From: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Subject: Interesting quote (long)
Reply-To: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 17:07:35 GMT

The following is a quote from Umerto Eco's "Focault's Pendulum".  I feel it is
extremely topical to this group, as well as being rather humerous.

  BTW, The book is very good, and I really recommend reading the whole thing. 
it is probably one of the best.  Hopefully this blantent plug & brown nosing
will get me off the hook for the copyright infringment I am about to commit.

  To set up the scene, the hero of the book has just met an editor from a
publishing house in a bar in Florence, Italy.  The editor decides to explain his
world view.

    "The next round's on me.  Two more, Pilade.  All right then.  There
are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and
lunatics."
    "And that covers everybody?"
    "Oh, yes, including us.  Or at least me.  If you take a good look,
everybody fits into one of these catagories.  Each of us is sometimes a
cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic.  A normal person is just a
reasonable mix of these components, these four ideal types."
    "Idealtypen."
    [. . .]
    "All right.  Less ice, Pilade.  Otherwise it gets into the bloodstream
too fast.  Now then: cretins.  Cretins don't even talk; they sort of
slobber and stumble.  You know, the guy who presses the ice cream cone
against his forehead, or eners a revolving door the wrong way."
    "That's not possible."
    "It is for a cretin.  Cretins are of no interest to us: they never
come to publishers' offices.  So let's forget about them."
    "Let's."
    "Being a fool is more complicated.  It's a form of social behavior.  A
fool is one who always talks outside his glass."
    "What do you mean?"
    "Like this." He pointed at the counter near his glass. "He wants to
talk about what's inside the glass, but somehow or other misses.  He's the
guy who puts his foot in his mouth.  For example, he says how's your
lovely wife to someone whose wife has just left him."
    "Yes, I know a few of those."
    "Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions.  They
embarass everyone but provide material for conversation.  In their
positive form, they become diplomats.  Talking outside the glass when
someone else blunders helps change the subject.  But fools don't interest
us, either.  They're never creative, their talent is all second-hand, so
they don't submit manuscripts to publishers.  Fools don't claim that cats
bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs.
They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend,
they're magnificent.  It's a dying breed, the embodiment of all the
bourgeois virtues.  What they really need is a Verdurin salon or even a
chez Guermantes.  Do you students still read such things?"
    "_I_ do."
    "Well, a fool is a Joachim Murat reviewing his officers.  He sees one
martinique covered with medals.  'Vous etes negre?' Murat asks.  'Oui, mon
general!' the man answers. And Murat says: 'Bravo, bravo, continuez!' And
so on.(*)  You follow me?  Forgive me, but tonight I'm celebrating a
historic decision in my life.  I've stopped drinking.  Another round?
Don't answer, you'll make me feel guilty.  Pilade!"
    "What about morons?"
    "Ah.  Morons never do the wrong thing.  They get their reasoning
wrong.  Like the fellow who says all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and
cats are pets, too, and therefore cats bark.  Or that all Athenians are
mortal, and all the citizens of Pireas are mortal, so all the citizens of
Piraeus are Athenians."
    "Which they are."
    "Yes, but only accidentally.  Morons will occasionally say something
that's right, but they say it for the wrong reason."
    "You mean it's okay to say something that's wrong as long as the
reason is right."
    "Of course.  Why else go to the trouble of being a rational animal?"
    "All great apes evolved from lower life forms, man evolved from lower
life forms, therefore man is a great ape."
    "Not bad.  In such statements you suspect that something's wrong, but
it takes work to show what and why.  Morons are tricky.  You can spot a
fool right away (not to mention the cretin), but the moron reasons almost
the way you do; the gap is infinitesimal.  A moron is a master of
paralogism.  For an editor it's bad news.  It can take him an eternity to
identify a moron.  Plenty of morons' books are published, because they're
convincing at first glance.  An editor is not required to weed out the
morons.  If the Academy of Sciences doesn't do it, why should he?"
    "Philosophers don't either.  Saint Anslem's ontological argument is
moronic, for example.  God must exist because I can concieve Him as being
perfect in all ways, including existence.  The saint confuses existence in
thought with existence in reality."
    "True, but Gaunilion's refutation is moronic, too.  I can think of an
island in the sea even if the island doesn't exist.  He confuses thinking
of the possible with thinking of the necessary."
    "A duel between morons."
    "Exactly.  And God loves every minute of it.  He chose to be
unthinkable only to prove Anselm and Gaunilon were morons.  What a sublime
purpose for creation, or, rather, for that act by which God willed Himself
to be: to unmask cosmic moronism."
    "We're surrounded by morons."
    "Everyone's a moron -- save me and thee.  Or rather  -- I wouldn't
want to offend -- save thee."
    "Somehow I feel that Godel's theorem has something to do with all
this."
    "I wouldn't know, I'm a cretin.  Pilade!"
    "My round."
    "We'll split it.  Epimendes the Cretan says all Cretans are liars.  It
must be true, because he's a Cretan himself and knows his countrymen
well."
    "That's moronic thinking."
    "Saint Paul.  Epistle to Titus.  On the other hand, those who call
Epimenides a liar have to think all Cretans aren't, but Cretans don't
trust Cretans, therefore no Cretan calls Epimenides a liar."
    "Isn't that moronic thinking?"
    "You decide.  I told you, they are hard to identify.  Morons can even
win the Nobel prize."
    "Hold on.  Of those who don't believe God created the world in seven
days, some are not fundamentalists, but of those who do believe God
created the world in seven days, some are.  Therefore of those who don't
believe God created the world in seven days, some are fundamentalists.
How's that?"
    "My God -- to use the mot juste -- I wouldn't know.  A moronism or
not?"
    "It is, definately, even if it were true.  Violates one of the laws of
syllogisms: universal conclusions cannot be drawn from two particulars."
    "And what if you were a moron?"
    "I'd be in excellent company."
    "You're right.  And perhaps, in a logical system different from ours,
our moronism is wisdom.  The whole history of logic consists of attempts
to define an acceptable notion of moronism.  A task too immense.  Every
great thinker is somebody elses moron."
    "Thought as the coherent expression of moronism."
    "But what is moronism to one incoherence to another."
    "Profound.  It's two o'clock, Pilade's about to close, and we still
haven't got to the lunatics."
    "I'm  getting there.  A lunatic is easily recognized.  He is the moron
who doesn't know the ropes.  The moron proves his thesis; he has a logic,
however twisted it may be.  The lunatic, on the other hand, doesn't
concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits.  For him,
everything proves everything else.  The lunatic is all idee fixe, and
whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy.  You can tell him by the
liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and
by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Temlars."

    (*) The french says 'You are black?', 'Yes, my general!', 'Good, good,
carry on!' (this presents an extremely good example of a fool)

 |  __L__   *******************************
-|-  ___    * Warren Kurt vonRoeschlaub   *
 |  | o |   * kv07@iastate.edu            *
 |/ `---'   * Iowa State University       *
/|   ___    * Math Department             *
 |  |___|   * 400 Carver Hall             *
 |  |___|   * Ames, IA  50011             *
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