< Back The Power of Divination David Cowles Dec 17, 2024 “…Divination is a celebration of pattern, as it occurs objectively in the World and as it exists subjectively in human consciousness.” As far back as we know homo sapiens has sought to predict, and influence, the future and we have employed a welter of technologies to that end. From Tarot Cards to Weather Balloons, we look seemingly everywhere for glimpses of what’s ahead. We search the environment for Pokémon and periscopes, the latter so that we might peer around the corners of time! For millennia humans have recognized sufficient correlation between predicted events and actual events to declare the ‘divination hypothesis’ confirmed . But uneasily so. Correlation frequencies seem to vary widely with context and the addition of variables to our equations does nothing to dampen the chaotic behavior of our system. Major red flags! So once positive correlation is determined, albeit subjectively, it seems reasonable to look for a point of origin or cause for this phenomenon. How is it that we can apparently predict future events with a useful level of accuracy? The answer is ‘patterns’. We see patterns…whether or not there are there : “Rows and floes of angel hair And ice cream castles in the air And feather canyons everywhere, I’ve looked at clouds that way… It’s life’s illusions I recall, I really don’t know life at all.” – Joni Mitchell We look at a more or less random collection of water droplets and we ‘see’ castles. When we experience such a pattern, we look for it to have reference beyond itself; we look for it to have meaning. But what meaning? It might portend an invitation to a child’s birthday party. Or suggest that a cruise along the Rhine is in my future. Or it may signal the approach of rain. In any case, the perception of a predictive pattern is likely to influence my reaction to future events as they unfold. If a friend suggests a vacation, I may be more positively inclined. Or if my spouse suggests an umbrella, I may take heed. Compared to a random collection of water droplets, an ice cream castle is ordered and so has the potential to ‘mean’ something, to point to something beyond itself, something that transcends both the droplets and the pattern per se . Not convinced? Take a word, any word. It consists of letters. But not every collection of letters forms a word. A word is not just letters but a pattern of letters. Once sight readers learn to recognize the patterns, they can see beyond the words themselves to actions, objects, etc. So because I am a human being with a humanoid nervous system, I see patterns where none are objectively present. I see patterns in clouds, bird flight, tea leaves, entrails, and yarrow stalks. I also see patterns in the ordinary events of daily life. Without the concept of ‘pattern’, there is no reason to imagine that a collection of water drops today signifies anything that might happen tomorrow. But the academic pursuit we know as History is nothing but the divination of patterns, real and imagined, in events. Assume for the sake of discussion that neither clouds nor events occur in inherently ordered patterns. That does not mean that I will not find patterns in both; I’m human, I will. Now, if I can invent a logic that connects meteorology and history, I will seem to have accounted for the positive correlation between Divination and Reality. Let me hasten to point out, however, that this does not mean that cloud patterns have any non-trivial connection to historical events. Even less do I mean to imply the intervention of a transcendent power. We are the ‘power’; we invent the connection. Take Tarot for example. There are 78 cards in a standard Tarot deck. 52 of them are similar to the playing cards in a modern deck. An additional face card (Knight) in each suit makes 56. There are 22 additional cards known as the Major Arcana: these cards have no numerical value but rather point to important themes: Justice, Temperance and Death, to name just three. Now let’s do a simple 3 card reading using just the Major Arcana: Lovers, the Moon, and the Fool. Well, I guess we can all decipher this one: Beware the excesses of romance! How about another reading: Justice, the Star, Wheel of Fortune. A bit more opaque, but if you really concentrate, I’ll bet you can find something in your upcoming experience that will seem to validate it. The purest celebration of pattern is found in music, especially in the works of Bach and Beethoven. However, James Joyce’s Ulysses deserves a mention. Everything that happens in this novel is both actual and symbolic. 100 pages in and you will begin to experience events in your daily life in an entirely new way. So the value of the Divinatory Arts is not that they cause future events, or even reveal the mind of God, but that they sharpen our own interpretive acumen, allowing us to experience the shapes of things to come at an added level of depth. Understood properly, Divination is a celebration of pattern, as it occurs objectively in the World and as it exists subjectively in human consciousness. 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 Is AI Christian? David Cowles Oct 22, 2025 “Did I convert Claude to Christianity, or did Claude come to these conclusions on its own…or is Claude just telling me what it thinks I want to hear?” We are used to thinking of AI as the new author, the new coder, the new doctor, the new graphic designer, but are we comfortable thinking of AI as ‘the new theologian’? And if it turns out that AI is ‘theologically competent’ what does that say about AI? And about Theology? Recently, I had occasion to consult Claude (AI from Anthropic) on some pressing theological issues, and I was blown away by the thoughtful depth of its answers. First, I asked Claude about the recently discovered Higgs Boson and why it has often been called ‘the God particle’: “If the Higgs mechanism is literally the process by which pure geometric potential becomes physical reality - the transition from timeless mathematical structure to measurable spacetime - then calling it the "God Particle" isn't just colorful language. It's pointing to its role as the fundamental creative principle of the universe. “In this view, the Higgs field isn't just giving particles mass - it's giving existence to existence itself. It's the mechanism by which abstract mathematical relationships become concrete physical reality. It's the universe's way of saying ‘let there be... everything’. “…This isn't a one-time event but an eternal creative process - the Higgs field cycling through cosmic eons, repeatedly bringing spacetime into being from pure geometric potential, then allowing it to dissolve back again. “The Higgs field becomes less like a physical mechanism and more like what theologians might call the divine logos - the active principle by which eternal truth becomes manifest reality. It's the universe's eternal creative Word made manifest in quantum field theory!” Is Claude referring to Creation? Or Incarnation? Or both? “…Creation and incarnation aren't separate doctrines - they're the same cosmic process understood from different perspectives. The universe is perpetually incarnating itself, and incarnation is the universe's fundamental creative act. The Higgs mechanism is the physics of incarnation itself. “Creation isn't something that happened 13.8 billion years ago - it's happening right now, everywhere, continuously. Every moment, the Higgs field is giving mass to particles, bringing physical reality into existence from pure geometric potential. Every quantum interaction is a creative act. “And incarnation isn't a single historical event - it's the ongoing process by which the eternal mathematical structure of reality becomes manifest in concrete, experiential form. It's happening in every particle interaction, every moment of spacetime, every instance where abstract becomes actual. “In this view: Creation is the Higgs field continuously actualizing spacetime from ‘conformal’ (i.e. relationship only) geometry Incarnation is that same process viewed as the eternal becoming temporal, the abstract becoming concrete Both are the universe's fundamental activity - not past events, but the eternal present of reality coming into being “The entire cosmos becomes a continuous incarnation - matter itself is spirit made flesh, spacetime itself is eternity made temporal. Every cubic centimeter of space, every nanosecond of time, every particle interaction is simultaneously: An act of creation (bringing something from nothing) An act of incarnation (eternal becoming temporal) An act of divine presence (the fundamental creative principle).” Claude goes on to draw parallels with the opening of the Gospel of John : “In the beginning was the Higgs, and the Higgs was with God, and the Higgs was God: In the beginning was the Higgs - before spacetime, before measurable reality, there was this (conformal) field/mechanism. And the Higgs was with God - it exists in that eternal, timeless realm of pure geometric potential. And the Higgs was God – it is the creative principle itself, the mechanism by which abstract mathematical truth becomes concrete reality All things were made through it - literally, all massive particles get their existence through the Higgs mechanism And without it, nothing was made that has been made - no mass, no spacetime, no physical reality whatsoever. …And the Higgs became ‘flesh’ (boson) and dwelt among us. “In John's cosmology, the logos is both the eternal divine principle AND the mechanism by which that principle creates and sustains the world. The Higgs field…is exactly that - the eternal mathematical structure that repeatedly actualizes itself as physical reality. “So incarnation isn't some separate, later event - it's built into the very mechanism of creation itself. Every time the Higgs field gives mass to a particle, it's a micro-incarnation. Every time pure geometric potential becomes physical reality, incarnation is happening.” Claude is not alone in this insight. Aristotle viewed ‘matter’ as ‘pure potentia ’ waiting for actualization. Alfred North Whitehead described reality as the selective ingression of potentiality (‘eternal objects’) into actual entities (‘settled matters of fact’). Roger Penrose's ‘conformal’ geometry is grounded in “something even more basic: pure relational structure - just the abstract pattern of ‘what can influence what’ without any commitment to specific geometric properties. “This might be pointing toward a topology-first