French Chef Research Articles

Dana Polan, Julia Child's “The French Chef.” Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. 312 pp. $23.95

Dana Polan, <i>Julia Child's “The French Chef.”</i> Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. 312 pp. $23.95

Rethinking the Authorship Principle

The fundamental principle of order in the library catalogue is the authorship principle, which serves as the organizing node of an alphabetico-classed system, in which "texts" of "works" are organized first alphabetically by uniform title of the progenitor work and then are subarranged using titles for variant instantiations, under the heading for an "author." We analyze case studies of entries from (1) the first documented imperial library catalogue, the Seven Epitomes ( Qilue [七略]), in China; (2) Abelard's Works , which featured prominently in the 1848 testimony of Antonio Panizzi; and (3) The French Chef and the large family of instantiated works associated with it. Our analysis shows that the catalogue typically contains many large superwork sets. A more pragmatic approach to the design of catalogues is to array descriptions of resources in relation to the superwork sets to which they might belong. In all cases, a multidimensional faceted arrangement incorporating ideational nodes from the universe of recorded knowledge holds promise for greatly enhanced retrieval capability.

Tasting the World: Environmental Aesthetics and Food as Art

Food can provide an unique insight into both the human conditions of embodiment and interactive experience, and aesthetic education of awareness. My project is to present an opportunity for a far-reaching pragmatic vision by treating aesthetics as having to do with the elements (cultural, qualitative, dynamic) that make up an environment. This provides a sufficiently extensive ground on which to argue for eating as one of the most profound meanings we can experience. Environmental eating, then, means tasting a world - tasting the fundamentals of what constitutes a place.The true cook is the perfect blend, the only perfect blend, of artist and philosopher. He knows his worth: he holds in his palm the happiness of mankind, the welfare of generations yet unborn.1 Norman DouglasDining is and always was a great artistic opportunity.2 Frank Lloyd WrightTraditionally, cooking, and eating have not been hot topics in philosophy; they never really took off in the way that talking about systematic doubt, ontological arguments, and bound variables did. Yet, I hope that by the end of this essay, you will join me in seeing food as providing an unique insight into the human conditions of embodiment and interactive experience, and as providing an aesthetic education of awareness through taste.To make this work, I am going to attempt to connect three rather different people, and, in the process, overcome a traditional practice I see as outworn. The people to be connected are: John Dewey, Susanne Langer, and a late eighteenthearly nineteenth century French chef, Marie Antoine Careme. From Careme, we get a clear articulation that through food, and confectionary in particular, our edible is related to the of architecture. Thus, food is more than the merely edible - it is an insight into the way we construct various environments. From Langer, we see how can take us places. Art creates virtual realities that allow us to aesthetically encounter aspects of human feeling. For Langer, architecture in particular creates a type of space where the elements of culture can be directly experienced through art. From Dewey, we see how the potential for aesthetic development is larded in even seemingly ordinary experiences because living is qualitatively environmental, and our interactive experience of our is held together by a tensionfilled, qualitative rhythmic flow. Further, learning involves aesthetic experience by going beyond the merely cognitive and showing how education is based on the qualitative interaction one has with the world through a shared community of inquiry. Together these three provide a framework in which food can be facilitative of an education.The practice to be overcome (and this may be a side issue) is the traditional attempt to determine what is and is not art. I believe that this project overshadows the more important project of figuring out why we want to call anything art in the first place. Therefore, I will focus on the qualitative aspects that provide aesthetic experiences. This approach is not only more conducive to understanding the value of in general, it (along with the trifecta of Careme, Langer, and Dewey) also allows us to see a rich potential and use for a philosophy of food.This is not an article about what would normally be considered to be environmental philosophy, and its inclusion among the other contributions is testimony to the wide spectrum of interpretations regarding issues. My use of environment is intended to be quite broad (perhaps enormously broad), because the project is to present an opportunity for a much more far-reaching pragmatic vision regarding food as a method of exploring our shared world. Accordingly, I do not use a discussion of aesthetics that is nature -oriented. Instead I treat aesthetics as having to do with the elements (cultural, qualitative, dynamic) that make up an environment. …

