+ + +"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love." - Sophocles + + + + + + +
+
+"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies."
+--Aristotle
+
+not sure why these are here, but here's a long rant by Ayn Rand:
+h
+I am referring here to romantic love, in the serious meaning of that term�as
+distinguished from the superficial infatuations of those whose sense of life is
+devoid of any consistent values, i.e., of any lasting emotions
+other than fear. Love is a response to values. It is with a person�s sense of
+life that one falls in love�with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or
+way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One falls in
+love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person�s character, which
+are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the
+style of his soul�the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable,
+irreplaceable consciousness. It is one�s own sense of life that acts as the
+selector, and responds to what it recognizes as one�s own basic values in the
+person of another. It is not a matter of professed convictions (though these are
+not irrelevant); it is a matter of much more profound, conscious and
+subconscious harmony
+Many errors and tragic disillusionments are possible in this process of
+emotional recognition, since a sense of life, by itself, is not a reliable
+cognitive guide. And if there are degrees of evil, then one of the most evil
+consequences of mysticism�in terms of human suffering�is the belief that love is
+a matter of �the heart,� not the mind, that love is an emotion independent of
+reason, that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy. Love is
+the expression of philosophy�of a subconscious philosophical sum�and,
+perhaps, no other aspect of human existence needs the conscious power
+of philosophy quite so desperately. When that power is called upon to verify and
+support an emotional appraisal, when love is a conscious integration of reason
+and emotion, of mind and values, then�and only then�it is the greatest reward of
+man�s life. -Ayn Rand
+
+The Romantic Manifesto, pg 32.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
Let us answer the question: �Can you measure love?� +
The concept �love� is formed by isolating two or more instances of the +appropriate psychological process, then retaining its distinguishing +characteristics (an emotion proceeding from the evaluation of an existent as a +positive value and as a source of pleasure) and omitting the object and the +measurements of the process�s intensity. +
The object may be a thing, an event, an activity, a condition or a person. +The intensity varies according to one�s evaluation of the object, as, for +instance, in such cases as one�s love for ice cream, or for parties, or for +reading, or for freedom, or for the person one marries. The concept �love� +subsumes a vast range of values and, consequently, of intensity: it extends from +the lower levels (designated by the subcategory �liking�) to the higher level +(designated by the subcategory �affection,� which is applicable only in regard +to persons) to the highest level, which includes romantic love. +
If one wants to measure the intensity of a particular instance of love, one +does so by reference to the hierarchy of values of the person experiencing it. A +man may love a woman, yet may rate the neurotic satisfactions of sexual +promiscuity higher than her value to him. Another man may love a woman, but may +give her up, rating his fear of the disapproval of others (of his family, his +friends or any random strangers) higher than her value. Still another man may +risk his life to save the woman he loves, because all his other values would +lose meaning without her. The emotions in these examples are not emotions of the +same intensity or dimension. Do not let a James Taggart type of mystic tell you +that love is immeasurable. +
Introduction +to Objectivist Epistemology Ayn- Rand +
+ + + + + + +
+
+Existentialism
+No testimony is sufficient
+to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of
+such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it
+endeavours to establish.
+� David Hume
+
+There is not to be found, in
+all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such
+unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all
+delusion in themselves
+� David Hume
+
+I believe that religion,
+generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind � that its
+modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more
+than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
+� H. L. Mencken
+
+Religion is fundamentally
+opposed to everything I hold in veneration � courage, clear thinking, honesty,
+fairness, and above all, love of the truth.
+� H. L. Mencken
+
+There is, in fact, nothing
+about religious opinions that entitles them to any
+more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be
+noticeably silly.
+� H. L. Mencken
+
+# Life
+>" A balance that does not tremble cannot weigh. A man who does not tremble cannot live.."
+ -- Erwin Chargaff
+
+>"Try to learn something about everything, and everything about something.""
+ -- T. H. Huxley
+
+>"I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be
+a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant. -- H. L. Mencken
+
+>"For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong" -- H. L. Mencken
+The notion that a radical is
+one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one
+who loves his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than
+the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to
+crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.
+� H. L. Mencken
+
+Men become civilized not in
+proportion to their willingness to believe but in proportion to their readiness
+to doubt.
+� H. L. Mencken
+If only it were all so
+simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil
+deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and
+destroy them. But the dividing line between good and evil cuts through the heart
+of every human being, and who is willing to destroy his own heart?
+�
+Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
+
+When you think of the long
+and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed
+in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
+� C. P. Snow
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
+in trying to adapt the world to himself.
+Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man" - George Bernard Shaw,
+*Maxims for Revolutionists*
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Inspirational:
+
+"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
+ "In the depths of
+winter I finally
+learned there was in
+me an invincible summer." -
+Albert Camus
+
+"Did you ever see an unhappy horse? Did you ever see
+bird that had the blues? One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is
+because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses."
+- Dale Carnegie
+
+MORE:
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ Just as the earth itself forms the
+indispensable ground for the only kind of life we know, providing the sole
+sustenance of our minds and bodies, so does empirical truth constitute the
+foundation of higher truths. (If there is such a thing as
+higher truth.) It seems to me that Keats was wrong when he asked,
+rhetorically, �Do not all charms fly�at the mere touch of cold philosophy?�
+The word �philosophy� standing, in his day, for what we now
+call �physical science.� But Keats was wrong, I say, because there is
+more charm in one �mere� fact, confirmed by test and observation, linked to
+other facts through coherent theory into a rational system, than in a whole
+brainful of fancy and fantasy. I see more poetry in
+a chunk of quartzite than in a make-believe wood nymph, more beauty in the
+revelations of a verifiable intellectual construction than in whole misty
+empires of obsolete mythology�Any good poet, in our age at least, must begin
+with the scientific view of the world; and any scientist worth listening to must
+be something of a poet, must possess the ability to communicate to the rest of
+us his sense of love and wonder at what his work discovers. I believe that scientific knowledge has
+fractal properties; that no matter how much we learn; whatever is left, however
+small it may seem, is just as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with.
