< Back Bakunin and COVID 19 David Cowles Jun 20, 2023 “If someone says, “God told me to do it,” we confine them in a hospital setting. But if someone says, “I followed the science,” we elect that person to public office.” “I am guided by the science.” How often during the recent pandemic did we hear public officials recite that mantra? Meaning what? I have turned over my reason, my conscience, my moral authority, and my ethical duty to an amorphous collection of people and institutions guided by an ever-changing body of so-called ‘knowledge’? Once upon a time, folks used to say, “I am guided by my faith. I have turned over my reason, my conscience, my moral authority, and my ethical duty to God and to people and institutions sanctioned and guided by God.” Meet the new god (science), the same as the old God (YHWH). To the chagrin of many, there is no fundamental difference between “I am guided by the science” and “I am guided by the Word of God” ( aka the Bible, the Koran, etc.). In both cases, the speaker is subcontracting ‘moral responsibility’ to an external agent. It is a way of avoiding the always disappointing consequences of terrifying choices and timid actions. If someone says, “The Devil told me to do it,” we imprison them. If someone says, “God told me to do it,” we confine them in a hospital setting. But if someone says, “I followed the science,” we elect that person to public office. Yet, all three are really saying the exact same thing! As a 19 th century revolutionary, Mikhail Bakunin (1814 – 1876) might have been expected to hold the precepts of modern science in high esteem, and so he did! But, unlike many of his comrades, then and now, he was singularly not fooled by the ‘science made me do it’ fallacy. On the one hand, he wrote: “We recognize the absolute authority of science…” Then he added: “…but we reject the infallibility and universality of the savant …the savants form a separate caste, in many ways analogous to the priesthood.” Bakunin consistently excoriates Big Science: “Suppose a learned academy…charged with legislation…frames none but laws in absolute harmony with the latest discoveries of science…Such legislation would be a monstrosity…” “…Human science is always and necessarily imperfect…A society that would obey legislation emanating from a scientific academy…would be a society, not of men (sic), but of brutes.” “…A scientific academy invested with a sovereignty, so to speak, absolute…would soon end in its own moral and intellectual corruption…such is the history of all academies.” “A scientific body, to which had been confided, the government of society would soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all, but to quite another affair…its own eternal perpetuation…” “The government of science and of men (sic) of science…cannot fail to be impotent, ridiculous, inhuman, cruel, oppressive, exploiting, maleficent.” I wonder what he really thinks! Sidebar : Notice what is missing from Bakunin’s blistering critique. Nowhere does he mention the undemocratic way in which academy members are chosen, nor the fact that members are almost all white males, middle-aged or older. (He does decry the fact that they all come from the privileged classes .) Today, organizations like Antifa treat Bakunin as an intellectual forebear, but would he recognize himself in their ideology? As an intellectual, Bakunin paid the required homage to the scientific spirit, but as an ‘eternal anarchist’, he distrusted everything , including science itself: if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him! Science, theology, theology, science, church, state, tomato, tomato! It is institutionalization per se that is the enemy. Marxism replaced the Judeo-Christian God with a pantheon of new deities: the State, History, Science, etc. Not Bakunin. For him, atheism is atheism, period. Importantly, Bakunin does not confine his Critique of Scientific Reason to the institutional side of science; like Beowulf, he confronts Grendel in her den: “…Science can grasp and name only the general significance of real facts, their relations, their laws – in short that which is permanent in their continual transformations – but never their material, individual side, palpitating so to speak with reality and life…Science comprehends the thought of reality, not reality itself: the thought of life, not life. That is its limit, its only really insuperable limit because it is founded on the very nature of thought…” Bakunin’s thought spans the length and breadth of western philosophy. The distinction he draws (above) is both reminiscent of Parmenides ( Aletheia and Doxa ) and anticipatory of Sartre ( en soi and pour soi ). Sartre’s best known novel, Nausea , is centered on the main character’s realization that Being incessantly and inevitably overflows the margins of ‘being’. Like Sartre, Bakunin finds value in art that is missing from science: “Science cannot go outside of the sphere of abstractions. In this respect, it is infinitely inferior to art…art in a certain sense individualizes the types and situations which it conceives…” Summing up, Bakunin writes: “What I preach then is, to a certain extent, the revolt against science or rather against the government of science… to remand it to its place so that it can never leave it again.” Such language! Reminiscent of God exiling Satan in Dante and Milton, even of God enchaining the sea in Genesis and Job. In recent years, science has been uncharacteristically center stage in our public forum. To some, it is, at least potentially, omniscient, and omnipotent. To others, it is a ‘hoax’. Still others acknowledge their dependence on science, even as they view it with a measure of distrust. Very few of us arrive at the nuanced assessment of science achieved by Bakunin almost 200 years ago. 