Einstein on page 150 of his "popular" explanation of Relativity (Copyright 1961 by his estate)reminds us that the special theory of relalivity exist in minkowski spaces of exactly four dimensions. It is on faraday's chalk board. there was a fellow named minkowski on the freighter. He was the radio man (electromagnetic waves. on page 146 Einstein mentions Maxwell's prediction of electromagnetic waves. Faraday is mentioned on that same page. But the general theory, einstein admits is less well appreciated by the physicists of the mid-20th century. But Einstein sticks to 4 dimensions: 3 spatial and 1 temporal. So today we have the string theory: 10 spatial dimensions and 1 temporal. Faraday's choice is between Einstein and most of the rest of theoretical physics. In essence, we are sure that is a string theory to bikinis (H-bomb blows up island named Bikini, think Jughead), music (Faraday's piano and other instruments) and yo-yo's. However, do the words string and physics belong in the same sentence? NO
I am taking Einstein's side. He's got a great trackrecord.
sabato 13 febbraio 2010
a choice of kkkkarma: lost in the pacific
richard alpert, desmond hume, and frank lapidus have all been voyagers with secrets that make them flawed. Yet they are leaders because they have mastered themselves. Lapidus is a candidate for this reason. He is the man who may fight MIB. desmond is the man MIB wants to trade places with; he wants his odyssey and his penelope. Faraday has frustrated him. desmond will sail no more, he is the fixed point. Richard will be freed; jacob's death freed him.
But there will be two warriors taking richard's place. sawyer and locke are linked. Sawyer served his master well. He killed the wicked father of locke. Conversely, sayid and ben are linked. the former turned the latter into the man who become sayid's master.
ben and locke are old men in a country not made for old men. Again Yeats' Sailing to... Sawyer and sayid will fight for their masters eternally. Wordsworth -- the child is father to the man but not for these two.
charlie may not die, may not end a washed-up rocker (literally). danny faraday will pull a vishnu (incarnation number ten "kalkin") and save rock and roll.
This the cyclic theory of history alla Vico (this is the genius who re-invented the concept of history) or Jung (Archetypes).
OR
St Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, and Christianity are vindicated. Jacob says IT ONLY ENDS ONCE. Sheppard takes his cue from St. John and finally decides which of the flock will become sweaters and which will become supper. recall the last supper was passover. Lamb is the main course at every passover since moses preside over the first.
Who will explain all this? Moses' brother, AARON in the latter case. Walt the most gifted of the children. In the process, he may save his father.
In Christianity death is death 99.9999% of the time. In Jung's universe, death is just a spin in the cycle
But there will be two warriors taking richard's place. sawyer and locke are linked. Sawyer served his master well. He killed the wicked father of locke. Conversely, sayid and ben are linked. the former turned the latter into the man who become sayid's master.
ben and locke are old men in a country not made for old men. Again Yeats' Sailing to... Sawyer and sayid will fight for their masters eternally. Wordsworth -- the child is father to the man but not for these two.
charlie may not die, may not end a washed-up rocker (literally). danny faraday will pull a vishnu (incarnation number ten "kalkin") and save rock and roll.
This the cyclic theory of history alla Vico (this is the genius who re-invented the concept of history) or Jung (Archetypes).
OR
St Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, and Christianity are vindicated. Jacob says IT ONLY ENDS ONCE. Sheppard takes his cue from St. John and finally decides which of the flock will become sweaters and which will become supper. recall the last supper was passover. Lamb is the main course at every passover since moses preside over the first.
Who will explain all this? Moses' brother, AARON in the latter case. Walt the most gifted of the children. In the process, he may save his father.
In Christianity death is death 99.9999% of the time. In Jung's universe, death is just a spin in the cycle
I would be lost without it
Comments on LOST: it was easier than I thought to get to 2004 from 1977
My opinion: Einstein was right. the whole universe turns each time even a fragment of it changes. The effects of the change are felt only within the part of the field (universe) that is altered. These shift may alter both time and space or only the single time axis or the triple x,y,z axes of space. Examples black holes, worm holes, H-bombs. To go beyond and extend the concept, natural disasters, geographical shifts do the same. My guess is temporal wormholes explain most of the previous shifts. The 77 shift was the result of a time-space shift because it divided the survivors of flight 316. As to the energy source, I can't be sure. As for why a particular place or time, that depends on one's view of predestination. That's a subject that is tied to personal religious belief
My opinion: Einstein was right. the whole universe turns each time even a fragment of it changes. The effects of the change are felt only within the part of the field (universe) that is altered. These shift may alter both time and space or only the single time axis or the triple x,y,z axes of space. Examples black holes, worm holes, H-bombs. To go beyond and extend the concept, natural disasters, geographical shifts do the same. My guess is temporal wormholes explain most of the previous shifts. The 77 shift was the result of a time-space shift because it divided the survivors of flight 316. As to the energy source, I can't be sure. As for why a particular place or time, that depends on one's view of predestination. That's a subject that is tied to personal religious belief
martedì 9 febbraio 2010
Before our subject was theology. Thick books are full of guesses; it is my contention that thin books present truth. There is no room for fuzzy prose. This point is debatable. However, it is my opinion that most theological tracts are fuzzy with wool-gathering. There are few theological works which merit the term scholarly. Philo of Alexandria, Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Descartes, Spinoza, and William James are among the scholars of the essential components of religion. This small work is born of my frustration with the contemporary material that passes as theology and the improbable hope of stealing some the venerable enlightenment of greater minds that I have encountered in my reading.