+That, I think, is the secret of the Universe. There are many aspects of the universe that
+still can�t be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance implies only
+ignorance that may some day be conquered. To
+surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature up to this
+time, and it remains premature today. The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
+the one that heralds new discoveries, is not �Eureka!� (I found it!)
+but �That�s funny�� Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Seek ye first the good things of the mind,
+and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt. Let the mind be enlarged, according to its
+capacity, to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to
+the narrowness of the mind. Knowledge is power. There is no great concurrence between
+learning and wisdom. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to
+believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and
+consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to
+be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others
+to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with
+diligence and attention. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to
+philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides
+to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious
+superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of
+men. In the depth of winter I finally learned
+that within me there lay an invincible summer. The important thing is not to stop
+questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be
+in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous
+structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of
+this mystery every day. He who joyfully marches to music in rank and
+file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake,
+since for him a spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization
+should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality,
+deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all
+this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds
+than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the
+cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. Peace cannot be achieved through
+violence, it can only be attained through
+understanding. The scientist finds his reward in what Henri
+Poincare calls the joy of comprehension, and not in the possibilities of
+application to which any discovery may lead. A human being is part of a whole, called by
+us the �Universe,� a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his
+thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest � a kind of optical
+delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
+restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons
+nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our
+circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in
+its beauty. It was, of course, a lie what you read about
+my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not
+believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it
+clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the
+unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can
+reveal it. I believe in Spinoza�s God who reveals
+Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself
+with fates and actions of human beings. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am,
+of course, and have always been an atheist�It is always misleading to use
+anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things
+outside the human sphere � childish analogies. We have to admire in humility the
+beautiful harmony of the structure of this world � as far as we can grasp it.
+And that is all. Everything is determined, the beginning as
+well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for
+the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all
+dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. "How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief
+sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it.
+But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for
+other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own
+happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose
+destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I
+remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men,
+living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same
+measure as I have received and am still receiving... -from "The World as I See It", by Albert Einstein
+ My Credo (1932)
+ "It is a special blessing to belong among
+those who can and may devote their best energies to the contemplation and
+exploration of objective and timeless things. How happy and grateful I am for
+having been granted this blessing, which bestows upon one a large measure of
+independence from one's personal fate and from the attitude of one's
+contemporaries. Yet this independence must not inure us to the awareness of the
+duties that constantly bind us to the past, present and future of humankind at
+large. The further the spiritual evolution of
+mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine
+religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and
+blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. The foundation of morality should not be
+made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or
+about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment
+and action. One thing I have learned in a long life:
+that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike � and
+yet it is the most precious thing we have. I am a deeply religious nonbeliever�This is
+a somewhat new kind of religion. "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means
+nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction
+between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." "One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether
+one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after
+I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific
+problems distasteful to me for an entire year." Selected Einstein aphorisms
+ Physics is to
+math what sex
+is to masturbation. A poet once said, �The whole universe is in
+a glass of wine.� We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for
+poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass
+of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of
+physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather,
+the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a
+distillation of the earth�s rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of
+the universe�s age, and the evolution of stars. What strange
+array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are
+the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is
+found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover
+the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of
+much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the
+consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide
+this glass of wine, this universe, into parts � physics, biology, geology,
+astronomy, psychology, and so on � remember that nature does not know it! So let
+us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it
+give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all! Poets say science takes away from the beauty
+of the stars � mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is �mere.�
+I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or
+more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination � stuck on this
+carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern � of
+which I am a part � perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as
+one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all
+apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What
+is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery
+to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists
+of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men
+are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an
+immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
+We have a way of discussing the world, when we talk of it at various
+hierarchies, or levels. Now I do not mean to be very precise, dividing the world
+into definite levels, but I will indicate, by describing a set of ideas, what I
+mean by hierarchies of ideas. "There is a computer disease that anybody who works with
+computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely
+with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!" None are more enslaved than those who hopelessly believe
+they are free. - Van Goethe.
+
+
+
+
+
+
-
-
-"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love." - Sophocles
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." Let us answer the question: �Can you measure love?�
- The concept �love� is formed by isolating two or more instances of the
-appropriate psychological process, then retaining its distinguishing
-characteristics (an emotion proceeding from the evaluation of an existent as a
-positive value and as a source of pleasure) and omitting the object and the
-measurements of the process�s intensity.
- The object may be a thing, an event, an activity, a condition or a person.
-The intensity varies according to one�s evaluation of the object, as, for
-instance, in such cases as one�s love for ice cream, or for parties, or for
-reading, or for freedom, or for the person one marries. The concept �love�
-subsumes a vast range of values and, consequently, of intensity: it extends from
-the lower levels (designated by the subcategory �liking�) to the higher level
-(designated by the subcategory �affection,� which is applicable only in regard
-to persons) to the highest level, which includes romantic love.
