Thursday, December 21, 2017

A Solstice Surprise

A few words now in celebration of today's solstice event. I am quoting Jan Cox. Normally I avoid this in any large amount since this blog celebrates the HOW he showed his students, the how of orienting your attention, and remembering.  Original thinking was a big part of this, and so that is what I do in this blog.  Not for its own sake, but because original thinking helps loosen the grasp of the mechanical cerebrations that are an  aspect of the planet.

Today though, a little holiday:

It was in the 1970s the Jan Cox mentioned to his students that the state of religion, at least in the western world, was "putrefied." He did not seem to think the way established religions operated then, could be reversed.

And in the 1990's he said, "Now people have nowhere to go." Both comments illuminate current events.  Especially the last, since it speaks to the planet as a whole. A glimpse of history shows migration as a common, maybe defining, process. "Now people have nowhere to go."

One more, and this will confound many. In the 1980s he said there is not life elsewhere in the universe, and there are no extraterrestrials. My take on this is that the strength and recurrence of sentiments in favor of such scenarios, speaks to a basic urge in human nature. Of course Jan also said, there is no god.

"There is no god that you can name."

Friday, December 1, 2017

You can't talk about hormones

Not really. Your words will be from the mind, the hormones have no words to explain themselves.

And this points to the reality that the influence of hormones on activity is rarely even mentioned, and so, the myth of rational behavior, flourishes. It is of course necessary for the evolution of folks--- that they think they are self-directed actors.

But remembering the behavior of alpha wolves, explains a lot of what is in the headlines lately. The alpha wolf takes what he wants.  Now of course, when caught out, there is no story, response, excuse, that sounds right, because speech is not really involved.  Most people can I believe, sense the yucky in these verbal apologies.

Not that my explanation is meant to be encompassing. Just a strand of insight. And here, is a jolly example of ---- alpha geese.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Anglophone philosophy

"Apes don't read philosophy."

"Oh yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it."

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Perchance to -

So yesterday in a used book store I found a philosophy book that had an old lover's name in it.  I must say, I had excellent taste in cads. And now, today, the song du jour has these lines: I bet you think this song is about you.  

Sunday, October 8, 2017

The meaning of timelessness

https://blog.oup.com/2017/10/confucius-philosophy-infographic/?

To ponder.

Saturday, October 7, 2017

What can one say to ordinary consciousness


Anger
never
clarifies.
It
can only
obscure
at the
level
of a person.
There is
a
structural
building
function
when
anger is
viewed
long
term:
after
the angry
individual is
gone.

Except
for the
fact
struggling
against
one's own
helps
clear the
fog.


Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Okay, a glance at contemporary events

Ostensibly.

What we want are hypocrites.
Politicians are all power hungry dogs.
This demand for ideological/moral purity on the part of voters is misguided.
What we want is someone in office capable of being embarrassed in doing something to benefit larger groups.

Notice I have not mentioned binary thought.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

The bobble in the bauble

The question of whether there is an innate superiority to electronic or printed pages is still a viable discussion topic. Jan Cox would perhaps have situated it in the context of how life is speeding up. I would suggest that an increasing subjectivity in the minds of people is an aspect of this growth of life, and the pace of the growth.

When a person reads a passage via electronic media, and finding themselves confused, wants to return to a previous point, then the electronic media is actually more cumbersome than the printed page. Not only is it more difficult to find a precise passage one has already perused, but studying that passage, should it be intellectually challenging, is innately more difficult in the ebook version.

When something is perplexing, it is helpful to have the exact words isolated in front of you. You can re-read them, ponder the meaning, and are prepared when an insight flashes. The quickness and efficiency of an electronic format makes this isolation and concentration more challenging, because of the very qualities which commend the newer format. The reader is more likely to skip over a challenging portion because of the price of concentrating on an isolated  part of the text.  I say price, meaning the added difficulty when the text is a smaller part, literally, of your field of attention. The printed page allows the stabilization, in space, of a confusing passage, for studying.

The assumption in my argument is that you are reading something intellectually challenging. The text which is not challenging of course, does not highlight this drawback. Such unchallenging material is by definition more subjective. The reader seizes the meaning (probably of some external narative) and move on quickly. He or she becomes accustomed to a speed which diverts them from a taste for intellectual stimulation. And from the question: why ever would you read something that was not challenging to your understanding.

Monday, October 2, 2017

What a difference a name makes

Great story about snakes on the New Scientist website.

One of the deadliest snakes in Africa turns out to be not what it was assumed. Instead of being an invasive species, it is an new species, one which should be protected.