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 You Can’t Get There from Here David Cowles Jan 11, 2024 “What do 200 trillion sparks have to do with one idea?” In 2024, a brand new supercomputer will be ‘turned on’. Big deal! Except that this computer, called DeepSouth , has been built to mimic the human nervous system. For example, it is capable of more than 200,000,000,000,000 synaptic operations per second, which is on par with the estimated rate of operations in the human brain. Cool beans! But none of this helps us answer the fundamental question: how do 200 trillion synaptic operations turn into an idea for the next issue of Aletheia Today Magazine ? Our interaction with the world consists of holistic quanta of experience. We have no sense of 200 trillion electrical phenomena when we shout, “Eureka!” What do 200 trillion ‘sparks’ have to do with one idea? You just can’t get here from there! Whether you call them ‘buds’ (James) or ‘events’ (Fuller) or ‘actual entities’ (Whitehead), each quantum of experience seems whole . How do you break down the Wow! response to a beautiful sunset? Yet, contemporary science wants us to believe that that such a quantum of experience is simply an ‘emergent property’ of trillions of synaptic firings. But how? Objection : Perhaps consciousness is an accidental and unnecessary byproduct of neurobiology; perhaps it has no function. But then, how would it have evolved if it didn’t confer some sort of adaptive advantage? One current model talks of ‘consciousness’ as a ‘global workspace’ that allows us to dream up novel juxtapositions and test them out. It has a function! Question : How would the Wow! experience change if just one of the 200 trillion operations per second did not occur? If 10 did not occur? If 10 billion did not occur? When is ‘wow’ no longer Wow! and what takes its place? So, the quantum of experience we call Wow! cannot just be the product of 200 trillion independent events but does this mean that there is no connection between Wow! and our neural processes? Have we put the ghost back in the machine (Ryle)? Of course not. Wow! is all about the activity of our neural net…but not in the way that materialists (above) suppose. Rather, the Wow! response itself organizes the activity of our neurons so that they can support that Wow! There is no experience of Wow! without a physiological analog, but there is no coordinated (patterned) neuronal functioning without a Wow! (or some alternative experiential equivalent, e.g. Yuck! ). Materialists want us to accept an A → B model of reality; idealists prefer A ← B. But in fact, neither is correct. A better model would be A ↔ B. The relationship between 200 trillion synaptic firings and the experience of Wow! evolves dialectically; but that is not to say that the two are identical…or even congruent. Our neurons are always active but without ‘experience’ their firings are uncoordinated; they are just idling, they are noise. Wow! is the response of my whole organism to its whole ‘world’. It sends a shock wave across my neural net. It stimulates the orientation and coordination of synaptic firings so that I can have a conscious experience of Wow! Analogy : An ordinary piece of metal is exposed to a magnetic field. Immediately, its jumbled molecules align and the metal fragment itself now becomes a magnet. So Wow! aligns neurons. Those of us who speak modern Indo-European languages have learned to shoe horn all experience into the syntax of active/passive voiced verbs. Billy hit Johnnie; Johnnie was hit by Billy. What could be simpler? Except that, as every parent knows, real life events are rarely so clear cut. Events involve relations between two or more parties. But it is as true to say that the event designates its parties as it is to say that the parties determine the event. To describe events as they happen in the real world, we need another verb form, a ‘voice’ between active and passive, a ‘middle voice’. The Middle Voice verb form is used to describe an interactive relationship between two or more parties. The Middle Voice is the voice of reciprocity, mutuality. In rare, ‘degenerate’ cases, an event may take on an active/passive character, but our language forces us to treat every event as degenerate…with disastrous consequences. It prompts us to ask: Was ‘original sin’ really an incident of apple eating or was it the building of the Tower of Babel several generations later? The engineering triumph of Babel came at a price: language lost its ability to communicate, i.e., to model interactive events. Would it surprise you to learn that Indo-European languages (and many others) were ‘born’ with a mature Middle Voice. In fact, it is possible that Middle Voice was the primary proto-syntactical verb form. But in our eagerness to conquer the planet, and enslave each other, we allowed the Middle Voice to atrophy. We confront a similar dilemma whenever we encounter a Gestalt . Given the opportunity to view the same configuration of elements in two different ways, each revealing a different pattern, most of us will experience only one such alignment at a time. The two competing ‘faces’ of a Gestalt correspond to active/passive polarity. What’s figure? What’s ground? The Middle Voice is comparable to seeing both sides of the Gestalt at the same time. It's not easy, but it’s reality, and IRL, figure and ground are always interchangeable; they are co-subjects. So we have a lot of thinking to do! How is it that holistic experiences and quantum events co-modify? And how do they do it? How do we learn to keep both sides of a Gestalt in mind at the same time? How do we move past the ‘syntax of slavery’ (active/passive voice) to communicate our vision of a communitarian world, steeped in justice, where a wolf can lie down with the lamb? Rousseau’s Peaceable Kingdom ! One thing’s for sure: You can’t get there from here! 