venta | Is it Friday yet ?

Current Music: Antehelion - Best Of, 1999-2003

Is it Friday yet ?

Oh look, it's Elizabeth trying to sneak enormous philosophical issues into a scratty little cut...

I'm currently reading Antonia Fraser's biography of Mary, Queen of Scots. Which has so far been interesting, although it has consistently unsettled me with its strange word-order within sentences. Owing to my unsociable habit of reading while eating, it's also rather more splattered with miso soup than any book on Scottish history should rightfully be.

However, in talking about the behaviour of the Scottish nobility around the time Mary returned to Scotland, it says:

"there is a basic code of human decency, which should not be violated even in times of insecurity" (quote approximate, as I don't have the book with me).

Which struck me as rather a sweeping assumption to just drop into the middle of a pargraph. I'm not even sure I agree with it. I'm wondering if it's the hypothetical should of someone who knows it isn't them whose going to be suffering the insecurity...

Discuss :)

Today's slightly less in-depth question: why, when placing multi-volume books on shelves, do the volumes always seem to go right to left ? It seems an odd convention, in view of the left-to-right nature of our society. I'm hoping

addedentry might know the answer to this one.

I'm tired. My neck hurts.

On the plus side, a colleague brought me a CD this morning of what he describes as "home-brew chilled dance/ambient with celtic crossovery things going on" which he made, as is traditional, in his bedroom.

I'm quite liking it so far.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, like many such discussion it all comes down to the world "should".

Take this as 'should in the opinion of the writer' and the statement is presumably true in a fairly uncontroversial way.

If meant in a kind of wider morally absolute sense it seems pretty clearly wrong. Or at least, as wrong as prescriptive absolute morality usually is, about which views differ muchly.

To be honest, I was more wondering about the idea of a basic code of human decency - and whether one existed.

I don't think you could say anything totally universal, but I was wondering to what extent it's feasible to say things like "most cultures think murdering your father or sleeping with your sister is a Bad Thing".

Claiming universals is always a dodgy line of argument. Much anthropology up to the late 70's is full of them. And then a whole generation of hungry-grad students discovered deconstruction, and so the world changed...

Nonetheless, there are a few very broad themes that seem to be commonplace in many societies - the two you list are the main ones. Often such taboos are dressed up within a religious framework, but not always.

Hmm. Rather difficult to say, if only because the exceptions tend to be rather more dramatic than the rule. Murder is certainly generally proscribed but the exceptions tend to be dramatic; the Thuggees for example or the Nizari Ismaili Order. Ancient Iceland also had rather idiosyncratic attitudes, distinguishing between killing and secret killing (the latter was far worse, the system of morality being based on codes of honour).

Give or take a bit, I think I agree with the assertion. I believe that individual rights are the best chance we have to build a fair and functionally ethical society. As such, respecting those rights (whatever they may be - this is subject both to opinion and to variation) can constitute the "decency" in question. But again, it's about what "should" means - without specifying a basis for morality it's difficult to say what we "should" or "shouldn't" do.

Is it possible that the writer is asserting "should in the prevailing opinion of the society under discussion"? In that case it is not clear whether the assertion is true or false.

I actually know the answer to this, having pondered it at length.

Take a pile of books. Orient them neatly such that the first volume is on the top.

Turn them ninety degrees so as to put them in a bookcase.

See?

But I'd put the first volume on the bottom.

So you've reduced the problem to a question already asked :)

That's interesting.

If asked to arrange books in a pile I'd put the first one on the top.

It may be that your book-pile-arranging is done with the underlying knowledge that turning them afterwards puts them in the 'wrong' order, while the rest of the world just follows the 'top-down' rule without having thought about what happens when they put them in the bookcase.

What "top down" rule?

We write left to right and top to bottom.

Oh, I see.

In that case, I'll point out that I very rarely sort books in a stack and then place the stack on the shelf - I find it easier to sort books on the shelf, and as such it makes sense to me to sort them "shelfwise" (i.e, left to right) rather than "stackwise" (i.e, top to bottom).

But I'd put the first volume on the bottom

Me too. I treat multi-volume books in exactly the same way that I treat series of books - the first one goes on the left.

