The Learned Pig

Art – Thinking – Nature – Writing

Tag: philosophy

  • The Paper Zoo

    The Paper Zoo

    Choosing to draw: philosophy and aesthetics Whatever else the Romans may have done for us, teaching us to draw was not one of their gifts. The two great works of classical scholarship on animals were Aristotle’s History of Animals, and Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis historia. Neither Pliny nor his Greek predecessor included any illustrations in…

  • A Dys-Praxic Sketchbook

    A Dys-Praxic Sketchbook

    I used to think that the only skill I had was drawing. It was only much later that I realised that it was simply the only skill that I had experienced difficulty in acquiring and yet had not given up on. It was also my only physical skill. Under most of the circumstances I encountered…

  • The Restless Whirlpool of Life

    The Restless Whirlpool of Life

    “Go faster, harder; be stronger, tougher,” – just some of the words I use as mental self-flagellation in those critical first five minutes pounding the pavements on my early morning runs. At the same time, there’s another voice in my head asking why: “Why go faster? Why not slow down? When you slow down, you…

  • Workers Hammer

    Workers Hammer

    The following is an edited extract from the conversation between artist John Stark and anthropologist David Graeber, author of Debt, the first 5000 years and The Utopia of Rules. The conversation was originally published in the catalogue that accompanies DoL Po, Stark’s solo show at Charlie Smith London, 20th May – 26th June 2016.  …

  • The Chernobyl Herbarium

    The Chernobyl Herbarium

    Chernobyl and Plant Life: Silent Witnessing It is incredibly difficult to talk and write about Chernobyl. No serious book on the subject has been able to dodge the task of thinking about the conditions of possibility for thinking in proximity to this theme or this scene. Still before commencing, a work on Chernobyl must first…

  • Euclid’s First Definition

    Euclid’s First Definition

        Cover image: Euclid, Stoicheia (Elements). Manuscript, Constantinople, September 888. MS. D’Orville 301, fols. 113v-114r © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford (via Alain R. Truong)    

  • The Reality of Race

    The Reality of Race

    Over the last few decades there has been some confusion about the category of race, a category that was once so central to all the social sciences. If race often appears in quotes, does that mean it is not real? If race is a social construction, why is there still racism in institutions, feelings and…

  • The Courtiers’ Anatomists

    The Courtiers’ Anatomists

    What did it mean to experiment with animals in the seventeenth century? There is much ambiguity surrounding the terms “demonstration,” “experience,” and “experiment” in this period, further complicated by linguistic ambiguity: “expérience” in French and “experientia” in Latin could mean what we know in modern English as either experience or experiment. The medieval term “experimentum”…

  • A Pervert’s Guide to the Apocalypse

    A Pervert’s Guide to the Apocalypse

    The bold white title reads “Cool Photos”. I dutifully open the email to find yet another link to yet another photo essay from yet another intrepid, probably amateur photographer who has schlepped their medium format through the crumbling halls of Detroit. Or was it Pripyat again? Or some (now) generic computer generated image of the…

  • The Barometer of My Heart

    The Barometer of My Heart

    On 20th February 2002, at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), in Paris, philosopher Jacques Derrida asked an audience of students the following question: “The phallus, I mean, the phallos, is it proper to man?” This question opened the eighth session of a series of lectures given by Derrida between 2001 and…

  • PYG

    PYG

    Toby is one influential pig. As the very first learned pig to turn his tricks upon the stage, he provided a template for countless subsequent acts at fairs and festivals throughout the nineteenth century, and following this proliferation, a richly evocative motif for poets and sundry satirists. He is also, of course, the inspiration for…