- If one wants to measure the intensity of a particular instance of love, one
-does so by reference to the hierarchy of values of the person experiencing it. A
-man may love a woman, yet may rate the neurotic satisfactions of sexual
-promiscuity higher than her value to him. Another man may love a woman, but may
-give her up, rating his fear of the disapproval of others (of his family, his
-friends or any random strangers) higher than her value. Still another man may
-risk his life to save the woman he loves, because all his other values would
-lose meaning without her. The emotions in these examples are not emotions of the
-same intensity or dimension. Do not let a James Taggart type of mystic tell you
-that love is immeasurable.
- Introduction
-to Objectivist Epistemology Ayn- Rand
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Existentialism
-No testimony is sufficient
-to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of
-such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it
-endeavours to establish.
-� David Hume
-
-There is not to be found, in
-all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such
-unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all
-delusion in themselves
-� David Hume
-
-I believe that religion,
-generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind � that its
-modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more
-than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
-� H. L. Mencken
-
-Religion is fundamentally
-opposed to everything I hold in veneration � courage, clear thinking, honesty,
-fairness, and above all, love of the truth.
-� H. L. Mencken
-
-There is, in fact, nothing
-about religious opinions that entitles them to any
-more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be
-noticeably silly.
-� H. L. Mencken
-
-# Life
->" A balance that does not tremble cannot weigh. A man who does not tremble cannot live.."
- -- Erwin Chargaff
-
->"Try to learn something about everything, and everything about something.""
- -- T. H. Huxley
-
->"I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be
-a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant. -- H. L. Mencken
-
->"For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong" -- H. L. Mencken
-The notion that a radical is
-one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one
-who loves his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than
-the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to
-crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.
-� H. L. Mencken
-
-Men become civilized not in
-proportion to their willingness to believe but in proportion to their readiness
-to doubt.
-� H. L. Mencken
-If only it were all so
-simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil
-deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and
-destroy them. But the dividing line between good and evil cuts through the heart
-of every human being, and who is willing to destroy his own heart?
-�
-Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
-
-When you think of the long
-and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed
-in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
-� C. P. Snow
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
-in trying to adapt the world to himself.
-Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man" - George Bernard Shaw,
-*Maxims for Revolutionists*
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Inspirational:
-
-"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
- "In the depths of
-winter I finally
-learned there was in
-me an invincible summer." -
-Albert Camus
-
-"Did you ever see an unhappy horse? Did you ever see
-bird that had the blues? One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is
-because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses."
-- Dale Carnegie
-
-MORE:
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Just as the earth itself forms the
-indispensable ground for the only kind of life we know, providing the sole
-sustenance of our minds and bodies, so does empirical truth constitute the
-foundation of higher truths. (If there is such a thing as
-higher truth.) It seems to me that Keats was wrong when he asked,
-rhetorically, �Do not all charms fly�at the mere touch of cold philosophy?�
-The word �philosophy� standing, in his day, for what we now
-call �physical science.� But Keats was wrong, I say, because there is
-more charm in one �mere� fact, confirmed by test and observation, linked to
-other facts through coherent theory into a rational system, than in a whole
-brainful of fancy and fantasy. I see more poetry in
-a chunk of quartzite than in a make-believe wood nymph, more beauty in the
-revelations of a verifiable intellectual construction than in whole misty
-empires of obsolete mythology�Any good poet, in our age at least, must begin
-with the scientific view of the world; and any scientist worth listening to must
-be something of a poet, must possess the ability to communicate to the rest of
-us his sense of love and wonder at what his work discovers. I believe that scientific knowledge has
-fractal properties; that no matter how much we learn; whatever is left, however
-small it may seem, is just as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with.
-That, I think, is the secret of the Universe. There are many aspects of the universe that
-still can�t be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance implies only
-ignorance that may some day be conquered. To
-surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature up to this
-time, and it remains premature today. The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
-the one that heralds new discoveries, is not �Eureka!� (I found it!)
-but �That�s funny�� Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Seek ye first the good things of the mind,
-and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt. Let the mind be enlarged, according to its
-capacity, to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to
-the narrowness of the mind. Knowledge is power. There is no great concurrence between
-learning and wisdom. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to
-believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and
-consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to
-be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others
-to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with
-diligence and attention. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to
-philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides
-to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious
-superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of
-men. In the depth of winter I finally learned
-that within me there lay an invincible summer. The important thing is not to stop
-questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be
-in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous
-structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of
-this mystery every day. He who joyfully marches to music in rank and
-file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake,
-since for him a spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization
-should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality,
-deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all
-this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds
-than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the
-cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. Peace cannot be achieved through
-violence, it can only be attained through
-understanding. The scientist finds his reward in what Henri
-Poincare calls the joy of comprehension, and not in the possibilities of
-application to which any discovery may lead. A human being is part of a whole, called by
-us the �Universe,� a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his
-thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest � a kind of optical
-delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
-restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons
-nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our
-circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in
-its beauty. It was, of course, a lie what you read about
-my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not
-believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it
-clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the
-unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can
-reveal it. I believe in Spinoza�s God who reveals
-Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself
-with fates and actions of human beings. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am,
-of course, and have always been an atheist�It is always misleading to use
-anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things
-outside the human sphere � childish analogies. We have to admire in humility the
-beautiful harmony of the structure of this world � as far as we can grasp it.
-And that is all. Everything is determined, the beginning as
-well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for
-the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all
-dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. "How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief
-sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it.