What a difference a name makes, 24 little
cosmologies.

"New" in this context means new to science, not new to the island. I wonder if a snake didn't just get into this guy's laptop, and rewrite some work, as an evolutionary maneuver.  See, there were plans to eradicate this species because it was invasive on the island. Now, the argument is the snakes should be protected: the cobra-preta is unique on this island. It exists nowhere else. Wouldn't be the first time snakes had a say in a story.





Friday, September 22, 2017

Who you lookin at, cowboy?

The charm of the cute, say the minute mouse, is the frilly manner in which that cute obscures adjacent abysses.

Sunday, September 17, 2017

A Piece of Cake

Could it be that the cake of peace is a piece of cake?
Jan Cox once said that the success of  convenience stories is that they were "convenient." It took me years to get this, but he was pointing to that slackness which allows individuals to live their lives in a dream state. The goal is not some seven--checkered multisyllabic heaven; it is to remember. Oneself. Not more difficult than waving your hand, really. But outside the realm of convenience .

One does not discuss the cake of peace itself.

Friday, September 15, 2017

Right or Up



This link to a right wing news site is part of my policy to listen to different sides of debates. Our topic is never current gossip: this headline I share to bring up the topic of ordinary consciousness again. (To even get the point of the headline, though, you must be aware of the Brexit debate.) I stress that this post (this blog) is not about external events, it is about the way we think. That is, as Jan Cox spent much time elucidating, reliant on binary thought. But this is a good example of the processes of thinking that we rely on constantly. And it is blinkering, not clarifying. How so?

I quote:
REMAINERS’ PRO-MIGRANT MASK IS SLIPPING
It is oligarchy, not migrants, that elite Europhiles are fighting for.

End quote.

The operative logic in this statement is that if a person is for rich people, they must be against immigrants. But why could one not be for both segments of the population. No reason except that the point in the headline is made in an either/or format. The writer can do that because of the binary thought that is the structure of ordinary consciousness. 

Maybe some rich people are just pretending to worry about the fate of migrants, as a tool to prevent Britain seceding from the EU. But many are not insincere and there is nothing persuasive in that sentence, no facts marshaled, to diminish a both/and scenario. The strength of the headline is simple binary dualism. If a thing is that, then it cannot be also this. 

Binary thought serves a useful purpose when we examine the external world with a view towards rearranging it. But for most that is rarely the content of their thought. And since they are unaware of their reliance on a faulty dualism, gaining a broader picture of their situation, of the complexity we live in, is frustratingly out of reach. Yes they can fix a broken garage door, but others things do not yield to binary thinking in a manner that leads to effective ideas.

There is no right in right or left. And that is just the slightest example.
This binary thinking is a manifestation of that mechanicity which lives our lives for us.

Monday, September 11, 2017

Hawk in a hurricane

Jan Cox was a hawk who flew in a hurricane. The hurricane surrounds us always. Not so such birds: a raptor in search of others, of his own unnameable species.


Monday, September 4, 2017

Language -- you gotta love it

"Normal" is a pretty light weight concept; it suggests an inherently subjective approach. The word "normal" has gained use recently in politics, where the idea of normalizing has gotten a lot air time/print space. I thought of that reading this morning Brian Koberlein's always excellent blog. He ends a discussion of a puzzling type of galaxy with these words:

These diffuse galaxies could have formed with a mass similar to our Milky Way, but with much less gas and dust, producing much fewer stars. To know for sure we'll need a better understanding of dark matter, but that's another story.


"A better understanding" is a phrase which normalizes human ignorance: we know nothing about dark matter. This phrase suggests we just have some gaps to fill in.

Language-- you gotta speak it, but it is always -- another story...

Thursday, August 31, 2017

Shocolate and Chit

Shocolate and Chit: what is the difference? Does it matter?

One way to phrase the goal of what Jan Cox called "This Kind of Stuff" is to tell the difference between what is actual, and what is otherwise.

First you have to appreciate there is a problem. In ordinary terms, perhaps the value of a dish depends on your being able to tell the difference with your fingertips between a painted design on a plate, and one that is a decal pasted on. A mere example this, to point to things far more valuable, and even more fragile.

Is that a saxophone or a clarinet you hear?  Investigating the physical itself, is a step onward, and critical to any more ethereal weight-bearing matters. The phantasmal of any kind, just dilutes one's effort.