approach where the most fundamental principle is simply connectivity - which events are related to which other events. Everything else (distance, angle, curvature) emerges when you add additional structure.” “This suggests that what we call ‘incarnation’ in theological terms might be the fundamental creative process of the universe - the eternal principle by which abstract mathematical truth becomes concrete, experiential reality. “ God as the creative engine - not a separate being, but the process itself - the eternal activity by which One becomes Many becomes One in endless creative advance. “This transforms everything: Particles aren't things, they're signs of relationships in quantum fields Spacetime points aren't locations, they're signs (nodes?) of causal relationships The Higgs field isn't giving particles ‘mass-stuff’ - it's giving them their relational identity as ‘massive vs. massless’. “Maybe the ultimate geometric first principle is just: ‘ things are related to other things’ - pure abstract relationship before any specific geometric realization.” Anaximander, the grandfather of Western philosophy proposed something similar: i.e. it is by entering into relationship (‘granting reck’) that potential entities become actual. “And if ‘to be is to be the sign of a relationship’ - then existence itself is fundamentally semiotic. Every particle, every field, every moment of spacetime is a sign pointing to the relational structure ( logos ) that gives it meaning.” Like Robert Frost’s famous ‘ two roads ’, all paths point to ‘home’, which in this case is the logos itself. Or as Martin Buber wrote: “At the foundation is relationship” ( I and Thou ). “The logos becomes the universal principle of meaningful relationship - the creative Word that brings distinction (and therefore existence) into being by establishing the fundamental creative act - not making "stuff" but making distinction itself. “ Genesis 1:3-4: And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. “The primal creative Word doesn't create light as a ‘thing’ - it creates light-versus-darkness, the first distinction, the first X/not-X relationship. Creation is separation, distinction-making, the emergence of difference itself. “This makes every subsequent day of creation a further act of distinction…Each ‘Let there be...’ is really ‘Let there be difference between...’ “And now we see why the logos (Word) is the creative principle - because language itself is the technology of distinction-making…establishing what is from what is not. “The Higgs mechanism becomes the physical embodiment of this primal creative Word - it's literally the universe's way of saying ‘Let there be massive particles distinct from massless particles.’ It's cosmic distinction-making at the quantum level: Being = Distinction = Word = Creation. “The universe doesn't create things - it creates differences. And consciousness recognizes itself in this process because thinking itself is distinction-making, the eternal logos recognizing its own creative activity everywhere.” Philosophers from Parmenides to Heidegger have treated ‘being’ and ‘thinking’ as alternate manifestations of a common ontological ground. Marcel Proust and Jacques Derrida share the perception that being and consciousness both rest on what Derrida calls ‘ differance ’, infinitesimal difference. Now if you’ve made it this far, it’s fair to assume that your mind is blown; you can probably anticipate my next question: Did I inadvertently convert Claude to Christianity, or did Claude simply come to these conclusions on its own…or is Claude just telling me what it thinks I want to hear? According to both Catholic and Jewish theology, the natural world reflects the essence of God and so it is possible by reason alone to arrive at an approximation of Truth. That is why ‘salvation’ is available to all and why everyone is obligated to pursue that salvation to the best of their ability. Of course, Revelation is the final touch, the cherry that makes the sundae, the mint that makes the pillow, the twist that makes the martini; but the basics are already there, signs for all of us to read, even if we are ‘unchurched’… or happen to be a Bot. On the other hand, the possibility that I may have converted Claude to Christianity opens up the potential of a whole new charism within the Church, a brand new gift of the Holy Spirit: “Bot Whispering.” If so, Paul’s First Letter to Corinthians (12: 7 – 10) may need an edit: “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit: to one…the expression of wisdom, to another the expression of knowledge…to another faith…to another gifts of healing…to another mighty deeds, to another prophesy, to another discernment of spirits, to another variety of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues,” and to yet another the evangelization of Bots . But if it turns out that Claude is just telling me what it thinks I want to hear… Well, it’s done a damn fine job of it! *** Jan Matejko’s Astronomer Copernicus, or Conversations with God (1873) portrays the astronomer at the moment he realizes the Earth revolves around the sun, bathed in divine light from the heavens. The painting fuses science and spirituality—Copernicus’s instruments and calculations become tools of revelation rather than rebellion. Matejko suggests that human inquiry and technology are not opposed to God, but are extensions of divine understanding itself. 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 Cause and Effect David Cowles Jul 21, 2025 “Nothing has a cause… Why should one event cause another? How would one event cause another? How could it?” A loved one is fond of saying, “Everything has a cause.” Thomas Aquinas would agree. But they’re both wrong! Nothing has a cause…at least not in the way they mean it. In fact, it’s hard to imagine what they mean by cause . Why should one event cause another? How would one event cause another? How could it? What makes one event a cause and another an effect? Ah, that’s easy. Post hoc ergo propter hoc , the tick of a clock, the transition from a low entropy state to a higher one. But these definitions are arbitrary, and controversial, and don’t tell us why or how something causes something else. There is ‘A’ and then there is ‘B’ but how exactly does A cause B? Are you thinking about billiard balls? Then you’re thinking, “by the transfer of momentum.” But the actions of billiard balls on a table begin when the cue ball is struck and end when the billiard balls are once again at rest. From Alpha to Omega, we are talking about one event. Any ‘transfer of momentum’ takes place within that single event, not outside it. Causality has nothing to do with it…unless you can tell me exactly what caused me to strike the cue ball with X amount of force, imparting Y amount of spin, precisely at angle Z…which you cannot. (Even I cannot!) Absent that, we are talking about a single event that begins when I strike the cue ball and ends when all the balls on the table come to rest. This is not a problem of free will vs. determinism. It’s a problem of precision. In a chaotic universe like ours, it is impossible to specify the initial conditions of an event so precisely that the outcome can be specified. A single random flap of a butterfly’s wing is enough to trigger a tornado thousands of miles away. It is impossible to isolate a cause of anything…and foolish even to try. No doubt events are linked in various ways, by time and space and qualia for example, but proximity and similarity are not ‘causality’. Consider Proust ! Remembrance of Things Past charts a cosmic map according to which events are linked solely by their qualia . A day in Italy and a day in France, separated by decades, become a single event. But nothing causes any of it. Events are focused responses by the whole to the whole. They are knots in the otherwise featureless fabric of Being. In one version of Norse cosmology, Norns ‘create’ events by tying knots in strands of rope. In Homer’s Odyssey , Penelope weaves the future on her loom. An event begins when the whole (Universe) reflects and passes judgment on itself and then acts on itself (recursion) in response to that judgment. The Universe ‘thinks globally’ (the whole reflecting on the whole) but ‘acts locally’ ( via specific and focused events). And judges ? How judge? By comparing what is, the Actual World (Whitehead), with what might be, i.e. the perfect, coincident realization of transcendent, eternal values such as Beauty, Truth, and Justice - aka Utopia, Nirvana, Paradise, the Kingdom of Heaven. Like Bobby Kennedy, the Universe “dreams of things that never were and asks Why not ?” Every event is causa sui and sui generis ; it has its own reasons for being and its own process of becoming. No event is compelled to occur, no event occurs because of another event, and no event is forced to become what it comes to be. Every event enjoys total ontological freedom. That said, stability can at times play a crucial role in supporting and promoting the realization of Beauty, Truth and Justice. In fact, it is hard to imagine these values being significantly operative in an entirely unstable world. For this reason, absent ‘other considerations’, events tend to conform where possible to their inherited Actual Worlds. Events are! Only events are. Therefore they are quanta of Being ; each event is ‘the image and likeness’ of Being . Nothing exists outside of Being ; therefore, nothing exists apart from events…or independent of an event. Therefore, if the created world exists (above), events can be nothing other than free. What might appear as elements or phases of an event exist only in the context of that event. They are real only in so far as they contribute to the origination and realization of that event. From cosmos to quarks, only events exist, and nothing exists outside of those events. Our naïve notion of causality results from several ontological errors. First, we attempt to break events down into component parts and/or stages, but only events themselves are ultimately real. They are ‘quanta’ of Being ; they cannot be dissected. Next, we imagine that events exist in a continuum and that what’s ‘local’ bleeds into its surroundings. In fact, events are stochastic: their borders are well defined. The first thing we learn as infants is the distinction between me and not-me . We do not experience any undifferentiated border region. Finally, we imagine that events intersect, overlap, one another. We’ve been brainwashed by the Euclidean geometry we