people-from-cambridge

"Yes, I’m in love, I feel it now, And Caelia has undone me, And yet I’ll swear I can’t tell how The pleasing plague stole on me."

"Her voice, her touch, might give th’ alarm— ’Twas both perhaps, or neither, In short, ’twas that provoking charm Of Caelia altogether."

"Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms."

"Arunachal Pradesh should be treated as a major priority on a global scale. Languages such as Basque and Burushaski have attracted high levels of scholarly interest over many decades precisely because of their status as language isolates. Those in Arunachal Pradesh have been completely bypassed. Moreover, although these languages are presently still spoken, their populations are small and pressure to switch to Hindi, promoted in both the media and via the school system, is growing. Probably by no coincidence, Arunachal Pradesh is also a major centre for biodiversity, something which attracts worldwide attention and resources. It is suggested that the little-known languages of Arunachal Pradesh should be given similar priority due to their uniqueness and endangered status."

"Arunachal Pradesh consists of a chain of isolated languages, which have been on the southern edge of the core Tibeto-Burman area. A plethora of different contact situations have allowed both lexical borrowing and sometimes striking grammatical and phonological restructuring. But perhaps it would be useful to begin considering this region as more similar to the Amazon or NE Asia than Tibet."

"What seems to have happened is that the seminar room has taken on a life of its own; that topics are established and debated, regardless of any empirical reality. And that hypotheses evolve through a type of arms race; each one has to be more bizarre than the last to attract attention. The larger the constituency, and English literature is the largest of all, the more like an ants’ nest the competition. Only the weirdest survive. Similarly with linguistics; perhaps less than a twentieth of all linguists do anything that could really be described as empirical investigation and tiny fraction of that pays attention to little-known languages."

"History in part is the trust between the generations, a link through and across time that helps give identity and meaning to the present. As individuals, families, communities, and a nation we all have meaning in time, something that was celebrated last year in the coronation. And that is why those opposed to these values and this nationhood, attack our history and do the same in other countries."

"Between 1750 and 1900, Britain became the foremost power in the world, both territorially and in economic terms. An intellectual powerhouse, Britain also became a model political system for much of the world. These changes were connected. Territorial expansion provided raw materials, markets and employment and, combined with Protestant evangelicalism and liberal self-confidence, encouraged a sense in Britain of being at the cutting edge of civilisation. Indeed, empire was in part supported on the grounds that it provided opportunities for the advance of civilisation. This was seen not least by ending what were regarded as uncivilised as well as un-Christian practices, such as widow-burning and ritual banditry in India, and slavery and piracy across the world."

"The continued dynamism of successive Islamic societies produced fresh bouts of conquest that led to new sources of slaves. Thus, on the eastern end of the Islamic world, Mahmud of Ghazni, south-west of Kabul (r.971–1030), whose empire stretched from the River Oxus to the River Indus, launched numerous raids into northern India from the 990s, annexing the Hindu state of Sahi to the east by 1021. Religious factors played a role in his attacks, which in 1022 extended far down the Ganges valley and in 1026 into Gujarat. Chroniclers claimed that his campaign of 1024 yielded over 100,000 slaves. Such numbers fed a major slave trade into Central Asia, Persia and Iraq, as well as bringing wealth to the army. The Delhi sultanate (1206–1526), established by Qutb-ud-din Aybak, who had been a military slave of the Churid Sultan Muizz u-Din, so that it is sometimes referred to as the Slave Dynasty, in turn, used Turkic slave soldiers from Central Asia as well as local Hindu soldiers. This sultanate took part in largescale slave raiding in India.... The island of Bali in the East Indies (Indonesia) was a source of Hindu slaves for the Muslim world... The campaigns in India of the Mughals and the Deccan sultanates produced many Hindu slaves, some of whom were sold on to Central Asia and Persia... In India, the Mughals enslaved rebels and those deemed rebels, for example, Hindus who rejected attempts at proselytism, as at Benares in 1632. Those captured in Mughal campaigns were often given to the troops for their use or for them to sell. Enslavement was also the fate of peasants who could not meet their taxes and rents, with men, women and children often sold to Muslim lords as a consequence. Further south in India, enslavement was used by the Deccan sultanates, notably Bijapur and Golconda, in suppressing opposition. These major Muslim states campaigned extensively into southern India and enslaved Buddhists, Hindus and others. Thus, in the 1640s, Golconda seized much of the state of Vijayahagara and Bijapur that of Mysore. However, the Mughal conquest of the Deccan sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda in the 1680s led to the end of military slavery there... India was also a source of slaves, for example with girls taken to Afghanistan and the Middle East and, from the mid-seventeenth century, forced labour moved to plantations in the Dutch-ruled coastlands of Sri Lanka."

