Diva

Yesterday my brother referred to Sabrina Carpenter as a diva. I had no idea what he meant. It could have been one of several distinct things.

So I decided it was time to talk about the word "diva."

I first became aware of the term sometime around 1975. Maybe more like 1973. In any case, as far as I was aware, a diva was a star female opera singer. I didn't know much about opera -- I still don't -- but I heard Beverly Sills and Maria Callas referred to as divas.

Going back a bit further in time, the 1933 Oxford English Dictionary defines a diva as "a distinguished female singer." Etymological sources are given such as Italian meaning "goddess" or "lady-love" and Latin meaning "goddess," feminine of divius, "god."  

The 1933 also mentions the synonym "prima donna," which is Italian for "leading lady," "primary female singer," etc. Opera again. The earliest English usage cited is from Harper's in 1883. In the late 19th century in the English-speaking parts of the world, opera was considered to be something primarily Italian -- correctly? I don't know. I don't know much about opera.

When I first came across the term "diva," in connection with opera, I had heard the term "prima donna," but not in any sense which had to do with opera. A prima donna, as far as I knew, was a spoiled, difficult, unpleasantly egotistical person, gender not specified.

Eventually I learned that the two terms were synonymous, in opera, and in the wider world. Except that "diva," like "punk," was re-claimed by people at who the term was hurled. A diva became something positive, a proud, strong woman who didn't care if you found her difficult. The first non-operatic usage I noticed was it being applied to female pop music stars, like Diana Ross or Patti LaBelle. 

Simultaneously, I noticed that the usage of the term "diva" in opera could be positive or negative. It could denote that a star soprano was a great singer, or that she was an aggravating person. Then I noticed that in the case of Maria Callas, different people applied the term "diva" to her non-singing, offstage life, some positively, some negatively, although they were all referring to the same behavior. What struck some people as difficult and disgraceful, struck others as proud and glorious. 

Or perhaps it was more a case of some regarding a woman as proud and disgraceful, while others saw her as proud and glorious. Reclaiming the intended insult as a compliment. Saying that if you had a problem with this particular goddess, it was strictly your problem. 

I was already somewhat disturbed by people applying the term "diva" to non-operatic singers, when I became aware that it was being applied to people who didn't sing at all. Drag queens, for example. In To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, the regional-award-winning drag queens refer to themselves as "fierce, ruling divas."

Thinking that over, while getting ready to write this essay, I began to wonder whether the operatic connection might be all in my head, and whether ladies who refer to themselves as divas might not be going back directly to the Latin, skipping opera altogether. As in: opera? What opera? Honey, I'm talking about goddesses! 

Then I remembered that, in To Wong Foo, the book DV by Diana Vreeland is recommended to a young lady as the last word in getting a MAY-un, and of course, Diana Vreeland, whatever else she was or was not, and that's several more essays at least, was utterly incapable of going for an entire book without saying quite a bit about Maria Callas. Of course I've read DV. What, you haven't?! *faints*

So anyway, my point was that I'm going to have to ask my brother just exactly what he meant when he called Sabrina Carpenter a diva.

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What Is Science, What Is Philosophy?

To all of you who are so obsessed with precisely determining what is and what isn't science, be aware that science is defined quite differently in different languages, and that the Latin word for "science," "scientia," was in use over 2000 years ago, long before Francis Bacon and Galileo were born, long before there was an English language. In German, the word for "Science," "Wissenscaft," is applied much more broadly than in English. Not only is history a Wissenschaft to ze Chermans -- they even have things like "Literaturwissenschaft," "the scientific study of literature," which sounds very silly even to me, and will presumably make your head explode if you're one of those English-speakers currently very much at pains to label as incorrect all definitions of "science" but the most narrow.



Is philosophy scientific, is science philosophical? Again, it's partly a matter of semantics. The term "φιλοσοφία (philosophia)" is even older than "scientia," and the ancient Greeks who were called philosophers in their day, from Thales to Pythagoras to Plato to Plotinus, we still call philosophers today -- which leads me to suspect that the present-day English-speakers squabbling about the definition of "science," and defining it very narrowly, don't know very much about those ancient Greeks, or they'd be disturbed that one of them who's always been referred to as a philosopher, Thales, acted very much like someone they'd call a scientist, using mathematical principles to determine things such as the height of Egyptian pyramids, the distance of ships seen from the shore, and the size and shape of the Earth. Then there's Pythagoras, whom these strict categorizers today call a mathematician, but in his time was known as a philosopher along with Thales and Plato. The present-day categorizers call Plato a philosopher, but how many have heard that Plato is believed to have put a sign at the entrance to his Academy which asked all those unfamiliar with geometry to go away? But wait, there's still more bad news for those would have clear and clean distinctions between one academic discipline (Did you notice where the term "academic" comes from?) and the next: Although Plato called geometry "γεωμετρία, geometria," it's not at all clear that he or his contemporaries restricted the use of the term anywhere nearly as English-speakers do today. If you break the word into its parts you see "geo" and "meter," "Earth" and "measurer." To the ancient Greeks this could have meant all sorts of things including the study of history and literature and art botany and all other things in categories as diverse as the Earth. Could have, and in the practical everyday use of the word, probably did.



And, finally, to really make the New Atheists swallow their gum: in Medieval universities, theology was often referred to as the "Queen of the sciences."

Except of course that New Atheists are not swallowing their gum: since I'm rambling on about stuff that happened a long time ago when everybody was ignorant, they're impatiently asking, as they impatiently ask whenever I point out that one of their own has said something wildly inaccurate on an historical subject, "So what?"

So Thales and Pythagoras and Euclid and Bacon and Galileo and Einstein and Heisenberg and many others (Many, many others. It's a long time from Euclid to Francis Bacon, and 1 person who knew that science didn't stop in the meantime, and wasn't waiting to be invented, by Francis or by Galileo, depending on which New Atheist yahoo you talk to, was Francis Bacon. I know this because I've read some Bacon and noticed all of the earlier scientists he mentions and praises. He knew he was building on their work, as opposed to having sprung fully-formed from the brow of Zeus.) did what they did while entirely un-plagued by this English-language mania, particularly virulent right now, to section science off from mathematics and and philosophy and history and linguistics and music and art all the other things which have gotten us out of the trees eating grubs and berries and trying in vain to fight off panthers with sticks and made life somewhat more bearable. Yes, science when extraordinarily narrowly defined has helped with that, too. Yes indeed it has, it's helped greatly. But Einstein didn't cordon himself off from the rest of the world. He played the violin, he loved the visual arts and philosophy. Galileo wrote a treatise on Dante. You think that's odd? His contemporaries would have found it odd if an Italian as learned as he had not done so. (Milton published some scientific works.) You want to talk about this supposed division between science and art -- can you say "Leonardo da Vinci"?