I met a few years back) bought the shambling corpse and tried to revivify it, but I don’t think they’ve truly succeeded.

Years back, I had a subscription to the Journal , which I let lapse after a year. It was 1986, and I know this because my copies resurfaced in the Great Move to Kate’s place this April. Sadly, but almost predictably, I’d romanticized these things I’d known before. They were not so great; entertaining, yes, but not the sheer incisive satire I’d remembered. When I graduated from high school, I’d bought The Best of the Journal of Irreproducible Results , and that text is more consistently funny than the journals themselves. And, I suppose, that book of selections colored my remembrance of the original.

And one last thing....the JIR was shelved in the Physics Library at Berkeley. One day I shall go back and see if it’s still there. I went back to Berkeley last January, but not to the Library. It was an important trip for setting old memories to rest, but that would be a longer and more difficult post. It’s still beautiful, thought, and many of my favorite places are still there. There’s something lovely about the conservatism of universities.

And that’s a small taste of the fabulous writing to come this fall!

---

Cogito Ergo Sum

Murphy’s Refutation of Descartes

Rene Descartes’ catchy slogan, “I think, therefore I am”, has somehow gained a reputation as an important insight.
Its superficiality was first recognized by his contemporary, Edsel Murphy. It is regrettable that the fallacious
ideas of Descartes have become well known, while Murphy’s have sunk into obscurity. It is my hope, in this short
paper, to put the two into proper perspective.

Murphy himself seems to have been a somewhat elusive figure. According to Haber(1), he was born by a breech delivery
early in the fifteenth century. However, our evidence clearly places him as a contemporary of Descartes (1596-1650).
Possibly there were two Edsel Murphys. One or the other of them is best known for Murphy’s Law which, readers
are reminded, in its simplest form states that if anything can go wrong, it will.

Murphy, like many other well-known figures of the day, had a nickname. While Thomas Aquinas was known as “The Ox”
because of his large size and slow speech, Murphy as gone down in history as “The Horse.”

The Argument

“I think, therefore I am” sounds so impressive that it carries conviction. Murphy recognized it as a syllogism with an unstated major premise.

• Major Premise: A non-existent object cannot think.
  
• Minor Premise: I think.
  
• Conclusion: Therefore, I am.
  

When put this way, Descartes’ slogan is obviously trivial, said Murphy. Compare with,

“I weigh 170 pounds, therefore I am.”

Since nothing useful is to be found at this level, Murphy tried to search deeper. Descartes was apparently trying to answer the
question, “How do I know that I exist?” To this, “Cogito ergo sum” isn’t a bad reply, although it will not withstand critical examination.

After all, if I seriously doubt my existence, must I not also doubt my thinking? To put it another way:

Q: How can you be sure that you exist?

A: I think.

Q: How can you be sure you are thinking?

A: I can’t, but I do think that I think.

Q: Does that make you sure that you exist?

A: I think so.

This should make it clear that Descartes went too far. He ought to have said:

“I think I think, therefore I am.”

Or possibly,

“I think I think, therefore I think I am, I think”

To “The Horse,” even such watered-down version were unacceptable. This important proto-Existential philosopher
contended that, from a humanistic point of view, you do not really exist unless others are aware of your existence.
Murphy proclaimed,

“I stink, therefore I am.”

The Dispute

In typical scholastic fashion, there were acrimonious exchanges between the followers of Descartes and Murphy. The
Murphyites accused their opponents of putting Descartes before the Horse. On the other hand, Murphy’s modest
disclaimer of mathematical skill, “I don’t know math from a hole in the ground”, was used against him by the Cartesians.

Summary

I trust that this exposition will help rehabilitate Edsel Murphy and to reaffirm his important influence.

Bibliography

(1) Haber, S. Laboratory Halforisms, Path Ann. 7:345, 1972

---

N.L. Morgenstern, MD

The Journal of Irreproducible Results, Vol. 24, No 3:6

Copyright © 1978 by the Journal of Irreproducible Results, Inc.