Which churches are included in this argument?
There is a list of Catholic, Orthodox, and national churches on pages 188-189 of the Italian edition (published in Italy as L’ Universale vol. 32 of Gerhard Bellinger’s Knaurs grosser Religionsuhfuhrer (Munich, 1986). That’s my list. There are two other branches of Christianity enumerated Anglican (“near but not near enough”) and Protestant (“off the reservation”). These two branches will form our counter examples.
The Jewish faith is a clear, unique path to Salvation. One could even discuss Christianity without the faith of the Hebrews. It is the theological North Star.
I am not an expert in other religions, except to say that:
i) Many aspects of Buddhist instruction are compatible with what I will term universal Christianity.
ii) The wisdom of Confucius and his two great disciples seem far from the West but are fundamental to Christian conduct. The second Sinic sage, Mencius says, “a man who has trained his mind to the utmost, knows himself, and in this, he knows also heaven”. The third, Hsun Tzu, insists that only through education and discipline may one become enlightened.
iii) Christianity is a product of Hellenic and Hellenistic culture. (The same argument can be made to a lesser extent for Judaism in terms of its dispersion beyond Israel in the period between deaths of Alexander the Great and Augustus.
iv) Persian religious symbols and conventions are hidden (not very well) in Judaism. They are so obvious in all of branches of Christianity that Christians consider them part of their Jewish heritage or the invention of the early Christians themselves.
Let make it clear that any form of Islamic law is as invalid as any moral code drawn from Anglican or Protestant sources. Islam is correct when it declares that God is One, the Creator of All, and is both Merciful and Compassionate. STOP THERE. Another profound distinction is that the Chinese philosophers do not preach religious doctrine; they teach how to become receptive to religion. Furthermore, the Buddha teaches how man approaches the Divine through thought and behavior. Both, along with other sages prepare men to accept Revelation. It is my contention that moral law comes from God (top to bottom). Moreover, only two such codes exist: Jewish and universal Christian. Furthermore, in their most perfect, they are intertwined with dogma. I must be careful to say that adherence to either code may occur in the absence of their dogmatic components. I would submit that this sort of life is more difficult than remaining within a group of like- minded persons. Such persons are islands in a sea of evil. Of course, evil can and always does sneak into the true Churches. The devil is a superlative theologian. Works are the proof of faith in the healthy human. Read the Letter of James. As the apostle points out, Satan knows that Christ is the Savior; however, this is no ticket out of hell. Hubris and disorder are the great weapons of evil.
Before our subject was theology. However, there was another equally important subject. This latter was an analysis of the boundaries of causation and a method for using archetypes to replace cause-and-effect. Correlation and rigorous empiric observation were also championed. All this was done to support Peirce’s statement: “It is absurd to say that thought has any meaning unrelated to its function.” (My blog, poetry:2009-- with notes, on Google provides a list along with a brief description of these books)
This leaves one more sentence: “I only desire to point out how impossible it is that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything but conceived sensible effects of things.” I would substitute the word “brains” for “minds”. This thesis rumbles fitfully through my earlier works. It is equally important as the other two, but, except for the section concerning Francis Bacon in Design, it is obscured by my views on theology and the limitations of causality. These two “philosophical investigations” are vital in the evaluation of the universal realities (e.g., God’s existence and attributes and the nature and maturation process of human beings).
There is one thing that has become obvious to me. Despite my nursery school knowledge of particle physics, more sophisticated view of economics, and my attempts to "keep current" with medical "literature", I am isolated from my generation. What I would term "my generational cohort" in my Italian monograph is a group is one of the many groups that I have simply walked away from; I did what Bogart did at the end of Casablanca: I walked out into the darkness of a foggy night. This departure was necessary for my survival at the time. At the half-century mark, this approach has revealed its defects. I am stuck in the nineteen seventies.Oh, I accept that the discovery of Higgs boson will be sufficient proof of Aristotle's first cause. However, such an event will not replace an ontological proof.My major work in endocrinology was between 1985 and 1989. This work has had practical and theoretical implications which fuel in discussion in 2009. I had the privilege of working with others; I was a part of team, certainly not its leader. Again, in 1999 to 2000, I was involved in some research of lesser importance in which I played a smaller role. The internet provides documentation
In contrast, to the medical research was a team effort; the psychology, philosophy, and theology contained in my books, (beginning in 1997 and written mainly between 2005 and 2009) are mine alone. They have taken beyond me the poems written between 1969 --1977 and 1997 – 2001: so far beyond my place in time and space that I have lost my way.My hope is that this book will help find my way back to my cohort. All the previous work remains (true and valid to me), but I hope to find my way back to my generation and to the "tasks" that each individual is meant to perform. Of course, good poetry is the primary goal, but there is room for and benefit in the secondary endpoint which is this book. The theme of these essays is that modified thesis from Peirce: It is impossible we should have an idea in our brains which does not relate to anything but conceived sensible effects of things.
