Saturday, July 5, 2014

The apple rolls far from the tree

Garrison Keillor reminds us that today is the anniversary of (July 5,
1687) when Newton published "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica, or "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.... the
Principia contained Newton's three laws of motion, including, ....
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

Note the binary formulation: an equal and opposite reaction. We might
wonder if there is not a third force here, what Jan Cox called, E
force, or the unexpected, the irrelevant, coming into play each
second. Which sounds smug, but I am just trying to widen that small
aperture through which we see the world.

The historical treatment of Newton though is also a great example of
binary thought, in that, the work that equally involved him, his work
on religious issues, is never investigated. So for sure at least one
third of Newton's thought is ignored. Newton the scientist and Newton
the Alchemist are two sides, the good Newton and the old-fashioned
Newton. Whereas, with a figure this brilliant, you might have thought,
perhaps the entire corpus of his work should be studied with a view
towards greater comprehensibility.

This is the kind of approach though which the rigor mortis of binary
thought makes unlikely. A large part of Newton's thought can be just
ignored, the same way human experience, being labeled subjective, can
just be ignored by scientists.

Myself, I wonder if you can really understand Newton without studying
all his work to appreciate what he was saying.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

We walk across manholes like the night

There are gaps everywhere, and our survival as intellectual creatures depends on our not seeing them.

There are gaps everywhere and any personal progress in a vertical dimension depends on our remembering them

Cars and cores

What people call their minds, their selves----
are like automobiles. Necessary, automobiles, capable of things we could NOT do otherwise, like covering large distances quickly. There are enormous structures designed to make these automobiles even faster. The cars in my picture are rational, thought. Mental functioning. 

But perhaps automobiles are misnamed. Self...Moving. Because a driver is needed. Even if, soon perhaps these vehicles will move with minimal human intervention. All this obscures the fact there is something for which the cars are just a tool. The person inside. 

This person is like that quantity of reality, which the Work addresses; the "person" in our metaphor of urban reality, is  the aspect of humanity which might become less mechanical, in optimum and rare circumstances. It is necessary for the Work, or something like the Work throughout history, to actuate this quantity because this quantity, comparable to a person, situated within a world a metal machines, is not necessary for functioning of the world, not anyway, necessary in any large quantities. 

Cars can profitably be considered rational thought. Persons then, are that non-verbal dimension, the locus at which change is possible, just barely, possible. Once in a whirl. By those who can even conceive the distinction  between cars and their drivers.