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 Being David Copperfield David Cowles Oct 17, 2023 “Most of us would rather be a well-drawn character in a Stephen King novel than a real person.” When I began writing David Copperfield , I knew I had my work cut out for me. To capture the panorama of life in 19 th century England, I needed to invent dozens of unique and interesting characters: Aunt Betsey, Mr. Murdstone, Tommy Traddles, Uriah Heep, Mr. Micawber, and of course, Agnes Wickfield, to name just a few. Each of these characters, even Davey himself, needed a backstory and a constellation of motivations to account for their actions. Each character needed to be memorable but also believable, a tall order for any author. Nevertheless, my novel was well received. Now I am starting work on an autobiographical sequel. I’d planned to follow the same plot line, but I’ve already realized that this won’t work. Two problems: first, my hero…that’s me! (Ok, anti-hero, if you insist.) I’m no David Copperfield. To the extent that my character has a backstory and a personality that explains his behavior…that character is not me! Sigmund Freud notwithstanding, nothing accounts for my actions. Authors rely on characters’ backgrounds to explain their behavior. I do what I do. I was made in the image and likeness of God: “I will be what I will be.” (Exodus 3: 14) Most of the time, my actions do follow well-worn tracks. I find it’s easier to do what folks expect. Until I don’t! My life story starts out as a real page turner, suddenly morphs into a head scratcher, and ends up dusty and half-read on the shelf of someone’s rarely visited library. My second problem is you! Who R U? I need to know if I’m to include you in my novel. Are you really an alter-ego (a mini-me) or are you just a cardboard cutout rescued from the set of The Truman Show ? Have you passed the Turing Test? If not, I can test you right now. Luckily, I just bought a Manhattan skyscraper for this very purpose. So, please walk to the edge of my roof and tell me, what do you see on the sidewalk directly below? No? What are you afraid of, a gust of wind? You’re a 250-pound fire plug and today’s totally calm! Even my flag is limp. No, you’re not afraid of some imaginary gust; you’re afraid of yourself. You know that you could just as easily jump off the edge of my roof as not. Probably, you won’t; but maybe, just maybe, you will. It’s a chance you’re not willing to take. The stakes are unaffordably high. That uncertainty is what makes a life interesting…and a novel unreadable. Ok, you will? Great. And so you walk right up to the edge and give me a detailed report. Thank you; now I know that you are cardboard after all. Only a fictional character would throw caution to the wind. Or… perhaps you’re just very brave, or macho, or have a keen sense of balance; perhaps for some reason, you are anxious to please me and so you comply with my utterly unreasonable request. Or perhaps you are a real person and just pretending to be a piece of cardboard. As I stare at my still blank monitor, I realize that I am already embroiled in two of philosophy’s most intractable problems: (1) Other minds, and (2) Free will. We’re in love with determinism ! We love destiny, God’s will, and the laws of physics…anything so long as it’s not me . It’s the ultimate free lunch: order without responsibility! The Devil made me do it, so I’m not to blame, but boy-o-boy, did I ever enjoy myself in the process. Sin without its wages: ‘volunteer work’. Thank you, Lucifer, for the free ride! So, there will be no Autobiography, at least not in the mode of David Copperfield . Perhaps I could cobble together a curriculum vitae with a dramatis personae , but don’t expect any explanation of my actions or the actions of any of my characters. We are most definitely not in search of an author! Most of us would rather be a well-drawn character in a Stephen King novel than a real person. Being real is messy, unpredictable, and always disappointing. We’d love to have a persona we could rely on: “That’s just the sort of hairpin I am!” What better way to justify everything I do while taking responsibility for none of it? We all want to ‘be someone’. Tracy Chapman, Fast Car , “I had a feeling I could be someone.” Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront , “I coulda been someone.” Ricky, Boyz in the Hood , “I want to do something with my life; I want to be somebody.” So, we measure ourselves against various fictional characters. Speaking for myself, I’m not as good a dad as Father Knows Best , as good a kid as Leave it to Beaver , as good a spouse as The Good Wife, as good a criminal as The Blacklist , as good a friend as Cheers , as good a dog as Lassie . Yet I judge myself in comparison to these imaginary beings; and of course, I come up short! My celluloid heroes are smooth; they know who they are, their behavior is consistent, their lives have meaning. By comparison, I’m more of a hedgehog, a ball of sharp bristles, concealing endless contradictions, masking noxious self-doubt. My life is a meander, not a journey. Imagine Odysseus without his Ithaca – that’s me… and you too, unless you’re one of Jim Carey’s props. I can no more measure up to my fictional idols than wooden Pinocchio could measure up to Geppetto’s idea of ‘a real boy’. I am not just ‘less than’; I am entirely ‘other than’. Less than? Ok, I can improve. Other than? There’s nothing I can do. I’ll never be a rhinoceros. But I can surely die trying! 