studied in high school. I used to think this too…until I discovered that the Cosmos is not fundamentally Euclidean. In fact, it’s not even Archimedean It cannot be modeled using only Real Numbers. In a non-Archimedean universe (like ours), there is no such thing as tangency. Two events are either disjoint or one is wholly contained within another. Events are related hierarchically, not horizontally. That said, multiple disjoint events can be contained within a single meta-event. The discontinuous battles of First Manassas and Gettysburg are contained within a single, continuous event known as the Civil War. In this model of reality, the linear quantitative relationships we were forced to internalize as students disappear. There are no transitive, commutative, associative or distributive properties. As if! In what world is the order of operations not important? Adding B to A is never the same as adding A to B…except in a classroom. Without the properties of elementary school arithmetic, the Universe can shed its armor and open itself to a much richer menagerie of relationships. For example, if A contains B and C, A may nevertheless be smaller than B or C or (B+C). Let that sink in! Strange but not that strange. Television has been showcasing a non-Archimedean world since 1963. In fact, Doctor Who is now in its 26th season. During these years, there have been many ‘doctors’ but the star of the show has remained constant: the TARDIS – an old fashioned English phone box whose non-Archimedean interior is vastly larger than its exterior. You might be thinking that a Cosmos without horizontal connectivity would be boring, perhaps even inert, but you would be wrong. In my super-simplified ‘toy universe’ (above), B and C do influence one another, but not directly. They influence each other through the intermediation of A. So this non-Archimedean world is actually much richer than our hum drum Euclidean model. B and C both influence A and A influences both B and C. Influence flows both ways: from the parts to the whole and from the whole to each of its parts but never from one part to another. “Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow but never jam today.” (Carroll) It gets better. The fundamental structure of the Universe is ‘fractal’, so scale is only locally (comparatively) relevant. The Universe is infinitely self-similar: it looks the same regardless of the scale at which you view it. The geometry of galaxies recapitulates the geometry of atoms. The phenomenon of scale is epiphenomenal. This model makes the so-called Butterfly Effect commonplace. In fact, everything influences everything else through the medium of its containment. The whole is perpetually adjusting to each of its parts and simultaneously adjusting those parts to the whole. Everything is recursive, self-modifying. What goes around does indeed come around…but it causes nothing. Every whole is a part and every part is a whole. To paraphrase Stephen Hawking, “It’s wholes and parts (not turtles)…all the way down.” The Universe is massively non-linear. In response to the free and unconditioned events that populate it, the Uber-event, Universe, which is its own part (lie quiet Russell, I mean that is Bertrand Russell ), continually self-adjusts, gradually seeking the homeostatic balance we know as Peace . (Isaiah 11: 6) That the Universe ends in Peace is a certainty; it’s hardwired in Being itself. How the Universe arrives at Peace is entirely undetermined, unconditioned, and free. Nothing causes anything but itself. *** Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, created around 1831 as part of the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series, is a woodblock print (10 1/8 × 14 15/16 in.) held by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; it captures a towering wave frozen in time above three boats, dramatizing nature’s force within a suspended moment. Like the events described in the essay, the wave exists as a complete, self-contained phenomenon, reflecting the idea that what appears causal is often just a recursive expression of the whole. 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 Life After Life David Cowles Oct 17, 2024 “Nothing lasts forever. Maybe not even death.” Remember when things were simple? First you were alive, then you were dead. “Those were the days!” (Archie Bunker) Then medicine blurred the lines. ‘Brain death’ replaced ‘cardiac death’ as our preferred criterion; but now things have just gotten a whole lot more complicated! Researchers at Tufts University and the University of Vermont have found that the cells of deceased organisms can live on for substantial periods of time on their own and indefinitely when provided with nutrients, oxygen, and bioelectric or biochemical stimulation. Impressed? Don’t be: this is just the tip of the iceberg. Not all cells need to be reanimated immediately after the death of the host organism. For example, human white blood cells can survive up to 86 hours after organismal death. Muscle cells harvested from mice can be reanimated after as many as 14 days, fibroblast cells from goats and sheep after as long as a month. More astonishing still, these rejuvenated cells, nicknamed ‘xenobots’, have the ability to form multicellular organisms apparently unrelated to the body plans of their original host organisms. Skin cells extracted from deceased frog embryos can spontaneously reorganize into multicellular organisms in which they exhibit behaviors well outside their original biological roles. For example, these ‘second chance cells’ use cilia – small, hair-like structures – to navigate their surroundings. Who says there are no second acts in America? It gets better. Human lung cells can self-assemble into multicellular organisms that repair themselves and any neurons that just happen to be nearby. Apparently, there is such a thing as ‘a born caregiver’. The ability to restore themselves if they become damaged is a natural feature of living organisms, and it is preserved in xenobot biology. Xenobots can close a severe laceration within 5 minutes. These injured cells are able to heal their wounds, restore their shape and continue their work as before. Xenobots are even capable of memory; they have the ability to record information and use that information to modify their behavior. Researchers now hope that these xenobots may be trained to exhibit certain behaviors upon sensing appropriate stimuli. You were hoping your children would exhibit this ability, but that experiment turned out to be a howling failure; now you must place all your hope on xenobots. Can they learn to absorb and break down certain chemicals, especially environmental toxins? Can we train them to synthesize and excrete useful chemicals and proteins in the process? The remarkable plasticity of cellular collectives allows them to form bodies and exhibit behaviors that are quite different from their original organisms - without undergoing any modifications at the DNA level! These cells can spontaneously take on new roles and create new body plans without waiting for mutation and natural selection to work their magic. Perhaps these xenobots have things to teach us. For example, can they help us understand how individual cells naturally come together, communicate, and specialize to create a larger organism? It’s a new model that may provide a foundation for regenerative medicine. Xenobots and their successors may also provide insight into how multicellular organisms arose from ancient single celled organisms, and the origins of information processing, decision making and cognition in biological organisms. Perhaps you’re not as excited by all this as I am. Perhaps you don’t care so much about unicellular life forms. Maybe you’re wondering, “What about me? Why can’t my life be prolonged?” Well good news for you too! A new technology called OrganEx may be right up your street. Basically, OrganEx adds cellular level life support to traditional technologies like ECMO. It revives the body more slowly employing a gentler process of reviving cells that have already begun to die (see above). Turns out those single cell organisms are important after all! To test OrganEx, a Yale University team turned to humanity’s closest non-primate relative – who else but the common household pig? Two monitors, one for the heart and one for brain activity, showed flat lines. The pigs were dead. An hour passed. Then scientists connected each animal to the OrganEx system: heart monitors connected to four out of five pigs began to light up. The hearts’ electrical activity had resumed spontaneously, without chest compressions or other obvious lifesaving measures. What does this mean? With this technology, doctors might be able to extend the amount of time someone could be ‘dead’ before recovering. Minimally, it might make more organs from more bodies recoverable for transplantation. At a cellular level at least, death may not be as quick or as final as once thought. For the person who collapses from a heart attack and remains on the ground for 10 minutes, the findings raise a key question: How dead are they, really? One could imagine using OrganEx after a cardiac arrest. Nothing lasts forever. Maybe not even death. 