00:11
Alright then, so as we often do here at エーサイナイト,
we have a leftover dribble of a topic from the last episode. So what did you start
saying before I forcibly cut you off? No, no, it wasn't forcible. It was an
authority-based decision because you made a great ending to the last one.
Well, that, and I also don't want people to always have to listen to, you know,
40-minute episodes just because I don't know where to cut it. 40-minute episodes that are on like
all related because we made them related topics, but not necessarily topics of the same genre.
It's connected in our mind, Mark. I always like to tell people, and then I promise I will get to
the dribbling. I always like to tell people when we're doing writing that, you know, if you want to
make a connection, you can make any connection, right? Like there are techniques. You like to tell
to the readers like, hey, just hold on for a couple more paragraphs. I'm getting there.
So like I tell students sort of this when they're learning how to expand their writing,
right? So when they're trying to break from the idea of you must write it this way,
right? Then what I tell them is that like you don't have to, but if you change it,
you have to be ready to work on making it make sense, right? So like you cannot just expect
that a reader will get it. Like the sort of forced structures that exist in certain places
are to make it easier to read and absorb. So if you're going to carry the reader along,
you need to make sure you're carrying them, right? You have to help them in some way.
You can't just expect them to follow you. You can't just expect them to follow you. So this helps
because then I'm able to show students basically like, oh, you want to put this sentence, like you
want to put it up there. You want to put the information up there. Let me show you that I can
force it, right? I can put language that pulls me from one to the next, but some of these are going
to be harder to follow. Yeah. So you can already see that I'm like smiling because you've done
exactly what you just talked about. Yes. But I'll do it right here. I'll make this entirely relevant,
right? So I'm saying that you can put pieces of language in, in order to orient or rearrange any
of these things, right? You make them easier or harder to sort of connect to. Now, in order to
do that, you have to spend time thinking about the topics you're bringing up. In order to spend
03:07
time thinking, of course, you need spaces where you can think. And those spaces that you can think
in might be on a walk. And now, so on a walk, you see from the previous episode, we have the
dribbling that was left behind. And I wanted to bring up, and I will in a moment, sort of Japanese
relevant individuals who may also have had that walking habit, right? Like in the academic sphere.
Yeah. And I figured I would find somebody in relation to this by one walking path that I
happened to know of off the top of my head. There are many, right? There's there's tons,
you can walk anywhere, right? But when I went for the first time to Kyoto, maybe,
maybe two years ago? Maybe. Yeah, it was in August. Nobody go in August.
Yeah, if you have a choice, don't go in August. Yeah, I didn't really have a choice. But I still
I'm glad I went. But oh my god, it was bad. Anyway, I had been wandering around, right? And I was,
I think now that I'm looking at this map, I'm remembering why I was in this area. I had gone
to Nanzen-ji. And that was great. These, I think Nanzen-ji has the aqueducts, right? Like the sort
of running water, the aqueducts where they're like big stone, like archways that carry water,
basically, like towards different areas. I mean, I don't I don't know much about it at all,
actually. So it's cool. I thought it was neat. It was one of the ones that stuck out to me
when I wanted to go. And I was like, cool, I can go to Nanzen-ji. And then there was also above or
north of that there was Ginkaku-ji. And so I was like, great, I'll be in the area, something like
that. I'll just I'll figure it out from there. Yeah. In between, there is a pathway known as
Tetsugaku-no-michi. And this is, you know, the philosopher's walk, right? Ah, yes. So wonderful.
I walk this path and I become a philosopher. Yeah. You know, the wisdom of the ancient
civilization will be bestowed upon you upon walking. Yeah, that's exactly why I'm as wise
as I am now, actually. Wow, this is sarcasm. Just so we said we would mark when this happens.
I don't think we have a bell noise or something. Yeah, we need a bell. I don't want to just have
a bell like next to my desk to ring because I don't want to get the volume wrong and like,
you know, take out somebody's ear. No, it will have to be, you know, in the editing stage. Yeah.
