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Saturday, May 29, 2010

What is a philosopher?

First one must decide what widom is. Then one must decide what a lover is. Then one can think they know what a lover of wisdom is.

So, what is wisdom? I think wisdom is about wholeness or totality, viewing things or ideas or events from all perspectives. An impossible feat indeed, yet that is why a philosopher is a lover and not a knower.

Maybe it is like viewing a raindrop as itself as well as part of the rainstorm as part of the clouds as part of the weather front as part of climate as part of ... and knowing that for a moment the raindrop is itself, as well as the whole in all its many forms as well as the cool drop hitting your tongue as well as the poem that forms in your mind.
    

Scientists and Philosophers

It becomes almost a game, science reveals a truth, then removes that truth from the philosopher's game board of mystery and the unknown, as though "science" were an entity that can possess. Science is a process, a tool, for discovering truth, it can no more claim truth than a shovel can claim a hole. Which leaves the game board where it has always belonged, in the hands of the philosophers! Mysteries or truths, both, more than enough for a philosopher's mind to forever ponder.      

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Potential or inevitable?

A handful of basic building blocks (that would all fit nicely in your hand, quarks and electrons and protons and neutrons and such) + invisible laws of nature that guide the building blocks (gravity, thermodynamics, and more) = potential to build a universe with stars and birds and bugs and little fellows that are self aware.

The debate? Potential or Inevitable?