-But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for
-other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own
-happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose
-destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I
-remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men,
-living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same
-measure as I have received and am still receiving... -from "The World as I See It", by Albert Einstein
- My Credo (1932)
- "It is a special blessing to belong among
-those who can and may devote their best energies to the contemplation and
-exploration of objective and timeless things. How happy and grateful I am for
-having been granted this blessing, which bestows upon one a large measure of
-independence from one's personal fate and from the attitude of one's
-contemporaries. Yet this independence must not inure us to the awareness of the
-duties that constantly bind us to the past, present and future of humankind at
-large. The further the spiritual evolution of
-mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine
-religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and
-blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. The foundation of morality should not be
-made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or
-about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment
-and action. One thing I have learned in a long life:
-that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike � and
-yet it is the most precious thing we have. I am a deeply religious nonbeliever�This is
-a somewhat new kind of religion. "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means
-nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction
-between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." "One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether
-one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after
-I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific
-problems distasteful to me for an entire year." Selected Einstein aphorisms
- Physics is to
-math what sex
-is to masturbation. A poet once said, �The whole universe is in
-a glass of wine.� We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for
-poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass
-of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of
-physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather,
-the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a
-distillation of the earth�s rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of
-the universe�s age, and the evolution of stars. What strange
-array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are
-the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is
-found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover
-the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of
-much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the
-consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide
-this glass of wine, this universe, into parts � physics, biology, geology,
-astronomy, psychology, and so on � remember that nature does not know it! So let
-us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it
-give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all! Poets say science takes away from the beauty
-of the stars � mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is �mere.�
-I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or
-more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination � stuck on this
-carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern � of
-which I am a part � perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as
-one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all
-apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What
-is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery
-to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists
-of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men
-are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an
-immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
-We have a way of discussing the world, when we talk of it at various
-hierarchies, or levels. Now I do not mean to be very precise, dividing the world
-into definite levels, but I will indicate, by describing a set of ideas, what I
-mean by hierarchies of ideas. "There is a computer disease that anybody who works with
-computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely
-with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!" None are more enslaved than those who hopelessly believe
-they are free. - Van Goethe.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
+Gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time,
+the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. -
+Albert Camus
+
+Everything is permitted," exclaims Ivan Karamazov. That, too, smacks of the
+absurd. But on condition that it not be taken in a vulgar sense. I don't know
+whether or not it has been sufficiently pointed out that it is not an outburst
+of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact. - Albert Camus
+
+All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences
+that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that
+those consequences must be considered calmly. - Albert Camus
+
+The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must
+imagine Sisyphus happy. - Albert Camus
+
+Philosophy
+
+We are creatures of matter. And we should
+learn to live with that fact.
+� Paul M. Churchland
+
+The reductionist worldview is chilling and impersonal. It has to be
+accepted as it is, not because we like it, but because that is the way the world
+works.
+
+
+
+
+
+"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the
+level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy." - Steven Weinberg
+
+
+
+# Religion
+
+> "I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions
+> they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect
+> the young and innocent."" - Arthur C. Clarke
+
+
+""Science can destroy a religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever
+demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they
+have few followers now.
+� Arthur C. Clarke
+Science simply doesn�t deal
+with hypotheses about a guiding intelligence, or supernatural phenomena like
+miracles, because science is the search for rational explanations of natural
+phenomena. We don�t reject the supernatural merely because we have an
+overweening philosophical commitment to materialism; we reject it because
+entertaining the supernatural has never helped us understand the
+natural world. Alchemy, faith healing, astrology,
+creationism � none of these perspectives has advanced our understanding
+of nature by one iota....
+Scientific �truths� are
+empirically supported observations agreed on by different observers. Religious
+�truths,� on the other hand, are personal, unverifiable and contested by those
+of different faiths.
+� Jerry A. Coyne
+The fear of God is not the
+beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and
+doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of
+wisdom.
+� Clarence Darrow
+The modern world is the
+child of doubt and inquiry, as the ancient world was the child of fear and
+faith.
+� Clarence Darrow
+
+
+At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an
+intelligent God is drawn from the deep inward conviction and feelings which are
+experienced by most persons. But it cannot be doubted that
+Hindoos, Mahomadans and others might argue in
+the same manner and with equal force in favour of
+the existence of one God, or of many Gods, or as with the
+Buddists of no God. There are also many barbarian tribes who cannot be
+said with any truth to believe in what we call God: they believe indeed in
+spirits or ghosts, and it can be explained, as Tyler and Herbert Spencer have
+shown, how such a belief would be likely to arise.
+
+Formerly I was led by feelings such as those just referred to, (although
+I do not think that the religious sentiment was ever strongly developed in me),
+to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the
+soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of
+a Brazilian forest, �it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher
+feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind.� I
+well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of
+his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and
+feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has
+become colour-blind, and the universal belief by men
+of the existence of redness makes my present loss of perception of not the least
+value as evidence. This argument would be a valid one if all men of all races
+had the same inward conviction of the existence of one God; but we know that
+this is very far from being the case. Therefore I cannot see that such inward
+convictions and feelings are of any weight as evidence of what really exists.
+The state of mind which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and which was
+intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ from that
+which is often called the sense of sublimity; and however difficult it may be to
+explain the genesis of this sense, it can hardly be advanced as an argument for
+the existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and similar
+feelings excited by music.
+� Charles Darwin
+ To invoke God as a blanket
+explanation of the unexplained is to make God the friend of ignorance. If God is
+to be found, it must surely be through what we discover about the world, not
+what we fail to discover.
+� Paul Davies
+In a universe of electrons
+and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people
+are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won�t find
+any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has
+precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no
+purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
+� Richard Dawkins
+
+I think it�s important to
+realize that when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal
+intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It
+is possible for one side to be simply wrong.
