"After the Dance"

"--AND you say that a man cannot, of himself, understand what is good and evil; that it is all environment, that the environment swamps the man. But I believe it is all chance. Take my own case . . ." started Tolstoy his short story, "After the Dance." That was pretty much what I was thinking after I watched the, sometimes superficial and sometimes deep, but throughout graceful and colorful dance of the Collage company.


The dance was to a moving series of eclectic and mesmerizing songs, the origins of which came from very very old lands and from cities the ruins of which do not even exist anymore. The dancers, half of whom are dear friends, moved uncompromisingly and with an obvious eagerness to please.

And this was their choice to create their environment, actively, with sweat and compromise, not by chance. They not only committed to a painful process of training, but they stripped their personalities and ideas, submitted to an idea and were part of an echo from the past into a back-alley Cambridge theater. They created their environment, and I am glad to touch it, albeit briefly.

The science of hope

I was with dear friends in a Cambridge restaurant, eating Shabu Shabu (a.k.a. awesome awesome Asian hot-pot). Our conversation was turned into the validity of organized religions in the modern world. One strong argument for religion was that logic and science cannot give hope. With science, it will be always the cold, brutal facts and nothing else. Hence, people, one way or the other, need faith, simply to have hope.

I thought about it for a while and I come to the conclusion that I disagree. There is one, amazing development emerging within science that makes me really hopeful about the future: the findings about the evolution of cooperation.

A little unrelated, but very recent article in BMJ highlights my line of thought. The authors, who happen to be across the street from my lab, argued in their paper "Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study" that "[p]eople who are surrounded by many happy people and those who are central in the network are more likely to become happy in the future."

This would suggest that happiness is not an individual emotion, but a shared one. It also fosters the idea that we really should make other people happy, simply because of the selfish desire to be happy.

It is a long shot, but I am hopeful that the day of scientifically based morality will emerge from the pitiful clashes between science and non-science.

Glenn Gould - Again

I am just mesmerized by Glenn Gould. I do not know if deep inside, I want to be like him, or just admire him for his childish arrogance. He is just a wonderful character.

Jacqueline Mary du Pré

She was just amazing!!!

I came across Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Min, performed by Jacqueline du Pré. Her performance was, even to unpolished ears like mine, just breathtaking.



Yo-Yo Ma's interpretation of the piece, which I would have taken as the definitive version (as his performance on Bach's Cello Suites), remained by far the weaker one. Remarkable, considering that Yo-Yo Ma is a brilliant artist and both artists play with the same Cello, the fabled Davidov Stradivarius.



Later, it dawned on me that the film Hilary and Jackie, which I saw with E. ages ago, was actually her life story. And a sad sad story it was. A great talent shadowed by immense fears and insecurities, and above all, a horrible disease. The lives of some people are just remarkable. And these lives remind me of a section from Nietzsche's Gay Science:quote:

It is true that there are men who, on the approach of severe pain, hear the very opposite call of command, and never appear more proud, more martial, or more happy than when the storm is brewing; indeed, pain itself provides them with their supreme moments! These are the heroic men, the great pain-bringers of mankind: those few and rare ones who need just the same apology as pain generally — and verily, it should not be denied them. They are forces of the greatest importance for preserving and advancing the species, be it only because they are opposed to smug ease, and do not conceal their disgust at this kind of happiness.

Response to religious freedoms

A BRILLIANT RESPONSE BY Radu Ioviţă TO MY PREVIOUS POST ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS

This is an interesting topic, but I'm going to disagree with you. I've been reading a book by Sir Peter Ustinov, which he incidentally wrote in German, called "Achtung: Vorurteile!" ("Attention: Prejudice!"), where one of the things which remained engraved in my memory is the observation that not so long ago, in Victorian England, a judge who perhaps had children of his own, with whom he'd sit around the fire in the library and read them stories, would calmly go to Court the next day and sentence a 12-year old girl to HANGING for having stolen a piece of bread. Ustinov remarks, correctly in my view, that the judge would not have been able to contain his surprise if someone had pointed out his behavior as inconsistent at best, schizophrenic and perverse at the worst. This is because the concept of 'social causes' and origins of crime and unrest were not cemented as they are now. One only has to look at Dickens's stories to see how wide-spread and pervasive the problem of inhumane treatment of criminals was in 19th century Europe, especially for children, and especially for the poor. But Victorian England can hardly be described as a religious fundamentalist country – on the contrary, it is the society that produced Darwin, Prestwich, and Huxley. So, given the striking similarity of the two events, what is the common ground between the two? It is the radical acceptance of the letter of the law, of the rigid application of a code in the name of 'order and discipline'. It is fundamentalism, I give you that, but not religious fundamentalism. It submits individual and even collective judgement to an unchangeable code of rules, which in itself has no agency. Imagine that the qadi judging this case had been taught to exercise his judgement in context, and to consult with others and with old Islamic law books. I doubt he'd have come to the same sentence. That's why I will side with your dad on this. And by the way, the article I sent you does mention that convicting a girl of 13 is illegal according to the Shari'a. I don't think I have to remind you of what kinds of
crimes were commited in the name of secular law in places like the Soviet Union, Cambodia, or China...

This is why I'm suspicious of any political faction which promises "order and discipline": they always deliver. Islam seems to be in a peculiar situation. I don't think that any of the countries whose main law today is the Shari'a had it as their main law uninterruptedly since the Middle Ages (I may be wrong about this). But if the Shari'a was reintroduced recently, it is as a reaction against something else – I am supposing that it is Western colonialism and the introduced body of laws that went with it (or Ottoman colonialism – from what I know, Ottoman law was a mix of Shari'a and the various kanuns allowing the ulama's to interpret each case). In any case, it's the return to 'purism' that worries me, not the basis on which it is (rather shabbily) argumented.

I suspect that as our societies become increasingly complex, they tend to become increasingly controlled by ever-growing bodies of law. I remember that a few years ago, a women's advocacy group wanted to petition for the legiferation of their male colleagues' behavior during the period of pre-menstruation!! Needless to say, this is an unworkable situation, but the trend in legiferation in other complex interactional situations such as sexual harassment in the workplace has definitely intensified. In today's world, the easiest thing to become is a criminal! But there is hope: Recently, in Germany, several pilot projects to de-legislate automobile driving have had a huge success – they were simply trying to discourage drivers to blindly follow the rules of traffic, and to exercise their judgement rather than assume that everyone will follow the law flawlessly. To do this, they've simply removed most of the signs from the roads, therefore forcing the drivers to question their priority rights, to slow down, and to look around them.

Religious Freedoms

I am very confused about the boundaries of religious freedom.

A recent news story in BBC, "Stoning Victim 'begged for mercy'" highlights everything that is wrong with religious fundamentalism. It was the story of a 13 year-old rape-victim, who apparently yelled "don't kill me, don't kill me" before she was stoned to death by more than 50 men. Allegedly more than a thousand people watched the stoning. The stoning was, according to the Somalian court authorities, a necessity of Sharia law.

This is just not right! And, I do not know any person, Muslim or non-Muslim alike, who would defend the position of the Somalian court authorities. My father, who becomes a pretty devout Muslim, like millions of other Muslims around the world, would be disgusted with the stoning and condemn it with all his heart. I am sure, he would claim that real Islam is a religion of tolerance and love. I believe in my father's sincerity, but this does not change the fact that many Somalians (and their government) believe in a particular interpretation of Islam that preach violence and inequality of women.

I, as an intellectual, cannot find a reasonable line of thought to define "acceptable religion" and the "unacceptable religion," especially given that religions are not supposed to change or vary. Obviously, categorizing all the world's religions through one extreme incident is completely illogical. However, it brings to mind that there are countless interpretations of Islam (similar to other religions). So, there are questions that I want to raise: when it comes to religious tolerance, who shall we tolerate and who we shall not? How shall we separate willful submission to a greater power and outright corrupt oppression of the disempowered? Most importantly, where shall we draw the line between faith and reason?

PLEASE TUNE IN FOR A BRILLIANT RESPONSE FROM RADU.

The narrow and non-intersecting paths of knowledge

There are many distinctive shifts happening in the intellectual world. Driven by the immense speed of transmission, the interpretation and transformation of ideas is mind boggling. However, this speed carries with it the risk of creating complex, yet superficial paradigms that unable to comprehend deeper and more subtle connections.

A recent opinion piece, Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship , by James A. Evans, tackled a very related issue.

