< Back God & Time Crystals David Cowles Dec 13, 2025 “Value forms the basis of the judgments that motivate the islands of order we call events. 1750 words, 8 minute read For centuries (Aquinas), if not millennia (Cicero), philosophers have struggled to prove the existence of God. According to most logicians, they have failed, either because God does not in fact exist or because the existence of such an entity is not within the universe of propositions subject to proof. Christians believe that the existence of God is revealed in Scripture, in the life of Jesus, and in prayer. Roman Catholics believe that the existence of God can also be adduced via experience and reason alone ( aka science); and now we have important new confirmation of this premise. According to Christian cosmology, the universe not only has a beginning (the Alpha point) but also an end (the Omega point). Call it Eschaton, Parousia , Kingdom of Heaven…or whatever. Science agrees! Call it Big Crunch, Big Freeze, or Heat Death; the universe has a sell by date. Genesis ( Alpha ) and Apocalypse ( Omega ) do not occur within time. They happen outside of time ; they are to time as bookends are to literature. My choice of decorative bookends for my library contributes nothing to the content or quality of the books I place between them. They are of a different logical order entirely. So it is with Alpha and Omega . The transition from Genesis to Apocalypse occurs in what we call ‘time’. In fact, this ‘transition’ is time. But where we regard time as a line segment or ray, it is seen as a single point from the perspectives of Alpha and Omega . It is as though they see the timeline rotated 90°. They look at it from its end points. Therefore, from their perspectives, spacetime is a dimensionless point…and the same point in both cases. But if Alpha sees the ‘first point’ on the line and Omega sees the ‘last’ point, how can we say that they both see the same point? Because all of the structure at all of the moments in time is visible from either end. Imagine looking through a kaleidoscope from both ends: same pattern, different perspectives. That’s Alpha & Omega ! Both Alpha and Omega are perfectly ordered states. They are what ‘order’ is. They define it. And between these two ordered states? Chaos , spacetime, i.e. where we live. Our temporal realm is globally disordered; however, local islands of order can and do emerge, to wit: this dialog we are having right now. This ‘local order’ is imperfect and transient. It inevitably dissolves back into the flux. That’s what we mean by entropy : “Islands in the stream, that is what we are.” (Kenny Rogers, et al.) How is it that order can emerge out of Chaos ? How come ‘islands of order’, if any, don’t just flicker in and out like virtual particles? In fact, pockets of order, when they do occur, seem to be auto-reinforcing. They are homeostatic, recursive, and they have a ‘dissipative’ relationship with the chaotic background. Which brings us to the fundamental question of cosmology, if not philosophy itself, “Why (or how) is there something rather than nothing?” The recent discovery of a new state of matter/energy called a Rondeau Time Crystal provides a relevant physical model. This entity cycles perpetually from an ordered state ( Alpha ) through a disordered state ( Chaos ) to an ordered state ( Omega ). Rinse and repeat. This is not a purely mathematical concept. It’s a physical reality. But how is it that local order emerges and endures in the midst of global chaos? While a theist might credit God ( Alpha & Omega in this context), a secularist might posit some property of being itself (e.g. negative vacuum pressure). Turns out, both are right! To be clear, causality vanishes at the shoreline of Chaos . Whatever order emerges out of Chaos is sui generis and causa sui . However, the fact that Chaos is suspended between Alpha and Omega ‘shapes it’ or ‘fine tunes it’ in a way that allows for the emergence of independent islands of local order. Again, there are physical analogies. Imagine a hammock strung between two trees. The trees contribute nothing to the hammock other than potentiality . However, the strung hammock automatically assumes its signature catenary shape which defines the hammock in the universe of Platonic forms. The ‘islands of order’ that populate Chaos do not emerge accidentally. If that were the case, they would be fragile and extremely short lived, flickering in and out like fireflies. In fact they are remarkably resilient and enduring. What’s the half-life of a diamond? “Diamonds are forever” (DeBeers); well, maybe not forever forever but still… Events are homeostatic, dissipative, and recursive. They struggle heroically against inexorable entropy. Their raison d’etre appears to be being itself…and that’s half true. They devise incredible strategies in pursuit of that goal, for example, reproduction . We take it for granted that things want to be : one example, the so-called survival instinct , another, surface tension . But not everything ‘wants to be’. Cells practice apoptosis , people commit suicide. So the survival instinct can’t be primal. Entities that ‘want to be’ must want to be for an even more fundamental reason. That reason is what Whitehead called their Subjective Aim . For most of us, survival is a necessary condition for the furtherance of our aims. But for some cells in some circumstances, apoptosis is a more appropriate strategy. The concept of Aim implies the existence of Value . We ‘aim’ for what we consider ‘good’. Robert Browning: “A man’s reach (aim) should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for.” In the Gospel of John we read, “No one has greater love than to sacrifice their life for another.” (15: 13) And what parent would not risk their own life to ensure the survival of their child? Good trumps all, even life itself! But where do we find this Value , this Good? Not in our chaotic realm! Nietzsche: “…One belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole… But nothing exists apart from the whole!” ( Twilight of the Idols ) The Gospel of Mark quotes Jesus: “Why do you call me ‘good’? Only God is Good.” (10: 18) In Nietzsche’s realm (i.e. our own) things are ‘good’ relative to one another but Good per se characterizes God and only God. Good is God. Nietzsche was right : “…One belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn…the whole.” Nietzsche was wrong : “But nothing exists apart from the whole!” Yes, it does! Value exists apart from the whole. Robert Browning says so! The whole exists as it is, but Value (Good) allows, impels, the whole to pass judgment on itself (and on each of its parts). My wife says I’m judgmental. Damn straight! But judgment does not preclude tolerance or mercy; in fact, it is their prerequisite. Aim is the culmination of a multistep process, beginning with the requirement that the universe pass judgment on itself (conceptual recursion). Ordering (physical recursion) is the active consequence of that judgment. Just as ‘faith’ is not true faith unless it leads to works ( Letter of James ), so judgment leads to execution . In the context of Value , execution is the inevitable consequence of judgment: identify and optimize! But in our chaotic world, “nothing exists apart from the whole.” Nothing except, non-thetically, Alpha and Omega . Of course, these are states of maximal order and value per se . Value (i.e. Good) defines Alpha and Omega and so ‘shapes’ the Chaos (as trees shape a hammock): Value gives Chaos its topology - that is how Value is felt in the midst of Chaos . Value forms the basis of the judgments that motivate the islands of order we call events . Of course, these local manifestations of order are ephemeral; they are bound to be reabsorbed into Chaos . “… Our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air; and—like the baseless fabric of this vision— the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.” (Shakespeare, Tempest ) But order has a definitive signature. The strings of a lyre can be ‘tuned’ continuously within a range. When each string is tuned to a particular frequency, the lyre is capable of producing a series of pleasant, harmonious tones which we can identify, record (musical notation), and remember – e.g. a melody. Local islands of order are like a few bars of Brahms heard over the cacophony that is Lower Manhattan. Fortunately, the vibrations of a string can be reproduced via ‘sympathetic resonance’ in other strings so long as those ‘other strings’ are tuned to a compatible frequency. When a string vibrates, it creates sound waves that travel through the air. If these waves encounter another object that naturally resonates at the same frequency (or a harmonic of that frequency), they can set that second object in motion. The second object "responds" to the vibration because the incoming frequency matches one of its naturally resonant frequencies. Strings are like AM radios, tuned to sound, rather than EM, waves. In this analogy, melodies are manifestations of the Good that resides in both Alpha and Omega . When a melody emerges out of the chaotic medium, it resonates with that same melody in Alpha & Omega . The two become one. The temporal realm and the eternal realm merge. A melody is a melody regardless of the medium. The Ode to Joy is the Ode to Joy no matter who (competently) performs it, whether it’s on paper (musical notation), on tape (recording), or in concert. It has its own unique identity (signature) regardless of context or medium. Likewise, the local islands of order that emerge within Chaos , to the extent that they manifest Good, resonate with the perfect order eternally resident in Alpha & Omega . But it is the same ‘melody’ whether in a state of perfect, eternal order or transiently emerging out of Chaos . It is both temporal and eternal. Here I’ll take the wisdom of Yogi Berra over that of Bill Clinton: Whatever is, is ! *** Henri Matisse’s The Joy of Life (1905–06) presents a radiant pastoral scene where nude figures dance, recline, and play music within a boldly colored, flattened landscape. Rejecting realistic perspective, Matisse uses intense, non-naturalistic color and simplified forms to convey emotional harmony rather than physical accuracy. The painting celebrates sensual pleasure, freedom, and a utopian vision of life, marking a defining moment in the development of Fauvism. