unit eleven: Critical and
Creative Thinking
The Stub-Book
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón
(Spain,
1833-1891)
he action begins
in Rota. Rota is the smallest of those pretty towns that form the great semicircle of the bay of Cádiz. But despite
its being the smallest, the grand duke of Osuna
preferred it, building there his famous castle, which I could describe stone by stone. But now we are dealing with neither castles nor dukes, but with the fields
surrounding Rota, and with a most humble gardener,
whom we shall call Uncle Buscabeatas though
this was not his true name.
From
the fertile fields of Rota, particularly its gardens, come the fruits and vegetables that fill the markets of Huelva and Seville.
The quality of its tomatoes and pumpkins
is such that in Andalusia the people of Rota are always referred to as pumpkin-
and tomato-growers, titles which they accept with pride.
And,
indeed, they have reason to be proud; for the fact is that the soil of Rota, which produces so much, that is
to say, the soil of the gardens, that soil which yields three or four crops a
year, is not soil, but sand, pure and clean, cast up by the ocean, blown by the furious west winds and thus scattered over the entire region of Rota.
But the ingratitude of nature is here more than compensated for by the constant diligence of man. I have
never seen, nor do I believe there is in all the
world, any farmer who works as
hard as the farmer of Rota. Not even a
tiny stream runs through
those melancholy fields. No matter! The
pumpkin-grower has made
many wells from which he draws the precious liquid that is the lifeblood of his vegetables. The tomato-grower spends half his life seeking substances which may be used as fertilizer. And when he has both elements, water and
fertilizer, the gardener of Rota begins to fertilize his tiny plots of ground, and in each of them
sows a tomato-seed, or a
pumpkin pip which he then waters by hand, like a person who gives a child a drink.
From
then until harvest time, he attends daily, one by one, to the plants which grow there, treating them with a love only comparable to that of parents for
children. One day he applies to such a plant a bit of fertilizer; on
another he pours a pitcherful of water; today he kills
the insects which are eating up the leaves; tomorrow he
covers with reeds and dry leaves those plants which
cannot bear the rays of the sun, or those which are
too exposed to the sea winds. One day, he counts the stalks, the flowers, and even the fruits of the earliest ripeners; another day, he talks to
them, pets them, kisses them, blesses them, and
even gives them expressive names in order
to tell them apart and individualize
them in his imagination.
Without
exaggerating, it is now a proverb (and I have often heard it repeated in Rota)
that the gardener of that region touches with his own hands at least forty times a day every tomato
plant growing in his garden. And this explains why the gardeners of that locality get to be so bent over
that their knees almost touch their chins.
Well,
now, Uncle Buscabeatas was one of
those gardeners. He had begun to stoop at the time of the
event which I am about to
relate. He was already sixty years old
. . . and had spent forty
of them tilling a garden near the shore.
That
year he had grown some enormous pumpkins that were already beginning to turn yellow, which meant it was
the month of June. Uncle
Buscabeatas knew them perfectly by color,
shape, and even by name, especially the forty fattest and yellowest, which were already saying cook me.
“Soon
we shall have to part,” he said tenderly, with a melancholy look.
Finally,
one afternoon he made up his mind to the sacrifice
and pronounced the dreadful sentence.
“Tomorrow,”
he said, “I shall cut these forty and take them
to the market at Cádiz. Happy is the
man who eats them!” Then he returned home at a leisurely
pace, and spent the night as anxiously as a father
whose daughter is to be married the following
day.
“My
poor pumpkins!” he would occasionally sigh, unable to sleep. But then
he reflected and concluded by saying, “What
can I do but sell them? For that I raised them! They
will be worth at least fifteen duros!”
Imagine,
then, how great was his astonishment, his fury and
despair, when, as he went to the garden the next morning,
he found that, during the night, he had been robbed of his forty
pumpkins. He began calculating coldly, and knew that his pumpkins could not be in Rota,
where it would be impossible to sell
them without the risk of his recognizing
them.
“They
must be in Cádiz, I can almost see them!” he suddenly
said to himself. “The thief who stole
them from me last night at nine or ten o’clock, escaped
on the freight boat .... I’ll leave for Cádiz this morning on the hour boat, and
there I’ll catch the thief and recover the daughters of my toil!”
So saying, he lingered
for some twenty minutes more at the scene of
the catastrophe, counting the pumpkins that were missing, until, at
about eight o’clock, he left for the wharf.
Now
the hour boat was ready to
leave. It was a small craft which carries passengers to Cádiz every morning at nine
o’clock, just as the freight boat leaves
every night at twelve, laden with fruit and
vegetables.
The
former is called the hour boat because
in an hour,
and occasionally in less time,
it cruises the thirty-eight kilometers separating Rota from Cádiz.