2.
Every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, book 2, 367 to 347 BC, 335 to 322 BC
Self-loathing was a Hebrew invention which Christianity incorporated with great success. Its most prominent contemporary champion is an atheist, Woody Allen. As for the seven deadly sins, there is a reason for calling ‘em deadly. Life’s deadly boring without them. Without our appetites and passions, we wither. We got too many sins on list. We need to cut list by about 66%; we should working on mass murder, war, racism, man’s brutality to his own species, to his society, and to his planet.
"What causes wars, and what causes fighting among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war."
James 4:1-2 RSV
I' th' last night's storm I such a fellow saw,
Which made me think a man a worm….
As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,
They kill us for their sport.
King Lear Act IV, scene 1
3. Hesse’s Siddhartha: the guru and his limits.
Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. (page 142)
I have no desire to walk on water, said Siddhartha. Let the old Samana satisfy themselves with such arts. (page 24)
The young Siddhartha addresses the Buddha with the wisdom of a mature German who has undergone a complete psychoanalysis by Jung.
“But according to your teachings, this unity and logical consequence of all things is broken in one place. Through a small gap there streams into the world of unity something strange, something new, something that was not there before and that cannot be demonstrated and proved: that is your doctrine of rising above the world, of salvation. With this small gap, through this small break, however, the eternal and single world law breaks down again” (pages 32-33).
Herr Hesse has learned the necessity of archetypes. Not only is there Joseph Campbell’s “hero with a thousand faces” (John the Baptist, Christ, Saint Stephen),but there is the wise man with a thousand faces who maybe identical to the hero (John the Baptist, Christ, Saint Stephen) or a much less dramatic figure: Plato who hides his greatest wisdom under the mask of a stone cutter or Aquinas in a mass of flesh or Kant sitting in the same town all his life or Maxwell whose humility and piety was as great as his genius or Einstein who chased God when all the world believed Him to be dead.
The following does not diminish Gotama (the Buddha of history); however, it vindicates Pope John Paul’s contention that Buddhism is not a religion. Buddha teaches how we are to act and the method of thought that leads to such compartment. See Saint James’ letter: works are the proof and fruit of faith.
Do not be one of Shakespeare’s larvae; learn and mature so that the larva becomes a butterfly.
So what does our little worm require? Hesse answers with reply of Aristotle and Aquinas.
“What he had said to the Buddha – that the Buddha’s wisdom and secret was not teachable, … was just what he had now set off to experience, … He must gain experience himself” (page 47)
There is no use for a competent brain in isolation from the one real world. Our bodies are not coffins for the soul ( Augustine and Bernard). They are the instrument of salvation. Who can read the Gospel without eyes? Who can hear the prophets without ears? We have made the point; more profound cognitive acts need not be enumerated. Siddhartha explains how to find salvation, God, whatever term you wish to substitute…
“…when you throw a stone into the water, it finds the quickest way to the bottom… He goes through the affairs of the world like the stone though the water … He is drawn by his goal, for he does not allow anything to enter his mind which opposes his goal… It was what fools call magic and what they think is caused by demons…There are no demons. Everyone can perform magic. If he can think, wait and fast (page 60).
Moreover, do not confuse the unusual with the divine: I have no desire to walk on water, said Siddhartha. Let the old Samana satisfy themselves with such arts. (page 24)
Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. (page 142)
Siddhartha, Bantam Books, paperback July 1971
4. Here’s a little gem from Brave New World:
Well, as I was saying, there was a man called Cardinal Newman…Meanwhile, listen to what this old Arch-Community-Songster said…”We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves; we cannot be supreme over ourselves… We are God’s property…”
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Chapter 17
The fundamental error of Islam: No one surrenders to Allah; all persons are his from the beginning of time. One walks upon His path or is lost. This is the fundamental error of all political religions. This error gave raise to the Reformation and to the disaster of the Roman Catholic response. There may be national or linguistic faiths, but the political views are those of either Hebrew or Christian doctrine. There are some differences between the two. These are the sole areas where debate is permitted. The Protestant faiths do not form part of Christianity: It is the nature of the Eucharist and the presence of state approval or support that are the twin barriers. Body and blood, not toast and grape juice, are the Christian meal. The proper model for the Christian is Cicero, not Caesar. Christ and Cicero co-existed in Ambrose. The Christian bishop or priest must have some the gifts of Cicero: broad learning, capacity with language, some element of military discipline, a republican outlook. He, like Thomas More, should desire learning from any quarter without spinning like a weather cock in the winds of a dangerous world.