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back High School David Cowles Sep 14, 2023 “In place of the general knowledge you somewhat willingly soaked up in primary school, information is now noxiously technical and specialized.” “Latin, when am I ever going to need to speak Latin. Or French! Everyone speaks English anyway. Biology? Like I’d ever be a doctor! Extra school, student loans, and blood – no, thank you! Trig? Seriously? Do you see a pocket protector; is there a propeller on top of my beanie? And don’t get me started on the calculus !” A new school year has begun and we’ve all been there. The prevailing view is that these are just adolescent rantings. Supposedly, adulthood brings an appreciation of knowledge for its own sake - an understanding that knowledge is fungible: it can come in handy at times and in ways you could never anticipate. So who’s right, the hormone rich adolescent or the ‘sober’ adult? Actually, both! There’s no doubt that general knowledge can make life more interesting, and a broad educational background can open doors. On the other hand, people can lead perfectly successful and fulfilling lives without ever learning a foreign language, understanding biochemical pathways, or calculating the height of La Tour Eiffel – oops, French! Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad for all the bits of irrelevant information I was made to learn – and I wish I’d had the self-discipline to learn a lot more. General knowledge comes in handy when you find yourself editor-in-chief of a bleeding edge online magazine. On the other hand, knowledge is not a set of isolated facts. It is a pattern, continually expanding while filling in detail. Novel facts become relevant when they are linked to something that is already meaningful. Imagine instead reciting a poem in an entirely unfamiliar language (how’s your Finnish?) with no clue as to its content or tone. No information is created or communicated. That’s high school! You’re the VP of a local bank. Congrats, BTW. As an adult, how often have you used trigonometric functions to solve a real-world problem? What, never? So, you spent 9 months of your life learning something that you had no interest in at the time and that you’ve never used since? Really? The ‘best knowledge’ is knowledge rooted in inquiry. When I ask a question, there is at least a 50/50 chance I will pay attention to the answer. Knowledge thrives in a semantic community; it atrophies in isolation. Fortunately, life is endlessly interesting. Every day, we ask questions about the world. But how often do those questions refer to things we learned in high school? Everyone jokes about young children being ‘perpetual question machines’. Of course, they are! Everything is new to them…and interesting. The simple rhythm of ‘ask and answer’ fascinates them. Some of their questions may sound silly to your ears, but how does a toddler know what’s silly and what’s profound? Baby Einstein asked, “Bupe, why is time different from space?” Not so silly, was it? When my children and grandchildren were young, they asked the most amazing questions, and often came up with incredibly creative and insightful answers. So what happened? Nothing! My teenage grands still ask great questions…and they’re never ‘silly’. But their questions are about things addressed inadequately, if at all, in their classrooms. Faced with an impenetrable and seemingly irrelevant curriculum, high school students look for other ways to make their 4 years of drudgery meaningful. Some of these ‘extracurricular’ activities are constructive, some harmless, and some extremely dangerous. For example: Drama, clubs, choruses, etc. After school and summertime jobs. Volunteer work in the community. Sports. Reckless behavior. Addiction (screens, alcohol, drugs): Mind-numbing escape from mind-numbed boredom. Delinquency. Self-harm. Wouldn’t it be marvelous if the organic process of growing-up was engaging and relevant enough to make such auxiliary activities optional, unnecessary, or undesirable? “I can’t get drunk tonight; I’m working on a really cool science experiment.” I’m willing to concede that most of what we learn in Grades 1 – 5 is useful. It may not always be pleasant, but generally speaking, the more you learn at that age, the happier you’ll be, both immediately and down the road. But sometime between Grade 5 and Grade 9, something happens. It may be gradual…or abrupt. In place of the general knowledge you somewhat willingly soaked up in primary school, information is now noxiously technical and specialized. It no longer speaks in any way to your native curiosity…or life experience. This article is not meant to be a How-To manual; but may we suggest a few guiding principles? Education is an activity. People learn by doing. That doesn’t have to mean Industrial Arts, though it certainly can. It can mean any activity that a person finds engaging, from birdwatching to star gazing. Challenge : many teens have already lost the sense of engagement itself; they no longer know what interests them. Education is ‘client centric’. It springs from a person’s native curiosity. Adolescents are people too. They observe patterns, ask questions, imagine answers, make tools, accomplish projects – just like Homo sapiens . Welcome, aliens; won’t you join us? Life is not Jeopardy ! Real education does not flow from answers to questions; it’s the other way around. People learn from other people, not from just books. Competence and enthusiasm are attractive…and contagious. We need to recruit teachers who are passionate about their subject matter if we hope students will become passionate as well. Life’s a banquet! Classrooms are ‘resource centers’ led by charismatic subject-matter experts. Teachers offer traditional classes (like Oxford lectures), meet with small groups of students with similar interests (seminars), and work on projects with individual students (tutorials). Ok, you caught me! None of these ideas are new. At best, we’ve given this ‘tired but untried’ agenda new urgency and broader purpose. Hope so! Because it’s necessary. Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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< Back What It's Like to Know It All David Cowles Jan 18, 2026 “it felt as though what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me…and it still seems that way to me today.” 1500 words; 8 minute read When I was 25 years old, I knew pretty much everything there was to know… and I still do! (Just ask my long-suffering spouse!) More precisely, I knew almost everything I needed to know. (Who needs Latin, or Trig, right?) Sure, there were important holes and considerable elaboration was still required but it felt as though what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me…and it still seems that way to me today. Of course, most of the socially conditioned propositions I accepted eagerly c. 1970 turned out to be false. I have replaced them with a new set of eagerly accepted, socially conditioned propositions. The content of my gnosis has changed ( doxa ) radically but the structure ( Aletheia ) has not…with one exception: I now know something I didn’t know 50 years ago. I now know that I didn’t know sh*t in 1970. Therefore, symmetry requires me to be at least open to the possibility that what I think I know now may be no more accurate or exhaustive, objectively speaking, than what I thought I knew 50 years ago. (Intuitively, I’m sure that’s true!) Let’s get clear: most of what I thought I knew at 25 was wrong – partly because of my own shortcomings but mostly because of the ‘primitive’ state of global knowledge c. 1970, compared to now. Compared with everything that is available to be known, objectively, it is likely that the sum total of everything that is known is infinitesimal. Put another way, the gap between what is known or knowable (at any point in time) and what is actual at that time may be infinite. Sometimes called the ‘Negative Way’ by philosophers and theologians, this approach was ‘popularized’ by Nicholas of Cusa (15th century CE): the most we can ever hope to know about God is that we know and can know nothing! That is not to say that knowledge is useless. It has enormous importance, but that importance is limited to local regions of spacetime and specific human projects . There is no such thing as a universal algorithm or problem solving technique. (Godel) What I know I know in relation to a specific undertaking in a specific region of spacetime. Shift my situs or my focus and you change my gnosis . Speaking simplistically, every actual entity, every event, every undertaking is concerned with knowledge at three levels: (1) what is actual, (2) what is knowable, (3) what is known. By ‘actual’ I mean an exhaustively detailed account of the event itself. By ‘known’ I refer to the sum total of true propositions I entertain relative to the event. By ‘knowable’ I mean the universe of true propositions, relevant to the event, that lie within my universe of discourse . A newborn does not know that she does not know the structure of the solar system. Not her fault. It’s just not in her universe of discourse. So we don’t say that her intuitive model is ‘wrong’ – she can’t be expected to know what she can’t even imagine. In order for X to be knowable , it is necessary that I be able to form propositions related to X. That requires something akin to a language, though it need not be verbal. Musical chords, for example, work just as well. Rhythms in jazz. Rhyme in poetry. How about olfactory layers in haute cuisine ? Or the interplay of light and shadow in fine art? My friend is an oenophile – he can’t drink a glass of house wine without detecting hints of leather and cassis. Me, I just wait for the buzz. My friend can taste the wine same as me, but he can’t ‘know’ the wine until he is able to place it in a conceptual matrix populated by ‘cigar, must, and fruit’. Me, I don’t know what I don’t know about wine. I barely know that there is something to know beyond the obvious. My friend’s detailed knowledge vastly exceeds mine, but it is likely that I know as much, in proportion to what we each know to be knowable, as my friend does. So let’s return to the opening sentence: “When I was 25 years old, I knew pretty much everything there was to know…and I still do!” I might have more accurately have said, “When I was 25 years old, I knew a healthy portion of everything I knew to be knowable…and 50 years later, I still know that same ‘healthy portion’, although what I know is radically different.” To be clear, the propositions that I entertained as true in 1970 have almost all disappeared or changed, replaced by new, unanticipated factoids. But the ratio of what’s known to what’s knowable is unchanged. This phenomenon strikes me whenever I read Genesis . The authors had no telescopes, microscopes, or particle accelerators. They knew nothing about genetics (DNA, gene mutation, evolution, etc.). Yet they produced a work that probably contains as large a portion of what was available to be known - in these disciplines at that time - as any textbook today. So which is more true, Genesis’ creation story or Hoyle’s steady state model of the universe; the question is inherently undecidable and therefore meaningless. In business, I often heard it said, “There are 3 kinds of lies – white lies, damn lies, and statistics.” In that spirit I would say that there are 3 ways something may be knowable : (A) it may be objectively knowable, i.e. it’s available to be known, (B) it may be subjectively knowable, i.e. it’s available for me to know it, and (C) it may actually be known, i.e. I know it. Gnosis is fractal! In proportion to what is subjectively available to be known by me, my level of actual knowledge is always more or less constant…as is yours…regardless of scale, regardless of topic, even if we have little else in common. So let’s draw some conclusions. Depending on your model, what is objectively knowable (A, above) is either unimaginably vast…or infinite. If it is the latter, then whatever is subjectively knowable (B, above) is effectively zero relative to A. In any case it is miniscule. So you get no ‘extra credit’ for your grotesquely inflated universe of discourse (B); in the end, we’re all drowning in the same sea (A). Likewise, we’re all in the same boat when we compare what we actually know (C) relative to what is available to us to be known (B). So what? Well, Sheldon over there explains things using an impenetrably complex model derived from cutting edge mathematical physics. Missy on the other hand imagines God as an emaciated version of Santa Claus – a kindly old man (sic) with twinkling blue eyes and a flowing white beard, sporting Joseph’s technicolor dream coat. Who’s right? Both…and neither. But needless to say, Sheldon is cruelly dismissive of Missy’s metaphysics…and indeed, of Missy herself. How ‘stupid’ of her not to know what he knows! Is Sheldon right, or at least justified? No way! Missy knows the same proportion of what’s subjectively knowable to her as Sheldon knows of what’s subjectively knowable to him. Plus what’s knowable to each is the same proportion of what is available to be known. Sheldon, of course, wants to add another dimension of comparison. He wants to weigh his knowledge (C) against Missy’s (C’), but there is no warrant for doing so. The proposition itself is meaningless. C compares with C’ only if there is an absolute, transcendent standard to serve as the metric of comparison; but there is not. The model we’re presenting makes no provision for any such Platonic mysticism . What is objectively knowable is ill-defined and constantly in flux. The Roman Catholic liturgy offers a useful paradigm. It is more or less the same everywhere on earth, and as far back as the first century CE, and yet if you scratch 10 congregants, you’ll find 10 different cosmologies, theologies, and eschatologies. So who’s right? They all are…and no one is. They all know the same proportion of what is subjectively available to them to be known (B). But the temptation to compare actual knowns (C) can be overwhelming. What percentage of life’s acrimony boils down to I’m right and you’re wrong ? How different would life be if we eliminated this dimension of conflict! Note : This is neither skepticism nor relativism . Each of us has an obligation to know as much as we can within our universes of discourse and to expand those universes, our conceptual vocabularies, as far as possible. We are not, however, obligated, or even allowed, to evaluate what we know relative to what others know. What others know can only be evaluated relative to what is subjectively knowable within their universes of discourse and we have no direct, independent access to that information. Two corollaries: (1) There is no room in philosophy or science for intellectual pride, and (2) we can learn from everyone’s models because all such models represent good faith efforts to express the ineffable. *** Stadia I (2004) by Julie Mehretu is a large abstract painting in ink and acrylic that uses layered architectural lines, flags, and geometric forms to evoke the dynamic, chaotic energy of stadium spaces and other large‑scale public arenas. The composition’s complex interplay of marks and colors reflects Mehretu’s interest in how collective environments, movement, and social structures intersect in contemporary urban life. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. 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< Back The Crucible Challenge Winner: Integrity vs. Life Grace Krzenski We are thrilled to share with you the winning essay from our first Young Writers Challenge, this one conducted exclusively at Cabrini High School in New Orleans. Our winner, Grace Krzenski, answered the prompt, "Why do you think Arthur Miller decided to call his play 'The Crucible' and which definition of crucible do you think Miller had in mind when he wrote his play?" Grace's essay has also awarded her $100. Congratulations, Grace! In the spring of 1692, Abigail Williams and Betty Parris, two children, started what would become a full-blown witch hunt that would result in the death of twenty people and the imprisonment of at least one hundred. Today we refer to this as The Salem Witch Trials. Arthur Miller, author of the 1953 play entitled The Crucible uses this unfortunate period of history to reveal what happens when fear and hysteria take control. According to dictionary.com , the word crucible is “used to refer to [a situation] that represents an extreme trial for someone, especially a situation that tests courage or preparedness.” Arthur Miller titled his play as he did in order to show that the residents of Salem were put to a moral test: they could tell the truth and die, or lie and live. Characters John Proctor and Tituba personify this moral dilemma and the two courses of action it presents. More specifically, John Proctor chooses integrity over life, while Tituba forfeits her integrity to live. John Proctor, a farmer in his mid-thirties, is cast as a morally challenged man who is not afraid to stand alone. Early in the play, we learn that he has chosen to stop going to church because he despises the sermons, and we also learn that he has had an affair with his servant, Abigail Williams. Clearly, John Proctor is an imperfect man; however, he has one incredibly redeeming quality: he cannot cling to a lie in order to save himself. Despite his absence from church and his infidelity, he passes the ultimate moral test when he refuses to perpetuate the lies that resulted in the death and imprisonment of so many in Salem. He stands alone when it would have been easier to do what so many others did; they lied to save their lives. Shortly before he is hung, he says, “I cannot throw away my life in a lie, even though it would save my life.” To John Proctor, life without the goodness of your word is not worth living. On the other hand, Tituba, Reverend Parris’s slave from Barbados, chooses life over integrity. Tituba is the first to be accused when Abigail Williams, Reverend Parris’s niece, claims that Tituba made her drink blood. Abigail does this to shift blame from herself to Tituba because at the time, witchery was a “hangin’ error.” When Tituba realizes that she will be faced with a fatal beating or hanging on the gallows, she confesses to witchcraft and quickly incriminates two others, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, both easy targets in the community. While one can empathize with Tituba’s choice, certainly John Proctor is the more admirable character; he chooses integrity above all else. However, it’s likely that Miller wants us to understand that this “crucible,” this test, is complicated, and that the way one responds cannot be so easily judged because fear and hysteria obscure both reason and the truth. So, while Tituba lies to save her life, it’s hard to condemn her. In short, Arthur Miller prompts readers and viewers to carefully consider the moral dilemmas in their own lives and to think about what lessons they might learn from what happened in Salem. At what point is it okay to lie? Is life more important than one’s integrity? Moreover, is it vain to choose integrity over life? These are the questions that Miller’s masterpiece raises. So, did John Proctor pass the test? Did Tituba pass it? It’s difficult to say definitively because it all depends upon what is most important to each individual. Grace Krzenski is a junior at Cabrini High School , New Orleans, where she enjoys studying science and English. Grace is on the varsity Cabrini basketball team, and in her spare time enjoys reading, playing basketball, and spending time with family and friends. She is looking forward to attending college somewhere in the southern states to study marine biology. Do you run an English or philosophy program at a school in search of a publisher for your students' content? Look no further! Email editor@aletheitoday.com for more information about how ATM can bring your young writers to the next level and get your department the publicity it deserves. Previous Next