Julia Child's The French chef

Julia Child's The French chef

Not Just in the Great House, but in the Quarters

Most scholars would have been daunted to the point of capitulation in the face of the archive Professor Gordon-Reed has mastered so magnificently for The Hemingses of Monticello. With the meticulousness of a crack detective, Professor Gordon-Reed has made the Hemings documents sing. One of my favorite examples is her brilliant reading of a Monticello kitchen inventory that James Hemings bequeaths to his younger brother Peter, who is about to assume James's (former, pre-presidency) role as Jefferson's chef after his retirement to Monticello in 1809. Gordon-Reed understands Hemings' list of tools and equipment as a kind of professional autobiography, testifying to James's remarkable training in the art of haute cuisine during his time in Paris with Jefferson. Jefferson will fulfill his promise to manumit James in the following months but, tragically, not long after that, James will be dead by his own hand. As an avid, nearly breathless reader of Gordon-Reed's account, I only wanted more, more, more. Eight years earlier, why did James Hemings refuse to ask Jefferson in a timely fashion to take him on as chef at the White House? Gordon-Reed speculates that James wanted Jefferson to offer an official invitation; meanwhile, the frustrated president-elect, waiting for James to approach him, grew weary of this unspoken power struggle in which the desired supplication was not forthcoming and the wish to offer the position according to official conventions became impossible to express; out of patience, Jefferson ultimately decided to hire a native Frenchman instead. This episode strikes me as particularly bizarre and heartbreaking, given that Jefferson took James Hemings to France precisely to afford him the culinary training that would enable him to cook haute cuisine for his master. And why, so soon after at last having been released from the burdens of laboring unremunerated for this complex, difficult man for nearly three decades, did the finally emancipated James find his life unsustainable in freedom? Did he have no attachments, no loves, no prospect of either? Professor Gordon-Reed supplies us with a sorrowful if oblique letter from Jefferson to one of his daughters in which he acknowledges James's death, but we have nothing from the Hemings side of the equation to fill in the blanks, and particularly, nothing from James's hand to help contextualize the tragedy to come. Gordon-Reed's ability to turn archival straw into intellectual gold, so prolific across her marvelous book, here runs into the brick wall of the archive's limitations, leaving this reader saddened and baffled by the story's greatest mystery. That even she has not unraveled the enigma of James Hemings (who would be my protagonist if I were concocting a sequel) is my only, and unfair, cavil with the book. Meanwhile, I am made breathless by the way in which Professor Gordon-Reed's achievement relies as much on her magnificent imagination as it does on her enormous archive. Like a great novelist, she breathes life and power into characters who in earlier accounts had been rendered with one part filial piety, one part nationalist zeal, one part Masterpiece Theater, and one part waxworks. (There may be too many parts in this recipe, but I am a literary scholar, not a French chef.) With brilliance, she details historical context in all its thick description, particularly James and Sally Hemings's life in Paris, with the foment of the revolution percolating; she vividly paints their social milieu among servants of other ambassadors and the very French aristocrats about to lose everything; and she is particularly sparkling in her discussion of black servant peers of the Hemingses who may have discussed with them the French Admiralty Court's hearing of petitions from enslaved noirs, for whom it nearly always ruled favorably. These chapters afford a rich understanding for the background to Gordon-Reed's speculation that Hemings was able to argue for the eventual manumission of herself and any future children in Virginia if she promised to return there with Jefferson when he left Paris. …

Is It Real . . . or Is It Motion Capture?: The Battle to Redefine Animation in the Age of Digital Performance