It
was, then, ten-thirty in the morning when Uncle
Buscabeatas
stopped before a vegetable stand in the Cádiz market, and said to a policeman who accompanied him:
“These
are my pumpkins! Arrest that man!” and pointed to
the vendor,
“Arrest
me?” cried, the latter, astonished
and enraged. “These pumpkins are mine; I bought them.”
“You
can tell that to the judge,” answered Uncle
Buscabeatas.
“No,
I won’t!”
“Yes,
you will!”
“You
old thief!”
“You
old scoundrel!”
“Keep
a civil tongue. Men shouldn’t insult
each other like that,” said the policeman very calmly, giving them each a punch in the chest.
By
this time several people had gathered, among them the inspector
of public markets. When the policeman
had informed the inspector of all that was
going on, the latter asked the vendor
in accents majestic:
“From
whom did you buy these pumpkins?”
“From
Uncle Fulano, near Rota,” answered
the vendor.
“He
would be the one,” cried Uncle Buscabeatas. “When his own garden, which is very
poor, yields next to nothing, he robs
from his neighbors’.”
“But,
supposing your forty pumpkins were stolen last night,”
said the inspector, addressing the gardener, “how do you know that these, and
not some others, are yours?”
Well,” replied Uncle Buscabeatas, “because I know them as well as you know your daughters, if you have any. Don’t you see
that I raised them? Look here, this one’s name is Fatty; this one, Plumpy Cheeks; this one, Pot Belly; this
one, Little Blush Bottom; and this one, Manuela,
because it reminds me so much of my youngest daughter.”
And
the poor old man started weeping like a child.
“That
is all very well,” said the inspector, “but it is not enough for the law that you recognize your pumpkins. You must identify them with
incontrovertible proof. Gentlemen, this is no laughing matter. I am a lawyer!”
“Then
you’ll soon see me prove to everyone’s satisfaction,
without stirring from this spot, that these pumpkins were raised in my garden,” said Uncle Buscabeatas.
And
throwing on the ground a sack he was holding in his
hand, he kneeled, and quietly began to untie it. The curiosity of those around
him was overwhelming.
“What’s
he going to pull out of there?” they all wondered.
At
the same time another person came to see what was going on in that group and when the vendor saw him, he exclaimed:
“I’m
glad you have come, Uncle Fulano. This man says that the pumpkins you sold me last night were stolen. Answer ...”
The
newcomer turned yellower than wax, and tried to escape,
but the others prevented him, and the inspector himself ordered him to stay.
As
for Uncle Buscabeatas, he had already
faced the supposed thief, saying:
“Now
you will see something good!”
Uncle Fulano, recovering his presence of mind, replied:
“You
are the one who should be careful about what you say,
because if you don’t prove your accusation, and I know you can’t, you will go to jail. Those pumpkins were mine; I raised them in my garden, like all the others I brought to Cádiz this year, and no one could prove I didn’t.”
“Now
you shall see!” repeated Uncle
Buscabeatas, as he finished untying the sack.
A
multitude of green stems rolled on the ground, while the old gardener, seated on his heels, addressed the
gathering as follows:
“Gentlemen,
have you never paid taxes? And haven’t you seen that green book the tax-collector has, from which he cuts receipts, always leaving a stub
in the book so he can
prove afterwards whether the receipt is counterfeit or not?”
“What
you are talking about is called the stub-book,” said
the inspector gravely.
“Well,
that’s what I have here: the stub-book of my garden;
that is, the stems to which these pumpkins were attached
before this thief stole them from me.
Look here: this stem belongs to this pumpkin. No one can deny it . . . this
other one . . . now you’re getting the idea . . . belongs to this one . . . this thicker one . . . belongs to
that one . . . exactly! And this one to that one .
. . that one, to that one over there . . .”
And
as he spoke, he fitted the stem to the pumpkins, one by one. The spectators were amazed to see that the
stems really fitted the pumpkins exactly, and
delighted by such strange proof, they all began to help Uncle Buscabeatas, exclaiming:
“He’s
right! He’s right! No doubt about
it. Look: this one belongs here . . .
That one goes there . . . That
one there belongs to this one . . . This one goes there . . .”
The
laughter of the men mingled with the catcalls of the
boys, the insults of the women, the joyous and triumphant tears of the old gardener, and the shoves the
policemen were giving the convicted thief.
Needless
to say, besides going to jail, the thief was compelled
to return to the vendor the fifteen duros
he had received, and the latter handed the money to Uncle Buscabeatas, who left for Rota very pleased with himself,
saying, on his way home:
“How
beautiful they looked in the market! I should have brought back Manuela to eat tonight and kept the seeds.”
9
Mr. Know-All
W. Somerset Maugham (England,
1874-1965)
was prepared to dislike Max Kelada even before I knew
him. The war had just
finished and the passenger traffic in the ocean going liners was heavy. Accommodation was very hard to get and you
had to put up with whatever the agents chose to offer you. You could not hope for a cabin to yourself
and I was thankful to be given one in which there were only two berths. But when I was told the name of my companion
my heart sank. It suggested closed
portholes and the night air rigidly
excluded. It was bad enough to share a
cabin for fourteen days with anyone (I was going from San Francisco to
Yokohama), but I should have looked upon it with less dismay if my fellow
passenger’s name had been Smith or Brown.