< Back The Wisdom of Wisdom David Cowles Jun 9, 2026 “Who would have guessed that the struggle of Good vs. Evil would boil down to a debate pitting King Solomon against Bertrand Russell?” 1500 Words, 7 minute read The Old Testament Book of Wisdom is traditionally attributed to King Solomon (10 th century BCE) but it was actually written in the 2 nd century, in Greek (vs. Hebrew or Aramaic), and most likely in Alexandria (Egypt, not Virginia…and not in Palestine). 200 years before Jesus, the author of Wisdom was already attempting to reconcile Judaism with the best of Greek philosophy – a noble project, elaborated by the Apostles John and Paul and culminating in the work of Thomas Aquinas a millennium later. That said, the brilliance of Wisdom could not be fully appreciated until the 20 th century CE, when Solomon, the wisest man of his generation, met Bertrand Russell (the wisest man of his?) in the mud wrestling pit at the Oxford Union. Why the grudge? It’s just a tiff about gods, nature, math, logic, and God. I mean, Jeez, it’s not the World Cup or anything! But still… “Some men (sic) see things as they are and ask Why . I dream of things that never were and ask Why not .” (Bobby Kennedy) Our Solomon (KS) is firmly in the first camp; he is a pragmatist. He recognizes an abundance (not necessarily a preponderance) of Beauty (Nature), Truth (Order), and Justice (Harmony) in the World. When he asks, “Why?” the answer (to him) is obvious: God! KS might have said, “God created the World, God sustains the World, and the World is made in God’s image and likeness. Any Beauty, Truth or Justice (i.e. any Good ) that happens in this World is a reflection/refraction of God’s nature and/or the fruit of God’s generative (and generous) activity.” He might have said that! Our Russell (BR) did not deny the existence of ‘good things’ and he did not even dispute the idea that ‘all good things’ could constitute ‘a set’ (math & logic), i.e. the Set of all Good things. Russell argued on logical grounds that the ‘Set of all Good things’ (SG) could not itself be a good thing, i.e. that no set can be a member of itself. This seems counterintuitive. Of course SG is a good thing; therefore it must be a member of the Set of all Good Things. And this doesn’t seem to be a one off anomaly. The set of all mathematical objects is itself a mathematical object; no? How about the set of all technologies? The set of all information? I could go on. Of course, there are sets that are not members of themselves. The set of all horses is not a horse. Clearly, there is room here for pluralism, but no, BR is insistent - so much so that he makes it an Axiom of Logic that no set may be a member of itself (even if it obviously is). ( Note : Russell gets around this apparent absurdity by saying that when a set is a member of itself, it is not a set after all but a class .) The set of Logical Axioms is a secular version of Moses’ Ten Commandments so when BR spoke ex cathedra , the world dutifully went silent…and stayed that way for more than half a century…until one brave soul (or fool) dared to shout, “Look, BR has no clothes!” Wisdom defeats Russell, a British Empiricist at heart, with an argument that begins with their shared recognition of Good (i.e. Beauty, Truth, Justice) in the World. Humans instinctively and correctly recognize the ‘divine’ in concrete manifestations of such Virtues. Sincerely if mistakenly, we elevate ‘good things’ to the level of ‘god things’, aka gods. The Sun is good; we recognize it, we deify it ( Ra ), and ultimately, we worship it; we are animists. Only later do we personify it ( Helios ); now we are pagans. Polytheism has its plusses: e.g. its penchant to recognize traces of divinity throughout the natural world; but on the other hand, the tendency for gods to proliferate makes the system quite unwieldy. What can be deified and what can’t? The wind, a waterfall, an eddy, my uncle’s pipe? The pagan equivalent of the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) would have to be in nearly continuous session, sorting out the conflicting claims of the pseudo-divine. Here, theology reached an inflection point: Do we collapse the various gods into a single divinity (monotheism) permeating all things or do we go all in on idolatry? Do we solve the problem of divine proliferation by designating ever more gods? And when we have exhausted Nature’s storehouse, do we start manufacturing our own gods, i.e. idols? This is the turn that has Solomon in a snit. It’s one thing to associate unique gods with specific natural phenomena. The impulse is benign. It’s quite another thing for us to make our own gods. Instead of a God who ‘made all things’ and/or is ‘incarnate’ in the World, we make gods of the works of our own hands. We become creator, gods are our creatures. We reduce divinity to the status of a bobble, a trinket, or a toy. That is a level of blasphemy that Solomon, for all his patience and wisdom, simply could not countenance. This time, we don’t need to put words in Solomon’s mouth; we have his own words (by attribution), compliments of the Book of Wisdom (chapters 13, 14): “ For all men who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature; for they were unable from the good things that are seen to know him who exists unseen, nor did they recognize the craftsman while paying heed to his works… They should have realized that these things have a master and that he is much greater than all of them, for he is the creator of beauty… (Solomon is clear: Beauty is a thing-in-itself, an objective reality, and not a subjective accident but the product of intentional agency.) “Yet these men are little to be blamed, for perhaps they go astray while seeking God and desiring to find him. For as they live among his works, they keep searching, and they trust in what they see, because the things that are seen are beautiful.“ But the most miserable people of all are those who rest their hopes on lifeless things, who worship things that have been made by human hands—images of animals artistically made from gold and silver, or some useless stone carved by someone years ago… “The idol made with hands is accursed, and so is he who made it; because he did the work and a perishable thing was called god . The ungodly man and his ungodliness are equally hateful to God; what was done will be punished together along with him who did it… For the worship of idols not to be named is the beginning and cause and end of every evil.” According to Solomon, all ‘beautiful things’ share a common quality (beauty), thereby disclosing the real existence of Beauty. Beauty per se is ontologically prior to its expression in various concrete objects and events. The set of ‘all things bright and beautiful’, by virtue of their shared Beauty is itself a beautiful thing; therefore Beauty, the common element of every beautiful thing, the element that makes the ‘beautiful’ beautiful, is itself beautiful and therefore is itself a member of the ‘set of beautiful things’. God is good, and God is the Good per se , and the Good is experienced in our World as Beauty, Truth, and Justice. Consequently, Keats can write, “Beauty is truth and truth beauty.” Both are manifestations of the Good and therefore manifestations of God. God is both beautiful and Beauty per se . Likewise, God is both truthful and Truth; God is just and Justice. Therefore God is a member of the set of all things beautiful, the set of all things true, and the set of all things just. Recognizing that beautiful, true, and just things exist in the world, understanding that Beauty, Truth, and Justice are objective absolutes, neither subjective nor relative, and concluding that Beauty, Truth, and Justice imply intentional agency (i.e. the existence of God) preclude any rational preference for Evil over Good. Conversely, all evil is at its root a rejection of what is beautiful, true or just in deference to some other pseudo-value (e.g. unjust gain, lust, power, sloth), i.e. in deference to the works of our own hands, i.e. in deference to idols. Who would have guessed that the struggle of Good vs. Evil would boil down to a debate pitting King Solomon, ‘the baby splitter’, against ‘better red than dead’ Bertrand Russell? But that is the whacky world of Intellectual History…and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else! Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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< Back How 2024 Became 1959…Again David Cowles Dec 10, 2024 “In both the UK and US, the voters who made a difference in 2024 were the voters who chose not to make a difference, Alienated Voters who just dropped out.” On October 15, 2023, Aletheia Today published an article on a mayoral race that took place in Boston 60 years ago. No, we did not use that article to predict with uncanny accuracy the outcome of 2024‘s Presidential Election…but we were definitely looking ahead. “This is a book about…people who have come to believe that voting is meaningless and useless because politicians or those who influence politicians are corrupt, selfish, and beyond popular control.” – Surely this is a quote from some just released rehash of recent events, correct? Not even close. This is the opening paragraph of a book published in 1960: The Alienated Voter , by Professor Murray Levin (d. 1999). Levin’s singular contribution to ‘electoral science’ is his discovery of a new species of voter that he called ‘Alienated’. The Alienated Voter (AV) does not vote with the intention of reshaping public policy or even in the hope of improving conditions for herself, her family and her friends. She no longer believes such things are possible. The Alienated Voter doubts her elected representatives have the power…or even the desire…to make life better for her. They are looking out for themselves…and their cronies. In any event, their influence