+� Richard Dawkins
+
+Science shares with religion
+the claim that it answers deep questions about origins, the nature of life, and
+the cosmos. But there the resemblance ends. Scientific beliefs are supported by
+evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.
+� Richard Dawkins
+
+If you have a faith, it is
+statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents
+and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving
+stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable
+determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so
+passionately believe would have been a completely different, and largely
+contradictory, set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a
+different place. Epidemiology, not evidence.
+� Richard Dawkins
+
+Mystery generates wonder, and wonder generates awe. The gasp can terrify or the
+gasp can emancipate. As I allow myself to experience cosmic and quantum Mystery,
+I join the saints and visionaries in their experience of what they called the
+Divine, and then I wander back 26 centuries to embrace Lao Tzu and the first
+chapter of the Tao Te Ching:
+
+
+
+"You see things that are and ask, "Why?" But I dream
+things that never were and ask "Why not?""
+- George Bernard Shaw
+
+
+
+"Do not be too squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more
+experiments you make the better". Ralph Waldo Emerson.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+-Robert Frost
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Most people are about as
+happy as they make up their minds to be." - Abraham
+Lincoln
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."
+-Guillaume Appollinaire
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+� Edward Abbey
+
+� Isaac Asimov
+
+� Isaac Asimov
+
+� Isaac Asimov
+
+If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be
+content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
+� Francis Bacon
+
+� Francis Bacon
+
+� Francis Bacon
+
+What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not
+stay for an answer.
+� Francis Bacon
+
+� Francis Bacon
+
+� Francis Bacon
+
+� Francis Bacon
+
+� Francis Bacon
+
+� Francis Bacon
+
+Don�t walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don�t walk behind me, I may not
+lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
+� Albert Camus
+
+� Albert Camus
+
+Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
+The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to
+hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
+� Albert Einstein
+
+� Albert Einstein
+
+� Albert Einstein
+
+� Albert Einstein
+
+� Albert Einstein
+
+� Albert Einstein
+
+� Albert Einstein
+
+� Albert Einstein
+
+� Albert Einstein
+
+� Albert Einstein
+
+"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this
+critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my
+way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have
+been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like
+mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally
+unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have
+seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward
+success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.
+"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always
+contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other
+human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never
+belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with
+my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of
+distance and a need for solitude..."
+
+Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here,
+involuntarily and uninvited, for a short stay, without knowing the why and the
+wherefore. In our daily lives we feel only that man is here for the sake of
+others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected
+with our own. I am often troubled by the thought that my life is based to such a
+large extent on the work of my fellow human beings, and I am aware of my great
+indebtedness to them.
+I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants,
+but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my
+life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather
+painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking
+myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and
+from losing my temper.
+I have never coveted affluence and luxury and even despise them a good deal. My
+passion for social justice has often brought me into conflict with people, as
+has my aversion to any obligation and dependence I did not regard as absolutely
+necessary. I have a high regard for the individual and an insuperable distaste
+for violence and fanaticism. All these motives have made me a passionate
+pacifist and antimilitarist. I am against any chauvinism, even in the guise of
+mere patriotism.
+Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and
+pernicious, as does any exaggerated personality cult. I am an adherent of the
+ideal of democracy, although I know well the weaknesses of the democratic form
+of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual have
+always seemed to me the important communal aims of the state.
+Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to
+the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice keeps
+me from feeling isolated.
+The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the
+mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as of all serious
+endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if
+not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be
+experienced there is a something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and
+sublimely reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense I am
+religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to
+grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all there is."
+-Albert Einstein
+
+Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human
+beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least
+partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this
+world beckoned like a liberation�The road to this
+paradise was not as comforting and alluring as the road to the religious
+paradise; but it has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted
+having chosen it.
+� Albert Einstein
+
+� Albert Einstein
+
+� Albert Einstein
+
+� Albert Einstein
+
+� Albert Einstein
+
+-Albert Einstein -- referring to the death of a fellow physicist
+
+-Albert Einstein
+
+"He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt.
+He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would
+surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once.
+Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble
+war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It
+is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of
+murder."
+-Albert Einstein
+
+
+
+
+-R.P. Feynman
+
+
+
+You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt
+and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it�s much more interesting to live not
+knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers
+and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different
+things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I
+don�t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we�re
+here�I don�t have to know an answer. I don�t feel frightened not knowing things,
+by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it
+really is as far as I can tell. It doesn�t frighten me.
+� Richard P. Feynman
+
+� Richard P. Feynman
+
+� Richard P. Feynman
+
+ For example, at one end we have the
+fundamental laws of physics. Then we invent other terms for concepts which are
+approximate, which have, we believe, their ultimate explanation in terms of the
+fundamental laws. For instance, �heat.� Heat is supposed to be jiggling, and the
+word for a hot thing is just the word for a mass of atoms which are jiggling.
+But for a while, if we are talking about heat, we sometimes forget about the
+atoms jiggling � just as when we talk about the glacier we do not always think
+of the hexagonal ice and the snowflakes which originally fell. Another example
+of the same thing is a salt crystal. Looked at fundamentally it is a lot of
+protons, neutrons, and electrons; but we have this concept of �salt crystal,�
+which carries a whole pattern already of fundamental interactions. An idea like
+pressure is the same.
+ Now if we go higher up from this, in
+another level we have properties of substances � like �refractive index,� how
+light is bent when it goes through something; or �surface tension,� the fact
+that water tends to pull itself together, both of which are described by
+numbers. I remind you that we have to go through several laws down to find out
+that it is the pull of the atoms, and so on. But we still say �surface tension,�
+and do not always worry, when discussing surface tension, about the inner
+workings.