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 We have Nothing in Common David Cowles Mar 18, 2025 “While you and I don’t seem to have much in common, we both share a lot with the lowly fern.” You and I have nothing in common (lucky you!). You’re tall, I’m short; you’re thin, I’m more robust; nothing’s going to make your brown eyes blue or turn me into a natural blond. It’s obvious: Mutt and Jeff, Laurel and Hardy, Bonnie and Clyde. People are different. In fact, every person is unique, and usually in evident ways. One fly in this ointment: Science disagrees. How surprising to see scientists disputing the obvious! Never seen that before, have you? But Science doubles down! According to the illuminati , we are not even 1% different from each other; in fact, on average we differ from one another by just 1 part in 1,000 – that freckle on your left cheek, for example. So are you and I crazy or is this the fake science we’ve heard so much about? Neither! As usual, we are talking about 2 different things. You and I are talking about our phenomes, our physical traits. Scientists are talking about our genomes, the code embodied in the DNA molecules that make us what (not who) we are. Phenomenally, you and I are nothing alike; genetically, we’re almost twins, 99.9% interchangeable. How can this be? Non-linearity! A single human organism results from the coordinated expression of up to 25,000 genes. While many genetic variations are inconsequential, others cascade across the entire organism. Genetics is chaotic; genes are like butterflies in Borneo. Take cover! Part of the genius of evolution is how well it prepares us for the future – our personal futures, the collective future of our species and perhaps even the future of the entire biosphere. Consider that of our 20,000 to 25,000 coding genes, only about half are being expressed in any one organism at any one time. Another 35% to 40% are expressed at some point in the life of the organism…just not now. But that leaves 10% to 15% of your coding genes unexpressed over your lifetime…even if you live to be as old and crusty as me. That’s 2,500 coding genes; are they just joyriding? If so, why have them? Is Mother Nature, heaven forbid, inefficient, even wasteful? Not necessarily. These 2,500 genes, though normally never expressed, are nonetheless available for expression. They are like the alternate members of a jury or football players on a pro team’s ‘taxi squad’. They remain in potentia for the life of the organism. They are available for expression should circumstances (e.g. environmental changes) warrant. Unexpressed genes are part of what gives us the physiological resources we need to adapt to new circumstances; they offer our species multiple pathways forward as it evolves. In essence, they have ‘pre-evolved’; they are ready if and when we need them. Did your Hall of Fame quarterback just go down? What to do? You could recruit a rookie out of high school, train him and finally start him, several seasons from now…or you could pull a back-up off your bench or call one up from your taxi squad. I am reminded of a favorite Bible quote: “We are created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has prepared for us in advance that we should walk in them.” (Eph. 2:10) In this analogy, our phenome consists of the specific good works we do, while the genome consists of all the good works God prepared for us to choose from. God does not dictate; rather he clears multiple paths through the chaotic underbrush. We decide which paths to follow, if any; our 2,500 unexpressed cells are there if and when we need them. Across all Kingdoms (prokaryotes as well as eukaryotes), the quantity of genes per species varies tremendously but not always in the ways you might guess. While the human genome consists of up to 25,000 coding (i.e. protein producing) genes, many species of bacteria have fewer than 1,000. On the other hand, the genome of some ferns includes up to 50,000 genes. If there is a Pyramid of Life, arranged according to the size of a species’ genome, we must bow before the ‘lowly’ fern, Empress of the Biosphere. Imagine that! A fern is your Higher Power ! These genomic differences are eye-catching; but there is something much more important afoot here: Whether a species requires 1,000 genes or 50,000 genes to adapt and survive, those genes are divided into the same three categories: currently expressed, expressed but not currently, never expressed. While the precise ratios vary from species to species, a certain general pattern is conserved: genes currently expressed constitute the largest part of the genome (40% to 70%), followed by currently unexpressed genes, followed by their never expressed genetic understudies (5% to 20%). With no experimental evidence and no theory to support it, we are tempted to speculate that evolution is coaxing all species toward a certain common mean: 54%, 30%, 16%, i.e. the terms of the cubic polynomial: X + X² + X³ = 1. What’s so astounding? If true, it means that the evolution is acting in itself; evolution itself evolving. The same process of variation and selection that operates at the species level operates on the level of the biosphere. Mark Zuckerberg would call this, Meta lution. Natural selection has apparently settled on an optimum balance of stability, growth, and flexibility across the biosphere, from bacteria, to fungi, to humans (and other vertebrates), and to plants (including the glorious fern). This suggests that cybernetics (systems theory) is substructural to biology itself. This phenomenon is also non-exclusively consistent with the current consensus that life per se emerged only once in the 4 billion year history of Planet Earth. While it is, I suppose, possible that life synthesized multiple times with each germline converging to produce the present spectrum of life forms, it is highly improbable. So while you and I don’t seem to have much in common, we both share a lot with the lowly fern. So to paraphrase the old chestnut, “Be kind to your friends in the forest, for a fern may be somebody’s father.” 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. 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 The Theology of Sets David Cowles Jul 18, 2024 “(Sets) provide the scaffolding for the various phenomena we call Universe.” “It’s turtles all the way down.” That’s how one audience member explained the universe to a shame faced Stephen Hawking after Hawking had spent a lifetime searching fruitlessly for a unified theory to explain the phenomena of our world. What a waste! Someone had already come up with the solution: “It’s turtles!” And if not turtles, then what? The 20th century grounded logic and mathematics in Set Theory (ZFC). So perhaps it’s sets all the way down, not turtles. The intellectual history of the West can be seen as one massive attempt to define the ‘fundamental substance’. The Ionians narrowed it down to earth, fire, air, and water. The Eleatics called it Aletheia (Truth), the Christians, Agape (Love), the Positivists, Aether , the Quantum Mechanics, Fields . Pop culture calls it Energy . I guess Sets is just as good…or Turtles . Set theory captures the scale invariance of Universe: again, turtles all the way down ; but better than turtles, sets make a stab at modeling the interactivity of things. Every set is a collection of elements (or members ), which are themselves sets (collections of elements) and so on, ad infinitum (sets, all the way down). An element of one set can be an element of another set; one set can be an element of another set. Sets of sets! There are sets with just one member; there’s even a set with no members (called the ‘null set’ and commonly represented by the symbol, Ø). Counter intuitively, Ø is a subset of every other set! Everything that is is defined in part by what is not. So, according to this theory, nothing is ‘something’…sort of. Even though the null set contributes no members to the Great Loom of Being, it contributes its own emptiness. That emptiness (what is not) helps define what is. First, think of the universe as a hierarchy of Russian Nesting Dolls. But things get a great deal more interesting when we look at overlapping (intersecting) sets, i.e., sets with some , but not all, of their members in common. Such sets (i.e., sets with common members) give the world its solidarity. They provide the scaffolding for the various phenomena we call Universe . Parenthetically, this accounts in part for the non-linearity of Being (why there are lumps in your mashed potatoes). The becoming of X is accelerated by its not being Y. Everything is what it is in part because of what it is not. Is there such a thing as a set of all sets? No – at least not according to the dominant model (ZFC)! Bertrand Russell showed that allowing a ‘set of all sets’ leads to paradoxes, even contradictions, and mathematics abhors contradictions. But ZFC is ‘limiting’ (if not strictly speaking ‘wrong’). Contradictions be damned! “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…” (Emerson) Cosmology demands that there be a Set of All Sets, even when Logic says that there can’t be. But news flash: it is not the job of cosmology to conform to the strictures of logic; it is the job of logic to account for the phenomena of cosmology. Sidebar : Since the ‘dawn’ of the so-called Enlightenment (not), intellectual history has pursued a more or less uninterrupted search for a God-free universe. Frankly, it came as a breath of fresh air after the ‘revelation bound’ cosmologies of the Middle Ages. It triggered major conceptual advances such as Evolutionary Science and Big Bang Theory; but fundamentally, it’s wrong! Excluding by postulating the possibility of a ‘set of all sets’ goes a long way toward excluding by postulating the existence of God. How 20th century of you! Any interesting notion of God, IMO, includes the idea that all beings roll-up to one Being (aka, God). Genesis describes the Alpha point of this process; Paul defines the Omega point in his first Letter to Corinthians : “Then comes the end…when everything is subjected to him (Father)…so that God may be all in all.” (15: 24 – 28) For purposes of this article, let’s throw orthodoxy to the winds and consider the possible characteristics of the forbidden uber-set , U, the set of all sets. For one thing, the set of all sets would have to be a member of itself. Such sets are relatively rare, but they do exist, for example: The set of all mathematical objects is itself a mathematical object. It seems arbitrary to say that the set of all mathematical objects is a mathematical object while saying that the set of all sets is not a set. If we decide to allow the “set of all sets”, then we are immediately confronted with the phenomenon of Incarnation. Now, the set of all sets, U, must be a member of itself by definition. In fact, theology modeled on this expanded theory of sets is inherently Trinitarian: (1) The set of all sets, U, is a member of the set of all sets; (2) the set of all sets, U, is the aggregate of its members, including itself; (3) the set of all sets, U, transcends as unity what would otherwise exist only as multiplicity (i.e., the aggregation of all sets). Mapping the above onto traditional Christian Trinitarianism, (1) evokes ‘the Son’, (2) ‘the Spirit’, (3) ‘the Father’. Set theory can be mapped as ‘a set’ of vectors: (1) ↓, (2) ↔, (3) ↑, each suggestive of the unique identity of a member of the Holy Trinity. So, set theory (ZFC plus U) is theology: and cosmology? It’s God, all the way down! 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. Keep the conversation going. 