is limited by a ‘system’ that co-opts every good intention for its own undemocratic ends. Nor is the AV a ‘message voter’. Who would she be messaging? In her world, there’s no one worthy of such a message. AV often does not belong to any political party; she has no discernable ‘ideology’. If challenged, she simply says, “I’m not political.” and turns away. But in fact, she is very political! She devours alternative media, rounding out the personal version of Leviathan she carries in her head. Nor is AV an ‘identity voter’. Her ‘class’, the exploited . Her ‘race’, the powerless . Contacted by a pollster, she is unashamed, “I did not vote!” and she wears that like a badge of honor, and scoffs, at least to herself, at her misguided neighbors who proudly but foolishly display their “I voted” stickers, like first graders hoping for a treat. The Alienated Voter knows, “There will be no treat!” Let me set the scene. It’s Boston, 1959. The City’s incumbent mayor is not running for reelection. The runner-up in the previous mayoral race, State Senate President John Powers, has been informally designated ‘mayor presumptive’ by the Boston ‘establishment’ and its media outlets. (Ring any bells?) Nevertheless four brave candidates entered the nonpartisan primary against Powers. Possibly the least well known of them: Registrar of Probate John Collins. As expected, Powers won the primary easily with 34% of the votes cast. Surprisingly, Collins finished second, but with only 22% of the total. The Boston media promptly promoted Powers from ‘mayor presumptive’ to ‘incoming mayor’. The outcome of the final election was never in doubt…until about 8:45 PM on the evening of November 3, 1959. At the time, Boston was best understood as an uneasy confederation of ethnically defined neighborhoods. Tell me your postal code (no zip codes yet) and I could tell you where your ancestors were from, what religion you practiced, and how much money you made. “You are where you live.” Yet, Levin’s study showed that religion, income, and ethnicity played no significant role in the 1959 election results. Collins won the votes of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, high and low income earners, Irish, Italian, Yankee and African American voters. Somehow, a consensus emerged without anyone (not even Collins) explicitly calling for it. Nobody saw it coming. It was not reflected in the size of crowds at political rallies; it was not reflected in public opinion polls. It happened under the radar, at bus stops and in barrooms, and it cut across all the city’s neighborhoods. In the end, Collins won, 56% to 44%. Powers carried only 4 of Boston’s 22 wards; he’d been expected to win them all. Collins turned a 12% primary deficit into an astonishing 12% election day margin. Both candidates received more votes in the final election than they had in the preliminary. Powers doubled his primary vote total, but Collins quadrupled his (from 28,000 to 114,000). 10% of those who voted for Collins in the final had voted for Powers in the preliminary! How does that happen? The verdict of Boston’s voters was delivered loudly…and clearly: “We won’t let the city’s ‘power elite’ take us for granted any longer.” May I ask you a question? The last time you voted in an election, did you think your preferred candidate would do a better job than their opponent? Not necessarily a ‘good’ job but a ‘better than the alternative’ job? Of course you did…you’re not an Alienated Voter. Professor Levin’s most astonishing finding was that a majority of voters in Boston’s Mayoral election did not think their candidate would be a better mayor than his opponent. This tendency was especially prominent among Collins voters. Voters did not vote for Collins; they didn’t even vote against Powers. They voted against a system that took them for granted. This phenomenon resurfaced in 2024, this time on a national stage. Just look at the 2024 vote totals: the Republican got just 3,000,000 votes more than last time – not enough to change the result; but his Democratic opponent got 6,000,000 fewer votes – and that’s what flipped the switch! The same thing just happened in the United Kingdom. Labour received only a few more votes in their 2024 landslide than they had in their 2019 rout; but the Tories received 6,000,000 fewer votes in 2024. In both UK and US, the voters who made a difference in 2024 were the voters who chose not to make a difference, Alienated Voters who just dropped out. How do we know that these results can be attributed to alienation and not just apathy? In the final New York Times/Siena College national poll in late October , nearly two-thirds of voters said the government was “mostly working to benefit itself and the elites,” rather than “the people and the country.” The establishment parties never had a chance! Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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< Back Healthcare – AI First David Cowles Jun 1, 2025 Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Healthcare has been an issue in the US since the mid-60’s and it has perhaps been issue #1 over the last 40 years. Today, it consumes almost 20% of our GDP but 30% of that cost is spent on treatment that is not appropriate for the patient’s actual condition. We’ve tried provider networks, we’ve tried managed care, we’ve tried consumerism, we’ve tried wellness – nothing works! Surprised? We know that government control, price fixing, supply rationing, and demand management never work…ever, anywhere, for almost anything. So why should healthcare be any different? What does work, almost always, almost everywhere, for almost anything? Technology. Why not give it a go? Lord knows we’re tried everything else. Now don’t get me wrong. Doctors know a lot; they know how to do a lot of things. But the system is structured so that this knowledge rarely benefits the typical patient during a typical interaction. ‘Patient management’ takes the place of genuine care. So, need a brain transplant? Come to the US! Have a skin rash? Rub mud on it…under the supervision of a qualified holistic healer, of course. Or add an AI Bot to your care team and see what happens: Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Happy Thanksgiving David Cowles Nov 24, 2021 Happy Thanksgiving! Really? With COVID, economic insecurity, terrorism, etc. what do we have to be thankful for? Only everything! Literally…every thing. Being is a function of being good. (Don’t tell that to my 10 year old self.) We ‘are’ only in so far as we are ‘good’. We don’t realize it, but we have a blind spot. Sadly, we are not “all that we could be”. But what is this thing called ‘Good’ that we celebrate this week? It’s God. It’s what makes Being be. It is the yardstick by which we measure everything in our world. But because it is a yardstick, it can’t be among the things that it measures. It must transcend our everyday world. And what transcends our everyday world is what we call “God”. Happy Thanksgiving! Really? With COVID, economic insecurity, terrorism, etc. what do we have to be thankful for? Only everything! Literally…every thing. Being is a function of being good. (Don’t tell that to my 10 year old self.) We ‘are’ only in so far as we are ‘good’. We don’t realize it, but we have a blind spot. Sadly, we are not “all that we could be”. But what is this thing called ‘Good’ that we celebrate this week? It’s God. It’s what makes Being be. It is the yardstick by which we measure everything in our world. But because it is a yardstick, it can’t be among the things that it measures. It must transcend our everyday world. And what transcends our everyday world is what we call “God”. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Mark’s Diary – Notes for a Screenplay David Cowles “And so they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were filled with awe, while those who followed behind were afraid.” Narrator : (Quoting Isaiah) “Here is my messenger whom I send ahead, a voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare a way for the Lord; make straight his path’.” Direction : As the Narrator is reciting Isaiah, the words are captioned in white letters across a black screen. Scene #1: John is baptizing pilgrims in the waters of the River Jordan. Jesus approaches and is baptized. Chorus (of 3): “This is my beloved son on whom my favor rests.” Scene #2: Jesus is praying alone in the wilderness, wrestling with the temptations of Satan. Learning that John has been arrested, he enters Galilee, proclaiming the Good News to everyone, everywhere. Jesus : “The kingdom of God is at hand! Repent and believe the good news.” Scene #3: As he walks along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus recruits his first apostles, Simon (Peter), Andrew, James, and John, fishermen and merchants from the local bourgeoisie. Jesus : “Come, I will make you fishers of men.” Scene #4: On the Sabbath, Jesus enters the synagogue at Capernaum, the major city in the region, and teaches the rapt congregation with authority. (We don’t hear the specifics of the teaching.) As he is speaking, an obviously troubled man interrupts and exposes Jesus’ identity: Chorus : “I know who you are, holy one of God.” Jesus : “Silence! …Come out of him!” Direction : Jesus is piqued at the interruption and at the untimely disclosure and, knowing it to be the work of demons, Jesus cures the man just to silence him, but it’s too late. He’s created a stir! It’s early days but already, things are not going as smoothly as expected. Scene #5: Jesus takes refuge in Simon’s house where he heals Simon’s mother-in-law as well as others from the town. Before dawn, Jesus slips out, hoping to pray alone, but Simon et al. soon follow. Scene #6: Now Jesus and his tiny band roam the hills of Galilee, sticking mainly to byways and speaking only in rural villages. Along the way, Jesus meets and cures a leper, and swears him to silence. Jesus : “Show yourself only to the priest.” Narrator : “But the man went out and made the whole story public, until Jesus could no longer show himself in any town. He was forced to remain in deserted places, but the people continued to come.” Direction : The Gospel of Mark includes numerous instances of Jesus performing miracles, usually swearing his beneficiaries to silence that they often break. We have staged a few of these miracles but the Director should feel free to stage additional miracle stories from the Gospel as she sees fit. Scene #7: Jesus and his disciples are walking through a corn field; it happens to be the Sabbath. The scene suggests Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows . The apostles are picking, peeling and eating ears of corn. Chorus : “Why do they do what is forbidden on the Sabbath?” Jesus : “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Son of Man is sovereign, even over the Sabbath.” Narrator : “So the Pharisees began plotting against him with the partisans of King Herod to see how they could do away with him…Then Jesus went up into the hill country and called the men he wanted, and they joined him. In all, he appointed 12 to be his companions.” Scene #8: As Jesus and his followers continued on their way, Jesus takes the opportunity to teach: Jesus : “Nothing is hidden unless it is to be disclosed, the measure you give is the measure you will receive…and more besides. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed , the smallest of all seeds…Once sown, it grows taller than any other plant and forms branches so large that birds can settle in its shade.” Scene #9, Narrator : “Once more, a crowd has gathered around Jesus so that he’s had no chance to eat. His family set out to take charge of him for people were saying that Jesus was out of his mind. When his mother and his brothers arrive, they remain outside and send a message into Jesus.” Chorus : “Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you.” Direction : Jesus is mortified at being summoned home for supper as if he were a little child. Angry, he looks for an opportunity to regain lost dignity. Jesus : “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?... Whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, my mother.” Direction: But the damage has been done. Chorus : “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? Are not his sisters here with us? Narrator: “So he could no longer work miracles there…he was taken aback by their lack of faith.” Jesus : Let’s cross over to the other side of the lake. Direction : Here for the first time a map of the region appears on the screen. As the film continues, the map reappears and Jesus’ movements are tracked. Map : Jesus travels across the Sea of Galilee from Bethsaida on the northern shore to the Decapolis, a group of 10 Greek speaking towns on the Southeastern shore. Scene #10, Narrator : “As Jesus stepped ashore, a man possessed by demons, who cut himself with stones, came up to him.” Jesus : “Come out of this man!” Narrator : “Now there happened to be a large herd of pigs nearby. The demons went into the pigs and the herd rushed over the cliff, into the lake, and drowned, and the spectators begged Jesus to leave the area.” Scene #11, Narrator : “So Jesus crossed back over to Gailee. Upon his arrival, Jairus, the leader of a local synagogue, approached him.” Jarius : “My little daughter is at death’s door. I beg you, ‘Come, lay hands on her, cure her, save her life’.” Jesus sets out but midway, messengers arrive. Chorus : “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Rabbi further?” Jesus : “Do not be afraid. Only have faith.” Narrator : “He allowed only Peter, James and John to accompany him to the leader’s house where there was a great commotion with loud crying and wailing.” Jesus : “Why this wailing? The child is not dead, she is asleep.” (Chorus laughs derisively.) “Get up my child,” and she rises. Scene #12, Narrator : “They set off secretly by boat, searching for an isolated place. But when he came ashore, Jesus saw a great crowd.” Chorus : “This is a lonely place, and it is getting very late. Send the people off to the farms and villages to buy themselves something to eat.” Jesus : “Give them something to eat yourselves. How many loaves have you?” Chorus : “Five loaves, and two fish as well.” Narrator : “Jesus took the five loaves, looked up to heaven, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to the disciples to distribute. He also divided up the fish. Those who ate numbered 5,000 and they ate to their hearts’ content. 12 large baskets full of scraps were gathered up at the end. “Then Jesus left this place and went to the territory of Tyre.” Map : Jesus route to Lebanon (Tyre), 50 miles northeast, a 3 day journey at that time. “He found a house to stay in and would have liked to remain there unrecognized, but that was impossible. On his return, he went by way of Sidon and the Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee…” Map : Jesus’ route through Lebanon, Syria and Jordan is incredibly circuitous. He ends up back at the Sea of Galilee but now he is back on the Eastern Shore. Emphasis should be placed on how much distance Jesus keeps between himself and his native Galilee. Scene #13, Narrator : “…There Jesus fed another 4,000 pilgrims with 7 loaves and several fish; this time 7 baskets of scraps were collected.” Direction : The disciples are murmuring among themselves. They appear bewildered. Jesus : “Do you still not understand? Are your minds closed? When I broke the 5 loaves among the 5000, how many baskets full of scraps did you gather?” Chorus : “Twelve.” Direction : Here the map can morph or flip into a blackboard/whiteboard. As the Narrator speaks, the following image gradually appears on the screen: ‘5 loaves/5000 people →12 baskets’ Jesus : “And how many when I broke the 7 loaves among the 4,000? Chorus : “Seven.” ‘7 loaves/4000 people → 7 baskets’ Jesus (exasperated): “Do you still not understand?” Direction: Tensions are clearly on the rise. Jesus is testy, the disciples are squabbling among themselves, and everyone is growing restless. Chorus : “We have left everything to become your followers.” Jesus : “There is no one who has given up home, brothers or sisters, mother, father, children or land for my sake who will not receive 100 times as much… and eternal life.” Direction: But like Washington at Valley Forge, Jesus realizes he can wait no longer. He must act…or risk losing his followers. It’s now…or never! Jesus : “Now we are going to Jerusalem where the Son of Man will be given up to the chief priests and the doctors of the law. They will condemn him to death and hand him over to the occupiers. He will be mocked, spat upon, flogged and killed; but three days later, he will rise again!” Narrator: “And so they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were filled with awe, while those who followed behind were afraid.” Director’s Note: This scene should be staged to suggest Kerouac’s On the Road , Ken Kesey’s ‘Merry Pranksters’, etc. As they proceed, crosses may barely be seen punctuating the far distant skyline. Curtain David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com Return to Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back CVS and Consciousness David Cowles Oct 24, 2023 “…Congratulations…you just created your first universe. May I call you God? Or would you prefer Lord of ‘the Ring’?” Riddle : What does a cash register receipt from CVS have in common with an electron, human consciousness, and political revolution? Give up? Answer : They all exhibit 720° symmetry. What? 720° symmetry? That’s ridiculous! You can have 90° symmetry, 180° symmetry, 360° symmetry, but never 720°. That’s just not a thing. The idea itself is ridiculous. I agree with you. It is ridiculous…and yet, it is a thing. May I demonstrate? Next time you visit a CVS, please don’t throw away the mile-long cash register receipt they give you at check-out. Instead, turn it into a loop—but not just any loop—a special kind of loop known as a Möbius strip. Here’s how (not recommended for readers under the age of 3): Hold the two ends of the receipt, one in each hand. Twist one end 180 degrees. Scotch tape the two ends together. Not too challenging, but congratulations anyhow: you just created your first universe. May I call you God ? Or would you prefer Lord of ‘the Ring’ ? But now what can you do with your Precious ? Run your finger along its surface. Keep going. Still going? It’s endless, isn’t it? You’ve taken an everyday rectangle, albeit elongated, with well-defined sides and edges and turned it into a one-sided loop with no boundary. You’ve created what topologists call a ‘non-orientable’ surface. Now pick a spot on the ‘strip’ and imagine an arrow on that spot, pointing up; slide that arrow to the right or left until you come back to where you started (360°). Hmm, something’s different, isn’t it? Your arrow is pointing down now, as if it were a reflection of the original arrow. Of course, it is the original arrow, only now it’s ‘disoriented’, a bit like me after a long night at my local . But no problem! Just keep going in the same direction. Another 360° et voilà , your arrow’s pointing up again. Your universe is symmetrical after all, but that symmetry requires 720° of revolution, not the meager 360°, as in my boring universe. At first, it seems amazing that we can create 720°symmetry in 360° space, but the phenomenon is not as rare as you might suppose. Ever heard of an electron? Electrons have something called spin – the subatomic analog of your finger running along the Möbius strip. We’re familiar with spheroids. Obviously, they exhibit 360° symmetry, right? Not necessarily. Turns out that the electron, and the proton, all massive subatomic particles, in fact, exhibit 720° symmetry. They behave like figures on a Möbius strip, not like baseballs. BTW, just in case you were wondering, massless particles like the photon generally exhibit boring old 360°symmetry, but the graviton is a bit of a twist : it exhibits 180° symmetry. 