Is It Real . . . or Is It Motion Capture?The Battle to Redefine Animation in the Age of Digital Performance Yacov Freedman (bio) The most intriguing scene in Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 2007) occurs after the movie is over. At the very bottom of the end credits, following the usual Pixar-perfect lists of loop groups and Production Babies, comes an unexpected disclaimer. "Our Quality Assurance Guarantee," it reads, "100% Genuine Animation! No motion capture or any other performance shortcuts were used in the production of this film." Next to the statement stands a winking caricature of a 1950s businessman giving the audience a thumbs-up for supporting such an apparently worthy endeavor. It is, without a doubt, an odd way to postscript a film, but Ratatouille's swipe at motion capture is also indicative of a larger dispute over the use of modern technology within the pantheon of animation techniques. The debate has been quietly raging for over a decade, even as the technology itself becomes more powerful, more convincing, and more widespread. The past two years, however, have seen several moves to end the debate, with various disciplines attempting to categorize motion capture—often to contradictory extremes. Rules have been written and opinions have been proffered from film practitioners, corporations, unions, and even award shows reflecting numerous agendas and points of view. Clearly, the question of how to view motion capture is an important one, as it illustrates the difficulties of defining different forms of film in the digital age. Motion capture occupies a unique and disputed place among film technologies. By capturing live movement as raw computer data, it exists as an unprecedented amalgam of both recorded and synthetic cinema. As such, motion capture is at the center of an ongoing debate about what constitutes animation in the digital age. Whereas it was once compared almost exclusively to animation and to techniques such as rotoscoping in particular, the medium has evolved into its own particular mode of expression. This has spurred an industry-wide race to redefine motion capture in which different factions of filmmakers—everyone from actors to visual effects artists, studios to labor unions—have attempted to claim the technology as their own. This essay examines how various groups within Hollywood have sought to control the conversation about motion capture as well as efforts by a prominent umbrella organization—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—to end the debate by scrutinizing its own definitions of animation. Previous essays on motion capture have largely dealt with the theoretical problems it presents: issues of reality versus representation, media confluence, and the "uncanny valley" of photorealism.1 Many of these same topics are being discussed within the film industry, only with the much more concrete goal of assigning creative and financial credit (or blame) for motion capture's successes (or failures). The major players involved—institutions including the Screen Actors Guild and the Walt Disney Company— recognize that the current debates over motion capture will have long-range professional ramifications. Furthermore, motion capture is an expensive technology, one that requires sizable investments of both funds and physical space. Hollywood's internal debate, therefore, is perhaps even more important than its academic counterpart, since industrial forces may ultimately decide whether motion capture will be canonized as animation, live action, or visual effect. Yet all these debates distract from another possibility, one advanced primarily by director/producer Robert Zemeckis: that motion capture represents a wholly new form of filmmaking, one that cannot and should not be limited by our previously held definitions of synthetic versus recorded cinema.2 For Zemeckis, categorizing motion capture is by itself problematic and would potentially stifle a new art form in its infancy. [End Page 38] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Ratatouille takes a stand against motion capture during its end credits (Disney/Pixar, 2007). Part 1: Animated Origins and Academy Rules In addition to its end-credit caveat, the entirety of Ratatouille can be read as an extended critique of motion capture.3 The plot focuses on Remy, a rat who realizes his lifelong dream of becoming a French chef by using a surrogate human to cook meals for him...