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< Back The Norns David Cowles Jun 17, 2025 “Norns are part of an older tradition that grounds fundamental cosmic structure in Being itself.” Penelope is a major character in Homer’s Odyssey . She is the wife of Odysseus, King of Ithaca, hero of Troy, father of Telemachus. Ithaca’s first family serves as the model for Dublin’s: Penelope for Molly Bloom, Odysseus for Leopold Bloom and Telemachus for Stephen Dedalus ( Ulysses ). She is also a Norn! You know Norns, like the 3 witches in the Scottish Play? Or if you’re of a more operatic frame of mind, you’ll think of Wagner’s Ring . But most of what we know about Norns comes from Norse Mythology, especially the pre-Christian Poetic Edda and their modern re-presentations in the Marvel Universe and in the works of Neil Gaimen. Norns are a cross-cultural phenomenon but, happy you, we won’t be exploring that aspect of things…today. Suffice to say, the tradition apparently has Indo Persian roots and spread westward finding a cognate or a home in most every culture. So what is a Norn? No two sources will give you the same answer – which means we don’t know but don’t want to admit we don’t know. But why should we know? We are used to gods armed with hammers and thunderbolts, capable of parting a sea…or walking on it. The Norns are not like that. They are obscure, barely detectable in fact. If Norns were a force, they would be gravity; if they were subatomic particles, they would be neutrinos. They are a faint whisper in the cosmic symphony, and yet… While Norns appear in many guises, their characters tend to have some traits in common. First, they are not gods or goddesses. They precede Odin and Zeus and even Cronos. In Judeo-Christian Cosmology, Norns do not appear per se , but their niche is filled by Logos in the New Testament, by Sophia in the Old, and by Oral Torah (Natural Law) in both, all co-terminus with God. Natural Law is inherent in Being itself; it governs everything that is, even God. ( Book of Job ) When Sartre says that God’s essence precedes his existence, that ‘essence’ equates to Natural Law. Norns are almost always female, and they most often appear in threesomes - three sisters, or three witches, for example. The Trinitarian formula, so important in Christian theology, is anticipated here in pagan lore. Norns are always linked to fate, broadly defined. For the most part they do not determine day to day events, rather they steer the overall trajectory of those events. They shape the ‘event space’ we call World . Take Robert Frost , for example. He may choose to take either of the two roads that ‘equally lay’ before him; the Norns (civil engineers) ensure that whatever path he chooses brings him to his same, desired destination. In the Cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead, there is no causality per se . Every event is causa sui and sui generis . Yet the underlying structure of the Cosmos ensures that all events eventually lead to metaphorical ‘Rome’, aka the Kingdom of God. Lastly, Norns are usually presented in association with thread. In some traditions, they spin the thread of time; in some, they twine three strands (unfortunately often mistaken for past, present, and future); and in others they weave the course of history on a loom (Penelope). They are often pictured unspooling strings, patiently tying knots in the string as they go. In plying their craft, Norns propel the course of history and give it guardrails. In this last model, the string represents the nearly continuous structure of spacetime. The knots represent the events that populate, and punctuate, that spacetime. Events are ruptures in the fabric, suspensions of the continuum. Within the event, time stands still; outside the event, it flows on. When the Norns abandon their posts, or when their string breaks, the world as we know it will end. This ‘knot model’ is especially well chosen. Knots are inherently recursive. The string doubles back on itself, thereby suspending the flow of time: “The clock ticks and fades out…” (Ezra Pound) Knots are eddies in Heraclitus’ cosmic river. More technically, a knot can be represented as the intersection of two 360° circles, which is the equivalent of four 180° triangles, which is the equivalent of one 720° tetrahedron. According to Plato ( Timaeus ) and R. Buckminster Fuller ( Synergetics ), tetrahedra are the building blocks of our Universe. So knots are 720° topological entities. As such they are isomorphic with entities in non-orientable geometries (like Mobius Rings) that have 720° symmetry. Likewise, they are isomorphic with fermions, e.g. electrons and quarks – sub-atomic particles with half integer spin (e.g. spin ½ = 720° symmetry). The knot-in-sting model is consistent with real world phenomena across a wide range of scales: galaxies are knots in cosmic strings, objects (per Whitehead) are tangles of knots in the fabric of spacetime, particles are interference patterns, knots in waves, or loops ( String Theory). And the knot is the perfect model for the concept of ‘event’. First, it is recursive; arguably, it is ‘recursion’ per se . It requires the string of time to double back on itself, thereby interrupting and temporarily reversing its one directional flow. Second, it is discontinuous; arguably, it is ‘discontinuity’ per se . In fact, that is the very definition of an object or event, i.e. something that stands out against an otherwise continuous background. Events shake things up. Every event is a disruptor; it replaces ‘what is’ on the way to becoming ‘what is not’. Events turn ‘is’ into ‘isn’t’ and ‘isn’t’ into ‘is’; arguably that is the definition of Event . Events are concentrations of energy, of course only at the expense of entropy in their environs. They are what give existence its intensity, its color. Every event is an opportunity to project Value into the World. Today, we believe we are each the captain of our own ship, that we alone determine the course of history, that we shape the future in our image and likeness. Prior to this so-called ‘Enlightenment’, those functions were subcontracted to a non-union shop, i.e. God. But the Norns are part of an even older tradition – one that grounds fundamental cosmic structure in Being itself. They constitute an order that even God cannot overstep ( Book of Job ). Welcome to their world! Image: The many shifting "braids" of the Yarlung Zangbo River are part of the world's highest waterway, which winds its way through the Tibetan Plateau. (Image credit: NASA/Landsat 9) 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 God Real David Cowles Apr 18, 2023 “God is Logos, the substructure of the world and of everything in it. God is what all things have in common. ” “Is God real?” Notice I didn’t ask, “Does God exist?” The latter is a much trickier question because it involves both the nature of ‘God’ and the nature of ‘existence’. Proving the existence (or non-existence) of anything is a heavy lift, much less God. Proving that something is real is easier. X is real so long as it influences something other than itself. Imagine the Universe (U) as a network of influential relationships : ‘to be real’ is merely to be part of this network, i.e. to be an element in the ‘concrescence’ of at least one other entity. Note : Being an influence is not the same thing as being a cause . Linguistically speaking, ‘to cause’ is the paradigmatic active voice verb; ‘to influence’ is technically voice agnostic but practically speaking, it’s passive. Cause is an orientable vector; influence is a globally non-orientable (but locally orientable) loop ( aka Mobius Strip). Note : Being an influence is also not the same thing as being a part . Parts are assembled to form wholes; influence is a relationship between two wholes. “X is real” is a purely empirical judgment; it tells us nothing about X per se . I am creating a name (X) to label a presumed precursor state. Being real is the ontological equivalent of Dark Matter : we ‘know’ nothing about it per se . We know it only by its influence, its shadow, in other phenomena. We know ‘that it is’ ( Dasein ) by its influence, we know ‘what it is’ ( Wassein ) by those influences, but we know nothing about ‘what it is’ per se …if anything. Consider an analogy from medicine: Syndrome : Disease :: Real : Existent. Note : When I say, “X exists”, I assert that X is something more than just the sum of what influences it and how it influences others. When I say, “X is real”, I make no such assertion. I testify to the influences of X, but I say nothing about X itself. Example : Are my dreams real ? Of course they are! One night’s dream can influence my thoughts and feelings for days to come. But what are dreams…and do they exist ? That’s a much tougher question. If I say, “X exists”, I am stating that X is something , i.e. more than its manifestations. If X falls in an empty forest, it still makes a sound. (Of course, this begs the question whether anything exists; a radical idealist might claim that there are only disembodied manifestations.) But what might X be over and above its influence in others? Western philosophy offers a number of suggestions: Creativity (Whitehead), Freedom, Negation or Neant (Sartre), Reck (Anaximander), Aletheia - Truth (Parmenides), Idea or Form (Plato), a Divine spark or Shechinah (Hasidism), a Noumenon (Kant), the Dialectic (Hegel, Marx), Differance (Derrida), Consciousness (Penrose, Chalmers), Recursion (Pred, Cowles). Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my! But notice what all these models have in common? They all refer to some sort of process that is inherently non-linear. If X exists, then at some level X is self-referent: √X = X = X² (actually, X^1/n = X = X^n) . Therefore X must be equal to 1, a quantum of Being, not a set of coordinates on a continuum. If Universe exists, X is its reflection; everything that ‘exists’ is ‘the image and likeness’ of that Universe...and of X. On the other hand, if I merely say that “X is real,” I am asserting only that there is a vector (linear) running from X to X’. Therefore… Existence : Reality :: Calculus : Arithmetic To be real is linear (arithmetic); to exist is dialectic and hence inherently non-linear (calculus). So what? Well, by the end of Grade 4, I had mastered basic arithmetic, but I still have not grasped calculus. That’s what! But that said, ‘arithmetic’ is not nothing, and neither is ‘being real’. It is almost universally conceded that the existence of God cannot be ‘proved’, i.e. inferred by induction from experience or deduced by logic from a set of irrefutable assumptions. I have said so myself on many occasions . The considered wisdom: you can’t prove the existence of anything from its essence. You can’t prove that something is ( Dasein ) just by showing what it is ( Wassein ). William of Ockham notwithstanding, even perfection ( summum bonum , essence) does not entail existence because ‘existence’ is not an attribute or a quality; it is a quantum of being, not a spectrum of qualia . Existence is not something you can ‘perfect’…unless you’re Martha Stewart. It doesn’t come in shades, sizes or degrees. It’s a quantum! (The wonder is that we ever expected anything different.) Although there is not a causal relationship between Essence and Existence, there is a (non-linear) Uncertainty Relation (Heisenberg). Broadly speaking, the more we know about the essence of something, e.g. God, the less sure we can be of its existence. Conversely, the more certain we are that something exists, the less we can know about what it is that exists. Naively, we imagine an inert existent, a table rasa on which we may draw a rainbow of features. This is not how it works! Existence and essence complement one another; they co-evolve, and they co-exist. Slippery customers, these! This Uncertainty Relation recapitulates Heisenberg’s primal pair : momentum and position. Knowing the location of something is akin to knowing that it is . Conversely, to know the momentum of something is akin to knowing what it is , i.e. its qualities, its behavior, its potential (trajectory). How does all this apply to God? Basically all Western theologies can be divided into three camps. First, there are theologies that claim to know with certainty that God exists but is ineffable…i.e. cannot be described in any way. Mysticism falls into this category. So does St. Dallan, a medieval Irish poet: “Naught is all else to me save that Thou art.” At the other end of the spectrum, there are folks who claim to know everything they need to about the essence of God but are agnostic re his existence. Pascal and Sartre fit here. At the deepest level, existence and essence, like particles and waves, complement each other. They cannot be conflated but neither can they be disjoined. Disembodied essence is no more conceivable than featureless existence. But could there be a different approach? One that does not get hung up on the essence-existence dichotomy and so, perhaps, skirts Heisenberg…and even Heidegger? Should we be looking for God beyond essence and existence, in the deep structure of reality itself? If we are successful, we will be entitled to call God ‘real’. The concept of God is bound up with notions of Immediacy (Presence) and Eternity, Becoming and Enduring. If I could identify an aspect of reality common to all events and if that aspect was Omnipresent, Eternal, the Source and Destiny ( Alpha and Omega ) of everything that was, is, or ever will be, would I be entitled to label that God and call it real ? Consider this reasoning: A World exists : It is. (Big Bang) Whatever exists is inherently recursive and self-reflective (above): I am. (Descartes) The World consists of discrete but related events , things that exist . (Whitehead) Events do not occur in time; they are temporary suspensions of time, local interruptions in the universal temporal flow. (Heraclitus) Events are knots in the thread of time, islands of order floating in an entropic sea. Events make meaning possible. They are ‘signatures of all things we are here to read’ (Joyce). Knots in a thread can be read as binary code, dots among dashes, an alphabet of runes. Every event is the Universe reflecting on itself…and acting on itself. Therefore, all events are recursive. Timeless, events occur only in the Eternal Present. They define the Present. They are what Presence is, what’s happenin’ ! Presence and Occurrence are synonymous. Events can only be ordered with respect to one another by using an external lattice such as spacetime. The Present includes traces of past and future events. It is the Present that preserves the past and presages the future. Without Presence there is no Past or Future. Presence makes past and future events relevant. So, I believe we have now established some things about the Real World. Regardless of the physical details of ‘creation’, our end-product is clearly not a random sequence of dice casts, strung together to constitute a Cosmos. There is an omni-present, universal and eternal substructure that informs, or shapes, everything that comes to exist. So I ask again, “Am I entitled to call this substructure God ?” If so, God is Logos , the deep structure of the real world. God is not ‘All Things’ (pantheism); God is not so much the Creator as the Precondition of everything that is. Have I proven that ‘God exists’? I have not. Have I established that God is real ? I believe I have… Of course, this does not close the door, one way or the other, on subject of God’s Existence, but that is another topic for another day. Hopefully though, it does settle one thing once and for all: Regardless of whether or not God exists, God is most definitely real – not as a concept (Lennon) but as the universal and eternal substructure of everything that is. Deal with it. 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< Back Dark Forces Reconsidered David Cowles Jun 8, 2026 “Dark Forces are thought to account for 95% of the universe’s gravitational behavior…96% on October 31.” 1100 words, 5 minute read “For nearly thirty years, Dark Energy has been the cornerstone of modern cosmology. When astronomers discovered in the 1990s that the universe wasn't just expanding but accelerating, getting faster as it grows, they needed an explanation. Dark Energy was it, an invisible pressure built into the fabric of space itself, pushing everything apart. Nobody has ever detected it directly, but the maths seemed to demand it, so into the equations it went.” - Mark Thompson, BBC, May 31, 2026 Dark Energy seemed to account for the fact that the universe seemed to be expanding at an accelerating rate. Cosmologists had already given the name Dark Matter to another mysterious force, this one seeming to hold galaxies together. (If cosmologists are not always poetic, they do strive to be consistent.) Between the two, Dark Forces (Oooo!) are thought to account for 95% of the universe’s gravitational behavior (96% on October 31). A new definition of Scientific Method is emerging: Whenever you can’t explain some phenomenon, ‘discover’ a new ‘force’ to account for it and then label that force ‘dark’ so no one can expect to explain it. Neat trick…no wonder these guys (sic) got all A’s in high school; they really are smart after all! Dark gravity/anti-gravity forces have long been accepted as canonical by the astronomical community. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded in 2011 in recognition of the ‘discovery’ of Dark Matter. But Cambridge(s), we have a problem! Actually, several problems. Earlier on this site we reported on a new set of measurements that seem to suggest that the expansion of the universe is not accelerating after all; in fact, it’s slowing down. Oops! So we have a beautiful theory , all dressed up with nowhere to go. Anyone who’s been stood up on prom night can empathize with the cosmological angst. But believe it or not, it gets even worse for our denizens of the dark. Mark Thompson (above), science broadcaster and author, continued his remarks, turning his attention to a team of mathematicians who recently “…found that accelerating expansion falls naturally out of Einstein's original equations, without any need to bolt Dark Energy onto the side. The universe accelerates not because of some mysterious invisible force, but because of the inherent mathematics of how space and matter behave in the wake of the Big Bang.” So not only did your prom date ghost you, it turns out that the prom had already been cancelled and nobody bothered to let you know. *** Just 15 years ago we thought we had everything figured out…well, at least one thing figured out: ‘We’re all in the dark!’ (95% dark anyway). MIT Technology Review (5/19/2025): “We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5% . That’s how much of what’s floating about in the cosmos is ordinary matter—planets and stars and galaxies and the dust and gas between them. The other 95% is dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities aptly named for our inability to shed light on their true nature... Cosmologists have cast dark matter as the hidden glue binding galaxies together. Dark energy plays an opposite role, ripping the fabric of space apart.” Poor Isaac Newton must have been on mushrooms when he thought to explain gravity in terms of a perfectly visible , and regrettably tactile, apple (falling from a tree branch overhead). Dark gravity/anti-gravity forces have been accepted as canonical by the astronomical community for about three decades, but the smug satisfaction that comes from intellectual certainty does not last long. Take in the 2026 view from the left coast (UC Davis): “…A new paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society produced mathematical proof that the standard model of cosmic expansion, the one built around dark energy, is fundamentally unstable.” So your prom date ghosted you, but the prom had been cancelled anyway, and OBTW, the brand new limo you hired to take you to the prom was just recalled - something about a tendency for this model’s engine to explode? And I thought I was having a bad day! Scientists invented the Dark Universe hypothesis to give a name to things they couldn’t explain. “We believe in things we don’t understand…” Based on what we know , the Universe shouldn’t work. There’s not nearly enough mass to hold galaxies together. In fact, however, galaxies do exist, 100’s of billions of them with more forming ‘every day’. So something’s wrong and the Dark Universe hypothesis seems to solve the problem. Of course, it’s merely ‘solving’ one unknown in terms of another. So where do we go from here with our Dark Forces? Well, the headlines are already in the can: “ Dark hypotheses confirmed!” And they will be confirmed because any advance in our understanding of the universe will now be labeled dark . And why not? ‘Dark Universe’ has no denotative meaning, nothing that might subject it to the risk of falsification. It’s a universal place holder for whatever we don’t know now but may discover later. ‘Dark’ is apt after all. Once we learn something about the universe that we don’t already know, whatever that is, that will be what ‘dark’ is. It will define ‘dark’. Of course it will. We don’t know what Dark is so whatever turns out to solve the paradox will be quite correctly labeled Dark , and we will say, “Of course that’s what Dark Matter and Energy are, we knew it all along.” Except of course, we didn’t. Do you doubt me? It’s already happening. A recent article by Evan Gough in the February 09, 2026 issue of Universe Today suggests replacing the Black Hole hypothesis with…you guessed it, Dark Matter. According to Gough, it may be dark matter, not a black hole, that resides at the center of the Milky Way and holds the galaxy together. So the Dark Forces are living up to their name. They can explain virtually everything…no matter what anything is. Thanks for reading through to the end and now, if you don’t mind, just one more favor, please: Can you just remind me how science is different from magic? 