UKC

On August 5th the BBC broadcast epidode two of Mountain hosted by Griff Rhys Jones . This episode featured Griff attempting to climb Napes Needle and talking to mountain photographer and author, Gordon Stainforth about mountain photography.....

Read more at http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

It was my birthday on the 5th. Don't think I could have focussed on anything like a TV

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com: Gordon's photo of Kipling Groove (not really a photo of Kipling Groove at all! By which I mean it's 'much more' than that..) is superb - it conveys a sense of the grandeur, beauty, and indifference of the mountains (The Sublime?).

In reply to Marc C:

That's pure cant you kant.

How can a mountain be indifferent?

In reply to winhill:

Depends on which way you've sat on it.

In reply to winhill: Hmm, I fail to comprehend how a mountain can be anything other than indifferent?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:indifferent&a...

In reply to Marc C:

"Mountaineering differs from other sports by involving itself heavily in landscapes. Football has Wembley, or it will have, but our theatre of dreams is among the wildest places on Earth."

quote: Ed Douglas

http://thebmc.co.uk/Feature.aspx?id=1717

In reply to Marc C:

Without being too pedantic, I hope, it is anthropomorphic to describe the mountain as indifferent and externalises the experience.

I picked it out cos you mentioned the Sublime, which for Burke and Kant was something very different, in as much it relies on something external to the human experience to make sense. In Kant's case this was God, not a 'self-produced' feeling. This is important as it relates to the connection between the aesthetic and ethical and their joint reference to experience of God.

So the externalisation of the Sublime is meaningless IMHO.

If Gordon sees this I'm sure he will probably trash it and I seem to remember him saying that some output on aesthetics was on his to-do list.

In reply to winhill: Anthropomorphic? If you said that the mountain had feelings that would be anthropomorphising it, to say that it is indifferent is to do the opposite.

In reply to John2:

>"anthropomorphising"

Is the UKC scrabble and are you cheating by using a dictionary?

In reply to John2 and winhill: Yes, that was precisely why I used the word 'indifferent' - i.e. to refer to something external, something that just 'is' (in contrast to Wordsworth et al's tendency to see Nature as somehow part of a Grand Design with Man as THE species that has some innate affinity with it).

In reply to John2:

Umm. My take on this is the same, in that the word 'indifferent' surely emphasises the inappropriateness of any kind of anthropomorphising (ouch, horribly long word) of mountains.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: Well it's shorter than anthropomorphisation.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

18 letters!

In reply to Marc C:

A few points bouncing around here, Marc ie. the notions of a) a Grand design and b) a GD with man ... affinity are surely separate arguments? Most politically correct people today would reject both. I would simply argue that we have no means of knowing whether there was/is a) or not. An argument I've been using to tease people with recently is: just supposing there IS a purpose to the universe? I don't see that that possibility can be ruled out, logically. (Ducks head under parapet again.)

In reply to John2:

Actually, Ruskin's simple expression 'the Pathetic Fallacy' was much better, wasn't it? Clever also in that it's not so simple an expression, as it also has overtones of a kind of pathos about human beings even wanting things to be this way i.e it also suggests that there is something rather sad and pitiful about people wanting mountains to 'emote' like them.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


So you could say you are anti-anthropomorphisation then?

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: I've just been reading Ruskin's description of the pathetic fallacy - http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/ruskinj/ and I'm not sure that he does suggest that there is something sad and pitiful about men wanting nature to emote. His attempt to divide men into three ranks according to their propensity to attribute feelings to inanimate objects doesn't really speak of sympathy for those in the lower ranks.

I do like his criticism of Pope's translation of Homer - I always thought that Pope created a flowery froth from the muscular original myself.

In reply to KeithW:

Yes, certainly. That doesn't mean the mountains are completely 'alien' to us in every sense, though.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: I think NMC Crack (or, rather, the rock that NMC Crack runs up) was fundamentally 'alien' to Darren Jackson Mind you, I found some boulders at Widdop yesterday totally alien to me

In reply to Marc C:

That begs the question whether it is the rocks or the climber that is 'alien'. A philosophical riddle: is it a neutral, two-way thing, or is one or the other fundamentally alien to the other? Er ... I'd better get back to work ...

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: Hmm, interesting poser - in Darren's case the answer is obvious