To know what is going on, that is ever the goal.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

What is bravery

How brave those little mammals, like meerkats, and chipmunks, that signal the presence of predators, to warn their kin. They are telling the hunters where they themselves are. Chipmunks of course may be underground, but not always,-- I saw one doing the gong alarm they can do, from under a vehicle.

Monday, July 31, 2017

Celebrating Cerebration

This is a real headline:

"John Brockman's Book on Thinking Machines: What Should We Keep From Artificial Intelligence?"

I have no doubt the author did not intend this to be funny. The threat from AI has been raised by leading intellectuals.

THERE IS NO SUCH THREAT.  You can only program words. And that is not the whole game.

To really understand thinking, you must grasp what is a non-verbal distance from cerebration.

So kick back jack. put your boots on the table and open a beer. Not to relieve the scary thought of a robot takeover. But to try and forget the tension a 'real attention' requires to sustain the gap we mentioned, the distance between words and a something adjacent. The gap which can nurture if sustained. And if not sustained, is still responsible for all the literary masterpieces, and scientific advances on the planet.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

The gaps in maps

Notice any example of cartography. There is an outline of land, and of sea. Perhaps we see first the shapes of land, but the shapes of the seas are just as enthralling.  Maps are a product of man's imagination. The usefulness of maps points to the utility of imagination. Imagination got us to the moon, and is the source of most of our bourgeois splendor. It is marvelous indeed to inhabit such a world.

Mapmaking is a nice hobby. For some few though, they recognise the rivet holes of binary thought in the spectral pursuits. Thank goodness someone is pursuing them. That is the way it is meant to be.

And for some few, their interest is in that which is not cartographable. I mean, marshes.

Saturday, July 15, 2017

Oblivious to the obvious

When people think something is obvious, this assertion, this confidence, shows in their words regarding the something obvious.

My description applies regardless of the topic of the words exuding assurance.

Where this gets sticky is if the import is concerning matters of the invisible. In this instance the sauce of confidence and knowingness poured over some verbal construction, actually impedes communication.

We are for the sake of expediency assuming there is a class of things which are obvious and worth discussing. In fact, Jan Cox pointed this out: when you think you've "got it", you have not.  

One reason Jan's phrase deserves to be recalled is the importance of the invisible and the difficulty of communicating about, around, these topics regarding man's potential.

When the speaker assumes his topic is "obvious," then the listener may himself may treat it as obvious. That way, hope of communicating that something is, lost. What the listener is learning is not something that may expand, facilitate, his own internal reaching for transcendence. What a listener
learns from one who speaks superficially, is to himself, imitate, a smart-ass.


Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Freedumb

Freedom to do what?

Freedom is perhaps the word of the 20th century, so you might think this topic had been sorted out.

What we see however is the quite vacuous idea there are restraints on you becoming "your self." One is not suggesting the restraints are imaginary, but rather the end point is worth examining. An example is Tim Burton's movie about Alice in her usual milieu. Our herowhine finds finally she can make decisions for herself. Decisions to do, decision to accomplish, WHAT.  But the story NEVER gets that far.  The waltdizzy fictionalizing of --really everything -- winds up with characters who can now be captains of their own barks. But where will these watercraft sail TO?

For some the interest is in the inability to even see the question.

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Philip K. Darn

A plot from a Philip K Dick story is outlined at this link.  "Expendable" resolves a war between bugs and humanity by having a spider (aligned on the side  of the the humans) share that the spiders will be able to "save you." It turns out the spider meant save humanity, not save that man personally.

An individual is both one and many. To a bible humping kid from Alabama, that realization once was shocking. What is the function of words after all.  They cannot be disconnected from the physical world. A distinction must be made between binary thought (critical to man's conquest of the external world) and that thought which appreciates and discovers, glances towards, the barely sayable.

But thought is not disconnected from the physical world. The connection is simply not what most suppose: the relation is not one of cause and effect.  After all, there is no separate realm between the mental and physical. There is just--- the material world. That reality though, that there is no separate spiritual realm, no superiority of the mental functions, is not a deflating recognition.

In fact, that the material contains all trialities, merely makes the wonderment more astonishing and provocative.

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Parts of parts

Picture a machine--parts move in a regular manner, intersecting, colliding, pushed always by other parts. These parts only interact at the simplest level, basically banging into each other. If you had a lever that suddenly decided it wanted to "find it's true nature," that piece would soon be so dented and bent that it might dislodge and disrupt not only its original function but in being loose impact other parts in an unpredictable manner. Unpredictable, okay, but we know one thing-- the effects for the larger machinery of this piece flying, falling, bouncing, crashing, breaking, would not have fortuitous effects.