A Medal for Mrs. Lincoln

A Medal for Mrs. Lincoln Jason Emerson (bio) On December 1, 1866, a group of nineteen august Frenchmen—politicians, academics, men of letters, and newspaper editors—entered the U.S. legation in Paris bearing a letter and a small box for Mary Lincoln, widow of the late President Abraham Lincoln. The men were some of the most eminent republican reformers in Imperial France, and they called themselves the Committee of the French Democracy. They were there to deliver a gift on behalf of forty thousand French citizens to honor the memory of Abraham Lincoln. The men gave their offering to U.S. Minister to France John Bigelow, after which committee member Eugène Pelletan said, "Tell Mrs. Lincoln the heart of France is in that little box."1 This gift for Mary Lincoln, a gold medal bearing a likeness of Abraham Lincoln on one side and a dedicatory inscription on the other, was the only tangible public tribute of sympathy Mary Lincoln ever received as a result of her widowhood. The story of this medal—its creation, its transmittal, its subsequent history, and its effect on Mary Lincoln—has never been fully examined by scholars, [End Page 187] and yet it is an interesting tale filled with pain and sympathy, suspicion and betrayal, frustration and triumph, and, ultimately, the victory of democracy over tyranny. A Foreign Tribute Mary Lincoln always had admired the French culture. She learned the language as a child and spoke and read it fluently, studied French history, and, as a lover of fashion, was enamored of all the latest French clothing styles. As first lady, Mary had a French chef in the White House and used her language skills to speak with foreign dignitaries in their native language. She also shared her love of French culture with Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner, himself a Francophile, and the two friends often would communicate in French. After the conclusion of her husband's second term as president, Mary intended to visit France as part of the family's planned world tour; and during her widowhood, Mary actually lived in France two separate times totaling about five years of residence. It seems, however, that she had no idea the esteem in which the French people held her husband, or her.2 The entire civilized world was shocked by President Lincoln's assassination in April 1865. Mary Lincoln later stated that she received "innumerable letters and resolutions from distinguished persons in all portions of the habitable globe" offering their sympathies.3 [End Page 188] "Their eyes, were only just beginning to comprehend the nature and nobility, of the great, good man, who had accomplished, his work, and before his Judge, it was pronounced complete," she bitterly and proudly wrote.4 Two of the first condolence letters Mary received were from the Count of Paris and the Empress of France.5 Empress Eugenie, wife of the Emperor Napoleon III, wrote, Madame: The Emperor sends to Washington his official expressions of the indignation and sadness which have gripped the nation of France, for the fatal blow that struck President Lincoln. However, aside from this national misfortune, your personal tragedy arouses profound feelings in my heart. I would like, Madame, to offer my own condolences, as well as the assurance of my prayers that Heaven will grant you the strength to bear this cruel ordeal. Please believe, [End Page 189] Madame, in my deep sympathy and my most sincere sentiments. Eugénie.6 In Paris, Minister Bigelow watched as people thronged the streets, as students held public meetings and marched in a body to the U.S. legation to express their sympathy, and as imperial police arrested many of the democratic demonstrators. The minister was soon deluged with letters of condolence, which he forwarded to Secretary of State William Seward, and which included numerous letters addressed to Mrs. Lincoln. Bigelow reported to the secretary that the number of letters was evidence not only of how the news of Lincoln's death shocked France but also of the deep respect and affection the French people held for him: "It is difficult to exaggerate the enthusiasm which his name inspires among the masses of Europe at...