Evans rightfully complained that "as more journal issues came online, the articles referenced tended to be more recent, fewer journals and articles were cited, and more of those citations were to fewer journals and articles. The forced browsing of print archives may have stretched scientists and scholars to anchor findings deeply into past and present scholarship. Searching online is more efficient and following hyperlinks quickly puts researchers in touch with prevailing opinion, but this may accelerate consensus and narrow the range of findings and ideas built upon."

I think, this is an important problem in the era of ultra-focused researh, completely detached academic fields, and poor intellectual public out-reach.

The Different Perspectives on Evolution in Academia

NOTE TO READER: IF YOU ARE INTERESTED PLEASE DO READ THE COMMENTS BELOW. THEY DO MAKE SOME EXCELLENT POINTS.

Representations of Evolutionary Theory in Turkish Newspapers, a paper for which I am a co-author, will be presented in ECREA conference in Barcelona. Meanwhile, one of the co-authors, Murat Gülsaçan, brought to my attention the following paper by Setälä and Väliverronen, entitled Public acceptance of evolution and the rise of evolutionary discourse. This paper, though a little bit convoluted with jargon, seems to ask a very similar question with our paper, yet through a completely different epistemological glass.

We would argue that evolutionary theory is grounded in the rational thought. We would further argue that rational thought has a legitimate logical basis to make better predictions than other epistemologies. Setälä and Väliverronen, if I did not completely misunderstand what they were trying to communicate in their abstract, would argue that evolution is yet another kind of "rationalist discourse." It is very surprising, and somehow unnerving, to see this distinction within academia.

Maverics, ponds and oceans

Who you callin' a Maverick is a very interesting article in NYT about a Texan family, who carries the name Maverick. It is one of those "only in America" stories.

I, being an "alien" in America, am fascinated by American politics, albeit dissappointed. It is really sad that the American political discourse is trapped in a shallow pond. It is even sadder that this pond lies just a couple of steps from an ocean of interesting ideas.

Magicians and Neuroscientists

This is really really fun. Even though neuroscientists tend to over-generalize at times, their findings are amazing. Here is a NYT article about the magicians, their tricks and the neuroscientific explanation to that.

As for the original review article in Nature-Reviews

The small dictatorship in the middle of Germany - ???

Amazingly enough, Marburg is in New York Times.

"This fairy-tale town is stuck in the middle of a utopian struggle over renewable energy. The town council’s decision to require solar-heating panels has thrown Marburg into a vehement debate over the boundaries of ecological good citizenship and led opponents to charge that their genteel town has turned into a “green dictatorship.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/07/world/europe/07solar.html

Italy and Bosnia - 10 Minutes

Sad, true, blunt. Imamovic captures the amazing obliviousness of the world and Europeans, in particular to the violence in the heart of Europe.


It seems that the director's new film, Go West, is facing stiff criticism in Bosnia because it tells the story of a clandestine gay relationship in the backdrop of the Bosnian war.

Going and telling - All about self!

Producing ideas, subconsciously and essentially, linked to disseminating them and, in the very core of it, it makes intellectuals self-promoting. In fact, all production of knowledge is essentially narcissistic and I think there is nothing wrong with that.

As bad as it sounds, it is exactly what an intellectual is: A person, who dedicates oneself to "know" and "think" more than others. This is exactly why an intellectual generally promotes her own ideas, constantly and aggressively. If you are a writer, an artist, a photographer, a scientist, a philosopher, a poet, or anyone who frames, visualizes, mixes, tests, questions, criticizes knowledge and ideas, then you have (and should have) more to tell... Not only, it is an urge (at least for me) to talk about my ideas, but it is (and should be) expected by the society.

Think about the social scientists. They (we) claim to know why people behave/vote/socialize/drink (you name it) better than the people themselves. Well, I think, we do know better. I personally would judge why my mother votes for secularist party every single election, not by her own words, but by the academic research on the voting trends in Turkey.

Or, think about this photographer, Jim Lo Scalzo's recent project called "Evidence of My Existence." It is a very personal account of his life. In the narrative, you hear about the hardships he has had with his wife or his clumsiness in the first fieldwork he did in India. If it was somebody else, I would not even bother to look or listen to what he has to offer. But, NO! Jim Lo Scalzo is not a random guy. His experience as a traveler and a photographer surpasses mine (and many others) and I am more than willing to listen to what he has to say.