+ On, up in the hierarchy. With the water
+we have waves, and we have a thing like a storm, the word �storm� which
+represents an enormous mass of phenomena, or a �sun spot,� or �star,� which is
+an accumulation of things. And it is not worthwhile always to think of it way
+back. In fact we cannot, because the higher up we go the more steps we have in
+between, each one of which is a little weak. We have not thought them all
+through yet.
+ As we go up in this hierarchy of complexity, we get to things
+like muscle twitch, or nerve impulse, which is an enormously complicated thing
+in the physical world, involving an organization of matter in a very elaborate
+complexity. Then come things like �frog.�
+ And then we go on, and we come to words and concepts like
+�man,� and �history,� or �political expediency,� and so forth, a series of
+concepts which we use to understand things at an ever higher level.
+ And going on, we come to things like evil, and beauty, and
+hope�
+ Which end is nearer to God, if I may use a religious
+metaphor, beauty and hope, or the fundamental laws? I think that the right way,
+of course, is to say that what we have to look at is the whole structural
+interconnection of the thing; and that all the sciences, and not just the
+sciences but all the efforts of intellectual kinds, are an
+endeavor to see the connections of the hierarchies, to connect beauty to
+history, to connect history to man�s psychology, man�s psychology to the working
+of the brain, the brain to the neural impulse, the neural impulse to the
+chemistry, and so forth, up and down, both ways. And today we cannot, and it is
+no use making believe that we can, draw carefully a line all the way from one
+end of this thing to the other, because we have only just begun to see that
+there is this relative hierarchy.
+ And I do not think either end is nearer to God. To stand at
+either end, and to walk off that end of the pier only, hoping that out in that
+direction is the complete understanding, is a mistake. And to stand with evil
+and beauty and hope, or to stand with the fundamental laws, hoping that way to
+get a deep understanding of the whole world, with that aspect alone, is a
+mistake. It is not sensible for the ones who specialize at the other end, to
+have such disregard for each other. (They don�t actually, but people say they
+do.) The great mass of workers in between, connecting one step to another, are
+improving all the time our understanding of the world, both from working at the
+ends and working in the middle, and in that way we are gradually understanding
+this tremendous world of interconnecting hierarchies.
+� Richard P. Feynman (source unknown)
+
+-Richard P. Feynman (written in the 1950s (!))
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ Science
+It is the sense of mystery
+that, in my opinion, drives the true scientist; the same blind force, blindly
+seeing, deafly hearing, unconsciously remembering,
+that drives the larva into the butterfly. If [the scientist] has not
+experienced, at least a few times in his life, this cold shudder down his spine,
+this confrontation with an immense invisible face whose breath moves him to
+tears, he is not a scientist.
+
-->
diff --git a/_posts/2024-05-10-covid-airborne.md b/_posts/2024-05-10-covid-airborne.md
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+---
+substacktitle: (Substack) New WHO report - defining "airborne" is very, very complicated
+layout: redirected
+sitemap: false
+permalink: substack29
+redirect_to: https://moreisdifferent.blog/p/new-who-report-defining-airborne
+---
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-
-
---Aristotle
-
-not sure why these are here, but here's a long rant by Ayn Rand:
-h
-I am referring here to romantic love, in the serious meaning of that term�as
-distinguished from the superficial infatuations of those whose sense of life is
-devoid of any consistent values, i.e., of any lasting emotions
-other than fear. Love is a response to values. It is with a person�s sense of
-life that one falls in love�with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or
-way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One falls in
-love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person�s character, which
-are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the
-style of his soul�the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable,
-irreplaceable consciousness. It is one�s own sense of life that acts as the
-selector, and responds to what it recognizes as one�s own basic values in the
-person of another. It is not a matter of professed convictions (though these are
-not irrelevant); it is a matter of much more profound, conscious and
-subconscious harmony
-Many errors and tragic disillusionments are possible in this process of
-emotional recognition, since a sense of life, by itself, is not a reliable
-cognitive guide. And if there are degrees of evil, then one of the most evil
-consequences of mysticism�in terms of human suffering�is the belief that love is
-a matter of �the heart,� not the mind, that love is an emotion independent of
-reason, that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy. Love is
-the expression of philosophy�of a subconscious philosophical sum�and,
-perhaps, no other aspect of human existence needs the conscious power
-of philosophy quite so desperately. When that power is called upon to verify and
-support an emotional appraisal, when love is a conscious integration of reason
-and emotion, of mind and values, then�and only then�it is the greatest reward of
-man�s life. -Ayn Rand
-
-The Romantic Manifesto, pg 32.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time,
-the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. -
-Albert Camus
-
-Everything is permitted," exclaims Ivan Karamazov. That, too, smacks of the
-absurd. But on condition that it not be taken in a vulgar sense. I don't know
-whether or not it has been sufficiently pointed out that it is not an outburst
-of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact. - Albert Camus
-
-All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences
-that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that
-those consequences must be considered calmly. - Albert Camus
-
-The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must
-imagine Sisyphus happy. - Albert Camus
-
-Philosophy
-
-We are creatures of matter. And we should
-learn to live with that fact.
-� Paul M. Churchland
-
-The reductionist worldview is chilling and impersonal. It has to be
-accepted as it is, not because we like it, but because that is the way the world
-works.
-
-
-
-
-
-"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the
-level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy." - Steven Weinberg
-
-
-
-# Religion
-
-> "I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions
-> they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect
-> the young and innocent."" - Arthur C. Clarke
-
-
-""Science can destroy a religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever
-demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they
-have few followers now.