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 Being and Nothingness David Cowles May 12, 2022 But there are holes in this Swiss cheese. First, while it is true that ‘events’ constitute the universe, what we’re calling ‘events’ (above) are rarely primordial events. William H. Gass, in his Introduction to Gertrude Stein’s The Geographical History of America , wrote, “Life is rearrangement.” Gass attributes this idea, if not this exact sentence, to Ms. Stein. According to this view, our lives consist of elements (events) and many of these elements seem to be shared by other people: one other, many others, most others, perhaps even all others. For example, growing up, we may be fed by a mother, punished by a father, taught by a teacher, babysat by a neighbor, etc. These ‘events’ are elements of my human life and, I assume, of many, but not all, other human lives; therefore, they are elements of ‘human life’ per se . The solidarity we experience as ‘society’ may be attributed at least in part to this vast network of shared elemental experiences. How many such elements are there? The number is uncountably large, but it is many, many orders of magnitude smaller than the number of distinct human lives that these elements can generate. “Life is rearrangement.” Think of the events that make up my life as words in a dictionary even larger than the OED. Only a few of these words are involved in the constitution of a single human being, but some of those same words turn up in others. The ‘rules’ by which these events can be combined to form a human life is the syntax of being human, while the number of unique human persons is analogous to an anthology of the complete works of an entire culture. But there are holes in this Swiss cheese. First, while it is true that ‘events’ constitute the universe, what we’re calling ‘events’ (above) are rarely primordial events. Usually a ‘society’ of events come together to share a common ‘superject’, i.e., meaning. So an event in your life, ‘X’, can fulfill the same function in my life, ‘Y’; both event-clusters have a similar meaning, ‘M’, but the route to ‘M’ in ‘X’ is very different from the route to ‘M’ in ‘Y’. While two individual paths may result in a common superject, the differences in those paths will significantly impact the further evolution of ‘X’ and ‘Y’. So,’X’ and ‘Y’ each emerge from their own unique Actual Worlds, they converge along the way to share a common superject, only to diverge again so that in the end, ‘X’ is entirely other than ‘Y’. Second, while both ‘X’ and ‘Y’ project ‘M’ as it is viewed by ‘Z’, ‘M’ has a different function in ‘X’ than it has in ‘Y’. ‘X’, and ‘Y’ share ‘M’ in ‘Z’, but ‘M’ in ‘X’ is radically different from ‘M’ in ‘Y’. Like families on your cul-de-sac , our lives can look very much alike from the outside, but they are always radically different when doors are closed and the shades are pulled down (i.e., on the inside). In fact, ‘M’ in ‘X’ is always different for ‘X’ than ‘M’ in ‘Y’ is for ‘Y’. Therefore, while our lives, considered socially, may overlap, those same lives, considered ontologically, can share no elements in common. Not only is every person unique, every primordial event that constitutes that person is unique; it has a unique function in ‘X’, though it may have a shared function for ‘Z’ (understood as all others, collectively). As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in Being and Nothingness , being-for-others has nothing to do with being-for-itself. As being-for-others, we are helping to build an all-encompassing web; as being-for-itself, each of us stands, alone, on the edge of Kierkegaard’s abyss and and on that edge, none of us has anything in common with anyone else, except the abyss . 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 Thai Food and a Salad David Cowles Jun 26, 2026 “It was a light shrimp dish that lit up my mouth like a bonfire…a good bonfire.” 1600 words, 8 minute read When Thai food first came to Boston, yup way back then, I couldn’t wait to give it a try. Asian, spicy, fresh, what’s not to like? Even so, I was absolutely blown away by my first experience. All I can remember now is that it was a light shrimp dish that lit up my mouth like a bonfire…a good bonfire. I never tasted shrimp (or anything) quite like this before…or since. I was in heaven (literally, as it turns out). So I called my dad with whom I had a ‘complicated’ relationship, “You’ve got to try this!” And so we did, and it was good, very good, and I was crestfallen. And so began a 50 (yes, 50) year quest to duplicate ‘my first time’. A lot of meals, mostly mediocre, a few awful, with a couple of great surprises mixed in…but nothing with anything in common with my original. I won’t (further) bore you with details of my life’s other quests; suffice to say, they are legion…and they’ve all come up snake eyes, which has led me to draw some conclusions about life itself: Mysticism aside, there is no such thing as ‘present experience’. As much as I seem to ‘be here now’ (Ram Dass), I am in fact almost anywhere else. Whenever I ‘should’ (who says so) be lost in a luscious swill or sumptuous bite, I am instead comparing it to other tastes I’ve had at other times and other places. “Good, but not as good as Prague.” If my experience is net positive, I immediately begin to redecorate the room, revise the menu (or at least our orders), train new wait staff, soften the lighting, and sorry my friend, make some changes to the guest list. I seem to be enjoying myself here and now, but actually I am savoring the experience I imagine I will have at the same venue on some future date. Of course no such experience will ever occur. Most likely, I’ll never set foot in this restaurant again but, if I do, I can be certain of one thing: it will disappoint. On the other hand, if my experience is even a titch below par, ‘I dream a dream in time gone by’ ( Les Mis ): the last time I had veal parm, the first time I had this wine, and oh, remember the 1963 Margaux we paired with foie gras on that rainy afternoon in Lyon? I’m not a curmudgeon, copious testimony to the contrary; in fact, I have been criticized for conferring ‘exaggerated praise’. But I know good and I recognize it in many places: Giotto and Gaugin, Wagyu and Big Mac, Neiman’s and Walmart…you get the picture. I know good, but I also know best, and this dish, sir, is NOT the best! (Lloyd Bentsen) A few disappointing culinary experiences will not rob life of all value and purpose. But applying this ethic beyond the protective gaze of the maître d’ just might. Suppose Georgie and Mandy’s first marriage is just ‘prep’ for their second; suppose Henry decided after all that he loved his first wife best; suppose you work 80,000 hours at a job that is not the job you wanted to be