A Short Course in Philosophy

Two well known philosophical limericks

A toper, who spies in the distance
Striped tigers, will get some assistance
From reading Descartes,
Who holds that it's part
Of his duty to doubt their existence.

But if he's a student of Berkeley,
One thing will emerge rather starkly:
That he ought to believe,
What his senses perceive,
No matter how dimly or darkly.

Some additions to complete the course courtesy of yours truly...

A Kantian might run away,
Or he might take a chance, and then stay
To see if it's real,
Or just an ideal,
And a noumenal blot on his day.

But if he heard Heidegger calling
And warning the toper was falling,
He'd know that his fear
Depends on how near,
He is to an authentic mauling.

A Taoist however, might say,
That if he partakes of the te,
What matters is knowing,
Just where he is going,
...the tiger is just in the Way.

And since his awareness is heightened
A Master of Zen isn't frightened -
Though he might give a kick,
If he hasn't a stick,
In the hope that the tiger's enlightened.

Though a Lockean might be more worried,
And beat a retreat rather hurried,
Having heard the effect,
To be had on his neck,
By something thus fanged and thus furried.

A Humean caught in this way,
Exploits naturalistic delay
While the Tiger's still caught
'Twixt the Is and the Ought,
His lunch can be getting away.

The poor toper besotted with meaning,
Unaware of the beast's natural leanings
Might be left by his friend
'Cos he can't comprehend
What he meant when he said he was leaving.

For the limerick writer, it's worse
If he's struggling with unfinished verse.
Should he stand wasting time,
While attempting to rhyme
The word "tiger", he'll leave in a hearse.

In general, the question is Being,
(The toper's, and that which he's seeing),
But I'm for eschewing,
The Being for Doing,
And eager to Be, so I'm fleeing.

Inspiration!

All you need to be creative is inspiration (breathe it in) and a little creativity.

Some time back a certain Mr Bubley, who specialises in Disruptive Analysis, demonstrated his skill by disrupting my day with this Generic Limerick

There once was an X from place B
That satisfied predicate P
He or she did thing A
In an adjective way
Resulting in circumstance C

Nice. But I wanted more, and in the absence of more lying around (or anything satisfying turned up by Google) obviously I had to write my own...

So here they are.

The Generic Limerick Algorithm

Specify X, with a well defined locus
State a Property Y (may be bogus)
Say what X did, does or may
Add adverbial phrase
And conclude with a joke, as per modus

A Limeri

The art of the limerick's cunning;
And, well done, the result can be stunning
But fluffing your lines
And forgetting your rhymes
Can leave the reader a bit underwhelmed

An Uncertain Limerick

A success in a life-long endeavour!
I've quantised the joke! Well I never!
But the humour's uncertain
Beyond Heisenberg's curtain
Where it may, or it may not, be measured

The Kama Sutra of Quantum Mechanics

In quantum the fun is coition
Of momentum and spatial position
And as for the state,
That we cannot relate...
Up or Down? Or a super-position?

A Paradoxical Generic Limerick

A Limerick structure conundrum:
Line two has a rhyme, but it's humdrum
The format's not broke
But there isn't a joke
Ergo: Quod Non Erat Demonstrandum

And last - and probably least...

A Null Generic Limerick

Mathematically speaking of sets
The joke is in what we don't get:
If set B is in C,
Then their union's still C.
What else would you ever expect?