From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Nov 10 2000 - 20:14:15 MST
>In a message dated 11/10/00 2:56:58 PM Central Standard Time, jr@shasta.com
>writes:
>
>> It seems to me the most extropic people have either avoided marriage,
>> tolerated it as a necessary evil, or abandoned it.
>>
>> I'm thinking of Socrates, Turing, Galileo, Oscar Wilde, Siddhartha, and
>> others.
Socrates certainly did not avoid marriage, although perhaps he tolerated it
(a rather mean-spirited way of putting it):
from Xenophon's Symposium:
Then Socrates: ...I see, the dancing-girl is standing ready; they are
handing her some hoops. ..
Then Socrates: The girl's performance is one proof among a host of others,
sirs, that woman's nature
is nowise inferior to man's. All she lacks is strength and judgment; and
that should be an
encouragement to those of you who have wives, to teach them whatever you
would want them to
know.
Antisthenes rejoined: If that is your conclusion, Socrates, why do you not
tutor your own wife,
Xanthippe, one of the most difficult women of times past, present, or future?
===================
Xanthippe has long been regarded as a shrew. This can be questioned.
http://home.pacbell.net/zadekia/xanthippe.html
As for Galileo - in 1600, his lover Marina Gamba gave birth to a
daughter,Virginia, later taking the name Maria Celeste. The next year
Marina has another girl, Livia, later Arcangela. Later he has a son,
Vincenzio. In 1629, Galileo becomes a grandfather, when his daughter-in-law
Sestilia Bocchineri, has a boy given the name Galileo. Married or not, he
seems friom this history to be, in his way, a family oriented kinda fellow.
Damien Broderick
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