Personalism

I have long thought that personalism is an ideal conceptual or philosophical 'vehicle' for expressing per-personal (and thus pro-animal) sentiments conceptually, abstractly, philosophically.  The later Peter A. Bertocci, a well-known Personalist, taught at Boston University.  He is often cited in papers about complex moral matters, particularly about sex and love, but the moral status of the person in distributed moral obligations is a concern for principled persons of all kinds, including those of us with profound respect for personhood in every species.

Peter Anthony Bertocci

May 13, 1910-October 13, 1989

Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy, Boston University, where he taught for thirty-one years. B.A., Boston (1931); M.A., Harvard (1932); Ph.D., Boston (1935).  Dissertation: The Empirical Argument for God in Late British Thought (published in 1938 by Boston University Press; advisor: Frederick Robert Tennant - the process metaphysician).

Other books include 
The Human Venture in Sex, Love, and Marriage (1949); 
Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (1951);
Free Will, Responsibility, and Grace (1957); 
Religion as Creative Insecurity (1958);
Sex, Love, and the Person (1967); 
The Person God Is (1970); and 
The Goodness of God (1981)

On This Site:a

• The Person, Obligation, and Value [1959]
  
• Susan K. Langer’s Theory of Feeling and Mind[1970]
  

Materialism: Failing before Life’s Challenges

In 1951, Bertocci wrote:

“. . . no matter how narrow the gap between the chemical and the living becomes—and discoveries about the nature of viruses and colloids do indeed narrow that gap—we must remember that the gap is a qualitative and not a spatial one.  Suppose we consider the colloids the ‘missing link’ between living and dead matter.  This may impress our minds with the wondrous continuity of degree between one order of being and another.  But let us take a closer look.  Has the gap between life and matter really been crossed, let alone explained?  Even though a colloid may reproduce as living things do, it otherwise behaves like a chemical.  But a cell acts throughout like a living being and not like a chemical.  The fact still remains that when life appeared,life appeared. . . . This collocation of events, this close interrelation of living and nonliving beings, is an opaque fact unless we postulate a purpose which uses one order as an aid to the continuance of another.  Obviously this appeal to a broader purpose will not explain how the food enters the stomach becomes part of the living blood, bone, nerve, and brain.  Any biochemist can give us the sequence, but he is as silent before this fact of transmutation as we are.  However, we’re not trying to introduce a Purposer to describe what science has not so far described; here we seek to explain the harmony between two orders of being, the harmony between two differing and interacting qualities of existence.   We are seeking a view which, far from denying established scientific facts, will allow them to fit into a broader scheme which decreases the mystery.  What mystery?  The fact that living beings should appear and be so closely interconnected with nonliving beings—especially if all there was to begin with was the nonpurposeful, nonliving, nonthinking hustle and bustle of units of energy. . . .”

“. . . Our interest here is to emphasize the greater coherence which comes into our thinking if we consider the interrelation of the physical universe and life and the developing evolution of species as the handiwork of a creative Intelligence intent on producing a world rich in life, and, in the existence of man, rich in mind and value.  The evidence so far adduced enables us to envisage a Mind which is responsible not only for the ultimate physical preparations for life but for the first appearance of life in its many forms and for the additional mutations and variations discovered by our scientists.”

Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, 1951, pp. 333-34, 337 (italics in the original).

Fifty years later, the atheist Antony Flew wrote:

“[We may now know] how—by evolution through natural selection—one or more very primitive kinds of organism evolved into the enormous variety of species now known either still to exist or to have existed during some period in the past.  But that is a very different thing from knowing the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life or even of any life.  For, so far as I know, no one has as yet contrived to produce any plausible conjecture as to how even the most primitive kind of organism with a disposition to reproduce and thus to expose itself to natural selection might have evolved from a mixture of the many kinds of complex molecule which are now known to be required for that construction.  [My italics; Flew has been dealing with these issues for over fifty years.]

“Conway sees here a threefold challenge to the materialist, of which I consider two of the elements to be much more formidable than the third.  The first of these two is to produce a materialistic explanation for ‘the very first emergence of living matter from non-living matter. In being alive, living matter possesses ateleological organization that is wholly absent from everything that preceded it.’  The second challenge . . . is to produce an equally materialist explanation for the emergence, from the very earliest life-forms which were incapable of reproducing themselves, of life-forms which a capacity for reproducing them-selves.”

Review of David Conway, The Rediscovery of Wisdom, Philosophy, January 2001, p. 161.