When we speak of humanity as a machine, we do not picture that one sketched just now. At the level of the most complexity we know, ourselves, our world, those dislodged parts could have beneficial  results, that is,those promoting growth, growth and a greater complexity.

And the reader may now say, ok, how do we put these parts together, or more subtly-- what would the picture look like with the parts together.  If I could explain the inherent problem with that question I should indeed, know, myself, a lot. 


Monday, June 5, 2017

The Proper Study of Buried Treasure Is Buried

Words are attractive to the scholar, quite apart from their necessity. The gleam of a framework that can be filled in with interlocking ideas and function in an explanatory manner is not a modern vista, rather it is part of humankind' s inheritance. Yet the idea that words cannot capture ALL of reality is also ancient, and as true. You find scholars like Isaiah Berlin, (June 6, 1909 to November 5, 1997) resting in the linguistic shade, and their wave is so appealing. So you delight in the work of these writers, and don't quite give up the thought that it is adequate. You could say you have to be a lion and embrace generalizations, as well as a fox, always sniffing for the underside, that in which the words are mired/moored.

That is not how Berlin used the phrase "the lion and the fox" in his The Proper Study of Mankind (1997): there it means, he says, explicating Machiavelli, that in between line necessary for the ruler to stay in control, as in lie, but not so much the people stop trusting you.

Isaiah Berlin will come back into fashion. His graceful prose, glittering angles, still beckon. As long as his students never ask, how far can you trust the verbal, when you are blind to the other currents within and without, mankind. The assertion Man, is the proper study of mankind, is meant to avoid this dilemma, but it doesn't really. You want to assume the relics of treasure are a glimpse of what is truly beneath the ground in excavation. That cup recovered: surely a hint of greater finds still buried. What you not conceive is that dirt IS the treasure.

Saturday, June 3, 2017

Reptilinear Dust

No, I have not seen the 2006 movie Snakes on a Plane. The picture one gets from this title however, is useful to point to the inadequacy of binary thought.  A certain hysteria can permeate public discourse when both sides only see two options. Some decades ago, an example was the Vietnamese war: you were against the war, or you were for it. Earlier, you were against communism, or you were for it. Major swaths of the 20th century resulted from the logic that the only way to be against fascism was to be for communism. And vv. And it can feel so persuasive, especially if you are young. OF COURSE IT BOILS DOWN TO TWO CHOICES. YOU ARE FOR US OR YOU ARE AGAINST US. WHAT COULD BE SIMPLER?

But the complexity of life, of our interactions and the bloomin buzzin business, means that the fork, the choice between two, is never correct. Wait, can that be right?

The snakes and you. At the physical level binary options take on a different cast. The plane in the movie title, is your own head. The electrifying thought of snakes in close quarters paints a picture, of the ordinary mind, in an extremis which is just the daily, dipped into dayglo paints.

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Scientists say the darnedest things

This link

https://phys.org/news/2017-05-hunter-gatherers-farming.html?

goes to an article headlined

Why did hunter-gatherers first begin farming?


The article itself does not even address that question.

The article discusses evidence for whether the first farmers deliberately tried to increase the yield of crops.

Read it yourself.  I wouldn't make such a fuss, but this happens in science popularizations all the time.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

A Field Trip to Academe


I do not normally quote, even the man whose influence defines this blog, Jan Cox, since the posts here are an "example" of fresh thinking. But this pdf is a fascinating look at issues in modern historiography, in this case-- the invention of writing.

http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/docs/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDOCS_derivate_000000008182/bsa_043_10.pdf
is a free download. 

Interesting stuff. And also an example to see how binary thought operates: although the ideas here are cutting edge, they are always within the realm of the mechanical.  The author is Reinhard Bernbeck, and a few words about him sets our stage:

REINHARD BERNBECK teaches Western Asian archaeology at the Freie Universität Berlin. His ...interests range from archaeological knowledge constructions and their ideological underpinnings to power relations in Neolithic and early urban societies of Mesopotamia. He has done fieldwork in Iran, Turkey and other countries. Recently, he started field work at sites of the 20th century in Germany.

Bernbeck makes a case that:

[The first] writing system represented, therefore, a technological not a conceptual, innovation...The discourse about the invention of writing is perhaps exceptional, as a relatively large group of scholars explicitly addresses medium- and long-term processes of convergence, and thus criticizes imaginations of creativity and originality for the process of the advent of writing.