Mexico City, 1891

Mexico City, 1891 Jeffrey M. Pilcher (bio) Britannia may have ruled the waves during the Victorian age of empire, but upper-crust Britons were nonetheless enslaved to a legion of French chefs. With his headquarters at the Savoy, Auguste Escoffier served as proconsul to this army of occupation, some five thousand strong, in kitchens throughout the kingdom (Trubek 47). From strategic locations in castles, manors, hotels, and clubs, these troops laid down a merciless barrage of champagne bottles, canisters of foie gras, and waves of sauce financière. Resistance was futile. The English elite, like the aristocrats of Tsarist Russia and the robber barons of gilded-age New York, succumbed to this invasion with only a whimper of post-prandial contentment. In 1891, the renowned Parisian chef Sylvain Daumont disembarked in Mexico, determined to extend the culinary imperium to a land where France had recently suffered humiliating defeat. Three decades earlier, the sandal-clad troops of President Benito Juárez had upset the better-armed forces of Napoleon III in the battle of Cinco de Mayo (5 May 1862). Although French [End Page 41] soldiers eventually occupied the country and imposed the Austrian archduke Maximilian as emperor, Mexicans fought a successful guerrilla war, buoyed by their early victory, and restored the republic in 1867. Even as Daumont drilled his kitchen brigade, a popular army of resistance mobilized in working-class taquerías (taco shops) to reclaim the honour of Mexico's national cuisine. Regardless of their nationality, those who aspired to elite status in the late nineteenth century considered the mastery of French cuisine essential. Table manners derived from courtly rituals were purposely designed to intimidate middling folk, and the proliferation of manuals for proper behaviour testifies to the widespread fear of embarrassment from failing to distinguish between, say, a pastry fork and a grapefruit spoon. Censure was particularly intense within the exclusive clubs where elites socialized and forged class identity. The Reform Club, for example, with its kitchen presided over by chef Alexis Soyer, was a bastion of Liberal politics in Britain. The endless parade of banquet courses, like the enormous sideboards carved with images of hunt and harvest, symbolized European mastery over the landscape. But this was still an early consumer society, with hunger stalking openly in the streets. Many felt both guilt at their own indulgence and dismay over French cultural hegemony (Williams 17-48; Ames 67-73; Freeman 195-203). Mexican aristocrats were scarcely parvenus at the Victorian dinner party. France's first intervention, a naval occupation of the Veracruz customs house in 1838, had been popularly dubbed the "pastry war" when word spread that the claims included sixty thousand pesos for a French baker in Mexico City as compensation for eclairs and tartlets supposedly eaten by revolutionaries. The second intervention, the ill-fated court of Maximilian and Carlota, provided a model of continental refinement that was quickly taken up by Mexico's provincial elite, many of whom refurbished their estates in the style of European country manors. The infatuation with French banquets reached a pinnacle under the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911). Wealthy Mexicans, convinced that imported technology assured their future progress, rushed to buy the latest consumer goods as well. In 1881, they organized a Jockey Club in the House of Tiles, a magnificent edifice near the fashionable Alameda Park. General Francisco Zacarías Mena, a personal friend of President Díaz, administered the club's vast wine cellar, while a French chef oversaw the kitchen (Pilcher Mexican Identity, 62-66; Beezley Judas, 13-66; Macías-González 90-91; Tablada 264-65). The arrival of the celebrated Daumont seemed to vindicate these cosmopolitan aspirations. The Mexican representative in Paris, don Tomás de la Torre y Mier, had negotiated his appointment as personal chef for his brother, Ignacio, a bon vivant and son-in-law of the dictator. Daumont was a self-conscious artist who believed that a great chef should combine flavours by instinct, the way a musician uses sounds or a painter colours. Within a year of his arrival, he had to set out on his own, opening an eponymous restaurant just a block south of the Jockey...

The Role of Sauce in Western Cuisine and Understanding of Contemporary Sauce

Sauce is a thickened, flavored liquid designed to accompany food in order to enhance and bring out its flavor. In the days before refrigeration, however, sauces were more often used to smother the taste of foods that had begun to go bad. The French are credited with refining the sophisticated art of sauce-making. It was the 19th-century French chef Antonin Careme who evolved an intricate methodology by which hundreds of sauces were classified under one of five 'grand sauces(mother sauces)'. Those are: Espagnole(Brown stock-based), Veloute(light stock-based), Bechamel(basic white sauce), Hollandaise and Mayonnaise(emulsified sauces) and Vinaigrette (oil-and-vinegar combinations). The contemporary sauce is more convenient and lighter than mother sauce. It includes new style sauce such as foam sauce, jelly sauce, sherbet sauce and chocolate sauce. To improve the modern sauce, from now on we need to develop and research about healthy sauce and new Korean sauce. Nowadays, they try to make new ways to be creative but we must understand the basic sauce. Most of all, we must go back to basic to develop new ones. We also should find the way to mix classic sauce and contemporary one well.