"Distorting our knowledge and understanding of the past by making it a matter of good or bad is a reductionism that is lazy and crude and stupid and dangerous. Academics serving up explanation in terms of race are similarly reductionist and similarly stupid. This is not about statues but a culture war, one in which the forces of illiberalism, intolerance and hatred brilliantly masquerade behind the call for righting the past and very much to the profit of a conceited and self-interested cadre of would-be revolutionaries; but do let them go first-class to their conferences, and remember that his/her title is Professor."

"Hostility to Enlightenment Western values is particularly characteristic of decolonisation. Alas nothing very credible have been offered in their place."

"Islamic law was far from monolithic, with different schools providing competing accounts. Nevertheless, it was agreed that non-Muslims living under non-Muslim rule could readily be enslaved by Muslims, and their status was heritable, although owners could free as well as bequeath, sell and give slaves. However, although, even among orthodox Muslims, the notion that slaves were properly secured by conquest alone was very far from being observed, non-Muslims living under Muslim rule were protected from enslavement, Christians and Jews being regarded as Peoples of the Book, and thus related to Muslims, and enjoying religious freedom on payment of a poll tax. Thus, for the purposes of ensuring slave labour, Muslim societies were not able to draw on the bulk of the population under their control and had to rely on the slave trade. In India, Islamic rulers, such as the sultans of the Delhi sultanate (1206–1526), used enslavement as a form both of extracting revenues and of punishment, not least for not paying taxes. Fiscal factors were to the fore and territorial expansion was in part financed by the sale of slaves."

"From the outset in 1917, the Communists believed in a utopian ideology, extreme, organised violence, atheism, a redefined place of the individual that served to reject Enlightenment precepts, and the rejection of preceding Russian history. During the Civil War and the 1920s, the Orthodox Church was crushed, with the slaughter of tens of thousands of priests and monks, and the desecration and destruction of churches, monasteries and the tombs of saints. The real and spiritual landscapes of Russia and the psychological life of the people were transformed as a consequence. Communism in its own way therefore constituted a major civilisational challenge to the notion in Europe and North America of a 'Western Civilisation', whether or not articulated explicitly in this fashion. This civilisation owed much to Christianity and placed considerable weight on liberalism and toleration. From this perspective, Communism, drawing both on a reconceptualisation of Russian authoritarianism and on a new, totalitarian ideology and practice, posed a counter-civilisational challenge with its own precepts, aims, methods and anticipated outcomes."

"War tore the guts out of the British empire, weakening it in resources and morale. The first major loss was Ireland."

"[A] purely hedonistic utilitarian, like Bentham, might agree with Mill in preferring the experiences of discontented philosophers to those of contented fools. His preference for the philosopher’s state of mind, however, would not be an intrinsic one. He would say that the discontented philosopher is a useful agent in society and that the existence of Socrates is responsible for an improvement in the lot of humanity generally."

"The sentiment to which [the utilitarian] appeals is generalized benevolence, that is, the disposition to seek happiness, or...good consequences, for all mankind, or perhaps for all sentient beings."