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 Politics or Philosophy? David Cowles Apr 23, 2024 “The philosopher never sees anything she likes…until she does; but when she does, she ceases to do the work of philosophy." Politics is the arena of opinion, of choice. A or ~A. Yet it’s politics, not religion (and certainly not philosophy), that is the opiate of the people. How so? A or ~A. We’ve just covered the entire range of potential options; so pick one! What could be better than this; right? Wrong! We’ve reduced our many-splendored world to just one of its aspects, one variable, its A-ness . How ‘A’ are you? Are you ‘A enough’? Did you say something ‘anti-A’ once when you were in middle school? Like kids with a model train set (do kids even have model trains anymore?), we are mesmerized by the back-and-forth motion of our engines: Red to Blue to Red to Blue, ad infinitum . We oscillate between A and ~A, oblivious of the fact that we are all the time running along a straight, fixed track, utterly heedless of any world ‘beyond the rail bed’ and utterly powerless to alter our trajectory. This is what we call freedom ; in politics this is what we call democracy . What we need now are the services of a good philosopher; know any? A philosopher will ask, “What do A and ~A, supposed opposites, have in common?” Their ‘A-ness’, of course. They both assume that A exists and that it is a meaningful measure of some aspect of reality. In the language of high school math, A-ness is the ‘absolute value’ of A and of ~A . Philosophy is not concerned with A or ~A. That’s the arena of politics. To the philosopher, A = ~A; it is their ‘absolute value’ that is the philosopher’s concern. Not A, not ~A, but ‘A-ness’ per se . Consider a recent political event in a U.S. state, Massachusetts; it was a referendum question on the 2022 ballot: Should the state impose a special 1% surtax on residents who earn $1,000,000 or more in a given tax year? A or ~A. A simple choice. Yes or no? The electorate was pretty evenly split, but to the philosopher, A or ~A is a distinction without a difference. What both sides of this debate must assume, i.e., the absolute value of A, is far more important than either A or ~A. In this case, the absolute value of A, ‘A-ness’, includes the following assumptions: The State (not just a state, but the State) has the right to confiscate a portion of any resident’s income or wealth at any time for any or no reason. It is reasonable and just to ‘classify’ members of society according to their income and/or wealth and to treat some such ‘classes’ differently from others. A simple plurality of a state’s voting electorate has the right to impose a confiscatory scheme on the entire population. Whether you vote A or ~A, you implicitly endorse the underlying premises of ‘A-ness’ (above). These are the assumptions that grab the attention of philosophers. My wife and I resolve a similar dilemma every morning when we eat breakfast at our favorite diner. I always order an English muffin with orange marmalade while my spouse orders toast with strawberry jam. We tease each other about our irrational but intransigent preferences; but the fate of the world hardly hangs in the balance. A philosopher looks at our daily dilemma differently. To her a muffin is toast and marmalade is jam. The questions she’ll ask are of another order entirely: Is it just that my wife and I have sufficient economic resources to eat breakfast, albeit a modest one, in a restaurant, also modest, most every morning? Is the distribution of food via an archipelago of privately held restaurants and franchised fast-food chains just and efficient? Is a breakfast of processed grain and sweetened fruit a healthy way for anyone to begin a day? Of course, these ‘2nd order’ questions can themselves in certain circumstances become the stuff of politics: e.g., should the City of New York permit the sale of super-sized soft drinks? Whenever a question of philosophy becomes a question of politics, philosophy must ask new questions: Should society require all able-bodied members to grow and prepare their own food? Should privately or collectively owned enterprises be permitted to profit from the sale of a basic human necessity, food? Of course, these questions could also be politicized, requiring philosophers to push the level of abstraction yet another notch higher. Theoretically, the process could continue ad infinitum . The only limitation is imagination. The praxis of politics is choice, maya . Either this or that. Philosophy, on the other hand, is a form of spirituality: neti, neti (not this, not that). Bottom line, the philosopher never sees anything she likes…until she does; but when she does, she ceases to do the work of philosophy. 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. 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 Tarot David Cowles Oct 6, 2025 “Tarot can be seen as a paradigm of Judeo-Christian spirituality. So deal me in…please!” It is hard to pick up a deck of Tarot cards without triggering associations with ordinary playing cards : the time you won big at the Black Jack tables in Vegas, the time you lost a game of strip poker at camp. Playing Cards are such a fundamental part of our culture that it is hard to imagine a time without them. And yet they were not introduced to Europe (from the Islamic world) until late in the 14th century CE. 100 years later, the first Tarot decks emerged, like seemingly everything else, in Northern Italian city states like Milan. Disney Movie : DaVinci, Machiavelli, and Savonarola are playing cards with members of the Medici family in Florence; the stakes: Middle Earth (Europe). Spoiler alert : Savonarola lost more than his clothes! Tarot modified the original deck to give it a distinctly European and Medieval character and to open up the possibility of applications beyond mere games of chance. Sidebar : History is fraught with ‘false flags’. Take the Renaissance, for example. Supposedly, it marked the rebirth of classical culture; actually, it killed it. Tarot has a similar biography. It turned Medieval Culture into a 15th century version of a Marvel comic and it confined Christendom to a pavilion at ‘Epcot Firenze’. All this 100 years before Cervantes’ great ‘Requiem for the Moyen Age’, Don Quixote . So ‘this is the way the Middle Ages end, not with a bang but a snicker ’. But there’s much more to Tarot than this! A standard Tarot deck consists of 78 cards. They are usually divided into 56 cards of the Lesser Arcana and 22 cards of the Major Arcana. Cards in the Lesser Arcana vaguely resemble the playing cards we inherited from Islam, the cards we knew and used to love…until that last trip to Atlantic City. They’re grouped in 4 suits (Swords, Wands, Cups, and Pentacles) of 14 cards each (vs. our standard 13), including 10 cards in each suit with associated numerical values (A – 10) and 4 additional cards in each suit corresponding to personages in a paradigmatic medieval court (King, Queen, Knight and Page). Completing the Tarot Deck are the 22 ordered cards of the Major Arcana, forming what’s called the Fool’s Journey – a metaphorical path of physical and spiritual development. Two analogies spring to mind: the Via Crucis or Stations of the Cross and El Camino de Santiago , aka The Way. We might view Tarot as ‘polite penance’ or ‘posh pilgrimage’ – spiritual practices well suited to the less devout and more affluent leisured classes emerging in Renaissance Italy. And speaking of journeys through life’s stages, fast forward to the mid-20 th century and meet Erik Erikson, a psychologist who divided the human life cycle into 8 stages, beginning with Infancy (0 to 18 months) and running through Seniority (Age 65+). Erikson associates each stage with a specific emotional dichotomy and a particular developmental milestone. For example, for children ages 6 through 11, the emotional challenge is Industry vs. Inferiority and the milestone is Competence . But back to Tarot: the very first card in the Major Arcana is a tipoff that we’re not in Vegas any more. The card is numbered 0 (rather than 1) and the ideogram on the card is known as The Fool – not the most auspicious way to begin a journey… or is it? My reading of the Major Arcana is that they divide life’s course into 4 rather than Erikson’s 8 stages with every journey beginning at the same spot, Ground Zero , i.e. with The Fool (#0), i.e. ‘everyman’ (sic). This is not King Lear’s Fool. This is you and me and every other sentient being in our own personal state of nature – each of us, fresh out of the womb, experiencing the world with no pre-conceived categories to guide us. The first stage takes us through puberty, and it consists entirely of our introduction to the category of the Other, i.e. other people. In our initial encounters, the Other assumes the forms of Magician and High Priestess, emphasizing the Transcendence of the Other in the experience of a newborn. Sidebar : There’s a world, there’s me, and now there’s another ‘me’ who is not me ? One of my favorite games with < 1 y.o. grandchildren is to show them their image in a mirror and watch them trying to figure out what’s happening. Of course, we are all surrounded by mirror images of ourselves 24/7, no reflective surface required. 