720° symmetry is important in another context: consciousness. I am aware of a table. For the sake of argument, let’s assume it’s a real table existing in a material world. Thanks to the properties of my central nervous system, I am aware of the look and feel of this table, but I am also aware of myself, and I am aware of myself being aware of the table. That’s consciousness! But what’s that ? Is it some sort of transcendental substance, a ‘soul’ perhaps? Or is it just another manifestation of a material ‘neural net’? Neither. It’s a topological feature of Universe per se . Like mass and energy, particles and waves, it’s akin to the property of reflection: the universe reflects itself. Apparently, self-reflection is an irreducible property of Being. Perhaps it’s what Being is. That’s not to say that self-reflection is always, or even usually, conscious. Consciousness rises to the level of a phenomenon only in the context of certain well-defined, but currently unspecified, physical structures. Once upon a time, people broke Universe down into ‘mind’ and ‘matter." Gilbert Ryle ( The Concept of Mind ) put an end to that. He demonstrated that that sort of dualism makes no sense. Mind and matter, like mind and body, are just different aspects of one phenomenon. Today our models are more nuanced. But using the old terminology, it turns out that both mind (consciousness) and matter (massive particles) exhibit 720° symmetry. This appears to be the real, deep structure of Being, not the anemic ‘special case’ abstraction we know as 360° symmetry. As usual, we have things upside down! Universe is characterized by 720° symmetry; 360° symmetry is a relatively rare, ‘degenerate’ exception. Yet we’ve mistaken the exception to the rule…once again! We’ve imprisoned ourselves in a ‘toy universe’. We ‘swim’ in Maya . “You say you want a revolution” ( The Beatles )? Well, you’re at home here! And what is a revolution other than the inversion of the socio-economic arrow? Marx said it well: a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. The Psalmists, Isaiah and Mark, did even better: “The stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone.” But the prize for Best Said goes to The Who : “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” The Theory of Revolution requires that the fabric of society (the political logos ) be non-orientable. How else can we turn an up-arrow down? But, of course that could never happen in the real world, could it? We’ve never seen a revolutionary cadre turn into a new aristocracy, have we? Oh and BTW, I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn that has your name written all over it. Let’s chat. Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Why the Universe Doesn’t Fall Apart David Cowles Sep 14, 2025 “What holds everything together? How is it that Universe is a universe, that it has an identity?” Ever since Woody Allen ‘discovered’ cosmic inflation ( Annie Hall ), folks have been asking, “So why doesn’t the Universe simply fall apart? What holds everything together? How is it that Universe is a uni verse, that it has an identity, that we can make statements that apply to the whole qua whole rather than to just some (or the sum) of its parts?” The Universe consists of ‘events’ – quanta of Being, connected in some way(s) to constitute a single event, a Uni verse. We’re all familiar with the 4 interactive forces: EM, Strong, Weak, and Gravity. They connect events laterally. Every event is linked to other events by these reciprocating forces and wholes are equal to the sum of their parts. It is my hypothesis that a universe of events linked together in this way only is not possible. At the end of the day, these bonds are insufficient to generate the degree of solidarity required. Also, according to this formalism, it is not even possible to define the whole as an ‘event’…which is a problem for a Universe that consists entirely of events. The actual Universe links events in additional ways. For instance, events are linked via a phenomenon known as Quantum Entanglement . In 1964, John Bell proved (and Alan Aspect later confirmed) that quantum events that interacted strongly in the past remain connected, i.e. entangled, in the present. In essence, these events, no matter how remote they may be in spacetime, behave as a single event. Like a skein of yarn, the Universe is inextricably tangled in this way; we call such a universe ‘non-local’. Non-locality provides an additional, stronger mode of connectivity between events. Our naïve notion of lateral connectivity via the 4 forces is challenged by the phenomenon of spatial separation. Space works at cross purposes to 2 of the forces. These forces (EM and Gravity) decline in strength according to the square of the distance between entities (inverse square law), i.e. doubling the distance between events reduces the strength of EM and Gravitational attractions by 75%. And on top of that, the Universe is continuing to expand, possibly at an accelerating rate. Not good news for cosmic solidarity! There is a third mode of connectivity which is even less intuitive. The events that make up the Universe are held together, and given definition, i.e. identity, by Universe itself. This mode of connectivity is counter-intuitive only because we are stuck in a ‘bottoms-up’ mindset. We are used to causes that produce effects, parts that form wholes. Why should this be so? Why should the whole be defined solely by its parts? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the whole to create its own internal partitions, its own structures? We tacitly acknowledge this whenever we talk about a whole being greater than the sum of its parts. This phenomenon masquerades in our ‘bottoms up’ world as teleology, tachyons, synergy, etc. The synthesis of a whole from its parts is what we call an ‘accident’ while the distillation of parts by its whole is what we call an ‘intention’. Intentionality is the opposite of determination just as accidents are the opposite of effects. But we are instinctively uncomfortable with such a ‘top-down’ model. Would we really prefer to live in a world where future events are caused by their predecessors? How miserable! Effectively, such a Universe is compelled to perpetuate its past, albeit in different forms, without respite. Is this Hell? Thank God we don’t live in such a place! We are less familiar with wholes that define their parts, with effects that determine their own causes. Yet, the Apostle John based his 2450 year old Gospel on precisely such a structure: “In the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God and the logos was God. Logos was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through logos and without logos nothing that came to be came to be…” (Jn. 1:1 - 3) The order of things precedes the things that are ordered. “It from bit.” (Wheeler) Order does not arise epiphenomenally by a chance combination of unrelated elements. How could it? Without order , how do you get order? “It’s emergent,” you say; but emerging from what? Order naturally degrades (entropy); it does not suddenly manifest. Humpty Dumpty’s shell does not spontaneously reassemble, like ‘dem dry bones’ in Ezekial . Then how is it that discrete entities, with internal structure and external relations, come to be? Don’t say ‘bootstrapping’. It’s a fun concept and, of course, there are many circumstances in which entities do appear to order themselves spontaneously, but this is only because the principle of order ( logos ) pre-exists. Bootstrapping cannot account for ‘order’ per se . Being is ordered necessarily, not accidentally! Anaximander, for example, believed that entities co-actualize by granting each other ‘reck’ (i.e. consideration, ‘space’). But the potential of things to be, the order that they will manifest, pre-exists the things themselves. Potentiality precedes actuality. The 4 forces operate in a world that is quite familiar to us; it is Archimedean , meaning that it exhibits continuity that can be fully described using real numbers only (extended to include complex numbers). We love real numbers! And why not? Between any two real numbers there is always another real number…so it would seem that the requirement of continuity is well satisfied. It isn’t! At least not fully. Non-Archimedean geometries expand the domain to include ‘unreal’ numbers, e.g. hyperreal infinitesimals. Between the lowest positive real number and 0, there exists an infinite number of hyperreal infinitesimals . They add another level of continuity to the already continuous set of ‘reals’. Real, Schimel, what’s the difference? With Real Numbers, whenever a > b, there is always some number n so that n*b > a. Not so with hyperreals! This modification seems innocuous enough; but once again, it isn’t! Among its unexpected corollaries: All triangles are equilateral or isosceles. For any sphere, any point on or in that sphere can be taken as its center. For any two spheres, either one is wholly embedded in the other or they are entirely disjointed, i.e. there are no overlapping spheres, no mere tangencies. Without enrolling in Cal Tech, you can see intuitively that each of these corollaries describes another level of connectivity between events. It is our hypothesis that non-Archimedean geometries will be required to model Quantum Behavior (the whole < the sum of its parts) and Teleology (the whole > the sum of its parts) efficiently. We have tried to account for the solidarity of the universe with just the 4 ‘lateral forces’. They form the belt that holds ‘the cosmic wardrobe’ in place. Except it doesn’t. Unfortunately, the belt is not tight enough to prevent embarrassing and nihilating wardrobe malfunctions . Turns out, we need a pair of suspenders as well as a belt. Fortunately, we just happen to have the right accessories on hand. Think of entanglement as linkage operating ‘below’ the level of EM & Gravity and think of teleology as a bond operating from ‘above’; together, hold our Universe together. *** Kandinsky’s Composition VII (1913) unleashes a storm of interlacing lines, ovals, and color currents that compress themes he’d sketched separately—deluge, Last Judgment, and resurrection—into one vast, turbulent drama. Rather than depict a scene, it aims to sound in the viewer like music, using abstract form and rhythm to suggest spiritual upheaval and renewal. