Joe Greenberg

[Tom Givon]

Dear Matt,

Thanks. It would indeed be hard to ferret out Joe's intellectual roots,
since they were so widely  spread, far-reaching and delightfuly
idiosyncratic. A lot of it, perhaps the initial core, goes back to
traditional 19th Century philology and the Classics, a literature I am
alas only too unqualified to evaluate. But like all imaginative,
restless people, Joe plucked his roots wherever he could find them,
assembling them along the way without great worry -- as long as (in his
judgement) they happened to fit for the task at hand. Which is a damn
good habit in philosophy of science; or, for that matter, in Biblical
Scholarship; both Karl Popper and the Bible proclaimed the very same
message of "by their fruit ye shall know them".

I found this refreshing tolerance of Joe's in the way in which he never
chided me for my own haphazard way of seeking -- often post-hoc -- for
appropriate intellectual antecedents. While he himself was so incredibly
well-versed in the Classical tradition, he never felt bound by it, and
never expected 'the younger generation' to be bound by it either. I have
a feeling he may have secretly rued the cultural illiteracy of some of
us (certainly mine), but was graceful enough to let us go on and do our
work as long as the work was in an interesting ('the right'?) direction.
I sometime wish I could feel, let alone practice, the same tolerance.

                     Best,  TG
=================

Matthew S Dryer wrote:
>
> Tom,
>
> I learned of Joe's death only shortly before you sent your message to
> Funknet.  In thinking of who I might pass on the news to, you came first
> to mind, since I heard you on more than one occasion speaking of Joe in a
> way that I don't think I've heard you speak so highly of anyone else.
> Many of us consider Joe, one way or another, to be among our major
> intellectual influences.  But who were Joe's intellectual influences?  I'm
> sure he had them, as we all do.  But the difficulty identifying who they
> might be, and thinking of the state of the field in the late 40s and the
> 50s, speaks to the astounding originality in his thinking.
>
> Matthew