THE COOKING ANIMAL: ECONOMIC MAN AT THE GREAT EXHIBITION

When called upon to hosta banquet celebrating the forthcoming Great Exhibition of 1851, the world's first display of international industry, the Mayor of York turned to the period's most renowned chef for the catering. The Frenchman Alexis Soyer, who had recently resigned from his position at the Reform Club in Pall Mall, had made a name for himself in Britain through a combination of extravagant culinary endeavours and popular household cookery books. The banquet at York was an important occasion; joining Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's Consort, was a long list of national luminaries from Victorian high society and the political world. Soyer did not disappoint the Mayor, or his guests. TheTimescommented that amongst the vast array of international cuisines on offer was featured “one dish, to which turtles, ortolans, and other rich denizens of land and sea had contributed, [which] cost not less than 100l.” The paper noted with satisfaction that the feast was consumed before an “emblematical device representing Britannia in her conventional attire receiving the industrial products of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America” (“The Banquet at York” 5). That this emblem provided the backdrop to such cosmopolitan fare was salient: it spoke to the way in which the production and consumption of food would become a crucial motif in the positive representation of globalisation as it was understood at the Exhibition; it also highlighted the important role that the Victorian metropolis would fulfil in the realisation of this new world order. Certainly, the internationalist bent of Soyer's cooking seemed entirely appropriate to the luminaries gathered at the York banquet, and it was no doubt with the French chef's culinary scope in their minds as well as their stomachs that the Exhibition's organisers invited Soyer to submit a tender to provide refreshments at the display itself (Soyer 197).

Anachronism and innovation: A case of hybrid economies in the early 19th century

Anachronism is commonly viewed as a mistake or a sin in historical analysis, and thus to be avoided.This article argues that there is a place for anachronism when engaging with ahistorical fields, and that anachronism can be used as critical analysis. By way of studying the famous French chef Antonin Carême, and the way in which he utilized revisionist history to position his own nouvelle cuisine, the article discusses innovation management and industrialized logic in a historical context, and the way through which this can be utilized to critique simplistic notions of economic eras.

Live the ADA legacy—Annually

“One can never know too much; the more one learns, the more one sees the need to learn more and that study as well as broadening the mind of the craftsman provides an easy way of perfecting yourself in the practice of your art.” —Auguste Escoffier (French chef, 1846–1935)

Das holzgeschnitzte Hauptwerk

First, I should perhaps explain the choice of a German title for this paper. I have chosen it deliberately, for other reasons than the coquettish alliteration, although I do believe that a nice little Stabreim does no harm in the title of a paper on such Wagnerian a piece as Bartok's first danceplay. Take the concept of Hauptwerk. It has its mirror translations in Italian (capolavoro), French (chef d'ceuvre), but try the English equivalent as given in the dictionary: chief work. However, I simply could not afford to give up this concept. Because one of the objectives of this paper is to state or re-state, that maybe the work in question is not a perfect masterwork, but it is very much a Hauptwerk. Also, I was sceptical about the English adjective wooden for the German holzgeschnitzt. The original Hungarian title given to the balletscenario by Bela Balazs translates literally into English as carved out of wood. The German holzgeschnitzt conserves the active aspect of the Hungarian fabolfaragott perfectly. Strangely enough, the original activistic participle in the Hungarian title has no bearing at all on the plot. We are not told, how the puppet has been carved out of wood. In fact, we do not even know, if it has been carved at all, and not simply cut down from a tree. The piece of wood, that the fairy would turn into a living puppet, is called in the libretto simply a big stick of wood. Very possibly Balazs has chosen the long Hungarian word merely for poetic-rhythmical reasons, and it is only consequent, that he abandoned it in his own German translation of the tale, which was published in the late twenties, with the simple German title: Der holzerne Prinz.