If you haven't read the article I cite, here's a gloss: what Bernbeck means is that the invention of writing, rather than being a singular, specifiable, event, is a culmination of many small occurrences (like collecting pebbles) happening over thousands of years. Bernbeck is disputing:

The story which ... simply mirrors the traditional narrative of great inventions and their consequential spread. De-dramatizing narratives insert the traditional creatio ex nihilo-discourse into a multi-millennia development of precursors of script in the realm of management practices....

[My] conviction [is] that 'innovation' is largely a matter of narrative framing rather than historical reality.

"De-dramatizing narrative" is a new phrase to me, but what he means is pretty clear-- what we call important inventions are the result not so much of a single man's genius, but the culmination of many small steps over a long time, in that direction.

Bernbeck concludes:

[I]nnovation is a discursively constructed phenomenon that depends to a large extent on the variable inclusion of relations between preceding conditions and consequences in narratives about innovations...

also:

The second argument of my paper is concerned with novelty itself. Innovation discourses tend to glorify tangible objects and neglect practices that may be at the origin of their very existence. 

Bernbeck is a really good writer. Funny how good writing carries a persuasive power of its own. He has just about persuaded me with his arguments that being able to count comes before being able to read. "Numeracy precedes literacy." But back to his conclusions. We are interested in this as a demonstration of binary thought. You might think he was arguing against binary thought, but in fact, that never struck  his mind--- the constraints that speech presents, when any issue must proceed on a binary basis, everything is either/or, this or that. Though he tones it down a bit at the end (in good scholarly fashion)-- his thesis is that history is made not by intellectual giants but by an environmental chronological series of small steps, which are ignored when the credit is passed around by historians.

Well, yes. That is the way the mind works. Notice his division of the issue into TWO parts and two parts only: His own "De-dramatizing narrative" and the "dramatized construction with a strong tendency towards reification."  The latter means the constraints of material evidence as the only thing necessary to define something "new," which then becomes, in effect, a "thing": the invention of writing, is treated as an object.

What Bernbeck misses, is not just that his thinking is stereotypical in arguing on the basis of only two, alternative explanations. If it is not one, it must be the other. Bernbeck ignores the mastodon-like obvious: BOTH are accurate. The critical precursory steps, and the dramatic leap forward. BOTH are necessary....Both and ... And, some third. Which I will not elaborate here, not wanting to get us into Karl Jaspers and his ilk.



Thursday, May 4, 2017

The warp and the wolf

It's a world eat world wolf we live in

Friday, April 28, 2017

FactJacked

Factjacked is a word to cover the mechanical nature of human thinking, especially as it applies to those who identify themselves as   -- thinkers. You see factjacking in every headline.  It is the quality of a finished thought. Capital letter to ending period of punctuation. What it signals is that the case is closed, when the case can never be closed, regardless of the fact that was in question.  The raw edge of newness, of openness, of vacant possibility, of the connections binding and building, is lost with the factjacked fact. It is a quality of thought itself, not any particular fact thought. Factjacking refers to the cerebral achievements which can be confidently and clearly presented to multitudes.

A finished fact is a useless, and irrelevant fact.  Of course, that is, some of the time.....

Saturday, April 15, 2017

Art before there were artists

Medieval border art is often presented as amusing trivia, as the whimsy of a bored copyist. I suggest the picture below some would so categorize. But is this explanation accurate?

It is possible that the composer of this picture, happy to be anonymous, believed himself to be rendering an accurate portrayal of the nature of man. We cannot speak of symbols in a world suffused with distinctions which unify. Let me point to the levels of man I propose this picture is meant to convey.

The dog, is the body of a man. Tough, effective in procuring the realities of food, and shelter.

The rabbit, in the saddle directing things, is man's emotional nature. Particularly astute since some see this layer as the source of the idea of sin.

And the preyer, a riff on the falcon, is the snail: the snail then is man's intellect. In its time, everyone got the joke, uneducated and clerical bigwigs alike. And they laughed, because they were comfortable in their own skins. And imbued with a vision of unity.

And this might be a good reading.

(Here's the  citation, something I rarely have to use, as a matter of principle.)




No automatic alt text available.

Saturday, April 1, 2017

In Praise of Originality

If you NEED a translation, you will never know how accurate that text is.

The student, if so he calls himself, must have missed the point.

