Bubble - Good
Country People

Friday,
November 07, 2008

7:09 PM

In Good Country People – why does
O’Connor include excerpts from Hulga’s book?

“Science,
on the other hand, has to assert its soberness and seriousness afresh and
declare that it is concerned solely with what-is.  Nothing – how can it
be for science anything but a horror and a phantasm?  If science is
right, then one thing stands firm:  science wishes to know nothing of
nothing.  Such is after all the strictly scientific approach to
Nothing.  We know it by wishing to know nothing of Nothing.”  These
words had been underlined with a blue pencil and they worked on Mrs. Hopewell
like some evil incantation in gibberish.  She shut the book quickly and
went out of the room as if she were having a chill.

Story is very
detailed

Science can’t
conceive of the possibility of nothing

Comment on Hulga?

You are what you
read

She reads about
nothing

Troubling passage

Concept of
nothing is impossible to conceive

Quote from an Enlightenment
philosopher -> DeCarte

Occasionalism is the name of
the philosophy

Only God can do things for
real

Human activity is not on its
own

Everything is an act of god

Everything is something

“We only exist as god’s
thoughts”

In Inferno everything is
twisted

Heaven is divine love

In hell everything aspires
to be nothing

Confusion is the
prelude to insight

?Statement about Ms.
Hopewell

She hopes

Can’t conceive of a world
where there is nothing

This keeps Plato up at night

Nihilism

Philosophy.

An extreme form of
skepticism that denies all existence.

A doctrine holding
that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or
communicated.

Rejection of all
distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate
all previous theories of morality or religious belief.

The belief that
destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for
future improvement.

also Nihilism A
diffuse, revolutionary movement of mid 19th-century Russia that scorned
authority and tradition and believed in reason, materialism, and radical
change in society and government through terrorism and assassination.

Psychiatry. A delusion,
experienced in some mental disorders, that the world or one's mind, body,
or self does not exist.

People who think god made
the world

What did he make it from?

From nothing?

Or was something there
before god was there (problem)

From God’s own substance
(occasionalism)

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Bubble - Good
Country People

Friday,
November 07, 2008

7:09 PM

In Good Country People – why does
O’Connor include excerpts from Hulga’s book?

“Science,
on the other hand, has to assert its soberness and seriousness afresh and
declare that it is concerned solely with what-is.  Nothing – how can it
be for science anything but a horror and a phantasm?  If science is
right, then one thing stands firm:  science wishes to know nothing of
nothing.  Such is after all the strictly scientific approach to
Nothing.  We know it by wishing to know nothing of Nothing.”  These
words had been underlined with a blue pencil and they worked on Mrs. Hopewell
like some evil incantation in gibberish.  She shut the book quickly and
went out of the room as if she were having a chill.

Story is very
detailed

Science can’t
conceive of the possibility of nothing

Comment on Hulga?

You are what you
read

She reads about
nothing

Troubling passage

Concept of
nothing is impossible to conceive

Quote from an Enlightenment
philosopher -> DeCarte

Occasionalism is the name of
the philosophy

Only God can do things for
real

Human activity is not on its
own

Everything is an act of god

Everything is something

“We only exist as god’s
thoughts”

In Inferno everything is
twisted

Heaven is divine love

In hell everything aspires
to be nothing

Confusion is the
prelude to insight

?Statement about Ms.
Hopewell

She hopes

Can’t conceive of a world
where there is nothing

This keeps Plato up at night

Nihilism

Philosophy.

An extreme form of
skepticism that denies all existence.

A doctrine holding
that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or
communicated.

Rejection of all
distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate
all previous theories of morality or religious belief.

The belief that
destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for
future improvement.

also Nihilism A
diffuse, revolutionary movement of mid 19th-century Russia that scorned
authority and tradition and believed in reason, materialism, and radical
change in society and government through terrorism and assassination.

Psychiatry. A delusion,
experienced in some mental disorders, that the world or one's mind, body,
or self does not exist.

People who think god made
the world

What did he make it from?

From nothing?

Or was something there
before god was there (problem)

From God’s own substance
(occasionalism)

Pasted
from <file:///G:\English\Dante\07-Bubble.doc>