Is this not the case in real libraries? I certainly don't remember ever seeing an encyclopedia arranged

[Winter - ZZ Top] [Televison - Wimbledon] [Marmoset - Teleology] [Etruscan - Heron] [Aardwolf - Eschaton]

No, doesn't seem to be true of alphabetical books like that. But often the numberically highest volume will be on the left, if the volumes are only labelled by number.

What kicked me off with this today was the boxed set of Narnia books in the staffroom - The Last Battle is the leftmost book in the box, and The Magician's Nephew the rightmost. This seems to be quite common in boxed sets of series(es).

(In fact, everything from herring...)

What kicked me off with this today was the boxed set of Narnia books in the staffroom - The Last Battle is the leftmost book in the box, and The Magician's Nephew the rightmost.

I did notice that... It was strongly tempting to put them 'the right way round'. It's the same sort of impulse as straightening hanging pictures, I think...

(In fact, everything from herring...)

Point scored and duly noted.

Thinking about it, I do put books on shelves so that the volumes go from left to right.

If I had to stack some books, I would indeed put the first volume on the bottom, specifically so that they would be in the 'correct' order when put on a shelf.

So I guess I've been doing it wrong all these years?

Books on shelves in my house start at the first one on the left and move to the last one on the right (because I naturally expect to read left to right, and to start at the first one).

Books in stacks in my house start at the last one on the bottom and finish at the first one on the top (because then I can take the first one from the top of the pile and when I've finished it, be reasonably certain that the next one to read is the next in the pile).

I'm slightly disturbed to find that for each of those paragraphs I was visualising a particular series of books. The first is the Dragonrider books and the second is the Anne of Green Gables books. These are by no means the only series of books in my house, they are not my favourite series of books, and although I read AoGG recently, I've not read any Dragonrider books for years, and I haven't read the rest of AoGG for even longer. How peculiar.

Yup, this is what I do as well. I order books such that they are left-to-right on a shelf and top-to-bottom in a stack. Yes, this does mean I have to reorder them when doing a stack to shelf transition.

I've had an alternative answer via email from a non-LJ person who read this.

The pointed out that as you look at a book on the shelf, it's actual contents goes right to left (ie first page on right, last page on left). So by putting Vol II to the left of Vol I, you have better coninuity of content... and indeed, if you were to rebind them as one vol, you'd want them that way round.

Since I believe it used to be moderately common to split large volumes up post-binding, this might be relevant.

Uh oh... it's endian-ness !

Ah, but using that line of thought would also require the books to be put on the shelf with the pages facing forward, and the spine to the back. The best consistency of pages you could want, except you'd not be able to identify the book.
So whereas that could create the order of the books, turning them around so you can see the spine would put the lowest/earliest volume on the left (where it was initially), and the latter to the right of it/them.

Up to the mutter century it was quite common for libraries to keep their books chained to a rail for security. A consequence of the usual chaining arrangement was that the spines were at the back and the fore-edges faced forward on the shelves. Titles would be scribbled on the fore-edge for identification. You might not want to do this to your collection, though.

Because that way you know exactly how long the series is.
If you are reading along a shelf from left to right as you normally do (teeny little assumption there) then if you file from right to left you will reach the last book first and know exactly how much series you have to go to reach the beginning.
If you reach the first book from a series first it could be any length long and you won't know if you have certainly reached the last book.

Make perfect sense - just like my book filing systems ;-)

I thought your book filing system was "they're still in the order that John and Steve put them back on the shelf in when they moved the shelves".

It is at the moment, but that is because I need to unpack the boxes of books and refile everything - its on my todo list for a rainy day.
They were in Andie filing order before I painted the room.

Why not arrange shelves to encircle the room.
Then there is no beginning, no end.

Books without end....

It's a nice idea, something would need to be done about the door though - kind of provides a beginning and end.
Oooh, what about one of the dug out core wine cellars adapted for books... http://www.instant-wine-cellar.co.uk/product.html

I think its to do with which way the writing goes down the spine. I think we are 'programmed' from an early age to tilt our headdss to the right to read these. I wonder if it is programmed or instinctive behaviour that then makes my eyes scan from right to left.

lanfykins, do you want to paint me brown and put a little white square on my head to investigate further?