5. A fish predicts its extinction
In Professor Stanley Fish’s New York Times blog of 01/18/2009, the wise professor cites a new book written by one of his former students: The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the University. The argument discussed by Mr. Donoghue is a proposition best stated by the philosopher Michael Oakeshott: “There is an important difference between learning which is concerned with the degree of understanding the necessary to practice a skill, and learning which is focused upon an enterprise of understanding and explaining”. I dispute this point vigorously. The liberal arts are literally life-saving and money–making. I attended a Catholic parochial school which was more concerned with feminism, lesbian alliances, and putting the worthless notions of Chomsky’s germ cell grammar into our delicate brains. When I arrived at the ninth grade, I was thrust into a Catholic military school which put great emphasis on sports, especially basketball. I had three paths from which to choose: the military, the athletic or the religious. I quickly realized that although I had been diligent in my studies, I was unprepared for high school. The question was made more vital by the fact that there was great parental pressure to attend medical school. Having no special talents, I had no chance in the athletic sphere or the military. That left religion which was equivalent to the pursuit of knowledge. It quickly became apparent as I pursued “knowledge” that the athletic coaches had none of it. The concept in medicine is to cure or alleviate the malady. Unfortunately, these coaches excelled at injuring the player with their nostrums. As for the military, they too were medically unsound. They recommended a high lead diet administrated by firearms. The acquisition of learning as an enterprise for its own benefit quickly allowed me to terminate my relationship with the athletic and military aspect of my school. It is likely that this was responsible for the practical benefit of avoiding major injuring for the first fifty years of my life. Additionally, I quickly learned that sports did not build character, but flaws in character. The athlete should be expected to perform better in academics than the non-athlete; the former usually has greater spatial intelligence than the non-athlete and is said to have greater endurance. This is the exception rather then the rule. The athlete does less and is rewarded to a greater degree than your present correspondent. Turning to the military, a terse phrase is sufficient: donkeys leading lions. In both spheres, socially destructive behaviors are tolerated and/or exulted. In these areas the road to perdition is lit and paved with evil intentions, defective thoughts
To cite another example from my university days, I was so disgusted by the fundamentalist religious beliefs of a certain economics professor that I took his course out of spite. From this course I learned enough to make a very small fortune. I read financial advice books regularly in order to find the occasional pearl hidden within a multitude of oysters. I never made much money practicing medicine. Leaving my physician employer’s retirement program saved my portfolio from being halved. I never took the advice of any financial professional. Instead I relied on religion. The religion I learned in my Catholic high school was not a normative, but positive, enterprise: comparative anthropology, Latin grammar, history of the ancient world, the conflict between church and state, Aristotle‘s logic, the Platonic soul, and the hunger to learn and read, to challenge and debate. I want to assure my reader that Balzac and Dickens are far better teachers about the real world than all the professors at Harvard Business School. Moreover, there is nothing more useful for analysis than the predicate calculus of Professor Whitehead.
It is certainly obvious to the reader that this book is about the application of learning for understanding and explaining great issues to the skill of the practice of medicine. Clearly, medicine is more witchcraft, carpentry, intricate crocheting, and plumbing than science. Of course, there are those that would argue that human life is not a great issue and that the liberal arts are unnecessary. To quote John Sperling (again from Professor Fish): “Coming here is not a rite of passage. We are not trying to develop value systems or go in for that expands their minds nonsense.” Sperling contends that his institution (the University of Phoenix) is a combatant in the culture war: “between defenders of 800 years of educational traditions (Sperling believes to be primarily religious in their origins; apparently he skipped the lessons concerning Galileo and Darwin in high school) and innovation that was based on the ideas of the marketplace”.