When I went on board I found Mr. Kelada’s luggage already below. I did not like the look of it; there were
too many labels on the suitcases, and the wardrobe trunk was too big. He had unpacked his toilet things, and I
observed that he was a patron of the excellent
Monsieur Coty;
for I saw on the
washing-stand
his scent, his hairwash and his brilliantine. Mr.
Kelada’s brushes, ebony with his monogram in gold, would have been all
the better for a scrub. I did not at
all like Mr. Kelada. I made my way into the smoking-room. I called for a pack of cards and began to
play patience. I had scarcely started before a man came up
to me and asked me if he was right in thinking my name was so and so.
“I am Mr.
Kelada,” he added, with a smile that showed a row of flashing teeth, and
sat down.
“Oh, yes, we’re sharing a cabin, I think.”
“Bit of luck, I call it. You never know who you’re going to be put in
with. I was jolly glad when I heard you
were English. I’m all for us English
sticking together when we’re abroad, if you understand what I mean.”
I blinked.
“Are you English?” I asked, perhaps
tactlessly.
“Rather.
You don’t think I look like an American, do you? British to the
backbone, that’s what I am.”
To prove it, Mr. Kelada took out of his pocket a passport and airily waved it
under my nose.
King George has many
strange subjects. Mr. Kelada was short and of a sturdy build,
clean-shaven and dark skinned, with a fleshy, hooked nose and very large
lustrous and liquid eyes. His long
black hair was sleek and curly. He
spoke with a fluency in which there was nothing English and his gestures were
exuberant. I felt pretty sure that a
closer inspection of that British passport would have betrayed the fact that
Mr. Kelada was born under a bluer sky than is generally seen in England.
“What will you have?” he asked me.
I looked at him doubtfully. Prohibition was in force and to all
appearances the ship was bone dry. When
I am not thirsty I do not know which I dislike more, ginger ale or lemon
squash. But Mr. Kelada flashed an oriental smile at me.
“Whisky and soda or a dry martini, you have
only to say the word.”
From each of his hip pockets he furnished a
flask and laid it on the table before me.
I chose the martini, and calling the steward he ordered a tumbler of ice
and a couple of glasses.
“A very good cocktail,” I said.
“Well, there are plenty more where that
came from, and if you’ve got any friends on board, you tell them you’ve got a
pal who’s got all the liquor in the world.”
Mr.
Kelada was chatty. He talked of
New York and of San Francisco. He
discussed plays, pictures, and politics.
He was patriotic. The Union Jack
is an impressive piece of drapery, but when it is flourished by a gentleman
from Alexandria or Beirut, I cannot but feel that it loses somewhat in
dignity. Mr. Kelada was familiar. I do
not wish to put on airs, but I cannot help feeling that it is seemly in a total
stranger to put mister before my name when he addresses me. Mr.
Kelada, doubtless to set me at my ease, used no such formality. I did not like Mr. Kelada. I had put aside
the cards when he sat down, but now, thinking that for this first occasion our
conversation had lasted long enough, I went on with my game.
“The three on the four,” said Mr. Kelada.
There is nothing more exasperating when you
are playing patience than to be told where to put the card you have turned up
before you have a chance to look for yourself.
“It’s coming out, it’s coming out,” he
cried. “The ten on the knave.”
With rage and hatred in my heart I
finished.
Then he seized the pack.
“Do you like card tricks?”
“No, I hate card tricks,” I answered.
“Well, I’ll just show you this one.”
He showed me three. Then I said I would go down to the
dining-room and get my seat at the table.
“Oh, that’s all right,” he said, “I’ve
already taken a seat for you. I thought
that as we were in the same stateroom we might just as well sit at the same
table.”
I did not like Mr. Kelada.
I not only shared a cabin with him and ate
three meals a day at the same table, but I could not walk round the deck
without his joining me. It was
impossible to snub him. It never occurred to him that he was not
wanted. He was certain that you were as
glad to see him as he was to see you.
In your own house you might have kicked him downstairs and slammed the
door in his face without the suspicion dawning on him that he was not a welcome
visitor. He was a good mixer, and in
three days knew everyone on board. He
ran everything. He managed the sweeps, conducted the auctions, collected money for prizes at the
sports, got up quoit and golf matches, organized the concert and arranged the
fancy-dress ball. He was everywhere and
always. He was certainly the best hated
man in the ship. We called him Mr. Know-All, even to his face. He took it as a compliment. But it was at mealtimes that he was most
intolerable. For the better part of an
hour then he had us at his mercy. He
was hearty, jovial, loquacious and argumentative. He knew everything better than anybody else, and it was an
affront to his overweening vanity that
you should disagree with him. He would
not drop a subject, however unimportant, till he had brought you round to his
way of thinking. The possibility that
he could be mistaken never occurred to him.
