MARIO BUNGE, OTHER Five decades April 05, 2010 Blog
One World One Day
By Manuel Jesus Orbegozo
yesterday I read an article in a local newspaper I was brought back vivid memories of Mario Bunge with whom I had an interview so deep as smiling. I would play in brilliant tribute to Argentine philosopher:
step for this interview, Professor Mario Bunge appeared in the lobby of his hotel wearing a neat suit cashmere tailored to its high physical and intellectual stature, his clear eyes and a wide smirk. He sat
. He crossed his long legs that seemed to have produced a large tangle of tibia and fibula, as I did with Peter O `Toole (who admires Bunge) at a hotel in Cuzco. They asked him if he would represent God and he said no, preferring to make even a simple soldier in Shakespeare, but not God.
Bunge, invited to answer if you like to play that role or Napoleon or Socrates, he replied that he would represent the latter, perhaps because the blind immortal taught to discuss rationally, as is the duty of all teachers "or" go to public places to discuss philosophical problems, challenging the false wisdom and offering their own opinions ", as reported in pocket dictionaries. Twenty-five centuries ago, "preaching to the spirits collided Socrates conservatives who accused him of impiety, while in this century, the positivist accuse Bunge madman or something. Curious because "it seemed stupid to discuss even with the interpreters and not to the positivists. The war started when Bunge wrote his first article against them in 1943, and go for a "war of 100 years" because back in 1953 to publish another article on them here in Lima . 'So far no rational response, "confesses Bunge, thereby demonstrating total ignorance of positivism on my work. Sometimes, like if a Christian was accused of a Muslim. "
" I would prove to turn the bad will of men, the mechanical performance of the selfish gene and that this altruistic gene that we all hold from the mists of time according to the American zoologist, Richard Dawkins, is not it, Professor Bunge?. -Dawkins is an ethologist and zoologist, but not American but English and teaches at Oxford. When he published his work I discussed with my students. We disenchanted. Dawkins is not a serious researcher. It is true that man is a product of the genes of their predecessors, but also the environment in which it develops, even in the womb. Also, a man with Down's syndrome could not learn the calculus, but rather be a good carpenter and be happy.
Bunge
I asked if Chaplin admires or Bernard Shaw for his great sense of humor by spraying with a hint of irony when lectures critical to becoming not sarcasm. She said yes. I remember when one of their keynote speeches organized by the Universidad Garcilaso de la Vega told that the Engineering University was trying to turn the fog to rain to cause life in the desert. He congratulated the scientists and said that was different to what I was trying to make the American CIA in Africa, chase the clouds did not rain and drought kept in the desert. Would not it be in Ethiopia who was then pro-Communist, Professor Bunge?.
renounce the man's behavior on many occasions said that we proceed as if we were animals, "we are beasts" expressed no compassion and understatement.
So speaking as I found some Argentines believe that makers of the world. There was once a universal cataclysm, and after missing all life on earth, rubbing his eyes out in the open a monkey survivor. For there came out a monkey, when he was a cannon shot, showed him an apple and said coquettishly:
- "Serving che, come", he reached the block and the wise monkey Argentine replied
- "look, I do not you do it again. "
and began a new era.
reference to these things over, I asked the doctor what Bunge most admired of Creation for example, which of the four elements. - The elements are four, are 12-tried to show my ignorance chemistry.
- No, I mean a. ..
- Ah, well, then I love all the elements. How can one not be fascinated to see how water flows in rivers, how it moves the sea, hearing the wind whistle or see a flame burning a fire. I imagine how it must be fascinated men of prehistory before the fire.
- Like right now, Professor Bunge, "because life / is fire, according to one of the most beautiful verses of Washington Delgado, a Peruvian poet.
- But this is beyond my admiration exclaimed Bunge really excited as if a lion roared, is the man.
And not how to put in doubt.
Professor Jorge Lazo Bunge had told him that I was the last journalist to interview Pol Pot. Bunge was curious to know what my opinion on the Kampuchean "Khmer rouge." I repeated what I had written recently that in two hours I could not look out of his soul and probes to see how treacherous was as paint and could not say whether it was heaven or hell.
But Bunge already had an opinion: "Pol Pot was not genocidal. Pol Pot was cruel and his crime of ordering a collective slaughter can never be justified. Genocide is the trying to destroy an ethnic group as happened in Yugoslavia and that Pol Pot did, "he said.
and agreed that genocides are caused by Hitler, in Boznia-Herzegovina, for example, while massacres, Chechnya, Hiroshima, My Lai, Sabra and Shatila and many other crimes against humanity of which, on the other hand, is full of history and the pages of the Bible.
Then I suggested: "Madame Rolland has two such historical" The more I know men love my dog \u200b\u200bmore, and perhaps, before the scaffold: "Liberty, liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name."