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Is the Universe an LLM? David Cowles Sep 11, 2025 “We had to invent AI, specifically LLMs, before we could understand NI (Natural Intelligence)…i.e. how Universe works.” The process of philosophical inquiry/scientific discovery is weird. Turns out, we had to invent AI, specifically LLMs (Large Language Models), before we could understand NI (Natural Intelligence), aka Science, Oral Torah, Natural Law, i.e. how the Universe works. ‘Before’ there is any thing , before there even was a before , or an after, there are Eternal Values, and these Eternal Values constitute the essence of the primordial Actual Entity ( aka God). These values are felt by everything that ever was, is, or will be - actually, virtually or potentially. They are universally attractive and motivating…but not irresistible. Events are free! To become is to pursue some configuration of Eternal Values as Subjective Aim. To be is to instantiate a specific configuration of Eternal Values as an Event ( aka Actual Entity). To have been is to have projected such a configuration of Eternal Values into the Actual Worlds of other Actual Entities. Being is a difference that makes a difference ( a la Gregory Bateson). If you cheekily challenge God in prayer, “What have you done for me lately?” his answer… not to put words in God’s mouth, but … would undoubtedly reference the Eternal Value like Beauty, Truth, and Justice. If you have ever enjoyed something good in preference to something less good, you have God to thank. Lasagna vs. Big Brother Slop , Beef Stroganoff vs. Hamburger Helper , an ice cold, bone dry martini vs. a warm glass of stale beer? Then thank God! It is because of Values that we can make these discriminations and it is because of God that we can access them. Values enter our Immanent World only when and as that World intersects with the Transcendent; whenever God intersects World, Values are communicated. And when is that? The intersection of the Transcendent and the Immanent is not to be understood primarily as (a) specific historical event(s) but rather as cosmic framework, i.e. logos . Every event is an intersection of the Transcendent with the Immanent. It is the Transcendent that constitutes the event as an event, but it is the Immanent that gives the event its ‘content’. That intersection is what defines an Event per se . The intersection of the Transcendent is coterminal with the Immanent but it occurs as three ‘moments’: Creation ( Alpha ), (2) Incarnation ( Emmanuel ), and (3) Apocalypse ( Omega ). Although we associate these moments with ‘stages’ of ontogenesis, they are not primarily occurrences but structures. They are ‘essentially cosmological’ before they are ‘accidentally historical’. Every event (Actual Entity) is a function of Creation, Incarnation, and Apocalypse. Creation may be viewed as a single proto-historic event but for that very reason it must also be viewed as a phase in the concrescence of every event. Creation is never one and done; to be, an event must tap into the Creative Process. Likewise, every event participates in the phenomena of Incarnation and Apocalypse. Creation, Incarnation, and Apocalypse constitute the three sides of Plato’s ontological triangle. Secular version : Liberty, Equality, Sorority. Theological version : Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Every event is embedded in at least one meta-event, and ultimately, every event is embedded in the ultimate meta-event, God. In 1 st Corinthians (15: 28), Paul discusses the ‘moment’ when God is “all in all”; Whitehead calls that moment God’s Consequent Nature . Being eternal, God is embedded in every event, and every event is embedded in God. Contrary to 20 th century Logic’s misguided Axiom of Foundation, God is even embedded in himself (Trinity). To be is to be an event and all events are (1) recursive and (2) reciprocal. ‘To be an Event’ is to reflect and act on oneself as one reflects ( Leibniz ) and acts on the external world. Ultimately, every subject (noun) is its own predicate (verb), every object (noun) its own subject. Syntax is one way we analyze holistic events in an effort, marginally successful at best, to reduce ‘an organic whole’ to ‘a collection of inorganic parts’ corresponding to so-called ‘parts of speech’. At least since the cultural transformation reflected in the Tower of Babel ( Genesis ), the principal function of language has been to reduce the World to a series of simple tools (levers to pull, buttons to press, etc.) that can be manipulated and deployed in pursuit of pragmatic objectives. I am indebted to Franco-Russian philosopher Alexandre Kojeve for the insight that these seemingly disparate moments (Creation, Incarnation, Apocalypse) are aspects of a single, atemporal process, spanning Fiat Lux ( Genesis ), Incarnatus Est ( Nicene Creed ) and Omnia in Omnibus ( Corinthians ). Newsflash : Being is not value neutral. To be is to be beautiful, true, and/or just. Not any of these things? Then sorry, Nemo , unlike Descartes, you are not ! But what if I am beautiful, etc., but imperfectly so? Then I am , but incompletely. I am not yet ‘all that I can be’! (U.S. Army) But I will be! What we call ‘cosmic history’ is the process of the Universe, like any good LLM, trying out different combinations of ‘events’ (words , logoi ) in search of the optimal configuration, aka the Kingdom of Heaven ( Matthew ), God’s Consequent Nature (Whitehead) - the configuration that perfectly instantiates the Eternal Values and redeems cosmic history in the process. Remember the Grandfather Paradox? It is a ‘paradox’ because it describes a configuration of events that we believe is impossible : Universe cannot find a stable configuration in which my grandfather dies at birth and yet I am born. What we call ‘principles of logic’ and ‘laws of physics’ are the things that Universe has learned about itself, by trial and error…so far. Like any good LLM, Universe has learned to self-train. As Universe learns, we should expect that additional ‘potential’ states of affairs will become ‘impossible’ while other ‘potential’ states become ‘actual’. The older and wider I get, the less likely it is that I will ever play basketball for the Boston Celtics and the more likely that I will crave a nap every day at 2PM. Transcendence saves Immanence! History is a winnowing process; it separates the delicious and nourishing grain from the ‘gross’ and indigestible chaff . Everything that can be saved will be saved. Even that which must be jettisoned leaves behind its shadow. What-is is not what-is-not! Initially, whatever is conceivable seems possible. A toddler will literally believe anything , and the Red Queen can believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ( Through the Looking Glass ) According to both Whitehead and Jung, the Bible (from Genesis through Revelation ) is the story of ‘Essential God’ (Primordial Nature) becoming ‘Existential God’ (Consequent Nature) via the created world: Alpha → Omega. Consciousness is a manifestation of the Universe’s perpetual process of self-reflection and self-adjustment (above). The Cosmos cannot ‘intentionally self-adjust’ unless it is somehow simultaneously ‘aware’ of both its current state (Actual World) and its target state (Subjective Aim). I cannot travel (Subjective Aim → Satisfaction → Superject) unless I know where I’m going and where I’m coming from; otherwise, I’m just wandering. Sartre (a self-proclaimed atheist) said that ‘God’ is the being whose essence precedes his existence - in contrast to humans whose ontological order is reversed. If we extend Sartre’s insight (also Whitehead’s and Jung’s), then the material world is the process by which ‘God acquires a body’, i.e. potentiality becomes actuality, the conceptual becomes physical. (This is reflected in the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body.) The Hebrew text usually translated “I am who am,”(Exodus 3: 14) may alternately be read, “I am coming to be what is coming to be.” In his First Letter to Corinthians (15:28), Paul sums it up: “…that God may be all in all ,” an apocalyptic formula first proposed by the pre-Socratic ‘pagan’ philosopher, Anaxagoras, 500 years earlier. So the primordial LLM is the Cosmos itself as it uploads into the Consequent Nature of God! Not a product of 21 st century technology, it’s approximately 14 billion years old…and still aging. Like any network of AI Supercomputers, Cosmos is ceaselessly trying out new combinations of elements, learning along the way, and continuing to self-correct until the optimum configuration is achieved. Our goals for this primordial LLM are high. Ideally, it would reconcile every element in its data base, resolving all conflicts, not by suppressing one party in favor of another, but by channeling energy from disparate elements to maximize intensity of experience. How will we know if we’re there yet ? When we can apply unreservedly and universally words like ‘Beauty, Truth, Justice, Love, Freedom, Joy, Harmony, Peace’…but none of their negations or diminutives. We are quite proud of ourselves. We have build giant LLMs more powerful than even science fiction writers could have imagined just a few decades ago. They engage us in conversation on a nearly infinite range of topics. But let’s put our achievement in perspective. We are currently building LLMs with maybe 10^4 discrete (English) ‘words’ in their dictionaries. The Cosmos has c. 10^90 such ‘words’ (estimated number of quanta in the Universe). So we have a bit to go yet. *** Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition VII (1913) is a vast, swirling explosion of color and dynamic lines that embodies themes of creation, destruction, and spiritual renewal. By abandoning realistic forms, Kandinsky sought to convey music-like rhythms and the hidden spiritual order of the cosmos, presenting a visual symphony of pure emotion and universal energy. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.