He was the chap who knew. We sat
at the doctor’s table. Mr. Kelada would certainly have had it all his
own way, for the doctor was lazy and I was frigidly indifferent, except for a
man called Ramsay who sat there also.
He was as dogmatic as Mr. Kelada
and resented bitterly the Levantine’s cocksureness. The discussions they had were acrimonious and interminable.
Ramsay was in the American Consular Service
and was stationed at Kobe. He was a
great heavy fellow from the Middle West, with loose fat under a tight skin, and
he bulged out of his ready-made clothes.
He was on his way back to resume his post, having been on a flying visit
to New York to fetch his wife who had been spending a year at home. Mrs.
Ramsay was a very pretty little thing, with pleasant manners and a sense
of humour. The Consular Service is ill
paid, and she was dressed always very simply; but she knew how to wear her
clothes. She achieved an effect of
quiet distinction. I should not have
paid any particular attention to her but that she possessed a quality that may
be common enough in women, but nowadays is not obvious in their demeanour. It shone in her like a flower on a coat.
One evening at dinner the conversation by
chance drifted to the subject of pearls.
There had been in the papers a good deal of talk about the cultured
pearls which the cunning Japanese were making, and the doctor remarked that
they must inevitably diminish the value of real ones. They were very good already; they would soon be perfect. Mr.
Kelada, as was his habit, rushed the new topic. He told us all that was to be known about
pearls. I do not believe Ramsay knew
anything about them at all, but he could not resist the opportunity to have a
fling at the Levantine, and in five minutes we were in the middle of a heated
argument. I had seen Mr. Kelada vehement and voluble before, but
never so voluble and vehement as now.
At last something that Ramsay said stung him, for he thumped the table
and shouted.
“Well, I ought to know what I am talking
about, I’m going to Japan just to look into this Japanese pearl business. I’m in the trade and there’s not a man in it
who won’t tell you that what I say about pearls goes. I know all the best pearls in the world, and what I don’t know
about pearls isn’t worth knowing.”
Here was news for us, for Mr. Kelada, with all his loquacity, had never
told anyone what his business was. We
only knew vaguely that he was going to Japan on some commercial errand. He looked around the table triumphantly.
“They’ll never be able to get a cultured
pearl that an expert like me can’t tell with half an eye.” He pointed to a
chain that Mrs. Ramsay wore. “You take my word for it, Mrs. Ramsay, that chain you’re wearing will never
be worth a cent less than it is now.”
Mrs.
Ramsay in her modest way flushed a little and slipped the chain inside
her dress. Ramsay leaned forward. He gave us all a look and a smile flickered
in his eyes.
“That’s a pretty chain of Mrs. Ramsay’s, isn’t it?”
“I noticed it at once,” answered Mr. Kelada.
“Gee, I said to myself, those are pearls all right.”
“I didn’t buy it myself, of course. I’d be interested to know how much you think
it cost.”
“Oh, in the trade somewhere round fifteen
thousand dollars. But if it was bought
on Fifth Avenue I shouldn’t be surprised to hear anything up to thirty thousand
was paid for it.”
Ramsay smiled grimly.
“You’ll be surprised to hear that Mrs. Ramsay bought that string at a department
store the day before we left New York, for eighteen dollars.”
Mr.
Kelada flushed.
“Rot.
It’s not only real, but it’s as fine a string for its size as I’ve ever
seen.”
“Will you bet on it? I’ll bet you a hundred dollars it’s
imitation.”
“Done.”
“Oh, Elmer, you can’t bet on a certainty,”
said Mrs. Ramsay.
She had a little smile on her lips and her
tone was gently deprecating.
“Can’t I?
If I get a chance of easy money like that I should be all sorts of a
fool not to take it.”
“But how can it be proved?” she
continued. “It’s only my word against
Mr. Kelada’s.”
“Let me look at the chain, and if it’s
imitation I’ll tell you quickly enough.
I can afford to lose a hundred dollars,” said Mr. Kelada.
“Take it off, dear. Let the gentleman look at it as much as he
wants.”
Mrs.
Ramsay hesitated a moment. She
put her hands to the clasp.
“I can’t undo it,” she said, “Mr. Kelada will just have to take my word for
it.”
I had a sudden suspicion that something
unfortunate was about to occur, but I could think of nothing to say.
Ramsay jumped up.
“I’ll undo it.”
He handed the chain to Mr. Kelada.
The Levantine took a magnifying glass from his pocket and closely
examined it. A smile of triumph spread
over his smooth and swarthy face. He
handed back the chain. He was about to
speak. Suddenly he caught sight of Mrs. Ramsay’s face. It was so white that she looked as though she were about to
faint. She was staring at him with wide
and terrified eyes. They held a
desperate appeal; it was so clear that I wondered why her husband did not see
it.
Mr.
