VL-IV pgs. 98/99: Postmodern Mysticism

[Michael Bailey]

 Richard  wrote:
> Dr. Johnson did not refute the good Bishop. Either he did not understand the
> first thing about Berkeley's philosophy, or he was making a joke.
>

or both?  You're right, of course:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Berkeley
"....Dr. Samuel Johnson kicked a heavy stone and exclaimed, "I refute
it thus!" A philosophical empiricist might reply that .... the
existence of the stone consisted exclusively of Dr. Johnson's
perceptions....Whatever the stone really was, apart from the
sensations that he felt and the ideas or mental pictures that he
perceived, was completely unknown to him. The kicked stone existed,
ultimately, as an idea in his mind, nothing more and nothing less."


Having followed up the thoughts that Robin's comments about heresy
provoked, I was taking a shortcut back to the text via the quickest
subject change wormhole that presented itself.  Found BB/DJ lurking or
larking somewhere along that corridor.

*** something I didn't know:
Both University of California, Berkeley, and the city that grew up
around the university, were named after him...The naming was suggested
in 1866 by a trustee of the then College of California, Frederick
Billings. Billings was inspired by Berkeley's Verses on the Prospect
of Planting Arts and Learning in America, particularly the final
stanza: "Westward the course of empire takes its way; The first four
Acts already past, A fifth shall close the Drama with the day; Time's
noblest offspring is the last."

so that's where that "westward the course of empire takes its way" comes from.