There is a thin line between sharing an interesting , well developed, sophisticated and above all, coherent way of looking at the world and simple, low-quality self-promotion. In the seemingly endless and deceivingly egalitarian world of internet, the line is even thinner. (see a very interesting article about this at http://www.edge.org/discourse/carr_google.html)

The question is: how to differentiate between different types of knowledge production around us.

For instance, there are a lot of similarities between the scientifically well-respected (but not uncommonly despised) The Edge web site and equally or more popular Islamic creationist web site of Harun Yahya. They are both essentially promoting specific ideas (ideologies). They are both very sure of their own value. They both think that issue of evolution is extremely important to discuss. They both have significant amount of content. But, I would never visit Harun Yahya's webpage, but has a RSS feed for The Edge website. Why?

The rational answer to this question remains one of my greatest puzzles?

Turkish Science

Knowledge production in Turkey is hampered by many setbacks. I think, the problem arises primarily because academic and intellectual leaders gain their power through personal relationships and political views. Nature seems to be interested in this topic for a while now. FYI.

Anatolia

First season of fieldwork in Central Anatolia. Summer 2004. Kardes Turkuler on my ipod.



"I am lost... I am lost in my own country."

These are the thoughts that haunted me as I drove a crappy station wagon, along the dirt roads somewhere near Nigde. The sun blew its unbearably hot breath from the windows and I passed ruins and hills and mounds and fields and villages.

I knew I had to stop in each of these small, worn-out, vanishing homes... I had to know who they were and I had to tell the world about them. I had to show how ancient and how important these people actually were. Yet, at that lost moment, I drove on.


And came a time the path took a left turn and there was nothing but the dark, dirty Central Anatolian yellow. I looked at my compass, as I knew I needed to go East and I kept driving.

The new exotic and the new cool!

Brooklyn Funk Essentials one of the many groups that have become regulars of the Istanbul music scene.

In the confusing, yet ever growing cultural maze of Istanbul countless groups and artists emerge in the last decade. For some, Istanbul, "where east meets west" became the new intellectual focus, as the east European cities were, when the grip of Soviets were weakening. For others, it represents a lost illusion of peace and tolerance. Others, who search for the 'safe exotic', found it in the hamams and whirling dervishes of the city. The more daring,went to the underground dens of vice, hidden in Beyoglu. It indeed has been a place for exotic and interesting social norms and histories and we pick and choose among them. Istanbul is becoming the new 'cool.'


I find this amazing and equally confusing. We, the conformist intellectuals of the 21st century, are shaping an illusion of a city for our own use.

The "Lessig Style"

Larry Lessig of Stanford University is neither an anthropologist, nor a scientist.  He is, of all occupations, a lawyer.  Yet, he is a very interesting lecturer.  His presentation style, now known as the "Lessig Style," seems to influence people's way of presenting their ideas.  Here is a recent commentary by a physicist on presenting "Lessig Style."  As for me, I find some of the elements, such as using single quotes or buzz-words on a single slide very helpful to emphasize a point, and rejuvenate the attention of the listeners.

The power of the Music

Milan Kundera asked in his fabulously inconclusive novel Immortality:

"Does love for art really exist and has it ever existed? Is it not a delusion? When Lenin proclaimed that he loved Beethoven's Appassionato, above all else, what was it that he really loved? What did he hear? Music? Or a majestic noise that reminded him of the solemn stirrings in his soul, a longing for blood, brotherhood, executions, justice, and the absolute? Did he derive joy from the tones, or from the musings stimulated by those tones, which had nothing to do with art or with beauty?"

His question, long forgotten, popped right back in my mind when I see this clip...

An exotic train inside your soul -or our pathetic generation

The lost souls of the post-modern age hit us on the face everywhere we turn. Daarjeeling Limited by Wes Anderson is just another slap, a very gentle one, but a slap nevertheless...

It seems for the generation Y, or whatever my generation is called, there is no cause except a nihilistic emotional self-exploration and no ideology except an extremely sophisticated mourning for a colorful, exotic and irreversibly lost past.

Chronicles of a dissolving past

I am again feeling that familiar tingling in my stomach sitting in the seat numbered 107, facing the opposite direction to the train’s movement: a longing to escape. My kind seems to fear future; hence we prefer to look to the past for answers.


We live in the land of blurry, unsolved memories and present is always a train ride.