Kelada stopped with his mouth open.
He flushed deeply. You could
almost see the effort he was making over himself.
“I was mistaken,” he said. “It’s very good imitation, but of course as
soon as I looked through my glass I saw that it wasn’t real. I think eighteen dollars is just about as
much as the damned thing’s worth.”
He took out his pocketbook and from it a
hundred dollar note. He handed it to
Ramsay without a word.
“Perhaps that’ll teach you not to be so
cocksure another time, my young friend,” said Ramsay as he took the note.
I noticed that Mr. Kelada’s hands were trembling.
The story spread over the ship as stories
do, and he had to put up with a good deal of chaff that evening. It was a fine joke that Mr. Know-All had been caught out. But Mrs.
Ramsay retired to her stateroom with a headache.
Next morning I got up and began to
shave. Mr. Kelada lay on his bed smoking a cigarette. Suddenly there was a small scraping sound
and I saw a letter pushed under the door.
I opened the door and looked out.
There was nobody there. I picked
up the letter and saw it was addressed to Max Kelada. The name was written in block letters. I handed it to him.
“Who’s this from?” He opened it. “Oh!”
He took out of the envelope, not a letter,
but a hundred-dollar note. He looked at
me and again he reddened. He tore the
envelope into little bits and gave them to me.
“Do you mind just throwing them out of the
porthole?”
I did as he asked, and then I looked at him
with a smile.
“No one likes being made to look a perfect
damned fool,” he said.
“Were the pearls real?”
“If I had a pretty little wife I shouldn’t
let her spend a year in New York while I stayed at Kobe,” said he.
At that moment I did not entirely dislike
Mr. Kelada. He reached out for his pocketbook and carefully put in it the
hundred-dollar note.
9
Keeping Errors at Bay
Bertrand Russell (England, 1872-1970)
o avoid the various foolish opinions to
which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.
If
the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation
yourself. Aristotle could have avoided
the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep
her mouth open while he counted. He did
not do so because he thought he knew.
Thinking that you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to
which we are all prone. I believe
myself that hedgehogs eat black beetles, because I have been told that they do;
but if I were writing a book on the habits of hedgehogs, I should not commit
myself until I had seen one enjoying this unappetizing diet. Aristotle, however, was less cautious. Ancient and medieval authors knew all about
unicorns and salamanders; not one of them thought it necessary to avoid
dogmatic statements about them because he had never seen one of them.
Many matters, however, are less easily
brought to the test of experience. If,
like most of mankind, you have passionate convictions on many such matters,
there are ways in which you can make yourself aware of your own bias. If an opinion contrary to your own makes you
angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good
reason for thinking as you do. If
someone maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator,
you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or
geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those
about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic,
because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only
opinion. So whenever you find yourself
getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will
probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the
evidence warrants.
A good way of ridding yourself of
certain kinds of dogmatism is to become aware of opinions held in social
circles different from your own. When I
was young, I lived much outside my own country—in France, Germany, Italy, and
the United States. I found this very
profitable in diminishing the intensity of insular prejudice. If you cannot travel, seek out people with
whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not
yours. If the people and the newspaper
seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them. In this opinion both parties may be right,
but they cannot both be wrong. This
reflection should generate a certain caution.
Becoming aware of foreign customs,
however, does not always have a beneficial effect. In the seventeenth century, when the Manchus conquered China, it
was the custom among the Chinese for the women to have small feet, and among
the Manchus for the men to wear pigtails.
Instead of each dropping their own foolish custom, they each adopted the
foolish custom of the other, and the Chinese continued to wear pigtails until
they shook off the dominion of the Manchus in the revolution of 1911.
For
those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine
an argument with a person having a different bias. This has one advantage, and only one, as compared with actual
conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not
subject to the same limitations of time and space. Mahatma Gandhi deplored railways and steamboats and machinery; he
would have liked to undo the whole of the industrial revolution. You may never have an opportunity of
actually meeting anyone who holds this opinion, because in Western countries
most people take the advantage of modern technique for granted. But if you want to make sure that you are
right in agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you will find it a good plan to
test the arguments that occur to you by considering what Gandhi might have said
in refutation of them. I have sometimes
been led actually to change my mind as a result of this kind of imaginary
dialogue, and, short of this, I have frequently found myself growing less
dogmatic and cocksure through realizing the possible reasonableness of a hypothetical
opponent.
Be
very wary of opinions that flatter your self‑esteem. Both men and women, nine times out of ten,
are firmly convinced of the superior excellence of their own sex. There is abundant evidence on both sides. If you are a man, you can point out that
most poets and men of science are male; if you are a woman, you can retort that
so are most criminals. The question is
inherently insoluble, but self‑esteem conceals this from most
people. We are all, whatever part of
the world we come from, persuaded that our own nation is superior to all
others. Seeing that each nation has its
characteristic merits and demerits, we adjust our standard of values so as to
make out that the merits possessed by our nation are the really important ones,
while its demerits are comparatively trivial.