"He was one of the leading figures to push Anglo-American analytic philosophy into collusion with the sciences...Smart acknowledged that what science tells us about the world is often hard to reconcile with how it seems in experience, but he stuck up for a reality that exists independently of our conceptions of it. He fiercely combated anti-realism, and postmodern notions that scientific theories (and the unobservable entities they depend on) are merely helpful, but arbitrary and disposable, human tools."

"I want to illustrate the relevance of metaphysics to ethics by reference to what is the greatest moral problem that has ever faced the human race: the question of nuclear war...the threat of nuclear war makes us envisage macro effects (effects on all people and the whole earth): the end of the human race, perhaps also of mammalian life itself, and the end of the prospect of humans evolving into yet higher and more wonderful forms of life...Those who comfort themselves with the thought that mutual deterrence has kept the peace for thirty years forget the importance of low probabilities in the macro context. Indeed what does it matter, from the perspective of possible millions of years of future evolution, that the final catastrophe should merely be postponed for (say) a couple of hundred years? Postponing is only of great value if it is used as a breathing space in which ways are found to avert the final disaster. And even a small probability that we shall not have this breathing space will yield negative expected utility of macro dimensions."

"Nor is this utilitarian doctrine incompatible...with a recognition of the importance of warm and spontaneous expressions of emotion. Consider a case in which a man sees that his wife is tired, and simply from a spontaneous feeling of affection for her he offers to wash the dishes. Does utilitarianism imply that he should have stopped to calculate the various consequences of his different possible courses of action? Certainly not. This would make married life a misery and the utilitarian knows very well as a rule of thumb that on occasions of this sort it is best to act spontaneously and without calculation."

"The reason why there are hardly ever completely knock-down arguments, except between very like minded philosophers, is that philosophers, unlike chemists or geologists, are licensed to question everything, including methodology."

"I regard Peter as one of the great moralists, because I suspect that more than anyone he has helped to change the attitudes of very many people to the sufferings of animals. Peter is a utilitarian in normative ethics, and a humane attitude to animals is a natural corollary of utilitarianism. Utilitarian concern for animals goes back to Bentham, who, presumably alluding to the Kantians, said that the question was not whether animals can reason, but whether they can suffer."

"His aim throughout was to produce a comprehensive worldview that accommodated both common-sense and scientific stringency. In moral philosophy, he applied his swashbuckling approach to bringing utilitarianism – the theory that goodness consists of promoting the greatest overall happiness – back to centre stage after it had been ignored for more than 50 years...he embraced its then-unpopular extreme form – act utilitarianism. Its milder version, rule utilitarianism, was "superstitious rule worship", he said, and negated precisely the deft adaptability to the actual situation that was utilitarianism's whole point."

"[I]f it is rational for me to choose the pain of a visit to the dentist in order to prevent the pain of a toothache, why is it not rational of me to choose a pain of Jones, similar to that of my visit to the dentist, if that is the only way in which I can prevent a pain, equal to that of my toothache, for Robinson? Such situations continually occur in war, in mining, and in the fight against disease, when we may often find ourselves in the position of having in the general interest to inflict suffering on good and happy men."

"That anything should exist at all does seem to me a matter for the deepest awe. But whether other people feel this sort of awe, and whether they or I ought to is another question. I think we ought to."

"Another type of ultimate disagreement between utilitarians, whether hedonistic or ideal, can arise over whether we should try to maximize the average happiness of human beings...or whether we should try to maximize the total happiness or goodness...Would you be quite indifferent between (a) a universe containing only one million happy sentient beings, all equally happy, and (b) a universe containing two million happy beings, each neither more nor less happy than any in the first universe? Or would you, as a humane and sympathetic person, give a preference to the second universe? I myself cannot help feeling a preference for the second universe."