Conclusion Apologia per sua vita: I have no talent at interpersonal relationships. I have no manual skills. All I have is a bunch of books. Much like the dodo I am extinct in the contemporary culture of education. I am less interesting than a dinosaur’s bones to a m A fish predicts its extinction
In Professor Stanley Fish’s New York Times blog of 01/18/2009, the wise professor cites a new book written by one of his former students: The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the University. The argument discussed by Mr. Donoghue is a proposition best stated by the philosopher Michael Oakeshott: “There is an important difference between learning which is concerned with the degree of understanding the necessary to practice a skill, and learning which is focused upon an enterprise of understanding and explaining”. I dispute this point vigorously. The liberal arts are literally life-saving and money–making. I attended a Catholic parochial school which was more concerned with feminism, lesbian alliances, and putting the worthless notions of Chomsky’s germ cell grammar into our delicate brains. When I arrived at the ninth grade, I was thrust into a Catholic military school which put great emphasis on sports, especially basketball. I had three paths from which to choose: the military, the athletic or the religious. I quickly realized that although I had been diligent in my studies, I was unprepared for high school. The question was made more vital by the fact that there was great parental pressure to attend medical school. Having no special talents, I had no chance in the athletic sphere or the military. That left religion which was equivalent to the pursuit of knowledge. It quickly became apparent as I pursued “knowledge” that the athletic coaches had none of it. The concept in medicine is to cure or alleviate the malady. Unfortunately, these coaches excelled at injuring the player with their nostrums. As for the military, they too were medically unsound. They recommended a high lead diet administrated by firearms. The acquisition of learning as an enterprise for its own benefit quickly allowed me to terminate my relationship with the athletic and military aspect of my school. It is likely that this was responsible for the practical benefit of avoiding major injuring for the first fifty years of my life. Additionally, I quickly learned that sports did not build character, but flaws in character. The athlete should be expected to perform better in academics than the non-athlete; the former usually has greater spatial intelligence than the non-athlete and is said to have greater endurance. This is the exception rather then the rule. The athlete does less and is rewarded to a greater degree than your present correspondent. Turning to the military, a terse phrase is sufficient: donkeys leading lions. In both spheres, socially destructive behaviors are tolerated and/or exulted. In these areas the road to perdition is lit and paved with evil intentions, defective thoughts
To cite another example from my university days, I was so disgusted by the fundamentalist religious beliefs of a certain economics professor that I took his course out of spite. From this course I learned enough to make a very small fortune. I read financial advice books regularly in order to find the occasional pearl hidden within a multitude of oysters. I never made much money practicing medicine. Leaving my physician employer’s retirement program saved my portfolio from being halved. I never took the advice of any financial professional. Instead I relied on religion. The religion I learned in my Catholic high school was not a normative, but positive, enterprise: comparative anthropology, Latin grammar, history of the ancient world, the conflict between church and state, Aristotle‘s logic, the Platonic soul, and the hunger to learn and read, to challenge and debate. I want to assure my reader that Balzac and Dickens are far better teachers about the real world than all the professors at Harvard Business School. Moreover, there is nothing more useful for analysis than the predicate calculus of Professor Whitehead.
It is certainly obvious to the reader that this book is about the application of learning for understanding and explaining great issues to the skill of the practice of medicine. Clearly, medicine is more witchcraft, carpentry, intricate crocheting, and plumbing than science. Of course, there are those that would argue that human life is not a great issue and that the liberal arts are unnecessary. To quote John Sperling (again from Professor Fish): “Coming here is not a rite of passage. We are not trying to develop value systems or go in for that expands their minds nonsense.” Sperling contends that his institution (the University of Phoenix) is a combatant in the culture war: “between defenders of 800 years of educational traditions (Sperling believes to be primarily religious in their origins; apparently he skipped the lessons concerning Galileo and Darwin in high school) and innovation that was based on the ideas of the marketplace”.
Conclusion Apologia per sua vita: I have no talent at interpersonal relationships. I have no manual skills. All I have is a bunch of books. Like the dodo I am extinct in the contemporary culture of education. Mea culpa.
Which churches are included in this argument?
There is a list of Catholic, Orthodox, and national churches on pages 188-189 of the Italian edition (published in Italy as L’ Universale vol. 32 of Gerhard Bellinger’s Knaurs grosser Religionsuhfuhrer (Munich, 1986). That’s my list. There are two other branches of Christianity enumerated Anglican (“near but not near enough”) and Protestant (“off the reservation”). These two branches will form our counter examples.
The Jewish faith is a clear, unique path to Salvation. One could even discuss Christianity without the faith of the Hebrews. It is the theological North Star.
I am not an expert in other religions, except to say that:
i) Many aspects of Buddhist instruction are compatible with what I will term universal Christianity.
ii) The wisdom of Confucius and his two great disciples seem far from the West but are fundamental to Christian conduct. The second Sinic sage, Mencius says, “a man who has trained his mind to the utmost, knows himself, and in this, he knows also heaven”. The third, Hsun Tzu, insists that only through education and discipline may one become enlightened.
iii) Christianity is a product of Hellenic and Hellenistic culture. (The same argument can be made to a lesser extent for Judaism in terms of its dispersion beyond Israel in the period between deaths of Alexander the Great and Augustus.
iv) Persian religious symbols and conventions are hidden (not very well) in Judaism. They are so obvious in all of branches of Christianity that Christians consider them part of their Jewish heritage or the invention of the early Christians themselves.
Let make it clear that any form of Islamic law is as invalid as any moral code drawn from Anglican or Protestant sources. Islam is correct when it declares that God is One, the Creator of All, and is both Merciful and Compassionate. STOP THERE. Another profound distinction is that the Chinese philosophers do not preach religious doctrine; they teach how to become receptive to religion. Furthermore, the Buddha teaches how man approaches the Divine through thought and behavior. Both, along with other sages prepare men to accept Revelation. It is my contention that moral law comes from God (top to bottom). Moreover, only two such codes exist: Jewish and universal Christian. Furthermore, in their most perfect, they are intertwined with dogma. I must be careful to say that adherence to either code may occur in the absence of their dogmatic components. I would submit that this sort of life is more difficult than remaining within a group of like- minded persons. Such persons are islands in a sea of evil. Of course, evil can and always does sneak into the true Churches. The devil is a superlative theologian. Works are the proof of faith in the healthy human. Read the Letter of James. As the apostle points out, Satan knows that Christ is the Savior; however, this is no ticket out of hell. Hubris and disorder are the great weapons of evil.