-� Arthur C. Clarke
-Science simply doesn�t deal
-with hypotheses about a guiding intelligence, or supernatural phenomena like
-miracles, because science is the search for rational explanations of natural
-phenomena. We don�t reject the supernatural merely because we have an
-overweening philosophical commitment to materialism; we reject it because
-entertaining the supernatural has never helped us understand the
-natural world. Alchemy, faith healing, astrology,
-creationism � none of these perspectives has advanced our understanding
-of nature by one iota....
-Scientific �truths� are
-empirically supported observations agreed on by different observers. Religious
-�truths,� on the other hand, are personal, unverifiable and contested by those
-of different faiths.
-� Jerry A. Coyne
-The fear of God is not the
-beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and
-doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of
-wisdom.
-� Clarence Darrow
-The modern world is the
-child of doubt and inquiry, as the ancient world was the child of fear and
-faith.
-� Clarence Darrow
-
-
-At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an
-intelligent God is drawn from the deep inward conviction and feelings which are
-experienced by most persons. But it cannot be doubted that
-Hindoos, Mahomadans and others might argue in
-the same manner and with equal force in favour of
-the existence of one God, or of many Gods, or as with the
-Buddists of no God. There are also many barbarian tribes who cannot be
-said with any truth to believe in what we call God: they believe indeed in
-spirits or ghosts, and it can be explained, as Tyler and Herbert Spencer have
-shown, how such a belief would be likely to arise.
-
-Formerly I was led by feelings such as those just referred to, (although
-I do not think that the religious sentiment was ever strongly developed in me),
-to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the
-soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of
-a Brazilian forest, �it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher
-feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind.� I
-well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of
-his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and
-feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has
-become colour-blind, and the universal belief by men
-of the existence of redness makes my present loss of perception of not the least
-value as evidence. This argument would be a valid one if all men of all races
-had the same inward conviction of the existence of one God; but we know that
-this is very far from being the case. Therefore I cannot see that such inward
-convictions and feelings are of any weight as evidence of what really exists.
-The state of mind which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and which was
-intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ from that
-which is often called the sense of sublimity; and however difficult it may be to
-explain the genesis of this sense, it can hardly be advanced as an argument for
-the existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and similar
-feelings excited by music.
-� Charles Darwin
- To invoke God as a blanket
-explanation of the unexplained is to make God the friend of ignorance. If God is
-to be found, it must surely be through what we discover about the world, not
-what we fail to discover.
-� Paul Davies
-In a universe of electrons
-and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people
-are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won�t find
-any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has
-precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no
-purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
-� Richard Dawkins
-
-I think it�s important to
-realize that when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal
-intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It
-is possible for one side to be simply wrong.
-� Richard Dawkins
-
-Science shares with religion
-the claim that it answers deep questions about origins, the nature of life, and
-the cosmos. But there the resemblance ends. Scientific beliefs are supported by
-evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.
-� Richard Dawkins
-
-If you have a faith, it is
-statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents
-and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving
-stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable
-determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so
-passionately believe would have been a completely different, and largely
-contradictory, set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a
-different place. Epidemiology, not evidence.
-� Richard Dawkins
-
-Mystery generates wonder, and wonder generates awe. The gasp can terrify or the
-gasp can emancipate. As I allow myself to experience cosmic and quantum Mystery,
-I join the saints and visionaries in their experience of what they called the
-Divine, and then I wander back 26 centuries to embrace Lao Tzu and the first
-chapter of the Tao Te Ching:
-
-
-
-"You see things that are and ask, "Why?" But I dream
-things that never were and ask "Why not?""
-- George Bernard Shaw
-
-
-
-"Do not be too squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more
-experiments you make the better". Ralph Waldo Emerson.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
--Robert Frost
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-"Most people are about as
-happy as they make up their minds to be." - Abraham
-Lincoln
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."
--Guillaume Appollinaire
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-� Edward Abbey
-
-� Isaac Asimov
-
-� Isaac Asimov
-
-� Isaac Asimov
-
-If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be
-content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
-� Francis Bacon
-
-� Francis Bacon
-
-� Francis Bacon
-
-What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not
-stay for an answer.
-� Francis Bacon
-
-� Francis Bacon
-
-� Francis Bacon
-
-� Francis Bacon
-
-� Francis Bacon
-
-� Francis Bacon
-
-Don�t walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don�t walk behind me, I may not
-lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
-� Albert Camus
-
-� Albert Camus
-
-Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to
-hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
-� Albert Einstein
-
-� Albert Einstein
-
-� Albert Einstein
-
-� Albert Einstein
-
-� Albert Einstein
-
-� Albert Einstein
-
-� Albert Einstein
-
-� Albert Einstein
-
-� Albert Einstein
-
-� Albert Einstein
-
-"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this
-critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my
-way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have
-been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like
-mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally
-unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have
-seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward
-success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.
-"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always
-contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other
-human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never
-belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with
-my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of
-distance and a need for solitude..."
-
-Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here,
-involuntarily and uninvited, for a short stay, without knowing the why and the
-wherefore. In our daily lives we feel only that man is here for the sake of
-others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected
-with our own. I am often troubled by the thought that my life is based to such a
-large extent on the work of my fellow human beings, and I am aware of my great
-indebtedness to them.
-I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants,
-but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my
-life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather
-painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking
-myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and
-from losing my temper.