We refer here not just to a search for extra-terrestrial life: to look for a planet LIKE our own, is to miss entirely the gorgeous freshness which typifies our rocky perch.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Birds of a song

It is spring here, and the crows, a species of which the individuals are larger than your standard pigeon, continue their year round cawing. Their raucous cry is easy to identify. So is the mockingbird's sweet variations.  The crows will, in a group, harass hawks, for no doubt good reasons. Then they are against a blue sky, their black cursive selves streaks on a different board.

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Sunday morning

This story about "the Bolivian Schindler"  reminds one that morality and goodness are not the same thing, not even especially connected.  Jesus knew this, Jan Cox also. Socrates may not have. I say this because of the account wherein Socrates refuses to flee, because, he honored the duty one owes to public officials.

Friday, March 10, 2017

Gravestones could be keys on a keyboard

Nice pictures at this link. They show instruments of flat stones,like xylophones, being struck to make music.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-mysterious-stone-instruments-that-keep-popping-up-in-vietnam

And to continue the article about "mysterious stone instruments", in a new direction:

Gravestones could be keys on a keyboard.

If so, that would not be original. SPEECH is the same thing. Because by the time the words are spoken, they refer to a past. There is no way to speak in the present tense--not "present" as in a current reality.

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Spit and Run

From a brief perspective you could picture the goal of someone with a certain interest in the work Jan Cox sought to illuminate, as "hit and run." Hit and run thinking.

Yes we all do it. Yes we all do it most of the time, I would hazard. Most every moment. The goal then could be to, as soon as you recognize that tape running in your head, the words, -- you--get away. Exit the scene of the linguistic machinery. This means your escape is from words--- at least to lower their volume. A few seconds of escape may be enough to validate the quest. To vivify the effort.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

The Shoulders of Giants

Quote:
. The polytheistic Etruscans had their own unique and distinct pantheon and practices, chief amongst which were augury (reading omens from birds and lightning strikes) and haruspicy....

This is from Ancient history Encyclopedia -- (http://www.ancient.eu/), their facebook page. The quote refers to practices begun before 500 BC.

The practises of augury are an early form of trying to understand one's life and world. Observing lightning strikes is not a spooky and benighted attempt to control destiny; it is an attempt to be objective. 

An objective approach to the world is not an modern invention. The idea that it is, suggests we are all still struggling to obtain objectivity, personally, and at a broader cultural level, today. If we cannot understand the gigantic contributions made by our forbearers, we cannot achieve a genuine appreciation of our times.

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Picture Books

We all have read them--- Look Dick Look. See Spot. Picture Books. 

There is a bedrock viability to this kind of image, despite Plato calling them shadows.

When lost, it can help to count the steps on your fingers. Okay, Shiva's fingers. How you got from the pictures to something not obvious, say the speed of light.

And yet, there are challenges to the picture book. For one thing it is endless. What is the picture of endlessness? Are holes, gaps, slippage in the bedrock, are such unavoidable?

Gaps, though, may make the sun brighter.  


Saturday, January 28, 2017

The multiverse idea is god coming in the backdoor of modern science

And since this is not recognized as such by its proponents we have the old delusions that so often accompany religion, back in the mix. The multiverse idea allows people who call themselves realists, to in fact hamstring standards of evidence and excellence. As in: are there conflicting measurements for the Hubble Constant? In a different universe there would not be such; or maybe there is some bleed through between universes. The point is the wall of evidence from which facts bounce back, is spongy, when you have the multiverse to obscure inconsistencies.

The connection here between Jan's work and the physical sciences is that we see in this collapse into ideas about the multiverse, a basic failure of the intellect to approach the questions about the unity of consciousness and what is commonly labeled the material.

Or,
maybe. 
The above is a perspective to consider.

Thursday, January 5, 2017

A Whimsical Aside

People I hope recall that this blog is not about Jan Cox, the 20th century philosopher and mystic, per se. It is about demonstrating his precept for his students, about originality -- a means to grow despite the mechanical nature of our world. But here we digress, with an incident that reminds us of a joke Jan liked: the one which ends "he had a hat." It is a common joke but to make sure everyone gets this-- the set up is an old woman and her grandson on a beach. The boy is swept away, but then rescued and returned by a heroic passer-by. The woman says --- ....

Of course he, and we from his example, liked making up our own new jokes, and this is an old one. It came back when I read this morning, from a blog of the Royal Society, this item in the records of the Royal Society Journal Book for 7 January 1702:

‘Mr Molesworth said, that Mr Haistwell’s brothers servant having lately lost his Hat in a Storm, in an East-India-Voiage: some 30 Leagues off, the next day, in a calm, they took a Shark, in which they found the Hat.’