Before our subject was theology. However, there was another equally important subject. This latter was an analysis of the boundaries of causation and a method for using archetypes to replace cause-and-effect. Correlation and rigorous empiric observation were also championed. All this was done to support Peirce’s statement: “It is absurd to say that thought has any meaning unrelated to its function.” (My blog, poetry:2009-- with notes, on Google provides a list along with a brief description of these books)
This leaves one more sentence: “I only desire to point out how impossible it is that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything but conceived sensible effects of things.” I would substitute the word “brains” for “minds”. This thesis rumbles fitfully through my earlier works. It is equally important as the other two, but, except for the section concerning Francis Bacon in Design, it is obscured by my views on theology and the limitations of causality. These two “philosophical investigations” are vital in the evaluation of the universal realities (e.g., God’s existence and attributes and the nature and maturation process of human beings).
There is one thing that has become obvious to me. Despite my nursery school knowledge of particle physics, more sophisticated view of economics, and my attempts to "keep current" with medical "literature", I am isolated from my generation. What I would term "my generational cohort" in my Italian monograph is a group is one of the many groups that I have simply walked away from; I did what Bogart did at the end of Casablanca: I walked out into the darkness of a foggy night. This departure was necessary for my survival at the time. At the half-century mark, this approach has revealed its defects. I am stuck in the nineteen seventies.Oh, I accept that the discovery of Higgs boson will be sufficient proof of Aristotle's first cause. However, such an event will not replace an ontological proof.My major work in endocrinology was between 1985 and 1989. This work has had practical and theoretical implications which fuel in discussion in 2009. I had the privilege of working with others; I was a part of team, certainly not its leader. Again, in 1999 to 2000, I was involved in some research of lesser importance in which I played a smaller role. The internet provides documentation
In contrast, to the medical research was a team effort; the psychology, philosophy, and theology contained in my books, (beginning in 1997 and written mainly between 2005 and 2009) are mine alone. They have taken beyond me the poems written between 1969 --1977 and 1997 – 2001: so far beyond my place in time and space that I have lost my way.My hope is that this book will help find my way back to my cohort. All the previous work remains (true and valid to me), but I hope to find my way back to my generation and to the "tasks" that each individual is meant to perform. Of course, good poetry is the primary goal, but there is room for and benefit in the secondary endpoint which is this book. The theme of these essays is that modified thesis from Peirce: It is impossible we should have an idea in our brains which does not relate to anything but conceived sensible effects of things.
2.
Every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, book 2, 367 to 347 BC, 335 to 322 BC
Self-loathing was a Hebrew invention which Christianity incorporated with great success. Its most prominent contemporary champion is an atheist, Woody Allen. As for the seven deadly sins, there is a reason for calling ‘em deadly. Life’s deadly boring without them. Without our appetites and passions, we wither. We got too many sins on list. We need to cut list by about 66%; we should working on mass murder, war, racism, man’s brutality to his own species, to his society, and to his planet.
"What causes wars, and what causes fighting among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war."
James 4:1-2 RSV
I' th' last night's storm I such a fellow saw,
Which made me think a man a worm….
As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,
They kill us for their sport.
King Lear Act IV, scene 1
3. Hesse’s Siddhartha: the guru and his limits.
Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. (page 142)
I have no desire to walk on water, said Siddhartha. Let the old Samana satisfy themselves with such arts. (page 24)
The young Siddhartha addresses the Buddha with the wisdom of a mature German who has undergone a complete psychoanalysis by Jung.
“But according to your teachings, this unity and logical consequence of all things is broken in one place. Through a small gap there streams into the world of unity something strange, something new, something that was not there before and that cannot be demonstrated and proved: that is your doctrine of rising above the world, of salvation. With this small gap, through this small break, however, the eternal and single world law breaks down again” (pages 32-33).
Herr Hesse has learned the necessity of archetypes. Not only is there Joseph Campbell’s “hero with a thousand faces” (John the Baptist, Christ, Saint Stephen),but there is the wise man with a thousand faces who maybe identical to the hero (John the Baptist, Christ, Saint Stephen) or a much less dramatic figure: Plato who hides his greatest wisdom under the mask of a stone cutter or Aquinas in a mass of flesh or Kant sitting in the same town all his life or Maxwell whose humility and piety was as great as his genius or Einstein who chased God when all the world believed Him to be dead.
The following does not diminish Gotama (the Buddha of history); however, it vindicates Pope John Paul’s contention that Buddhism is not a religion. Buddha teaches how we are to act and the method of thought that leads to such compartment. See Saint James’ letter: works are the proof and fruit of faith.
Do not be one of Shakespeare’s larvae; learn and mature so that the larva becomes a butterfly.
So what does our little worm require? Hesse answers with reply of Aristotle and Aquinas.