Posted October 13, 2007

Cheap Eats in the Area: Peace o’ Pie

Cheap Eats in the Area: Peace o’ Pie

Peace o’ Pie As we step into the tiny storefront home of Peace o’ Pie pizzeria in Allston, we are enveloped by the aromas of cheesy, tomatoey goodness. Gorgeous, bubbly-crusted pizzas occupy diners at nearly every shiny table. Walls in avocado green frame the scene. Behind the bamboo counter, a young chef scoops tantalizing pies from the oven. In short, everything about the place looks and smells like a regular, trendy pizzeria, but the ingredient list is far from standard. Peace o’ Pie is scrupulously vegan.

Read the full Globe review (Denise Taylor, Globe Staff)
Pictured, Vegan pizza at Peace o' Pie.
487 Cambridge St., Allston. 617-787-9884. www.peaceopie.com All major credit cards accepted. Entrance accessible; no restroom.
Get more information about Peace o’ Pie

Boston Vegetarian Food fesdtival (October 31st and November 1st)

The Boston Vegetarian Food fesdtival (October 31st and November 1st) has free food, and it's free.
In these difficult economic days, anything free wo0uld be true to our Midwestern roots.
www.BostonVeg.org/foodfest/

Great lectures by some experts in their respective fields on the 2nd floor all day Saturday and Sunday; otherwise, walk around and eat free food.

www.mocamobile.org AND www.dossia.org

Today at lunchtime I attended an HSPH presentation on www.mocamobile.org (MIT and HSPH developers for global health applications by cellphone/wireless devices that transmit photos and patient info to secure servers) and www.dossia.org (employer-insured systems that collaborated with MIT and HSPH developers - builds in patient incentives to personal responsibility for maintaining and developing personal wellness).

Very promising!

No beef with Julia’s kitchen: Her home’s new owner lacks the bone appetite

No beef with Julia’s kitchen

Her home’s new owner lacks the bone appetite

Lisa Landsverk and her daughters Rachael (left) and Teymura are among the new inhabitants of Julia Child's former house.(Essdras M Suarez/ Globe Staff)

By Billy Baker Globe Correspondent / August 31, 2009

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, USA -

They are known for their love of cats.  At least they had that much in common.

But Lisa Landsverk, the new owner of the grand Victorian home on Irving Street in Cambridge where Julia Child, the doyenne of la cuisine bourgeoise, lived, cooked, and warbled for 43 years, has brought a bit of her own personality to the place.

Take the painting of the cow.

“Nobody says when I grow up I want to be a hamburger,’’ the painting’s caption reads.

Yes, the matriarch of Child’s former kitchen is an animal-rights activist and a vegetarian. “It’s a bit ironic,’’ Landsverk said, in an understatement.

What’s more, Landsverk is not what you would call a foodie. She likes to make simple things for dinner: pasta, burritos, reservations. But in the month since Landsverk and her husband, Harvard Law School professor Michael Klarman, moved into Child’s former home near the Harvard campus, they have found themselves the accidental caretakers of what has become a bit of a destination for food tourists.

Due to a recent movie about her life, “Julie & Julia,’’ everything Julia Child is hot. The film, based on a 2005 book by blogger Julie Powell about her attempt to cook all 524 recipes in Child’s landmark “Mastering the Art of French Cooking’’ in a single year, has catapulted Child, who died in 2004, back into the spotlight.

Child’s 48-year-old book has shot to the top of the bestseller list.

With the Julia mania has come an odd sort of attention for Landsverk, a former lawyer, and her family.

There are the lurkers outside their windows, snapping pictures of the house; the person who left a stick of butter (Child’s favorite ingredient) on their fence post; and the reporter who knocked on their door to ask what it’s like to cook on the site of hallowed culinary ground.

“The truth is that we haven’t done much cooking since we moved into the place,’’ Landsverk said.

After a bit of hesitation, she agreed to allow the reporter in to change that.

The plan was simple: Make a couple of Child’s recipes and see how it feels. Landsverk added one caveat: Everything had to be vegan because she did not want to offend her animal-rights friends. So, no butter.

Landsverk chose ratatouille for an entrée - she liked Child’s assertion that the eggplant casserole “perfumes the kitchen with the essence of Provence’’ - and, for dessert, pêches cardinal, a compote of fresh peaches with raspberry purée.

Helping her were daughters Rachael Klarman, 20, a junior at the University of Virginia, and 8-year-old Teymura.

A son, 17, was off at Japanese camp, and her oldest daughter, 22, was still in Charlottesville, Virginia, where the family lived before the move.

Rachael Klarman admits she had never heard of the famous chef before the realtor touted the Child connection to the family.

But she has become quite enthusiastic about the former occupant, recently reading “Julie & Julia’’ and Child’s memoir, “My Life in France.’’