06:00
Pick an appropriately sarcastic sounding bell. Okay. All right. But yeah, so I took this walk,
right? Mind you, it was like 100 degrees Fahrenheit out and, you know, because I was
still in Fahrenheit when I was here at that time. And then it was like, you know, you know,
120% humidity, right? This is obviously hyperbole, but every single water molecule is condensing
on you. Right. And and boiling so that I could like feel more heat. So the the walk, right? I
don't remember much of other than being like, oh, you know, I'm looking at pictures now. And it was
nice, right? It's along a little, it's not really like a river, right? It's that sort of stone
walled, cobblestone walled channel so that the water is... Yeah, I think it's just one of the
many waterways that existed in old cities like this. Right. And so this one, just for some
context, apparently, using Wikipedia, I did not look super deep into this, right? Opened in 1890
and was extended in 1912. Okay. And it does... Ah, okay. Yep. It brings water from Lake Biwa Canal.
So yeah, another waterway through the city. And this came up and I was like, ah, right,
there's a philosopher's walk, you know, must must be named because of some people, right, who had a
habit of walking. Right. And at least in Wikipedia, there is some sources sort of references to two
Kyoto Daigaku professors in the 20th century. So last century. In particular, they were 19...
early 1900s, looks like. And their names were Nishida Kitaro and Hajime Tanabe.
Yeah, those are the two names that popped up when I'm looking at the Japanese wiki as well.
Got it. Okay. So those are the two that seemed to pop up. One being a philosopher, Nishida, and
Hajime being... Well, on Wikipedia, they call him a philosopher of science, mathematics and physics
specifically. And oh, yeah, mathematics and science. Yeah. But religion as well for Nishida,
it looks like. Yeah. I think they're kind of like intellectual colleagues who impacted one another.
I'm seeing it. Yeah, they definitely were within similar lines of academic philosophies. Yeah. And
okay. Yes. Yep. So yeah, these were, you know, two... I wanted to add two people or at least
some, right, from Japan versus, I think, many in the other list who may have been at least,
09:06
you know, Western based. Right. I don't remember all the names, but... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Just sort of add to that. No, I mean, clearly, you know, if not scientifically or theoretically,
but definitely empirically, it looks like it helps a lot of thinkers of all kinds to think
better, to walk around. And I guess it's not surprising that these are typically around
old cities of old campus cities, you know, college towns. And maybe those are the cities
that withstood sort of like the test of time in terms of preservation of the
sort of rough geography of the city. And right, because like, if you go to say,
cities like Singapore, you probably will not find the same path if you like left the country
10 years ago. True. Yeah. So there are those kind of that. I mean, and maybe, you know,
Singapore is only like 50 years old. So like, maybe they will stop changing so much at some
point. And they will like start to channel a lot more of their energy on preserving the past
at some point, as many established nations typically enjoy doing at some point,
when they feel like they have enough history.
Or whenever they feel like it just depends on
or whenever they feel like they have better days behind them than what they have in front of them.
Damn, I did not mean to be that deep.
It's just something there's something in there when you know, this can be,
this can be in like a very positive light. Or it can be it can be a back in my day,
which for anybody listening, if you don't know what that is, it's like the old codger codger,
you're not going to know the word. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's an old, it's an old person of whom they
continue to tell stories about the past, as if the past was either better, or at the same time,
was harder than the current experience you are having. So it can be either of those things,
and often both. So that's, that is what that means.
Yeah, but no, I think it's lovely that you know, these people are walking, and it seems like,
yeah, people still want to walk on the same path. I think there is also something nice about,
oh, somebody famous, or somebody I admire, also walked this walk. And it's, it's a different kind
of engaging with history, right? It's different from looking at historic painting or sculptures
12:03
in a museum, you're, you're actually, it's a form of architecture, you like have to be in a space
and share the same space. And for like, a little bit of your time, like you're spatially overlapped,
just temporally very off from one another. Something, something nice about that.