"Jack Smart...changed the course of philosophy of mind. He was a pioneer of physicalism – the set of theories that hold that consciousness, sensation and thought do not, as they seem to, float free of physicality, but can – or will eventually – be located in a scientific material worldview...Smart agreed with old-fashioned mind-body dualism – against behaviourism – that many mental states are indeed episodic, inner and potentially private; what he disputed was that this made their essential nature non-physical."

"The utilitarian’s ultimate moral principle...expresses the sentiment not of altruism but of benevolence, the agent counting himself neither more nor less than any other person. Pure altruism cannot be made the basis of a universal moral discussion because it might lead different people to different and perhaps incompatible courses of action, even though the circumstances were identical. When two men each try to let the other through a door first a deadlock results...Of course we often tend to praise and honour altruism even more than generalized benevolence. This is because people too often err on the side of selfishness, and so altruism is a fault on the right side. If we can make a man try to be an altruist he may succeed as far as acquiring a generalized benevolence."

"Certainly there would be no future suffering on earth if all life on earth ceased. But most people seem glad that they were born: we do not usually think of present people (and animals) that the pain in their lives outweighs their pleasures...There have been great advances in the human condition due to science: recollect the horrors of childbirth, surgical operations, even of having a tooth out, a hundred years ago. If the human race is not extinguished there may be cures of cancer, senility, and other evils, so that happiness may outweigh unhappiness in the case of more and more individuals. Perhaps our far superior descendants of a million years hence (if they exist) will be possessed of a felicity unimaginable to us."

"Normally the utilitarian is able to assume that the remote effects of his actions tend rapidly to zero...It seems plausible that the long-term probable benefits and costs of his alternative actions are likely to be negligible or cancel one another out. An obviously important case in which, if he were a utilitarian, a person would have to consider effects into the far future, perhaps millions of years, would be that of a statesman who was contemplating engaging in nuclear warfare, if there were some probability, even a small one, that this war might end in the destruction of the entire human race. (Even a war less drastic than this might have important consequences into the fairly far future, say hundreds of years.) Similar long term catastrophic consequences must be envisaged in planning flight to other planets, if there is any probability, even quite a small one, that these planets possess viruses or bacteria, to which terrestrial organisms would have no immunity."

"He was a philosopher with a wide range of interests and made distinctive contributions to the study of ethics, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and philosophy of religion....Jack became a committed Quinean naturalist believing that reality is wholly natural: no God, no soul, no mysterious singularities, not even meanings or propositions. For Jack philosophy and science have the same subject matter, even though the methods are different."

"Men were made for higher things, one can’t help wanting to say, even though one knows that men weren’t made for anything, but are the product of natural selection."

"... the dialogue between mathematical physics, geometry, and algebraic topology. The interaction between these subjects has been such a dominant feature of research developments in the past few years that it seems scarcely necessary to recite a list of examples: in fact, on the mathematical side it is quite hard to think of active areas in geometry and topology which have not been noticeably influenced by insights from physics—where by "physics" we mean particularly quantum field theory—and on the other hand the geometrisation of fundamental physical concepts is a profound and pervasive development."

"Geometers have studied the topology of closed surfaces and their higher- dimensional analogues (manifolds) for a long time. But a remarkable breakthrough came in the early 1980s when Simon Donaldson found some totally new and unexpected invariants of four-dimensional manifolds. These were based on the Yang–Mills equations of physics but it was not until later that Edward Witten again showed how to interpret Donaldson's invariants in terms of quantum field theory. Later still, using duality ideas from string theory, Witten and Seiberg made a significant improvement of Donaldson theory which led to solutions of old problems."

"It’s funny, when you use tiny sums of money, like when I started off, actually, it is equally as hard, because that money is someone’s money. It’s not a corporation, not a company, you have taken that money from friends or family, however you have raised it. It’s a funny thing coming up through filmmaking that way, it really makes you be responsible and to really appreciate the money that people are putting it."