Here, again, the rational man will admit that the question is one to
which there is no demonstrably right answer.
It is more difficult to deal with the self‑esteem of man as man,
because we cannot argue out the matter with some non‑human mind. The only way I know of dealing with this
general human conceit is to remind ourselves that man is a brief episode in the
life of a small planet in a little corner of the universe, and that, for aught
we know, other parts of the cosmos may contain beings as superior to ourselves
as we are to jelly‑fish.
Other
passions besides self‑esteem are common sources of error; of these
perhaps the most important is fear.
Fear sometimes operates directly, by inventing rumours of disaster in
war‑time, or by imagining objects of terror, such as ghosts; sometimes it
operates indirectly, by creating belief in something comforting, such as the
elixir of life, or heaven for ourselves and hell for our enemies. Fear has many forms—fear of death, fear of
the dark, fear of the unknown, fear of the herd, and that vague generalized
fear that comes to those who conceal from themselves their more specific
terrors. Until you have admitted your
own fears to yourself, and have guarded yourself by a difficult effort of will
against their myth‑making power, you cannot hope to think truly about
many matters of great importance, especially those with which religious beliefs
are concerned. Fear is the main source
of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom,
in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavour after a worthy manner of life.
9
Nine
Puzzles
A jeweler has
3 diamonds. They all look exactly
alike, but one diamond is heavier than the others. How can she identify the heavier diamond by using a balance scale
just once? Please outline your argument
as carefully as you can.
2. Same as above, but now the jeweler
doesn’t know whether the odd diamond is lighter or heavier than the other
two. By using the scale twice, how can
she tell (i) which is the odd one, and (ii) whether it is lighter or heavier?
3. What do you see in the following two
sketches?
4. One morning, exactly at sunrise, a Buddhist monk began to
climb a tall mountain. The narrow path,
no more than a foot or two wide, spiraled around the mountain to a glittering
temple at the summit. The monk ascended
the path at varying rates of speed, stopping many times along the way to rest and
to eat the dried fruit he carried with him.
He reached the temple shortly before sunset. After several days of fasting and meditation he began his journey
back along the same path, starting at sunrise and again walking at variable
speeds with many pauses along the way.
His average speed descending was, of course, greater than his average
climbing speed. Prove that there is a
spot along the path that the monk will occupy on both trips at precisely the
same time of day.
5. Three glasses
contain liquid, and three are empty.
Rearrange the glasses so that they alternate—one with liquid, one
without, one with liquid, one without, etc.
You are allowed to touch or move only one glass.
6.
In her drawer, Cathy has six pairs of black gloves and six pairs of brown
gloves . In complete darkness, how many gloves must she take from the drawer in
order to be sure to get a matching pair?
Think carefully!!
7.
Cigars cannot be smoked all the way to the end, so most cigar smokers generate
and discard butts. A poor man can make
one cigar from every 5 discarded cigar butts he collects. Today, he
collected 25 butts. How many cigars will he be able to smoke?
8. To tackle this problem,
imagine yourself a raven. You can still
reason as well (or as badly?J)
as you always do, but you have the body of a raven. You are starving, and ravens do love meat. There is a fine chunk of salami about 3 feet
below you, tied to a string. The other
side of the string is securely tied to your perch. By now, you have unsuccessfully tried the following:
q Bending down
as far as you can, grabbing the string with your bill and lifting it up--but it
was too long and it still dangled down below you.
q Grabbing the
salami chunk while flying, jumping upwards from the ground, or falling down
from the perch.
q Tearing or
untying the string.
q Breaking the
perch.
q Climbing down
the string (ravens, you found out, can’t do that sort of thing).
q Swinging the
string upwards towards you.
q Coiling the
string repeatedly around your perch.
And yet, that salami down there smells so
very good! What are you going to do???
(For an online hint, and to see how elephants solved this program, go to: http://youtube.com/watch?v=rplLLmx5xtY)
9. Tower of Hanoi Puzzle
9.
Imagine that you are faced with a board that has 3 pegs, I, II, and III (see
the figure above). Peg I has 3 disks of
different sizes, with the largest disk, G(reen), at the bottom, the middle one,
R(ed), in the middle, and the smallest one, B(lue), on top. You need to transfer all 3 disks to peg III,
as shown in the figure below—this is you goal state. In doing so, you must follow five rules:
1. You
can only move one disk at a time.
2. A disk must be moved from one peg to
another.
3. You
can only move the top disk of a peg (e.g., in the first figure above, you can
only move Disk B of Peg I to either Peg II or Peg III).
4. A disk cannot be placed on a disk
smaller than itself (e.g., Disk R can never be placed on top of Disk B).
5. Number of allowed steps: 7 or less.
Write a step-by-step
solution to this problem, so that a dumb robot might be able to follow your
instructions.
Step 1.
Step 2.