That brings sort of like a great brings a great level of meaning to like the human experience
with relation to time. Right? Yeah, why I think there is, at least perhaps at the beginning,
before people are perhaps full of the cynicism that may exist in life, and before they're able to
perhaps overcome it and come to an acceptance, you have an awareness that might come up of being
in a spatially similar place to somebody that you have begun to understand a little better
in the past that you might not be overlapping with, you might not have met. And you start to
sort of try and imagine what that looks like. And there's this attempt at connecting
that comes from being there and having a place that is preserved or having a habit that is similar in
nature. Yeah, even maybe if you don't know, there's something about that experience, which feels
connective, perhaps. Yeah. And you know what, like, while you're saying that, it occurred to me,
what a insane amount of privilege it is to be able to talk about having a place preserved from
decades, hundreds of years ago. Because that means you are likely not colonized,
and you are likely not bombed out of the hell, you know. And it's, it's, like, very few countries in
the world can say that. And Kyoto, famously, during World War Two, the Allies avoided Kyoto,
knowing that there's so many, like, national treasures, like, irrecoverable cultural heritage
that's there. Yeah. So it's always like, kind of interesting, engaging with history this way. It's
like, it's great that we have the access to this, but also think about why we still have it. And at
what cost, you know, what cost did it to still be there? Yeah. History is a darker place than we
care to or are able to hold and imagine at all times, because the situation you, in order to
arrive at a situation which is more stable, it often comes with all of the instability and usually
a set of violence, right, in some way, shape, or form, and destruction, as there is a clash,
15:01
right? And there is, I am mostly tempted to say, right, a darkness, even in that sense of,
well, there's obviously a darkness, right? But in that selection of what to destroy,
right? Like, to look at a place and say, this one is full of X, Y, and Z, right? Like things that
are somehow valuable. And we'll get back to the other dark part. Right, it's a form of censorship,
right? Yeah. Whatever authority was at the time decided that this is valuable, or this is not,
or this is less so. And not only is it biased on their decision of what they believe is valuable,
but it is also likely tuned to what it is valuable to them, right? Not the value to the
other. And so the decision says, well, we won't do this, but we will wipe out this area. And that
way, you have really dark thoughts, you know, that way, when it's over, we can get to the other
thing. And all we have to do is ruin this section, right? Right. That's horrifyingly morbid,
as a morbid reality. So walk, walk the path, walk your paths, people walk your I'm trying here,
I'm trying to take us out of morbidity, because I think it's worth sitting in that sometimes to
just feel it out. Yeah, that was not the like, the origin point of this. So what do we say allow
yourself to connect as a human to others experiences, whether it be spatially, or across
time to try and do to do goodness within the world. That's, yeah, or just take a fucking walk
or just take just take a fucking walk. Like, like, is your boss eyeing at you for taking too
many coffee breaks, go for another one. Just walk, just go again. And if Hey, you know what,
if they're eyeing you for taking too many coffee breaks, or I and you for taking too many walks,
you can always pull the Well, I suggest that you take a long walk off a short cliff.
Why do you have to bring it back to the morbid references? Oh, maybe it's morbid. I don't know.
I mean, that's sort of just a casual American thing to say, which is probably pretty morbid.
Anyway, go take as long a walk as you want. And don't go near any cliffs. Just call it a
productivity walk. Call it a creativity incubation period. You know, yeah, you can call it whatever
you want. Yeah, yeah. Call it whatever you want. Walk the walk, scheduled or unscheduled,
18:03
topologically unique or not. So you're not maybe you want all of them to be just the same. That's
fine. You know, that's also fine to you know, just be attentive about attentiveness. Yeah,
just be attentive. Just you know, do the things like you do the things. All right, we trust you
all. Thanks for listening this far. That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening and find us
on X at Eigo de Science. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. See you next time.