“What he had said to the Buddha – that the Buddha’s wisdom and secret was not teachable, … was just what he had now set off to experience, … He must gain experience himself” (page 47)
There is no use for a competent brain in isolation from the one real world. Our bodies are not coffins for the soul ( Augustine and Bernard). They are the instrument of salvation. Who can read the Gospel without eyes? Who can hear the prophets without ears? We have made the point; more profound cognitive acts need not be enumerated. Siddhartha explains how to find salvation, God, whatever term you wish to substitute…
“…when you throw a stone into the water, it finds the quickest way to the bottom… He goes through the affairs of the world like the stone though the water … He is drawn by his goal, for he does not allow anything to enter his mind which opposes his goal… It was what fools call magic and what they think is caused by demons…There are no demons. Everyone can perform magic. If he can think, wait and fast (page 60).
Moreover, do not confuse the unusual with the divine: I have no desire to walk on water, said Siddhartha. Let the old Samana satisfy themselves with such arts. (page 24)
Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. (page 142)
Siddhartha, Bantam Books, paperback July 1971
4. Here’s a little gem from Brave New World:
Well, as I was saying, there was a man called Cardinal Newman…Meanwhile, listen to what this old Arch-Community-Songster said…”We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves; we cannot be supreme over ourselves… We are God’s property…”
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Chapter 17
The fundamental error of Islam: No one surrenders to Allah; all persons are his from the beginning of time. One walks upon His path or is lost. This is the fundamental error of all political religions. This error gave raise to the Reformation and to the disaster of the Roman Catholic response. There may be national or linguistic faiths, but the political views are those of either Hebrew or Christian doctrine. There are some differences between the two. These are the sole areas where debate is permitted. The Protestant faiths do not form part of Christianity: It is the nature of the Eucharist and the presence of state approval or support that are the twin barriers. Body and blood, not toast and grape juice, are the Christian meal. The proper model for the Christian is Cicero, not Caesar. Christ and Cicero co-existed in Ambrose. The Christian bishop or priest must have some the gifts of Cicero: broad learning, capacity with language, some element of military discipline, a republican outlook. He, like Thomas More, should desire learning from any quarter without spinning like a weather cock in the winds of a dangerous world.
5. A fish predicts its extinction
In Professor Stanley Fish’s New York Times blog of 01/18/2009, the wise professor cites a new book written by one of his former students: The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the University. The argument discussed by Mr. Donoghue is a proposition best stated by the philosopher Michael Oakeshott: “There is an important difference between learning which is concerned with the degree of understanding the necessary to practice a skill, and learning which is focused upon an enterprise of understanding and explaining”. I dispute this point vigorously. The liberal arts are literally life-saving and money–making. I attended a Catholic parochial school which was more concerned with feminism, lesbian alliances, and putting the worthless notions of Chomsky’s germ cell grammar into our delicate brains. When I arrived at the ninth grade, I was thrust into a Catholic military school which put great emphasis on sports, especially basketball. I had three paths from which to choose: the military, the athletic or the religious. I quickly realized that although I had been diligent in my studies, I was unprepared for high school. The question was made more vital by the fact that there was great parental pressure to attend medical school. Having no special talents, I had no chance in the athletic sphere or the military. That left religion which was equivalent to the pursuit of knowledge. It quickly became apparent as I pursued “knowledge” that the athletic coaches had none of it. The concept in medicine is to cure or alleviate the malady. Unfortunately, these coaches excelled at injuring the player with their nostrums. As for the military, they too were medically unsound. They recommended a high lead diet administrated by firearms. The acquisition of learning as an enterprise for its own benefit quickly allowed me to terminate my relationship with the athletic and military aspect of my school. It is likely that this was responsible for the practical benefit of avoiding major injuring for the first fifty years of my life. Additionally, I quickly learned that sports did not build character, but flaws in character. The athlete should be expected to perform better in academics than the non-athlete; the former usually has greater spatial intelligence than the non-athlete and is said to have greater endurance. This is the exception rather then the rule. The athlete does less and is rewarded to a greater degree than your present correspondent. Turning to the military, a terse phrase is sufficient: donkeys leading lions. In both spheres, socially destructive behaviors are tolerated and/or exulted. In these areas the road to perdition is lit and paved with evil intentions, defective thoughts
To cite another example from my university days, I was so disgusted by the fundamentalist religious beliefs of a certain economics professor that I took his course out of spite. From this course I learned enough to make a very small fortune. I read financial advice books regularly in order to find the occasional pearl hidden within a multitude of oysters. I never made much money practicing medicine. Leaving my physician employer’s retirement program saved my portfolio from being halved. I never took the advice of any financial professional. Instead I relied on religion. The religion I learned in my Catholic high school was not a normative, but positive, enterprise: comparative anthropology, Latin grammar, history of the ancient world, the conflict between church and state, Aristotle‘s logic, the Platonic soul, and the hunger to learn and read, to challenge and debate. I want to assure my reader that Balzac and Dickens are far better teachers about the real world than all the professors at Harvard Business School. Moreover, there is nothing more useful for analysis than the predicate calculus of Professor Whitehead.
