Res Ipsa Loquitur
Posted: Sat Oct 12, 2024 10:58 am
Douglas Mercer
October 12 2024
In any sort of analysis, we have to accept the fact that there is likely to be an ultimate level or stopping point beyond which further analysis is impossible. It was this realization that animated Aquinas’s very sensible claim that the causal series in the universe could not stretch back in time infinitely, but had to have a starting point, else nothing would have ever got going at all. Analysis has to stop somewhere. Schelling’s cosmology in the Freiheitsschrift reasons similarly: there is some ultimate thing, to which everything else owes its existence, and it is will, the ground of all. In fact, I think it would be entirely reasonable for Schelling to take the position that all beings must have a ground – except will. Will is primal being (Ursein) in the sense that it is a first being: all else can be traced to it and the Will, alone of all things, haughty and imperious, is autonomous.
In general, bootstrapping usually refers to a self-starting process that is supposed to continue or grow without external input.
The idea behind the bootstrap doctrine is that a court which had no jurisdiction initially, when the issue is litigated, can lift itself into jurisdiction by its own incorrect but conclusive finding that it does have jurisdiction.
In a Court Of Law bootstrapping often refers to a lawyer assuming facts which are not in evidence.
The term is sometimes attributed to a story in Rudolf Erich Raspe's The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, but in that story Baron Munchausen pulls himself (and his horse) out of a swamp by his hair (specifically, his pigtail), not by his bootstraps – and no explicit reference to bootstraps has been found elsewhere in the various versions of the Munchausen tales.
To pick oneself up by one's own bootstraps is a literal impossibility as one must bend down to try to do so and the weight, distributed downward, makes such an action impossible.
To pick oneself up by one’s bootstraps is an English idiom meaning to become self-reliant.
In the vernacular we speak of something which speaks for itself, that is it does so on its own authority and requires no footnotes or citations from authorities extraneous to itself; for the word it speaks is gleaming and obvious and self-evident. That is the words literally pick themselves up by their own bootstraps.
We also speak of things taking on a life of their own, which often happens when men create a monster.
To speak on one’s own authority is to speak without qualifications.
Res Ipsa Loquitur (Latin for the thing speaks for itself) is tantamount to QED, that is the final word, a word that is so high handed it will brook no opposition.
***
Notes:
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom.
Hegel argued that absolute knowledge is possible but that to attain it one must respect the process of attaining it—when it is achieved the Owl Of Minerva begins its supernal flight.
October 12 2024
In any sort of analysis, we have to accept the fact that there is likely to be an ultimate level or stopping point beyond which further analysis is impossible. It was this realization that animated Aquinas’s very sensible claim that the causal series in the universe could not stretch back in time infinitely, but had to have a starting point, else nothing would have ever got going at all. Analysis has to stop somewhere. Schelling’s cosmology in the Freiheitsschrift reasons similarly: there is some ultimate thing, to which everything else owes its existence, and it is will, the ground of all. In fact, I think it would be entirely reasonable for Schelling to take the position that all beings must have a ground – except will. Will is primal being (Ursein) in the sense that it is a first being: all else can be traced to it and the Will, alone of all things, haughty and imperious, is autonomous.
In general, bootstrapping usually refers to a self-starting process that is supposed to continue or grow without external input.
The idea behind the bootstrap doctrine is that a court which had no jurisdiction initially, when the issue is litigated, can lift itself into jurisdiction by its own incorrect but conclusive finding that it does have jurisdiction.
In a Court Of Law bootstrapping often refers to a lawyer assuming facts which are not in evidence.
The term is sometimes attributed to a story in Rudolf Erich Raspe's The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, but in that story Baron Munchausen pulls himself (and his horse) out of a swamp by his hair (specifically, his pigtail), not by his bootstraps – and no explicit reference to bootstraps has been found elsewhere in the various versions of the Munchausen tales.
To pick oneself up by one's own bootstraps is a literal impossibility as one must bend down to try to do so and the weight, distributed downward, makes such an action impossible.
To pick oneself up by one’s bootstraps is an English idiom meaning to become self-reliant.
In the vernacular we speak of something which speaks for itself, that is it does so on its own authority and requires no footnotes or citations from authorities extraneous to itself; for the word it speaks is gleaming and obvious and self-evident. That is the words literally pick themselves up by their own bootstraps.
We also speak of things taking on a life of their own, which often happens when men create a monster.
To speak on one’s own authority is to speak without qualifications.
Res Ipsa Loquitur (Latin for the thing speaks for itself) is tantamount to QED, that is the final word, a word that is so high handed it will brook no opposition.
***
Notes:
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom.
Hegel argued that absolute knowledge is possible but that to attain it one must respect the process of attaining it—when it is achieved the Owl Of Minerva begins its supernal flight.
