The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Pages 89 - 132)

Wow. Chapters 149 and 157 are heavy stuff. They pretty much change the nature of the story from here on out. I definitely appreciate the realism that Haddon brought to the father's reaction. And the shoddy spelling in the letters gave me a real sense of the mother's vulnerability and flaws. I was sucked in, but I decided to stop after 157 to let the big events of the last few chapters sink in a little. I'll be resuming tonight, I'm sure. I wanted to take this book at a more leisurely pace, but at this rate, I'll probably be done before the weekend.

Good book, and I don't usually say that about contemporary fiction.

Oops, I lied: I did read past 157 last night. I almost forgot that I wanted to ask what everyone thought of Christopher's discussion of the mind in chapter 163. Do you think he really understands the mind?

(Well, come on, who really understands the mind? But do you think he understands it in a basic sense, the way that we understand people having minds that are like our own, but distinct, and so forth.)

And what did you think of his description of the mind, particularly his reduction of the mind to a kind of computer?

At the end of Chapter 139 (p. 90 in my version), Christopher quotes Occam's Razor as "No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary". That's quite a bit different from my understanding, which is more like "Given multiple solutions to a problem, the simplest one tends to be correct". Those two versions are compatible, but not equivalent. If Christopher's is accurate, I suspect it was re-written as the version I've heard to make it more useful for business/engineering situations. Anyone else familiar with Christopher's version of Occam's Razor?

Edited by: LanDroid at: 2/15/06 6:40 pm

pespmc1.vub.ac.be/OCCAMRAZ.html

Christopher's is the more direct summation of the Occam. The principle has been manipulated to a lot of different ends in recent years.

Yes, I was brought up short by his use of Occam, but it is closer to the original, and more convenient to him.

On the subject of mind, 'Theory of Mind' is a significant part of the scientific understanding of autism, but I'm going to have to read up on it again before commenting.

ADO15: what does your tag line mean? I haven't been able to translate it....

grazie

Quote:

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Wow. Chapters 149 and 157 are heavy stuff. They pretty much change the nature of the story from here on out.

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Mad: you can that again! I have to admit, I had figured out that the father was guilty, but I had no idea that it would be revealed like this. It's really heady stuff. I was laying in bed next to my wife (who had read the book) and I just kept muttering to myself. I thought it was just wild!

OT: Ginof - it means 'The Seed Beneath the Snow'. It's the title of a novel by a great Italian socialist author, Silone. Here's a link:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignazio_Silone

Edit: Should have added that the 'seed beneath the snow' refers to the human spirit under fascism.

Edited by: ADO15 at: 3/7/06 4:48 pm