As she walked back from a supply run to Savenor’s Market on a sweltering afternoon last week - Savenor’s was a favorite of Child’s, and she carved her signature signoff, “Bon Appétit,’’ into the sidewalk outside - Rachael Klarman said she’s been inspired to do more cooking in the kitchen, so that Child “is not rolling over in her grave.’’

Child and her husband, Paul, bought the house in 1956 for $35,000 and moved in two years later.

Paul, an artist and foreign service officer, designed the kitchen to Julia’s strict specifications, including countertops that were 2 inches higher than normal to accommodate her 6-foot-2-inch frame.

The kitchen was styled along the lines of a workshop, with the pots and pans hung from pegboards around the room, favorite knives - she had 800 - on magnetic strips between the windows, and everyday utensils in jars above the Garland range.

The pale green space changed little in Child’s time, and was familiar to many from the three cooking shows she filmed there during the 1990s.

When Child moved out in 2001, her kitchen and its contents were donated to the Smithsonian, where they are now an exhibit.

The house went through down-to-the-studs renovation, and when Lisa Landsverk and her family bought the 6,000-square-foot home in February for a reported $3.7 million, the only sign of Child’s tenure was her wine cellar, with its simple pine racks and handwritten vintage labels written by her husband.

The current kitchen is modern and white with a few stainless-steel accents. The windows and doorways are in the same place as when Child lived there, but the room has been expanded; an elevator has been removed to create a sunroom with a small dining area.

Stylewise, about the only thing the kitchen shares with Child’s is that everything has a place; in the new kitchen, that place is out of sight. Everything is so neatly concealed that Rachael said it took them a while to find the silverware drawer (it was hidden inside a larger drawer on the kitchen island).

With the ingredients ready and the cookbook open, Lisa and Rachael began making their way through the ratatouille recipe. Immediately, they realized that this was not going to be a quick meal.

“That’s very specific,’’ Lisa Landsverk said as she read Child’s directions to cut the eggplant into 3/8-inch-thick slices.

“No, there’s more,’’ Rachael Klarman said as she kept reading. “She calls for chunks with three specific dimensions. That’s impressive.’’

“And she wants us to dry each slice with a towel!’’ her mother gasped with a smile on her face. “We’re going to be here all day.’’

As they made their way through the recipes, mother and daughter began to notice a curious aspect to their conversation. They never said “the recipe wants’’ or “the book says;’’ they said “she says mind the heat’’ and “she wants us to chill the purée.’’ In “Julie & Julia,’’ Powell describes feeling that Julia was by her side like “some great big good fairy.’’

Lisa Landsverk and her daughter weren’t quite as grandiose, but agreed on one thing: Julia Child had them engaged with their dinner.

More than two hours after the cooking began, the kitchen was a mess but the food was ready. Teymura, who is chatty and a bit sassy, tried to get out of eating the ratatouille (she’d been pining for pasta), but relented when she was allowed to use chopsticks. She took one bite and announced “It’s kind of good, but not that good.’’

Rachael Klarman and her mother were more hesitant in their assessment.

After a few bites, Rachael said, almost relieved, “It tastes fine.’’ Her mother was impressed by the medley of flavors, but criticized her own technique.

“I think I overcooked the eggplant,’’ she said. “I wasn’t minding my heat like she said.’’

Correction: Because of an editing error, a Page One story yesterday about the owner of Julia Child's house gave the incorrect last name for the owner's daughter. Her name is Rachael Klarman.

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/articles/2009/08/31/new_occupants_get_cooking_in_julia_childs_former_house?mode=PF

SUPER DUPER! Wheeler and Wheeler's

A fellow named Wheeler del Torro spoke last Sunday at the Boston Vegetarian Society's month meeting (which we of the Boston Vegetarian, Veggie, and Vegan Meetups 'follow' or tag along to attend).
Wheeler’s place near the Symphony stop on the Boston MBTA

Wheeler is the creative international traveler who has rightfully become much loved in Boston (particularly around NEU, Colleges of the Fenway, and LMA) because of what he's made for those of us who pass through the Fenway area.

He passed around vegan ice cream samples, and I’m confident that 98.5% of all humans alive today would consider his vegan ice cream SUPER DUPER!

While there's a Vegan Ice Cream for All! Boston, MA meetup, I’d like to see Wheeler’s storefront operation inundated with numerous small group outings, perhaps once or more each month.

It could be possible for someone to organize some social event (likely working with Wheeler to just call 1-2 (or even 3-4) monthly outings to Wheeler's, maybe hold some discussions, or more.

For a college student to do this, the ~$20/month could become a challenge, problem, or possible issue in organizing a Meetup group, but perhaps Wheeler could get a local ‘sponsor’ who could front the ~$20/month fee (if asked, I’d suggest someone who might be eager to sponsor the Meetup outreach tool).