"Olaf Stapledon - Bio" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

emigres.
Frank Miller was employed by Booth and Co. of Sydney, an Australian firm that exported
animal skins to England. In the course of business he visited England every few years, and on
most of these visits his wife and family accompanied him. Agnes made four such trips, the third
of these, in 1902, when she was only eight. It was on this occasion that she was first aware of
Olaf, then sixteen. She remembers her dominating impression was of his extraordinary kindness.
Despite the fact that their age difference gave them little in common, he made a special effort to
see that her stay was pleasant and spent a great deal of time showing her about. She visited
England again when she was fourteen, and found Olaf as considerate and thoughtful as on the
earlier visit.
Prior to World War I, the family sent her to Europe for a year to study French, German and
music. These were deemed proper for the education of a young woman at that time, but Agnes
regretted afterward that she had not obtained a more serious academic training at some place like
Sydney University. When the war broke out she was in France, and her speedy return to
Australia in the company of a New Zealand cousin was considered advisable. While in Europe
she had had the opportunity to see Olaf on a number of occasions, this time as an attractive
young lady of seventeen and eighteen. As one may well imagine, his attention became less of a
kindly chore.
The engagement and the marriage itself were arranged by letter, with the harmonious
agreement of all concerned. After the marriage the couple went to live with Stapledon’s parents,
who had a large and beautiful home in Caldy. The possessiveness of Olaf’s mother proved a trial
and they moved to nearby lodgings. Olaf’s father solved the problem by buying them a house at
7 Grosvenor Avenue, West Kirby, where the two lived from 1920 to 1940.
Olaf engaged in extensive lecture tours for the Workers Education Association, which was a
primary source of income, though it meant he had to travel to nearby communities a great deal.
A girl, Mary Sydney Staple-don, was born May 31, 1920, and a boy, John David Stapledon, on
November 6, 1923. Not unexpectedly, Olaf proved to be a wonderful father. He was an easy
person to live with and would help the children with their problems and later with their studies.
Because he had a high degree of manual dexterity, as well as a great interest in things nautical,
he engaged in making model boats which he convinced himself were for the children’s pleasure.
He was a fast eater and would bolt his food, shove aside his plate, and fall to assembling these
model boats at the table while everyone else was still eating. All were happy and no one was
bored. The neighbors’ children were also beneficiaries of this nautical ingenuity.
 Through the 1920’s he gave many extramural lectures and taught university extension courses
in psychology and industrial history. He also began to contribute articles on sociology,
psychology and philosophy to a variety of journals. The serious books on his shelves
accumulated, and he began to form his own philosophical theories. By late 1928 these became
sufficiently firm that he was willing to challenge one of the leading philosophers of the day,
Alfred North Whitehead, at that time professor at Harvard University.
In his essay "The Location of Physical Objects"’ Stapledon offered an interpretation and then a
refutation of certain of Whitehead’s theories.
…Professor Whitehead insists that nature is that which we experience in sense-perception. All that
anyone really does experience in sense-perception is in physical nature—somehow. And though we may
infer from our sense-experience to unperceived and even unperceivable features of nature, these features
must ever be of the same stuff as those which we perceive. Of that which is "behind the veil of perception"
we know nothing. Indeed, to regard our sensed field as a veil, hiding something other than itself, is to pose
an unreal problem.

In introducing his comments Stapledon stated that Whitehead’s writings were "Perhaps more
pregnant than lucid and consistent." In this article he proves himself guilty of the same fault.