doing. Recently, however, I experienced something that forces me to revise my outlook: a salad! Not metaphorically, literally ‘a salad’, and not my first salad, not by a long shot. In fact, I would describe myself as something of an aficionado : Lobster Cobb in NYC, Antipasto in Boston’s North End, Greek Salad in Tarpon Springs, Pizza Topping in London. I’ve even fantasized opening a super high end restaurant called Salads, Salads, Salads where every item on the menu would be… But the salad that changed my life was made at home, thanks to my amazing spouse. Granted, it featured ‘local farm fresh’ veg and ‘up market’ versions of everything else…but nothing out of the ordinary. (No, I won’t be sharing the recipe: that’s not the point!) On a particular day, a particular combination of thoughtfully curated ingredients, mixed and dressed in a particular way, changed my view, not just of salads but of life itself. Unlike most everything else I’ve enjoyed in my life, the experience of ‘this salad’ was incomparable . No point asking my spouse to make it again. It wouldn’t be the same. No question of tweaking the ingredients; there’s nothing to tweak. It’s perfect and, drum roll please, it can’t be made more perfect ! Everything else , from salads to sunsets, is something else . Not better, not worse, but incomparable. My recent experience with this perfect salad will never be repeated or surpassed, but perhaps I may have other experiences of perfection. Some of those experiences may even include ‘local farm fresh veg’, but none of them will be the same as, or comparable to, what I now call my Salad Zero (S/0)…although some may be ‘incomparably perfect’ on their own. Now, you wouldn’t be reading this on Aletheia Today unless my experience resonated beyond the dining room. What if we can apply my culinary epiphany to, well, everything? *** Good comes in comparative forms (better, best); perfect does not. Something cannot be ‘more perfect’ than something else unless that something else is imperfect . ‘Perfect’ cannot be compared with ‘perfect’. There is only one Perfect and whatever is ‘perfect’ reflects (or shares in) that Perfect. So who do we know who’s perfect? Oh yah, God! God is perfect, a trait shared with S/0, but God is also Perfection per se - something a salad, even a perfect salad, cannot be. God is perfect. God is Perfection. As such God is singular, unique, and incomparable. Other entities (e.g. salads) can be perfect; they are also singular, unique, and incomparable. But they are not Perfection per se . That’s uniquely God. Whenever I have an experience, my immediate tendency is to evaluate that experience by comparing it with others. The moment I do, I am no longer ‘here now’ - I am no longer living my ‘present’ life. But very occasionally, one encounters something that ‘pushes back’, that refuses ‘comparative valuation’, i.e. something like S/0. I cannot compare Salad Zero to ‘other salads’; it only bears a superficial relationship to any of them. What then can I say about S/0? “I had it once and I will never have that experience again.” I cannot compare S/0 to other salads or dining fare because it defines its own category, a category of one. Other experiences may be perfect; if so, each of them in its perfection will have defined its own ‘category of perfection’ of which it will be the sole non-null member. Nerd Corner : There is a set of ‘things that are perfect’ (Whitehead’s Kingdom of Heaven). God is the paradigmatic member of that set, so is S/0, so is everything else that is perfect. But these things are not mere elements, they are also sets, but unlike the Set of All Things Bright and Beautiful , they are sets that contain, and can contain, only one non-null member. What defines a salad as ‘perfect’? It is any salad for which no addition or subtraction of ingredients or modification of technique would produce a ‘better’ product. Different, certainly; good, possibly; but better? Impossible or, ‘better’ still, meaningless . I hope to have many more salads in my lifetime and some of them will probably be good, perhaps very good. A few may even be ‘perfect’ in their own right. But none will be the ‘same as or better than’ Salad Zero . Improving on a bad experience should be easy; improving on a good experience is harder. But improving on a perfect experience is impossible. In fact, the concept itself is meaningless. Obviously, you can’t improve what is already perfect. *** But I beg your pardon, I promised you a rose garden, and I have not delivered…yet: Ray Stevens was right after all, “Everything is beautiful…in its own way.” (The beautiful manifests the Good but Beauty per se is a manifestation of Perfection, God.) For most experiences, we lack a unique conceptual category: “There are no words for this.” We are left to assign each new experience to a familiar if ill-fitting category. Every time we do so, we fall prey to Whitehead’s Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness , the original sin of the human condition. In that ‘misplaced’ context we find something comparatively good…or not. But perhaps there exists a category, undefined and for now at least ineffable, that has ‘this experience’ as its only non-null member. Leap : The Universe consists not of naked events but of sets of events. Each event is a member of a unique set of which it is the only non-null member. Each event is ‘perfect’ in relation to that set. Every event is its own paradigm. Therefore, the Universe consists of sets of events, each of which is perfect in the context of that set. Postscript : Have I become a Platonist? Not really. My perfect sets are not Plato’s pre-existent Forms. In my model, events create their own categories, their own sets, their own Forms. In the full flower of my grandiosity, I might even say, “I stood Plato on his head (apologies to Marx and Hegel). Forgive me, everyone! 