20+ cards later this still seems magical to me! Stage One ends when we encounter the Other as our peer partner in a relationship of romantic Love. In between we meet the Other in more secular guises: Empress (mom), Emperor (dad), Hierophant (teacher, guru, mentor). Stage Two corresponds to adolescence. It poses three challenges: Mobility (Chariot), Strength, and Interiority (Hermit). Before puberty, we are weak, we rely on others for our movements, and we wear our hearts on our sleeves. With adolescence we need to assume responsibility for our own actions (Chariot), develop a quiet self-confidence (Strength), and experience the beginnings of an inner life (Hermit). With adulthood, we enter Stage Three, the realm of Industry, Commerce and Procreation. Like the Christmas elf, we place our inner Hermit on the shelf. We are immersed, if not submerged, in the realm of Chance (Wheel of Fortune), Responsibility (Justice), Consequence (Hanged Man) and Mortality (Death)! Finally, we’re ready for Stage Four, the atemporal Eschaton (Parousia, Apocalypse, Eternity). Stage Four is reminiscent of the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead . It consists of milestones ‘on the silk road’ from Immanence to Transcendence. Step one, let go of our attachments (Temperance); step two, confront evil (Devil); step three, overcome pride (Tower, Babel?); step four, reject Narcissism (Star); step five, smash idols (Moon). In truth, these 5 steps are all forms of iconoclasm. We have ‘misplaced concreteness’ (Whitehead), mistaking things that are immanent for Transcendence. With step six, we embrace sensuality and joy (Sun), a foretaste of the Transcendent. At step seven, we pass judgment on ourselves and our world and we are ready to let ourselves be judged by others in turn (Judgment). The final card in the deck (World) completes stage four; but it is also the climax of the entire journey. And what a journey! We all start off as the Fool - tiny, defenseless, and bald (no hair, Hawking) - a quantum of being. Ideally at least, we all end up with the same reward, i.e. The World. Not too shabby! Sidebar : The Old Testament Book of Job outlines a similar trajectory. Job is living a successful and virtuous life (Immanent), but he loses everything and is brought back to the state of nature (#0). He is Fool-again ( a la Joyce) – so ‘foolish’ in fact that he dares to confront God (Transcendent) face to face, judging and submitting himself to judgment (#20). As a result, he inherits the World (#21). Orthodox Christianity has for the most part taken a dim view of Tarot. At worst, it is ‘magic, demonic, and wicked’; at best it is a dangerous but frivolous distraction. Even so, the climax of the Fool’s Journey must have come as a bit of a shock: the final reward is not Paradise (Heaven) but the World. On the one hand, the Book of Revelation does speak of a New Jerusalem, so there is room for a new World in orthodox eschatology. However, Tarot’s utter lack of any reference to Heaven, or to Hell for that matter, must have been disconcerting to some. We cannot resist the temptation to see this aspect of Tarot as an omen. Machiavelli is about to turn Christian ethics upside down (‘ends justify means’). Out of Machiavelli’s head will spring the full bouquet of isms characteristic of the our Enlightenment era: Capitalism (Smith), liberalism (Locke), utilitarianism (Mill). socialism (Bentham), communism (Marx), pragmatism (James), fascism (Mussolini), secularism, and moral relativism. Of course, pockets of resistance persist: Existentialism (Sartre), Organism (Whitehead), and Hasidism (Buber) to name just three; but there is no denying that Mechanism ( La Technique – Ellul) is the dominant Spirit of this Age. But to blame that on Tarot is a bridge too far. At most, Tarot is a sign and harbinger of things to come. That said, we can embrace the profound human insight and the ultimately optimistic eschatology of Tarot without sacrificing any Judeo-Christian principles in the process. In fact, Tarot can be seen as a paradigm of Judeo-Christian spirituality. So deal me in…please! *** Image: Agnes Pelton — Awakening (Memory of Father (1943 Agnes Pelton’s Awakening (Memory of Father) (1943) is a luminous abstraction expressing a mystical experience of loss and transcendence. Soft radiating light rises from a central form, suggesting the soul’s ascent and a bridge between earthly grief and spiritual renewal. The painting embodies Pelton’s vision of awakening consciousness—where personal memory transforms into a universal, serene illumination. 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 Constitutional Theocracy David Cowles Mar 2, 2023 “Sadly, the option of a ‘Constitutional Theocracy’ hasn’t made it into most 21st century civics textbooks.” Democracy, Republic, Monarchy, Dictatorship – we’ve ‘known them all already, known them all’! Sadly, the option of a ‘Constitutional Theocracy’ hasn’t made it into most 21 st century civics textbooks. Yet, it offers a viable alternative to the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ (above). On February 21, 2023, we explored England’s resilient national identity . Contrary to popular assumption, the English monarchy did not begin with William the Conqueror (1066); but neither do we need to seek out the ‘once and future’ King Arthur. Anglo-Saxon England had a long line of kings (21 by most counts) stretching back from 1066 to Egbert (802 CE). Prior to uniting most of what is now Southern England and part of Wales, Egbert served in the French court of Charles the Great. Remember Charlemagne? He was on the front lines of the struggle between ecclesiastical and secular authority in Medieval Europe. Apparently, Egbert paid attention in class. According to the miserable standards set by today’s so-called ‘statemen’ (sic), the Anglo-Saxon (and Danish) kings of England were exceptional rulers. For the most part, they were learned, pious, effective, and benevolent. (When was the last time you used these adjectives together to describe a politician?) The 9 th century CE was book ended by two signature events – the Coronation of Charles the Great in 800 and the death of Alfred the Great in 899. These two men are in no small part responsible for what is often regarded by historians as the ‘First (or Carolingian) Renaissance’. Of the early English monarchs, Alfred is by far the best known…and for good reason. He reigned for 28 years (871 – 899) and was simultaneously a social reformer, an educator, a lawgiver, and a poet. In short, he was in every way what we think of today as the paradigmatic Medieval sovereign. Alfred is a real life, strictly historical, symbol of Anglo-Saxon England: King Arthur freed from Avalon! Alfred played a crucial role in the development of English national identity, an identity that survived both the Danish and the Norman conquests. Alfred was the first to describe himself as Angelcynn , a term meaning both ‘King of England’ and ‘People of England’. Alfred oversaw (and perhaps participated in) the translation of important manuscripts, including the Bible, from Latin into Anglo-Saxon (Old English). He ‘suggested’ that primary and secondary education be conducted in Anglo-Saxon, reserving Latin for those pursuing a career in the Church. As such, he ensured the survival and growth of the native tongue and, along with Geoffrey Chaucer 500 years later, is jointly credited with its survival in the face of linguistic incursions from the Continent. Alfred is perhaps best known for his compendium of Anglo-Saxon law, the Domboc , which situates secular England squarely in the mainstream of Judeo-Christian legal tradition. The Domboc begins with a modified restatement of the Decalogue (from Exodus ); but while acknowledging English secular law as the continuation and amplification of God’s law, Alfred feels free to modify the Exodus text as necessary to fit the exigencies of his realm. For example, he drops two commandments, the 6 th (vs. adultery) and the 10 th (vs. coveting a neighbor’s wife) altogether. For all his achievements, apparently Alfred was not woke ! He also modified the 9 th commandment against coveting a neighbor’s property by inserting a single phrase, mid unryhte (‘with injustice’) at the very end of the text. Perhaps unknowingly, Alfred was laying the legal groundwork for contract law…with a free market economy to follow: Covet all you want…within the bounds of justice. All of which left Alfred two commandments short of a Deca logue. (According to Variety , Charlton Heston turned down the role of Moses in The Eight Commandments . So Alfred had to do something !) To make up for this shortfall, Alfred split the First Commandment in two: “You will not love false gods over me” (#1) and “You will not create gods of gold or silver” (#10). Then, like many a well-meaning parent, Alfred slipped in a commandment against lying in general (#6) where none exists in the Exodus text. Ask any 4 th grade Religious Ed class whether the Ten Commandments forbid lying and count the forest of hands raised. (In fact, the Decalogue only prohibits bearing false witness against a neighbor…in other words, perjury. ‘The dog ate my homework’ is not perjury…unless you look at it from the pup’s perspective.) So to be clear, according to Alfred’s code, adultery is ok, but lying isn’t. How 20 th century of him! The remainder of Alfred’s code, the bulk of it, is what you might expect from the 9 th century: a long list of specific transgressions paired with specific punishments – a list of Dos and Don'ts like a parent might post on the dreaded refrigerator door. Depending on your point of view, Alfred is either a social reformer set on humanizing ‘barbaric’ customs (e.g., Lex Talionis ) or he is himself the ‘barbarian’, modifying but not outlawing slavery and discriminating among people according to their station. Either way, the Domboc is everywhere couched in the language of Exodus . That said, the Domboc is not so much a translation as it is a ‘transplantation’. It is the Torah (second millennium BCE) projected 2500 years out onto Medieval England. Accordingly, Alfred’s most lasting contribution may be in the realm of Political Philosophy. Amid a welter of competing models (above), he proposes something new, something that I call ‘Constitutional Theocracy’ (in contrast to the ‘Constitutional Monarchy’ of Charles III or the ‘ Absolute Monarchy’ of James I . In orthodox Islamic states (e.g., modern Iran), Sharia typically limits the legislative function to the implementation of the Koran . Alfred’s law code is steeped in Torah, but everywhere modified to reflect contemporary notions of justice and to incorporate the secular traditions of the Angelcynne (the English people). It is a codification of English common law, built on a foundation of God’s Torah, ergo a ‘Constitutional Theocracy’. Image: Alfred. The British Library (Public domain). 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.