Interestingly, most French books have the writing in the opposite direction to us. This always annoys me, as the aesthetics of a book shelf require (in my own, universal, way) that the books must be neatly ordered with the writing all in the same orientation.

most French books have the writing in the opposite direction to us

Nah, that's Arabic you're thinking of :)

Agh, out pedanted before noon!

What I should have said was that the writing runs from the base of the spine to the top, not from top to base.

These French books don't sound too bad - it means you can sort your series of books in a stack, top to bottom, and then put the whole stack on the shelf upside down, and you'll have a set of books sorted left-to-right and with the text running top-to-base.

You can, but then the books are the wrong way up which is a terrible sin in my universal rules book.

Not that this displays any signs of obsessive-compulsive behaviour you understand, on no.

Yes, the direction of writing on the spine is the key. Those of you who have an image of librarians as nitpickers will be delighted to learn that there is an American standard, ANSI/NISO Z39.41-1997, equivalent to ISO 6357:1985.

Henry Petroski's The Book on the Bookshelf goes into detail if you can bear it.

I guess that with 'normal' books having the title written on the spine running from 'Top of spine' to 'Bottom of spine' then in order to have the spines readable Left-to-Right, Top-to-Bottom in sequence you'd need to shelve the first in the series to the right and the last to the left.

But whenever I've done it I've put the first on the left. Partially because the numbers that mark the series sequence (or the A-E, F-K, J-R, S-Z marking alphabetical volumes) are usually written on the spine from Left-to-Right, unlike the title of the book.

Anyway...

"there is a basic code of human decency, which should not be violated even in times of insecurity"

My feelings tend towards the idea that "times of insecurity" are precisely those times when it's most important to adhere to a "basic code of human decency". It's easy to be civil in a stable society. It's easy to respect the rights of someone who's not a criminal, or an enemy. And a moral code which doesn't make demands of you is probably not worth following.

And a moral code which doesn't make demands of you is probably not worth following.

Do you mean by this that if your code doesn't make demands of you, then it's not worth calling it a moral code, or that for a moral code to be worthwhile it must make demands on you?

(Or neither...)

Yes.

You're a mathematician, so you'd be happy with the idea of the 'null code'. I suspect much of the interest and much of the anger caused in discussing morality comes from attempts to be both complete and consistent...

Is morality a first order logic with arithmetic?

I got to do Maths and Philosophy.

My trained opinion is... Probably. Or 'almost always', to put it more technically.

'Almost always' is a technical term? Really? Hooray!

translates as "except for a finite number of cases" when looking at a continuous sample.

No it doesn't.

Or rather, if by "almost always" you mean the same thing as is technically called "almost everywhere", it means everywhere except on a set of zero measure. There do exist infinite sets of zero measure.

So, for example, "everywhere except at a countable infinity of points" is "almost everywhere". "Almost always" is presumably the same thing in the time domain :-)

And, if you really want to know, a set X is of zero measure if and only if there exists a series S(0), S(1), S(2) ... of countable sets of open intervals such that the union of each S(n) covers X, and the sum of the lengths of the intervals in S(n) tends to zero as n tends to infinity.

An open interval, (a,b), is the set of real numbers x such that a < x < b. Its length is defined to be b-a.

The definition can be extended into multiple dimensions by using open circles/spheres/etc instead of intervals, and area/volume/etc instead of length.

Mmm, Lebesgue integration. An entire finals paper's worth of money for old rope :-)

Oops, no, the standard approach is probably to use rectangles/cuboids/etc, rather than circles/spheres.

'Almost everywhere'... Lebesgue measure... Make it stop!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Is it Friday yet ?

Discuss

Re: Discuss

Re: Discuss

Re: Discuss

Re: Discuss

Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Re: Books going right to left

Defined end..

Re: Defined end..

Re: Defined end..

Re: Defined end..

Re: Defined end..

Books

Re: Books

Re: Books

Re: Books

Re: Books

Re: Books

Re: Books

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

almost always

Re: almost always

Re: almost always

Re: almost always

no subject