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 Two-Faced Theology David Cowles May 22, 2025 Two-faced, God incorporates both the Past and the Future in the Present…temporality is possible only in the context of eternity.” In another article on this site, we introduced the idea of a ‘ Two-Faced God ’ as seen in disparate mythologies and theologies across multiple cultures. We made reference to YHWH (Hebrew), Janus (Roman), Duir (‘Thor’, Nordic), Hercules (Greek), and Llyr/Lear (Welsh/Anglo-Saxon). These two faced gods all function as time-binders . They look back on the Past and forward to the Future. Take Llyr (above) for example. Yes, this is the ‘Lear’ of Shakespearean fame, the father of Cordelia, a goddess in her own right (Cardea). According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Cordelia buried Llyr at Leicester, a site sacred to the Roman god Janus (above), after she had obtained “the government of the Kingdom”. (Geoffrey writes happier endings than William.) Janus and the other two-faced gods of mythology are often associated with celebrations of the New Year. At the turn of each year, God looks back on the Past and forward to the Future, all at the same time, i.e. in the Present. At the stroke of midnight, for one brief moment, as the ball nears the end of its descent in Time Square, the Past and the Future are co-incident. But this is merely a convention to make reality compatible with orientable spacetime. In reality, every point in time is simultaneously its own beginning and its own end, the culmination of a unique past and the launch of a unique future. The present is a point, but any point, on a non-orientable Mobius Strip. If we wish, we can define the unique point we call ‘present’ as any intersection of any past with any future. We know that this is true because wherever and whenever we are, it is always the Present, right there and right then. “In my end is my beginning.” (Queen Mary) ‘God’ bridges the gap between Past and Future and enables a single timeless, motionless moment ‘where & when’ the entire Universe, past and future, can just be present. God is Presence; presence per se is God’s gift to the World. Christ, God’s Incarnation, is ‘God being present’, Emmanuel , ‘God with us!’ Again according to Geoffrey of Monmouth (above), the wizard Merlin prophesied to King Vortigern, “After this, (two-faced) Janus shall never again have priests. His door will be shut and remain concealed in Ariadne’s crannies.” According to Robert Graves ( The White Goddess ), ‘after this’ refers to the coming of Christianity and ‘Ariadne’s crannies’ refers to the Corona Borealis , aka the ‘Castle of Arianrhod’, a small constellation in the northern sky. Presciently, Merlin saw Christianity as a threat to pagan traditions; but had he read more closely the Nicene Creed and the Gospel of John , Merlin might have understood that Christianity was really a restatement of his own core beliefs, albeit at a deeper level. Imagine how different the course of history might have been, had Merlin been at the docks to welcome St. Augustine upon his arrival in England! We might be talking today about ‘Bishop Merlin of Cornwall’, or who knows, maybe even ‘St. Merlin’; but that is not how this cookie crumbled. In our map of the Universe, Earth and the firmament that surrounds it remain separated by a vast topological gulf. Our moon shots and deep space probes are attempts, yet feeble, to bridge the gap between terra firma and the stars. In this respect at least, earlier civilizations were way ahead of us. In Nordic mythology, for example, there is no essential discontinuity between ‘heaven and earth’. W. B. Yeats references a similar tradition in his Celtic Twilight . Sky begins where Earth leaves off. The cosmos is radically continuous, so no special feat is required for Janus to play hide and seek among the celestial bodies. All the kids do it! Ancients intuitively understood the Universe as ‘non-orientable’. Earth and sky are simply complementary orientations on a single continuous surface; they are mirror images of one another. This explains why celestial forms (e.g. constellations) are thought to mirror terrestrial forms and why celestial events are believed to influence terrestrial counterparts. Ezra Pound explored this theme repeatedly in his Cantos . According to orientable post-Copernican cosmology, I can walk along the surface of the Earth and, completing a 360° loop, I will find myself back where I began. According to many non-orientable ancient cosmologies, that same journey will take me across the sky as well as around the earth. I must complete a 720° loop if I want to get back to Boston, now appropriately, if somewhat pompously, nicknamed ‘The Hub’, as in ‘Hub of the Universe’. Where earth ends, sky begins. Therefore, when the cult of Janus is banished from Earth, it naturally reappears as a celestial phenomenon. Hiding in the stars is better than wandering through Hades…though perhaps a bit chillier. Speaking of Aranrot , in the ‘Castle of Arianrhod’ there is a silver wheel, the mill around whose pivot the entire universe was thought to turn. Through that pivot runs Yggdrasil , the cosmic Tree of Life, the ‘pole’ whose wobble determines the precession of the equinoxes, an astronomical cycle, approximately 26,000 years long, which forms the basis for the so-called ‘ages’ of the Zodiac. Today we are in the Age of Pisces, the fish, Jesus; ‘tomorrow’ we will find ourselves in the Age of Aquarius, water, the Holy Spirit. Liturgically, we are living in the Church’s ‘Easter Season’, but we are approaching the cosmic Pentecost. According to the Standard Model of Cosmology, time is a vector that is infinitely, or ‘almost infinitely’ (down to units of 10^-44 seconds), divisible. Therefore, any past is separated from any future by a point which we mistakenly call ‘the present’. This model is sufficient to account for almost all physical phenomena, but it cannot account at all for the phenomenon of experience . Fortunately, each of us is also two-faced . (If that comes as news to you, get out more!) Like Janus, we bind past and future in