![\"050405_einstein_tongue.widec\"](\"http:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2010\/01\/050405_einstein_tongue.widec_.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In Notebook 27 Frye writes:<\/p>\n
I\u2019m giving up the \u201cscience\u201d bit in AC<\/em>: it\u2019s impossible to explain to this generation of critics what I mean.\u00a0 I never did have the analogy of the physical sciences in mind: the model was always social science, man studying himself.\u00a0 What I thought of was a merging of criticism with semiotics and linguistics.\u00a0 When critics keep saying that there can\u2019t be a science of criticism, what they\u2019re really saying is \u201cI can\u2019t and won\u2019t write this kind of criticism,\u201d and I can\u2019t say they\u2019re wrong because I can\u2019t & won\u2019t write it myself.\u00a0 People will write it some day, and I thought it might be a good thing to alert the critics of the 50\u2019s to the ultimate end of what they were actually doing.\u00a0 But if it\u2019s just a prophecy with no present practical use, the hell with it. (CW<\/em> 5, 85)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As Michael Dolzani says<\/a>, Frye\u2019s scientific heroes were of the visionary kind\u2013\u2013Whitehead<\/a>, Jeans<\/a>, Alexander<\/a>, Bohm<\/a>.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always wondered whether Frye was familiar with the paradigm theory in Thomas Kuhn\u2019s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions<\/a>\u2013\u2013<\/em>a theory that would seem to have attracted him.\u00a0 He owned a copy of the book, but I think there\u2019s no evidence that he ever read it, though he seems to have discussed it in an interview with Gilbert Reid.\u00a0 Frye had more than a casual interest in science fiction and in the views of new\u2011age scientists\u2013\u2013what he called \u201cthe Tao of physics people\u201d (Ken Wilber<\/a>, Fritjof Capra<\/a>, et al.).<\/p>\n
Frye was familiar with several popular accounts of science.\u00a0 He read C.P. Snow\u2019s The Two Cultures<\/em><\/a>, James Gleick\u2019s Chaos: Making a New Science<\/em><\/a>, Isaac Asimov\u2019s The Intelligent Man\u2019s Guide to Science<\/a> <\/em>and The Neutrino: Ghost Particle of the Atom<\/em>, and he read as well several of Carl Sagan<\/a>\u2019s books (Bocca\u2019s Brain<\/em>, The Cosmic Connection<\/em>, and The Dragons of Eden<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n
Frye\u2019s library contains annotated editions of a wide variety of other books on science, including Edwin Burtt<\/a>\u2019s The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science<\/em><\/a>, Stewart Copinger Easton\u2019s Roger Bacon and His Search for a Universal Science<\/em>, David Hay\u2019s Exploring Inner Space: Scientists and Religious Experience<\/em>, his colleague John Irving\u2019s Science and Values<\/em>, Gordon N. Patterson, Message from Infinity: A Space-age Correlation of Science and Religion<\/em>, and Rudy Rucker\u2019s, Infinity and the Mind: The Science and Philosophy of the Infinit<\/a>e. <\/em><\/p>\n
Books that Frye owned but did not annotate include Tobias Dantzig<\/a>, Number: The Language of Science<\/em><\/a>: A Critical Survey Written for the Cultured Non-mathematician<\/em>, Karl Pearson<\/a>\u2019s The Grammar of Scienc<\/a>e<\/em>, Oliver R. Reiser\u2019s The Integration of Human Knowledge: A Study of the Formal Foundations and the Social Implications of Unified Science<\/em> and Unified Symbolism for World Understanding in Science,<\/em> and C.H. Waddington<\/a>\u2019s The Scientific Attitude<\/em>.<\/p>\n
At school I was taught that substances keeping form & volume were solids, those keeping volume but not form liquids, & those keeping neither gas.\u00a0 Even then I could see that there ought to be a fourth class keeping form but not volume.\u00a0 And there is a tradition, though admittedly a very speculative one, which says that there is a fourth class of this kind, & the one that includes all organisms or living beings.\u00a0 Also, that just as solids, liquids & gases have a symbolic connexion with, respectively, earth, water & air, so organisms, especially warm-blooded animals, are units of imprisoned fire.\u00a0 (CW 13, 208)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Notebook 27 Frye writes: I\u2019m giving up the \u201cscience\u201d bit in AC: it\u2019s impossible to explain to this generation of critics what I mean.\u00a0 I never did have the analogy of the physical sciences in mind: the model was always social science, man studying himself.\u00a0 What I thought of was a merging of criticism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bob-denham","category-science"],"yoast_head":"\n
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