"Horror movies have been in some way or another doing the same thing for hundreds of years: don't go down to the basement, don’t talk to that stranger, don’t have sex, don’t be a jerk to others. They’re all cautionary tales in one way or another, so the trick these days is getting an audience to invest in your story. If they're not invested in it, you’re just showing them another dark corridor with something that goes “bang” to try and scare them."

"What I know of this world is what my senses have told me."

"Often we'll verge on embarrassing territory, a certain over-the-topness. But maybe that's just trying to unveil something that's inside all of us."

"Offending people is better than no reaction at all."

"To find out where the origin of symmetry is would be to find out if God exists."

"The differential between the bubble we live in — which is ‘ordinary life’ — and the reality out there is almost as heavy as what is being depicted in a film like ‘the Matrix’. It could make you puke to make that step towards finding out what’s really going on."

"I think Muse won because Matt Bellamy is a guitar hero for the 21st century. He's genuinely innovative, a real creative type who comes up with unique guitar parts."

"You could be my unintended choice To live my life extended. You could be the one I'll always love. You could be the one who listens To my deepest inquisitions. You could be the one I'll always love."

"Musical genius Matthew Bellamy — Freddie Mercury meets Kurt Cobain meets Thom Yorke…and a hell of a nice and humble guy."

"The progress of botany, as of other sciences, comes from the interaction of so many factors that undue emphasis on any one can give a very distorted impression of the whole, but certainly among the most important of these for any given period are the prevailing ideas and intellectual attitudes, the assumptions and stimuli of the time, for often upon them depends the extent to which a particular study attracts an unbroken succession of men of industry and originality intent on building a system of knowledge and communicating it successfully to others of like mind."

"The bond price, and, as an arithmetical and rigid consequence, the interest rate is an inherently restless variable."

"Tragically, before the proliferation of empirically blind idiot savants, interesting work had been begun by true thinkers, the likes of J. M. Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, and the great Benoit Mandelbrot, all of whom were displaced because they moved economics away from the precision of second-rate physics. Very sad. 'One great underestimated thinker is G.L.S. Shackle, now almost completely obscure, who introduced the notion of "unknowledge"', that is, the unread books in Umberto Eco's library. It is unusual to see Shackle's work mentioned at all, and I had to buy his books from secondhand dealers in London."

"When we examine this suggestion, we see that it is no more than a formal acknowledgement of a problem, the problem of how (by what institutional arrangement, by what organization of affairs) the equilibrium prices are to be discovered. Repeated trial and error, while the market stands in suspense awaiting the outcome, is not a practical resort. The number of distinct trials, even if confined to discrete steps of price and quantity, would be so immense that the necessary 'market day' would extend beyond human life-times... [The] theoretical ideal applies to mutually isolated days or moments, each to be treated as perfectly self-contained and looking to no yesterday and no tomorrow. But the real market is dealing with goods inherited from yesterday, and in means of production whose products will not be ready till tomorrow. Meanwhile the non-economic circumstances are changing and rendering each successive equilibrium obsolete."

"There is little point in demanding minor concessions and relaxations of the abstract, timeless general equilibrium. The light it can throw on human affairs is throw by its most austere and formal version. We are not concerned to ask: How could it possibly work? The useful question is: What does its logical structure imply?"

"Before the Treatise, the interest- rate was determined by tastes and objective circumstances, by the persuasibility of income-earners to transfer consumption from the present to the future, and the desire of business men to transfer the means of free enterprise from the future to the present, thus altering the productive possibilities and enlarging the prospective income of the society including themselves."

"Whatever form it takes, the possession of the imaginative gift transforms the problem of accounting for human conduct. For now it is not a question of how given needs are satisfied. Deliberative conduct, choice, the prime economic act, depend for their possibility, when they go beyond pure instinctive animal response to stimulus, upon the conceptual power of the human mind. Choice is necessarily amongst thoughts, amongst things imagined."