Sunday, 20 September 2026

Major works meeting

• Continuing Metamorphoses
• Starting from 3.020
• Ending around 3.510
• Next week we’ll finish Book III and start Book IV of Metamorphoses

Minor works meeting

• Continuing Statesman
• Starting from 276e
• Ending around 286b
• Next week we’ll continue Statesman

Statesman reminder for next week:

[Spence] The visitor pulled the rug from under Young Socrates and us by securing his agreement to the mysterious and esoteric theory that he began to expound upon last week, only for him to refuse to follow his own line of inquiry, calling it too grand for it to be useful in the purpose of our present quest. This leads him to explain the fragility of models by using as a model for models letters and syllables and how they can be simultaneously understood in some cases by children while the same letters can be misapplied in other situations. We are to understand that understanding is about coming into balance with respect to the granularity of your model and the depth of mastery you have with it and how it relates to the whole. Then that is a segue for the visitor to begin talking about a middle way, which is what he calls the art of measurement, but before he does that there is a neat digression on what a weaver actually does. In the midst of the digression he simulates for us the very problem we had been suffering thus far by yanking our chain with all the possible ways one may struggle to define weaver before bringing us to the precise and yet flexible definition. This is thus our segue into the art of measurement. Finally on this topic he explains that we may define more in terms of being more than less, obviously, but even though it may be true it brings us no closer to the truth, since less remains to be defined. Therefore he introduces the idea of there being a proper amount, regarding more or less, and that more can be defined by being more than the right amount, but he extrapolates this idea beyond just more and less to even objectives and right and wrong. This is done by way of crafts and that each craft is defined by having a need and by virtue of the need a right amount, in principle. Finally he says that without such principles it is hard to believe that crafts exist at all, because if a craft doesn’t attempt to this question or is unable to then it’s hardly a craft at all but rather something else entirely. This was where left off and it had many parallels, finally, with the previous dialogue Sophist, because he talked about different classes taking part in other classes and the whole nature of the end of the discussion was about mixing and separating each in their due course. Last thing is the art measurement consisted of making measurements for what is and a type for what is in due or corse, which is a mother of saying what out to become.