The Genre of the Culinary Classic: The Works of Julia Child

Long recognized as the darling of public television, Julia Child, the star of The French Chef, Julia and Company, and Dining with Julia (among other popular programs), is also an author of rare elegance. Collectively, her works constitute a compendium of information on two major areas of culinary interest in the United States: French and American cooking. Julia, as she is affectionately known to her legions of fans, burst on the American publishing horizon in 1961 with the publication by Alfred A. Knopf of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I. Along with her coauthors, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, Julia became an instant nationally recognized author. What distinguishes Mastering the Art of French Cooking from its antecedents is its thoroughness in scholarship and coverage, underscored by a refreshing, subtle wit. Volume II follows the same format—with the same incomparable results. Julia and her coauthors thoughtfully listed not only ingredients, but all necessary utensils and other batterie de cuisine. Both volumes are illustrated in detailed pen and ink drawings rendered by Paul Child, Julia's husband.

The French Chef

The French Chef

Shouldn't We Teach GEOMETRY?

The point of view stressed by Dieudonne sees in almost all currently active and important branches of mathematics. Naturally, from such a point of view, we teach whenever we teach mathematics. This view goes far back-was it not customary to call every mathematician geometer?-but somehow, I cannot find much solace or joy in this view. It seems to me that to call all the activities described by Dieudonne by the name geometry is rather analogous to-and as justified as-calling the activities of a French chef agriculture. Indeed, in both cases much love, thought and effort is given to specially chosen and suitable objects (meats, vegetables, theorems) while converting them into delicacies for the true connoisseurs. And in both cases, many of the raw materials must be wasted if the only destiny deemed worthwhile for them is the transformation into gourmet dishes, or highly abstract mathematics. Dropping the simile, it seems to me that the situation of in colleges and universities is much less satisfactory than the opinions of my colleagues might have led you to believe. To justify this assertion, I should probably first give a brief explanation of what I mean by geometry. A good point of departure is provided by the illustration in Figure 1, which I found in a card store a short time ago. I hope that it conveys to you the same idea it conveys to me-that is a special way of replacing objects of the real world by simpler, idealized figures and shapes, and then investigating the mutual relations of these. This, I believe, is what geometry-intuitive geometry-is, and should be. Geometry arose in such manner and-as I hope to elaborate shortly-this is how meaningful and interesting questions continue to arise. In Greek times this process of abstraction led to the points, segments, circles, triangles and all the other objects of Euclidean geometry, and in the course of its development gave the ancients the opportunity to create the deductive system we know as Euclidean geometry.(l) Unfortunately, in later times this great achievement of the ancients was perverted to a religion. And even the Age of Reason did not dispel the superstition of the divine or a priori root of Euclidean until about 150 years ago for the most radical among mathematicians, -and not at all, to this day, for most mathematicians and laymen alike. Very few people are conscious of the fact that all -and Euclidean in particular-is a product of our thinking and represents just one of the ways in which we try to communicate about our surroundings and understand certain aspects of reality.

That Word ‘Caput’

A brief survey of the indebtedness of the modern languages of Europe, and in particular our own, to the Latin word caput may be not without interest.The French did not adopt the classical meaning of caput, but, by way of the slang of the Roman soldiers in all probability, preferred the Latin testa = a tile, French tête. But caput did enter Gaul as the early French chief and modern chef (e.g. chef d'orchestre, chef de cuisine, whence, by the way, the English ‘chef’). English borrowed this word from French under the guise of chief, and from the early French word chevetaine formed the English chieftain. But in one word the French did adopt the classical meaning of caput, and that was in the word couvre-chef (modelled presumably upon the Vulgar Latin capitegium), meaning a covering for the head. This was adopted in Middle English as curchef (kerchief) and signified originally a cloth to cover a woman's head. It was an easy step from this to the modern ‘handkerchief’. Further, Vulgar Latin had a phrase ad caput venire, ‘to come to an end’, ‘to accomplish’. This was taken over into early French as a chief venir: later the verb venir was lost and the phrase a chief was made into the verb achever. Our English word achieve was the inevitable offspring.