a real present, but unlike Janus, we also look outward at the World and inward at our experience of that World. We are Janus on steroids. We are not well represented by mechanical models (e.g. door and hinge). Our experience requires something more organic. We are better modeled as membrane , permeable to the flow of time but also resistant to it; that resistance is presence, the narrow neck in the temporal hourglass. Are we not forever trying to hold on to the present? Memory, language, and the arts (including architecture, sculpture, and photography) are all efforts to project our Past-Present into the Future. We have evolved, physiologically and culturally, to conserve and savor what is passing away. Along the universal timeline, the present looks back on the past and forward to the future. Within the present, time does not exist. The present is an immobile pivot around which time itself revolves. Itself immobile, it enables all motion; timeless, it is the origin of time (time = motion, the mill, above). All cosmic history hinges on this hinge (see what I did there?) and this two faced but ever constant Presence is what human beings have called God . Without God, nothing exists; nothing can exist. The past does not exist; it is past . The future does not exist; it is future . All that exists is the present and according to physics, the present is an infinitesimal point with zero informational content. Therefore, nothing can exist; but something does … Ergo , God. Two-faced, God incorporates both the Past and the Future in the Present. God provides the continuity that connects what once was with what is not yet. God makes the Present possible, lifting what is out of the rushing river of perpetual perishing, aka time (lie quiet Heraclitus), thereby making it eternal. Temporality is possible only in the context of eternity. Either the Holy Grail of the ancients, to enjoy eternal life with the gods, is realized every single day in every single event or God is just auditioning for the role of “Two Face” in the next Dick Tracy movie. Image: The Emperor Augustus Closes the Doors of the Temple of Janus (c. 1655-1657) by Carlo Maratta Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? 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< Back The Power of Prayer David Cowles Feb 3, 2026 “May what is potential become actual and what is transient, eternal.” Earlier we introduced our readers to a new development in physics that may have earth shaking significance for philosophy and theology . I am referring to the 2025 discovery of a ‘Rondeau Time Crystal’ (RTC), aka ‘Time Rondeau Crystal’, by Leo Joon Il Moon, et al. Recap : An ordinary Crystal (think diamond, quartz, et al.) is a configuration of matter that repeats a particular pattern indefinitely in space . A Time Crystal is a configuration that repeats a pattern indefinitely in time . An RTC is a specific flavor of Time Crystal with its own unique, and surprising, internal structure. An RTC consists of three phases which I’ve labeled: Alpha , Delta, and Omega . There is a causal (deterministic) link between Alpha and Omega . Delta is an indeterminate ( aka chaotic) region separating the two . The introduction of indeterminate elements does not disrupt in any way the hard-wired causal connection between Alpha and Omega … which raises another question: What role does the Delta phase play in overall evolution of the crystal? Stay tuned for that, but in the meantime… Resolved : “That Free Will and Causality can co-exist in a single entity.” Up to now, this was a fit topic for high school debate club. No more! The Moon Team just built a working, physical model that combines determined and indeterminate behavior in a single entity. We know the world through propositions , i.e. patterned relationships among disparate elements. We do not see a figure ; we only see a figure in the context of a ground . We see patterns, the juxtaposition of elements. “It’s cloud illusions I recall; I really don’t know clouds at all.” (Joni Mitchell) Propositions (patterns) may be physical (the juxtaposition of objects) or conceptual (the juxtaposition of symbols). Caveat : We must resist the temptation to think of ‘propositions’ merely in terms of words organized into sentences. A sentence is a proposition, but so is a melody, an image, a recipe, or the tower my toddler just built with her blocks. Propositions are patterns and patterns resonate. Patterns in Alpha resonate in lock step with patterns in Omega , uniting the two. Patterns that emerge indeterminately in Delta may (or may not) resonate with patterns in Alpha and Omega . But whenever patterns resonate, they are one! One pattern, multiple manifestations; but the pattern is the thing . Sidebar : Subatomic particles that interact with one another become ‘entangled’ so that the behavior of one is immediately correlated with the behavior of the other, even if they are separated by vast distances. Similarly, when patterns resonate, they become entangled; the many become one. Same process? Or merely analogous? Spend an evening at the symphony: dozens of musicians playing dozens of instruments yet no cacophony, just soaring melodies. When the tones of different instruments resonate, they fuse into a single, albeit complex, sound. Likewise, patterns in Alpha , Delta , and Omega can resonate. What makes this extraordinary is that the ‘raw material’ of each phase differs from the other two. Patterns are apparently ‘medium agnostic’. Sidebar : Being combines appetition and satisfaction. We are motivated by qualia , i.e. values, and we seek to realize those values in a real event, i.e. to make a difference. It is convenient for our purposes to allocate qualia to the Alpha phase and outcomes to Omega . However, there is no suggestion that this reflects anything we currently know about the internal constitution of Moon’s RTCs. So Alpha is home to values , the qualities that make the cosmos cook. Omega consists of outcomes , potential matters-of-fact. Delta