- Which would keep you Professor Bunge?.
- Let's start with that was an intriguing Madame Rolland which resulted in many deaths. Then, his thoughts are so cynical, but not stop many crimes committed in the name of freedom. "Liberty or Death" is a phrase or war cry that actually should be: "Freedom and Life."
- Life and not death, does not indicate that you fear death occurs?
- No, do not fear death because it is inevitable. To which I fear I have is a long agony, lingering death in a wheelchair, inability to think.
- O is estimated that more "you, your head to your heart, Professor Bunge?
- No, both feel the same admiration and the same respect.
When Bunge was in Lima in those days, I found that only 4 of the 20 newspapers that are published in the capital reported on the conference came to dictate, while the remaining 16 were devoted to reporting on its front page, on the buttocks a showgirl, an unpardonable neglect of the drafting table or the normal life of a rampant yellow journalism.
- Carlos Cossio The Argentine philosopher once said that after a brilliant flowering of opinion journalism, the press fell into the mercenary, is this true, Professor?
- First, a philosopher Cossío third category. Secondly, journalism has always been a mercenary, without this meaning that there is no serious press made by serious journalists like you, Orbell. (Thank you very much, Professor Bunge, etc.). etc.
- You always say so., Etc. .. Etcetera means "and everything else." Why do you repeat it, therefore, teacher, just one more .. Perhaps, unknown or does grammatical rule to strengthen its sequence?
- No, no. This is one of the many mistakes I make. It is a mistake.
was a mea culpa of Bunge made obvious solemnity. Then, I saw how to recognize a mistake but it was irrelevant, surfaced on his face the sober face of humility I consider the heritage of the sages and saints, as I ever saw in the face of German archaeologist Trimborn or the Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Mario Bunge said that the philosophers who most influenced their education, which perhaps still influence the mature Bunge, are Aristotle, Aristotle; Leibinitz (no t, I corrected the teacher, curiously watching my notes) that of monads and calculus, and Bertrand Russell, English potato that brilliant philosophy to understand that even those who consider ourselves servers.
I heard him say in his lectures than men teachers, especially, should speak or write very clear language that they understand. I remembered that Borges quoted John Donne's view that "The Holy Spirit is an eloquent writer and a copious writer, but not wordy, so far from eloquent style, as a superfluous."
- In the same way as Borges writes, Professor Bunge?
Bunge has unwound his long legs of American basketball player or snakes, and was leaning over my notes and has held that "clear, as Borges' but I think he likes García Márquez who praised by his tongue sizzle and shine his blue eyes.
- Ah, well, he added, "I love Miguel Delibes (I've heard only di Leon, the musician) and Leo Tolstoy and James Austen, oh, and Cervantes, a great modern novelist.
- How modern, Professor Bunge, if Cervantes is 1600?
- Cervantes is the founder of the modern novel-Bunge rejoice remembering, while this morning we see the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, when "going down the street looked up and saw written on a door, in very large letters:" Here books are printed, "what is satisfied with it, because until then had not seen any emprentada and wanted to know what it was like."
I also wanted to know how to be: 1) What is most frightening, if cancer or usufruct exaggerated, 2) if he fears more over time than to poverty, 3) if Marxism has something of Christianity, and 4) what you think about neoliberalism.
Y, Bunge believes that: 1) both are formidable: the excessive enjoyment of power and cancer; although this is a bad one individual and a collective evil (symbiosis to which Manuel D'Ornellas called "the cancer of power" ), and Bunge said that although it seems exaggerated only 1 / 5 of humanity lives in relative freedom, while the rest is down by some form of power which is not only political but also economic and cultural. Answered and 2) that poverty is as scary as over time, and 3) Marxism has much of Christianity, for example, what the brotherhood of man, both aim to create a better world while the Christians running while Marxists only wish, at least, Christians those Dead Sea sects, they had common property now, the church rule, and 4) of neoliberalism?, I hope it ends soon, because not based on anything scientific, not everyone favors but only to the rich . Nobody has to follow up. Actually, what should you care to today's world is to achieve full democracy, not one that draws us to vote only once every four or five years. Indeed, in a democracy to involve us all, often, as in Switzerland, where referendums are made every two or three months. "
Bunge's speech would have continued if the time the referee had not touched his whistle and signaled the end of the 30 minutes of play. However, in the short overtime, as when he played football in his childhood there in my Buenos Aires querido / when you'll see, Bunge was dedicated to remember Martha, his wife and mathematical extraordinary internationally known and their children. I shone the spirit and pride choked him as a tender murderer, when he referred to Eric, 29 years old and architect, and Silvana, 22, who studies neurobiology.
final interview
A more sentimental than scholar.
