Redefining misanthropy for a fresh generation. Standard posts begin with a definition from Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary followed by a modern adjustment. Miscellany on Wednesday and storytelling on Saturday.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Philosophy
PHILOSOPHY, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
2009 Update: The hymnal of mythology, offspring of science and a minotaur. Faith's sporophyte.
12 comments:
Anonymous
said...
No I can't be first. I refuse but.
Just the word sporophyte scares the hell out of me.
I visualize giant spores filled with mold looking somewhat like ice cubes dripping down--all on me--while a sporophyte garden is growing-- giant mushrooms enveloping me and my entire non violent philosophy ends but alas too late. I'm dying from a sporophyte attack
Thanks Doug, of all your definitions ever this is the one that grosses me out the most. You, liberal, you...
Philosophy: The study of whether I am really here, in which I find that if I think, then I am indeed here, but there's a chance I am nothing but a mind with a made up body and a made up world around me with made up people that I think I know and gave birth to and what not. I may very well be just an idea with a very good imagination.
Hmm. I would have said it's Faith's gametophyte. Or maybe its parasite. I'd elaborate, but I don't want to scare Pia. Any more than she already is. Guess I won't be seeing her in a Botany classroom any time soon.
You know the worst thing that's happened to the Ph.D.?
Dr. Phil! Who doesn't have one. Or, maybe, a show, either (oh please, please ...).
Philosophy: A class I never got around to taking. And when I DID finally hear the general description of the word - it was indeed nothing as I had imagined. I rather like your "hymnal of mythology".
Philosophy: A word I've heard and read a lot but which is not in my speaking vocabulary. Sometimes I wish I would have taken a Philosophy course so I could talk about it. Of course I still could read it all in a book. But what the hey, I would just as soon philosophize about all that. ..
12 comments:
No I can't be first. I refuse but.
Just the word sporophyte scares the hell out of me.
I visualize giant spores filled with mold looking somewhat like ice cubes dripping down--all on me--while a sporophyte garden is growing-- giant mushrooms enveloping me and my entire non violent philosophy ends but alas too late. I'm dying from a sporophyte attack
Thanks Doug, of all your definitions ever this is the one that grosses me out the most. You, liberal, you...
Philosophy: The study of whether I am really here, in which I find that if I think, then I am indeed here, but there's a chance I am nothing but a mind with a made up body and a made up world around me with made up people that I think I know and gave birth to and what not. I may very well be just an idea with a very good imagination.
Hmm. I would have said it's Faith's gametophyte. Or maybe its parasite. I'd elaborate, but I don't want to scare Pia. Any more than she already is. Guess I won't be seeing her in a Botany classroom any time soon.
You know the worst thing that's happened to the Ph.D.?
Dr. Phil! Who doesn't have one. Or, maybe, a show, either (oh please, please ...).
I've had enough of it, thankyouverymuch.
Why does nobody ever finish this question? Phil or Sophy? Phil or Sophy?
Phil or Sophy for what!? How do I know which to pick, if I don't know what they're to do after being picked? Sheesh!
Philosophy: A class I never got around to taking. And when I DID finally hear the general description of the word - it was indeed nothing as I had imagined. I rather like your "hymnal of mythology".
I am with Bierce here.
yeah, sporophyte sounds like a fungus...and a pleomorphic one at that!
philosophy,n. much like art...with the minor change of skipping the shortening of body parts with a fine gulp of poisonous hemlock
I knew a philosopher; they called him Silly Philly.
Philosophy: A word I've heard and read a lot but which is not in my speaking vocabulary.
Sometimes I wish I would have taken a Philosophy course so I could talk about it. Of course I still could read it all in a book.
But what the hey, I would just as soon philosophize about all that.
..
Yea, but just like those roads to nowhere you can always turn around and go another way, it's bound to connect somewhere, or so they
have been saying.
Pia, now you're thinking like a spore.
JD, you're a good notion.
Amoeba, I was pretty sure you'd take issue with "sporophyte" somehow, in the fernal analysis.
But, why, TLP?
Quilly, Van Morrison once sang "You may call my love Sophia, but I call my love Philosophy." Not his best line but it seemed clever in high school.
Terry, that was my first college class and I never touched it again.
You know the path, Ariel.
Minka, it could be a fern rather a fungus. Would that help? Art with hemlock is a grand definition.
I knew a dog we called Licy Icy.
Jim, it pays to be philosophical about an incomplete education.
Just over the next hill as I hear it, Coop.
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