Step
3.
Step
4.
Step
5.
Step
6.
Step
7.
Photo:
The real tower of Hanoi
9
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE, ANYWAY?
Isaac
Asimov (USA, 1920-1992)
hat is intelligence, anyway? When I was in
the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and,
against a normal of 100, scored 160. No
one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a
big fuss over me. (It didn’t mean
anything. The next day I was still a
buck private with KP—kitchen police—as my highest duty.)
All
my life I’ve been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent
feeling that I’m highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so,
too. Actually, though, don’t such
scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic
questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the
intelligence tests—people with intellectual bents similar to mine?
For
instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests,
could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far
more intelligent than he was. Yet, when
anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him
anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as
though they were divine oracles—and he always fixed my car.
Well,
then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence
test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a
farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron. And, I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic
training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard,
working with my hands, I would do poorly.
My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society
I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed
to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider
my auto-repair man, again. He had a
habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me.
One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc,
a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter
and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer.
He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and
left. Well, Doc, the next guy who came
in was a blind man. He wanted scissors.
How do you suppose he asked for them?”
Indulgently,
I lifted my right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two
fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man
laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, he used his voice and asked
for them.” Then he said smugly, “I’ve
been trying that on all my customers today.”
“Did you catch many? I asked.
“Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, Doc,
I knew you couldn’t be very smart.”
And
I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.
9
Lesson 28
1. Read pp. **
("The Stub Book").
2. Pedro Antonio de
Alarcón (1833-1891) was a Spanish writer and diplomat.
3. Please re-tell “The
Stub Book” in one short paragraph.
4. Is it possible for
a man to love his pumpkins, view them as “the daughters of his toil,” and
grieve when he has to bid them adios?
5. When did the idea of cutting the stems occur to Uncle Buscabeatas? What decisive step did he take before
leaving for the market town of Cádiz? Why are we only told that he “lingered for
some twenty minutes at the scene of the catastrophe” but are only told later
what actually transpired in those twenty minutes?
6. What was the source
of Uncle Buscabeatas’s
brilliant idea of cutting the stems of the stolen pumpkins and bringing them to
Cádiz? Could we say that sometimes great
discoveries are based on the same principle, e.g., making a great discovery in
the discipline of astronomy by relying on ideas from the discipline of mathematics?
7. The story ends with a much-deserved victory for Uncle Buscabeatas. But wait: Couldn’t Uncle Fulano claim
that Buscabeatas stole the stems from
Fulano’s field?
8. Are there similarities in the way Uncle Buscabeatas solved the
mystery of the missing pumpkins and the way Dr. Semmelweis (pp. *) solved the mystery of the
dying mothers? Did one of these
solutions require greater imagination and creativity than the other? If not, could we say that most of us, given
the right circumstances, have the potential of making great cultural
contributions?
Follow-up Reading and Viewing for Pleasure
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón . 1974. The
Three-Cornered Hat (a touching comedy based in Alarcón native Andalusia).
Lesson 29
1. Read pp. 225‑32 ("Mr. Know‑All").
2. Listen to a short story on Tape or CD:
"Mr. Know‑All."
3. A
Rashomon Effect Exercise: Briefly retell the story, not from Mr. Maugham's
viewpoint, but from Mr. Kelada's. In
retelling this story, assume that, although he was perfectly aware of his fellow
passengers' prejudices, Mr. Kelada chose to ignore them.
4. Read the Spotlight below ("Conversations
with a Critical Thinker") and answer questions a‑e.
|
Conversations
with a
Critical
Thinker
(OR: Black
on White = Right)
The first draft of Adventures
in English placed Maugham's "Mr.
Know‑All" in the
"Crosscultural Bridges" unit.
After all, the story involved Americans, Englishmen, and a Middle
Easterner who is, according to the narrator of the story, trying to pass as
an Englishman.
But just then, an Egyptian scholar
visited the Central Department of English.
Now "Mustafa" liked our book and was contemplating its
adoption in his native land, until he noticed "Mr. Know‑All." At that moment, all hell broke loose.
"What's the matter, Mustafa?"
one of us asked.
"My dear Nepali colleagues,"
he began. "I am truly astonished
that you chose to include this piece of 'literature' in your
collection."
"Why?" we asked, taken aback
by astonishment.
"Well," Mustafa said, "I
feel that you have unknowingly succumbed to Mr. Maugham's superb storytelling
gift, and that you have ignored a most disturbing aspect of his story."
)
We were still puzzled, and said so. So Mustafa continued.
"My esteemed friends, Mr. Maugham
is an out‑and‑out racist.
Read the story with this new allegation in mind, and judge for
yourselves."
We did, and found Mustafa's charge of
racism not as absurd as it first appeared.