-I have never coveted affluence and luxury and even despise them a good deal. My
-passion for social justice has often brought me into conflict with people, as
-has my aversion to any obligation and dependence I did not regard as absolutely
-necessary. I have a high regard for the individual and an insuperable distaste
-for violence and fanaticism. All these motives have made me a passionate
-pacifist and antimilitarist. I am against any chauvinism, even in the guise of
-mere patriotism.
-Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and
-pernicious, as does any exaggerated personality cult. I am an adherent of the
-ideal of democracy, although I know well the weaknesses of the democratic form
-of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual have
-always seemed to me the important communal aims of the state.
-Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to
-the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice keeps
-me from feeling isolated.
-The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the
-mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as of all serious
-endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if
-not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be
-experienced there is a something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and
-sublimely reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense I am
-religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to
-grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all there is."
--Albert Einstein
-
-Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human
-beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least
-partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this
-world beckoned like a liberation�The road to this
-paradise was not as comforting and alluring as the road to the religious
-paradise; but it has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted
-having chosen it.
-� Albert Einstein
-
-� Albert Einstein
-
-� Albert Einstein
-
-� Albert Einstein
-
-� Albert Einstein
-
--Albert Einstein -- referring to the death of a fellow physicist
-
--Albert Einstein
-
-"He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt.
-He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would
-surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once.
-Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble
-war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It
-is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of
-murder."
--Albert Einstein
-
-
-
-
--R.P. Feynman
-
-
-
-You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt
-and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it�s much more interesting to live not
-knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers
-and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different
-things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I
-don�t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we�re
-here�I don�t have to know an answer. I don�t feel frightened not knowing things,
-by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it
-really is as far as I can tell. It doesn�t frighten me.
-� Richard P. Feynman
-
-� Richard P. Feynman
-
-� Richard P. Feynman
-
- For example, at one end we have the
-fundamental laws of physics. Then we invent other terms for concepts which are
-approximate, which have, we believe, their ultimate explanation in terms of the
-fundamental laws. For instance, �heat.� Heat is supposed to be jiggling, and the
-word for a hot thing is just the word for a mass of atoms which are jiggling.
-But for a while, if we are talking about heat, we sometimes forget about the
-atoms jiggling � just as when we talk about the glacier we do not always think
-of the hexagonal ice and the snowflakes which originally fell. Another example
-of the same thing is a salt crystal. Looked at fundamentally it is a lot of
-protons, neutrons, and electrons; but we have this concept of �salt crystal,�
-which carries a whole pattern already of fundamental interactions. An idea like
-pressure is the same.
- Now if we go higher up from this, in
-another level we have properties of substances � like �refractive index,� how
-light is bent when it goes through something; or �surface tension,� the fact
-that water tends to pull itself together, both of which are described by
-numbers. I remind you that we have to go through several laws down to find out
-that it is the pull of the atoms, and so on. But we still say �surface tension,�
-and do not always worry, when discussing surface tension, about the inner
-workings.
- On, up in the hierarchy. With the water
-we have waves, and we have a thing like a storm, the word �storm� which
-represents an enormous mass of phenomena, or a �sun spot,� or �star,� which is
-an accumulation of things. And it is not worthwhile always to think of it way
-back. In fact we cannot, because the higher up we go the more steps we have in
-between, each one of which is a little weak. We have not thought them all
-through yet.
- As we go up in this hierarchy of complexity, we get to things
-like muscle twitch, or nerve impulse, which is an enormously complicated thing
-in the physical world, involving an organization of matter in a very elaborate
-complexity. Then come things like �frog.�
- And then we go on, and we come to words and concepts like
-�man,� and �history,� or �political expediency,� and so forth, a series of
-concepts which we use to understand things at an ever higher level.
- And going on, we come to things like evil, and beauty, and
-hope�
- Which end is nearer to God, if I may use a religious
-metaphor, beauty and hope, or the fundamental laws? I think that the right way,
-of course, is to say that what we have to look at is the whole structural
-interconnection of the thing; and that all the sciences, and not just the
-sciences but all the efforts of intellectual kinds, are an
-endeavor to see the connections of the hierarchies, to connect beauty to
-history, to connect history to man�s psychology, man�s psychology to the working
-of the brain, the brain to the neural impulse, the neural impulse to the
-chemistry, and so forth, up and down, both ways. And today we cannot, and it is
-no use making believe that we can, draw carefully a line all the way from one
-end of this thing to the other, because we have only just begun to see that
-there is this relative hierarchy.
- And I do not think either end is nearer to God. To stand at
-either end, and to walk off that end of the pier only, hoping that out in that
-direction is the complete understanding, is a mistake. And to stand with evil
-and beauty and hope, or to stand with the fundamental laws, hoping that way to
-get a deep understanding of the whole world, with that aspect alone, is a
-mistake. It is not sensible for the ones who specialize at the other end, to
-have such disregard for each other. (They don�t actually, but people say they
-do.) The great mass of workers in between, connecting one step to another, are
-improving all the time our understanding of the world, both from working at the
-ends and working in the middle, and in that way we are gradually understanding
-this tremendous world of interconnecting hierarchies.
-� Richard P. Feynman (source unknown)
-
--Richard P. Feynman (written in the 1950s (!))
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Science
-It is the sense of mystery
-that, in my opinion, drives the true scientist; the same blind force, blindly
-seeing, deafly hearing, unconsciously remembering,
-that drives the larva into the butterfly. If [the scientist] has not
-experienced, at least a few times in his life, this cold shudder down his spine,
-this confrontation with an immense invisible face whose breath moves him to
-tears, he is not a scientist.
-� Erwin Chargaff
-