Immortal Curiosity

During part of my time at St. John’s I did a lot of thinking on determinism, causal necessity, things of that nature. This became most conscious when reading what I found to be an awe-inspiring observation by Laplace:

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

—Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (Wikipedia entry)

I was stopped in my tracks upon reading this, for it resonated with a strong sense of things I’ve been possessed with for some time. From a variety of studies I had come to think that, with the enormous and perhaps insurmountable hurdle of “sufficiently advanced” technology, humanity might gain the ability to understand all past and future states of the universe. I won’t delve into why I was attracted to this, or what I feel now; suffice it to say I was plenty interested.  Read more... (579 words, estimated 2:19 mins reading time)

Each moment I hope to apply pen to paper, to touch upon one of the currents flowing in my mind, finally to find it acceptable, and possess the unified awareness to divert its flow into ink. I hope it will pool into glyphs of sufficient ability to later remind of their progenitors. But my thoughts, my awareness, this world, these senses, this moment– each becomes, by unique turns, ever more faceted, allowing of ever more interpretations, re-considerations, contemplations. What was passed over as easily as a single step on level ground one year is revealed to be treacherous and filled with difficulty the next. This pattern is further reinforced by my thoughts on the past and my mind as it was, or seemed to be.

Our sun-like consciousness shines a single beam, intent on clarification, into the icy cavern of our thoughts, producing an endless series of reflections, diversion, refractions, and schisms. And the interference of this action is permanent, for even if the beam cases in failure, its warmth has melted some small portion of the cavern, dripping and re-solidifying, ensuring a second attempt will never reveal the same scene again.  Read more... (304 words, estimated 1:13 mins reading time)

Concerning Richard Tarnas’ “Cosmos and Psyche“–

Having not heard of the book before coming across it sitting on a shelf, I perfunctorily read the description on the back cover. The paragraph revealed what might be quite an interesting and informative philosophical and scientific work, as others I had come across. But the phrase “correspondence between planetary alignments and the archetypal patterns of human history” threw me for quite a loop. Astrology? From a “distinguished philosopher”? Something must be amiss. It did make me curious enough to purchase the work, of course.

I mention the above observation because it initiated a process in my mind as I started reading the work that I found quite interesting. Despite my initial surprise at what the book’s content might be, after I started reading I tried to put all astrological thoughts out of my mind, and simply read the work for what it was to be. However, I kept noting a tendency in Tarnas’ diction that coalesced into the conclusion that he either had read many works of a astronomical, cosmological, or astrological nature (or had a smaller number in his mind quite distinctly) or that he was perhaps purposefully trying to remind the reader of these subjects without discussing them directly. He used “constellate” at least three times in the first 25 pages [edit: Make that 5 in the first 37! [And more. I give up.]]. While a fine enough word, it is quite uncommon. One corpus search of several million words had it listed 13 times. Another term was “nadir”, and there were several others.

Section 1 – Transformation of the Cosmos

Tarnas begins with a sweeping and inspiring overview of the widespread impact of the Copernican Revolution. He focuses on the various philosophical and psychological shifts it implied in the minds of those who accepted it, and that must have been in place in the academic world at large for such a conception to have arisen and eventually gain acceptance. A particular lucid summary of the broadest strokes of this change comes within the second chapter (pg. 9):

For the Coperican hypothesis to be made reasonable, an entirely new conception of “reason” itself had to be forged: new ways of deciding what counts as truth, new ways of recognizing patterns, new forms of evidence, new categories of interpretation, a new understanding of causality. [...] The nature of the Copernican revolution was so fundamental that what had to be rethought was not only all the conventional scientific theories but the entire established hierarchy of humanity’s place in the universal scheme of things: its relation to the rest of nature and to the cosmos, its relation to the divine, the basis for its morality, its capacity for certain knowledge, its historical self-understanding.  Read more... (1086 words, estimated 4:21 mins reading time)

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge is an inviting, informative work on several topics, primarily attempting to present what Wilson terms the “consilient world view”. He reviews a number of human investigations and endeavours, presenting how they variously show evidence for the effectiveness of consilience or have failed to utilize it, to their benefit or detriment, respectively. In addition, he present proposals for the inclusion of consilience in studies that have entirely or mostly neglected it, taking into account their current milieu.

One issue that became moderately annoying in this text is Wilson’s tendency to provide an overabundance of detail, leading to discussions within particular fields that I feel could have been entirely left out or summarized to the text’s benefit. In the end, while it does not feel overly taxing and is not that long of a work when one takes its subject into account, it could have had a much more unified and focused approach.

Assorted quotations and notes:  Read more... (721 words, estimated 2:53 mins reading time)

• Chapter 2-
  • After describing the development of the Enlightenment thinkers, he continues by claiming that their propositions and assumptions are borne out well and that they are not to be blamed for the fragmentary state of philosophy thereafter.