Who and What, We Are

Who we are must surely be connected with what we are a part of. This article talks about speculation regarding galaxy formation. Jan Cox stressed that the sincere seeker always pushed both for self-knowledge and knowledge of the world (he used the word cosmology.) Both are necessary for personal evolution and I suspect he would have approved of the idea these paths converge: psychology and cosmology. And we are always facing the unknown.

The Antiquaries

Before there were modern historians, there were antiquaries. From 1400 to 1800, in Europe, these scholars discovered and  examined carved stones, architectural features, old books. They had no idea how these things might be connected to answer questions about the builders, carvers, painters whose products they examined. Their own universe was firmly planted and considered timeless. Their finds were a source of interest, amazement, and reflected a collector's zeal and preservationist's scruples. 

A similar intellectual landscape prevails in modern science. Without questioning, mostly, their positivistic bearings, these figures point out exciting strange phenomena and refuse to consider questions of boundaries, of gaps, of edges. 

A difference is that the antiquaries did not pretend their research answered all the important questions.

Oh Bosch!

This story about the Bosch accreditation board certifiying another Bosch could remind one of the difference between the mind and the body. What matters is not what happened, it is what the Board says happened. Yeah, kind of.

Fake it new

Here is George Lucas from his recent interview with Charlie Rose:

Lucas defended his vision for the six previous Star Wars films, which he said involved constant innovation. “I worked very hard to make them completely different, with different planets, with different spaceships – you know, to make it new...”


And no doubt everybody does know, what he means. But as Jan Cox pointed out, you have pigs and wings, and putting them together --- that is NOT new. Rearranging the known, is not the "new"... 

The new is possible, is extant,

Even a blog devoted to originality may have a guest blogger sometimes

At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth;
But like of each thing that in season grows.

William Shakespeare

Fear of Fog

This blurb is for a new book getting some press from Oxford University Press:

Few deny the sheer significance of religious belief to human society, a topic of study that has provided much insight into how we lived previously, how we live today, and how we will live in the future. However, for what purpose, exactly, did religion originate? Is religious belief just an accidental outcome of human civilization? Or does it affect people’s behavior in a way that is evolutionarily advantageous? We spoke with Dominic Johnson, author of God is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human, who suggests science and religion, two spheres thought to be in perpetual conflict, actually evolved together for mutual human benefit.....

There must be something original in the review, the book, though maybe not much. I have no intention of pursuing the book. And this is because it seems so to conform with contemporary binary thought.

But typing in a caption for my post, I typed in "Fear of Fog". I meant to spell "Fear of God".  By some quirky QWERTY typo, I hit on an answer, to modern dyspepsia. What the Greeks call metataxis, the "in between", is what is unbearable to binary thought. This logical possibility  gave us all civilized convenience and comfort. This is what Jan Cox meant when he pointed to the fact binary thought allows people to chop up the external world and rearrange it.  Rearrange and invent air conditioning, and the like.


Why the binary mind cannot abide the reality of metaxis, that in between where perhaps most of reality is, is not clear. Perhaps binary thought would not work, or so well, if you point to all it cannot cover, that which cannot be neatly divided into two. Perhaps other forces, currents are behind the apparent incompatibility. How binary thinking got this imperial thirst suggests larger issues I probably don't imagine. 

Jan Cox did not use the word "metaxis" in my presence.  We are here, like in all of the posts in this blog,  exemplifying a method of his -- to think freshly, not what others have done cerebrallly. 

The real and what's else

Metaphysics is like poetry. As Michael Hamburger (I think he's the one) said of poetry,

It's a mug's game.

It is all imaginary, which does not mean  what people might imagine: it is just the words have to be made up. The terrain is not consumed completely by the words.

So if you can play the game, or finally learn to, play that game

You can win real money.