It is certainly obvious to the reader that this book is about the application of learning for understanding and explaining great issues to the skill of the practice of medicine. Clearly, medicine is more witchcraft, carpentry, intricate crocheting, and plumbing than science. Of course, there are those that would argue that human life is not a great issue and that the liberal arts are unnecessary. To quote John Sperling (again from Professor Fish): “Coming here is not a rite of passage. We are not trying to develop value systems or go in for that expands their minds nonsense.” Sperling contends that his institution (the University of Phoenix) is a combatant in the culture war: “between defenders of 800 years of educational traditions (Sperling believes to be primarily religious in their origins; apparently he skipped the lessons concerning Galileo and Darwin in high school) and innovation that was based on the ideas of the marketplace”.
Conclusion Apologia per sua vita: I have no talent at interpersonal relationships. I have no manual skills. All I have is a bunch of books. Much like the dodo I am extinct in the contemporary culture of education. I am less interesting than a dinosaur’s bones to a m A fish predicts its extinction
In Professor Stanley Fish’s New York Times blog of 01/18/2009, the wise professor cites a new book written by one of his former students: The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the University. The argument discussed by Mr. Donoghue is a proposition best stated by the philosopher Michael Oakeshott: “There is an important difference between learning which is concerned with the degree of understanding the necessary to practice a skill, and learning which is focused upon an enterprise of understanding and explaining”. I dispute this point vigorously. The liberal arts are literally life-saving and money–making. I attended a Catholic parochial school which was more concerned with feminism, lesbian alliances, and putting the worthless notions of Chomsky’s germ cell grammar into our delicate brains. When I arrived at the ninth grade, I was thrust into a Catholic military school which put great emphasis on sports, especially basketball. I had three paths from which to choose: the military, the athletic or the religious. I quickly realized that although I had been diligent in my studies, I was unprepared for high school. The question was made more vital by the fact that there was great parental pressure to attend medical school. Having no special talents, I had no chance in the athletic sphere or the military. That left religion which was equivalent to the pursuit of knowledge. It quickly became apparent as I pursued “knowledge” that the athletic coaches had none of it. The concept in medicine is to cure or alleviate the malady. Unfortunately, these coaches excelled at injuring the player with their nostrums. As for the military, they too were medically unsound. They recommended a high lead diet administrated by firearms. The acquisition of learning as an enterprise for its own benefit quickly allowed me to terminate my relationship with the athletic and military aspect of my school. It is likely that this was responsible for the practical benefit of avoiding major injuring for the first fifty years of my life. Additionally, I quickly learned that sports did not build character, but flaws in character. The athlete should be expected to perform better in academics than the non-athlete; the former usually has greater spatial intelligence than the non-athlete and is said to have greater endurance. This is the exception rather then the rule. The athlete does less and is rewarded to a greater degree than your present correspondent. Turning to the military, a terse phrase is sufficient: donkeys leading lions. In both spheres, socially destructive behaviors are tolerated and/or exulted. In these areas the road to perdition is lit and paved with evil intentions, defective thoughts
To cite another example from my university days, I was so disgusted by the fundamentalist religious beliefs of a certain economics professor that I took his course out of spite. From this course I learned enough to make a very small fortune. I read financial advice books regularly in order to find the occasional pearl hidden within a multitude of oysters. I never made much money practicing medicine. Leaving my physician employer’s retirement program saved my portfolio from being halved. I never took the advice of any financial professional. Instead I relied on religion. The religion I learned in my Catholic high school was not a normative, but positive, enterprise: comparative anthropology, Latin grammar, history of the ancient world, the conflict between church and state, Aristotle‘s logic, the Platonic soul, and the hunger to learn and read, to challenge and debate. I want to assure my reader that Balzac and Dickens are far better teachers about the real world than all the professors at Harvard Business School. Moreover, there is nothing more useful for analysis than the predicate calculus of Professor Whitehead.
It is certainly obvious to the reader that this book is about the application of learning for understanding and explaining great issues to the skill of the practice of medicine. Clearly, medicine is more witchcraft, carpentry, intricate crocheting, and plumbing than science. Of course, there are those that would argue that human life is not a great issue and that the liberal arts are unnecessary. To quote John Sperling (again from Professor Fish): “Coming here is not a rite of passage. We are not trying to develop value systems or go in for that expands their minds nonsense.” Sperling contends that his institution (the University of Phoenix) is a combatant in the culture war: “between defenders of 800 years of educational traditions (Sperling believes to be primarily religious in their origins; apparently he skipped the lessons concerning Galileo and Darwin in high school) and innovation that was based on the ideas of the marketplace”.
Conclusion Apologia per sua vita: I have no talent at interpersonal relationships. I have no manual skills. All I have is a bunch of books. Like the dodo I am extinct in the contemporary culture of education. Mea culpa.
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