Tea Bliss, Great Expectations, Maritain v. 3 and 4

I got a book on tea, Tea Bliss by Theresa Cheung. What I mostly learned was the vocabulary regarding the description of tea, and the idea that a tea's flavor can go flat. I immediately realized the truth of this, so much for my habit of reheating tea on occasion. Green tea goes completely flat. I also read Great Expectations, and I have to say I thought this was a masterpiece. The point of view of a young boy is marvelously rendered, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Maritain was an easy read for a philosopher. I continue to be amazed at the career of a Catholic philosopher, someone who studied Thomas Aquinas, in an academic setting. I continue to be surprised at the unabashed religious anthropocentrism, the naked feeling of Catholic superiority, that he constantly expresses. But of course this was all written in the 20's and 30's. I enjoyed Reflexions sur l'intelligence, which like many other books is really a collection of essays. It contains some interesting thoughts on analogical thinking, which is related to my research. For example, on page 120, he says that 'l'inadequation de la connaissance par analogie n'affecte que notre mode de connaitre, et non pas la verite de ce que nous connaissons..." The inadequacies of knowledge through analogy affects our mode of knowledge, but not the truth of what we know. Maritain makes in some of the later works some interesting connections between faith and science.I also thought it was interesting to see his discussions about Aristotle. On p. 227, "Pour lever le conflit qui mettait aux prises la Physique nouvelle et la philosophie d'Aristote, il aurait fallu des esprits d'une vigueur exceptionnelle, capables de discerner, derriere le nuage de confusions dont nous venons de parler, les lignes essentielles et la compatibilite fonciere des deux disciplines, au moment meme ou toutes deux, l'ancienne en pleine decadence et la nouvelle encore en formation, etaient le moins conscientes de leurs limites."

In v. 4, he has a charming biography of Thomas Aquinas. I knew nothing about him, although I had read some of the great Summa theologica, and so everything was a revelation, including the fact that he was controversial in his lifetime. Ah! The bishops of France have a great deal to answer for! The great essay, however, is Degres du savoir. It treats a wide range of questions -- Maritain's longer books, I am discovering, are often disjointed from one chapter to the next -- and provides a spiritual or religious basis for much of what we think of now as being purely scientific. On p. 315 of my edition, "...la loi scientifique ne fait jamais qu'exprimer la propriete ou l'exigence d'un certain indivisible ontologique qui par lui-meme ne tombe pas sous les sens (n'est pas observable) et reste pour les sciences de la nature un x (d'ailleurs indispensable), et qui n'est autre que ce que les philosophes designent sous le nom de nature ou essence." He also distinguishes between what exists and the representation of that object in the mind. I can't see how a philosophical system accommodating science can live with that distinction, as correct as it seems to be.