Lucian Freud Is Dead

 As anyone who has read my ongoing analysis of Canada's Group of 7 painters must realize, I don't know much about art.  But I do know my way around uncompromising assholes.  Painter Lucian Freud was one, and his death today lessens the species in ways that will not be appreciated for years and decades.

And, on yeah, its the 60th anniversary of LW's death.  Who, you ask? 

Fie upon you all!  The West is doomed.

Stephen Toulmin Has Died

Stephen Toulmin, one of the greats of 20th century English philosophy, and one of the few to bring Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas to bear on the philosophy of science, died on December 4th after a brief illness.

The time is interesting. Much of Toulmin's work in the field was in part a reaction to Popper and the logical positivists, who saw scientific inquiry as an ahistorical, relatively bloodless unfolding of logical argument and counter-argument. In his Human Understanding (1972), Toulmin attempted to apply evolutionary concepts to the history of knowledge in an attempt to "save" the Rationality of science in the messy post-Popperian world he helped to create.

So it would be have been interesting to hear what Toulmin thought of the CRU Hack. I suspect he would have regarded the emails revealed therein to be part of the usual "hurly-burly" of scientific inquiry.

In any case, a great loss.