So we hastily transferred the story from the "Crosscultural
Bridges" to the "Critical and Creative Thinking" unit of Adventures in English. And, before we continue, we would like you
to convince yourself that Mustafa's accusation is sensible:
a. Please re‑read the story (pp. 225‑32) and cite at least three instances
which seem to document Mustafa's claim of racism (the answer to this question
appears in Appendix XIII, p. 386).
b. State whether, in your opinion, Somerset
Maugham shares the view that "there is only one caste, the caste of
humanity?"
At
this point, however, one of us interrupted Mustafa and argued that his
accusation rested on a misconception.
That is, Mustafa seemed to have confused the person who tells the
story with Mr. Maugham. The narrator,
perhaps, looks down on Egyptians and Nepalis, but he should not be confused
with Mr. Maugham.
Mustafa was equal to this task. He reminded us that we had never been
under direct English occupation, while Egyptians had experienced British
condescension first hand. He argued
that Maugham never took the trouble to distance himself from the narrator. Finally, he marshaled a few other
illustrations of Maugham's parochialism.
For instance, he reminded us of Maugham's "Alien Corn,"
which again capitalizes, patronizingly, on ethnic differences. And this leads us to the next assignment:
c. In a single paragraph, please comment on
Mustafa's argument: Is he right in
insisting that Maugham himself is a racist?
You would think by now that old Mustafa
had made his point, and that he would join us for some long‑overdue
tiffin at the Kathmandu Coffee House. But our hopes were quickly dashed, for at
this point Mustafa turned his critical gaze on another aspect of "Mr.
Know‑All."
"My esteemed Nepali
colleagues," Mustafa proceeded, "I can understand how Maugham's
ethnocentricity escaped you, but what really baffles me is that you failed,
as well, to notice his shoddy math.
In fact, even if Maugham was a honest man (which I doubt), I wouldn't
trust him with giving me correct change for a fifty‑rupee note. I sense, however, that you are all anxious
to savor some Masala Dosa and coconut chutney, and I must confess that I myself would love to
sample a few South Indian dishes. So
let us drop this subject for the moment.
When you go home tonight, I urge you to re‑read Maugham's
captivating story once more and convince yourselves that I am right."
So we did go to lunch. And then, at Mustafa's insistence, we went
to Thamel Market, and saw Mustafa in action (in addition to being a critical
thinking ace, he is, no doubt, the best bargainer this side of the Indian
Ocean). We then went home, re‑read
the story, and saw that indeed Mr. Maugham committed an embarrassing
mathematical error.
d.
Explain Maugham's error? (the answer to this question appears in Appendix XIII, p. 386).
When we got together again, one of us
said:
"Sure, the mathematical error is
there, but this does not mean that Mr. Maugham is a careless
mathematician. The error, rather, is
committed by one character of the story, not by Mr. Maugham. "Mr. Know‑All," for all we
know, might be nothing more than a faithful rendition of an actual event in
Mr. Maugham's life."
e. We
shall not reproduce Mustafa's reply to this question. Instead, we shall ask you to provide your
own answer. So, what do you think, is
Mr. Maugham guilty of bad math, or did he deliberately include this error in
the story? Please explain your
answer.
|
Reading for Pleasure
Other
celebrated Somerset Maugham's stories include "Rain," "The
Kite," and "The Verger."
His best novel is perhaps The
Razor's Edge.
Lesson 30
1. Read pp. *
("What is Intelligence, Anyway?").
2. Try to solve the creative thinking puzzles on
pp. 237‑40 (answers to these puzzles
appear in Appendix XII, pp.
3. Please prepare a brief class presentation
(less than five minutes long) on the topic: "For me, the most interesting
point in Asimov's essay (pp. 233‑6) is
[describe, explain, and illustrate this point] because [explain your reasons
for thinking it most interesting]."
4.
Do you agree with Asimov that human beings cannot be placed on a one-dimensional
intelligence scale, that they are all made up of a unique mixture of
intelligence and stupidity?
5. Try telling
Asimov’s joke to a couple of friends.
Did they fall into the same trap that Asimov fell into, or were they
more “intelligent” than he was.
6. The
so-called “intelligence test” has often been used to label and exclude
people. For instance, in the USA in the
1920s, the test was used to justify discrimination against Italians Russians,
Jews, Poles . . . Asimov’s parents were
almost certainly excluded from polite society because of their poverty, foreign
accents, and Eastern-European origins.
Do you think such personal experiences might have contributed to
Asimov’s skeptical views of official I.Q. tests—despite the fact that he
himself scored very high in these very tests?
4. In small groups, please edit Sentences 60‑79 of Appendix III (pp. **). When done, compare your answers to those
given in Appendix IV (pp. **).
Reading for Pleasure
Asimov, Isaac. 1972. The
Gods Themselves (a great science fiction novel).
POSTSCRIPT
You can have
all the virtues—that's to say, all except the two that really matter,
understanding and compassion—you can have all the others, I say, and be a
thoroughly bad man.
Aldous Huxley
Ekta Books / Adventures
in English / Moti Nissani’s Homepage