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Goretti Publications's Philosophy
We have a few unusual policies at Goretti
Publications, and our readers may be
interested in having them explained. So
we've endeavored to do so here. Essentially,
these devolve into two main areas: numbering
and copyright. We'll address both in turn.
Numbers
Readers will quickly notice that our works
are not numbered in the prevalent decimal
system. Instead, they are numbered in the
*dozenal* system, where each column in a
number flips to the next at *twelve*, rather
than at ten. So counting proceeds as such:
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight, nine, ten, eleven, *dozen*;
dozen-one, dozen-two, dozen-three,
dozen-four...
Depending on the medium, we use different
characters for "ten" and "eleven." We use "X"
for ten and "E" for eleven on the Internet,
where our fonts are limited; so our counting
in digits looks like this:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, X, E, 10, 11,
12, 13, 14, 115, 16, 7, 18, 19, 1X, 1E,
20, 21...
In our pdfs and printed works, we have real
font options; so there, we use an inverted
"2" for ten and an inverted "3" for eleven;
our copyright pages explain this.
The dozenal system has a long pedigree,
having been first explicated by Juan Caramuel
y Lobkowitz in E48 (1640) and supported by
luminaries such as Georges-Louis Leclerc
(also known as the Comte de Buffon);
Pierre-Simon Laplace; John Nystrom; Sir Isaac
Pitman; Herbert Spencer; George Bernard Shaw;
and H. G. Wells.
A thorough explanation for why the dozenal
system is preferable to the decimal is beyond
our scope here; but plenty of information can
be found at the Dozenal Society of America:
http://www.dozenal.org
Copyright
At Goretti Publications, we only publish
works that do not restrict the reader's
freedom in meaningful ways. This means, as a
practical matter, that we only publish works
under "copyleft" licenses, or those in the
public domain. The reader may wish to
understand why.
The first reason is that we see no real basis
for so-called "intellectual property" in any
sensible system of philosophy. There is no
natural right to control the way that other
people use something once we give it to them
(e.g., there is no natural right to prevent
someone from copying a book once we've handed
it to them), nor is it, as a practical
matter, particularly effective at
incentivizing authors and innovation.
Indeed, to the contrary, the intellectual
property regime as it stands is more often
used to stifle innovation and to collect
rents on old works rather than to incentivize
the production of new ones.
However, agree or disagree with this way of
thinking (and obviously, on this complex
issue there is a great deal more to say),
Goretti Publications would still wish only to
publish works which are *open*; that is,
which do not restrict the reader's freedom in
unjustified ways. This is because we want
our works to be spread *more*, not less; and
in the unlikely event that this deprives us
of some profit that we would otherwise
accrue, we are glad and proud to make the
sacrifice. As Thomas Jefferson once
noted</a>:
It would be curious then, if an idea, the
fugitive fermentation of an individual
brain, could, of natural right, be
claimed in exclusive and stable property.
If nature has made any one thing less
susceptible than all others of exclusive
property, it is the action of the
thinking power called an idea, which an
individual may exclusively possess as
long as he keeps it to himself; but the
moment it is divulged, it forces itself
into the possession of every one, and the
receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
Its peculiar character, too, is that no
one possesses the less, because every
other possesses the whole of it. He who
receives an idea from me, receives
instruction himself without lessening
mine; as he who lights his taper at mine,
receives light without darkening me.
That ideas should freely spread from one
to another over the globe, for the moral
and mutual instruction of man, and
improvement of his condition, seems to
have been peculiarly and benevolently
designed by nature, when she made them,
like fire, expansible over all space,
without lessening their density in any
point, and like the air in which we
breathe, move, and have our physical
being, incapable of confinement or
exclusive appropriation.
0Source
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html
All around the world, men offer one another
their tapers, seeking some small bit of light
to help shine their way through the world.
It would be strange indeed if we, possessing
such infinitely reproducible lights as we do,
were to begrudge our fellow man a tip from
our taper.
For this reason, we only publish works that
we can use in this way: that we can offer for
free to whomever wishes them. It seems
unlikely that we would make much profit on
any of the works we publish; but if we would,
we're happy to give that up for the good of
others. Rather than make it impossible for
us to do so, we will limit ourselves only to
those books which we can offer freely to the
world.