is the realm of indeterminate acts, free or random, conceptual as well as physical. In an analogy from Quantum Mechanics, Delta = decoherence. Events in Omega are eternal but potential; events in Delta are actual but transient. If only we could somehow merge these two worlds! Prayer : May what is potential become actual and what is transient, eternal. Because of the hard wired causal connection between Alpha and Omega , potential outcomes in Omega include only those matters-of-fact that are consistent with the values resident in Alpha . The patterns that emerge in Delta are subject to no such filter. However, a pattern in Delta resonating with a pattern in Omega is one and the same pattern: what was potential is now actual , what was transient is now eternal . We are left with a single pattern co-located in Delta and in Omega . The wave function collapses in Delta ; it is atemporal, i.e. eternal, in Omega . That is the function of the Delta phase (above): to make the potential actual. Here is where some ‘religionists’ go wrong: they deprive God of novelty, adventure, creativity and intensity of experience. They assume that Omega consists of settled matters-of-fact. As a result, they define the human project as conforming behavior in Delta to specific, set patterns in Omega . If these Preachers of the Narrow Way were right, then absent God’s infinite mercy, only Jesus would be saved. He is the grain; we are the chaff. But on the contrary, Omega consists of every potential matter-of-fact that is consistent with the Alpha values. Everything , to the extent that it is consistent with Alpha , pre-exists potentially but eternally in Omega . It is our job is to conflate selected possibles resident in Omega into specific actual events in Delta . Excuse me! Wasn’t this article supposed to be about prayer? So it is! A prayer is a conceptual proposition in the form of a petition. It proposes a specific matter-of-fact: “May what is potential become actual and what is transient, eternal.” And when the pattern that is our petition resonates with a potential matter-of-fact in Omega , we say that our prayer has been ‘answered’. “If you dwell in me and my words ( Alpha values) dwell in you, ask what you will and you will have it.” (John 15: 7) “…If you ask the Father for anything in my name, he will give it to you.” (16: 23) “Ask and it will be given to you.” (Matthew 7:7) It’s just that simple. The way is not narrow after all; in fact, it is exceedingly broad. Whatever we do in Delta is redeemed, saved, eternalized in Omega – only so long as it does not contravene the divine values (Alpha). So live life to the fullest, always keeping Beauty, Truth, Justice et al. top of mind, joyously and gratefully embracing the promise eternal life, for “in my father’s house there are many mansions.” (John 14:2) *** Caravaggio’s The Conversion on the Way to Damascus captures the instant of Saul’s spiritual transformation, showing him fallen, blinded, and utterly vulnerable as divine light interrupts his former life. The composition shifts focus away from spectacle to inner change, emphasizing humility and surrender rather than heroic action. Prayer here is implied not through gesture but through total dependence, marking a radical turning point from persecution to faith. 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 Analytic Philosophy David Cowles Nov 16, 2023 “…Analysis was a breakthrough: it put the bloated language of German Idealism on a starvation diet…but does that mean we can’t enjoy the occasional pepperoni pizza with extra cheese?” Like fish, philosophers tend to travel in schools . Good thing, I suppose. There’s safety in numbers, especially now that academic freedom has been effectively suspended. Today, the Truth Value of a proposition is not only measured by, but is constituted by, its proximity to a mean. This is the Copenhagen Interpretation of Everyday Life . The measurement of an Event is, in fact, the Event itself. As in a modern video game, the map is the territory. Discovering is averaging! One might imagine an alternative Aesthetics (Beauty is the substructure of Truth – Keats, Whitehead, et al.) in which the Truth of a proposition is measured and/or enhanced by its deviation from the mean (deviation = information). But that was yesterday. We’re old now – too old for Santa Claus, too old for objective reality. Accordingly, ambitious academics in all departments keep a very close eye on the medians in their fields, as reported daily in the Financial Times . This is harder to manage than you might think. You see academic opinion moving away from your ‘sincerely held’ beliefs. Hard cheese! But is it better to stand your ground or cut bait? All of which makes for agonizing evenings in front of the fireplace, slipper-shod, sipping sherry. But I digress. In the 20 th Century, the various schools lost their ability to even speak with one another. They no longer shared a common store of concepts or common methods of inquiry. They no longer asked the same questions, and they no longer had a common language in which to answer them! We are truly living in the shadow of the Tower of Babel. One school followed a path well-worn by Kant, Hegel and the British Empiricists. They continued the tradition of building vast, all-encompassing philosophical systems a la Plato and Aristotle, hence the term, Systematic Philosophy . Another school, following Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, was laser-focused on the subjective phenomenon of existence itself; hence, Existentialism . Three other schools, no doubt stimulated in part by Marx and Engels, focused on the more practical elements of philosophical inquiry. Their visions of Utopia are strictly terrestrial and are known variously as Materialism , Pragmatism , and Positivism . Finally, yet another group of early 20 th -century philosophers turned their attention away from traditional philosophical concerns like ontology, cosmology, and ethics, and focused instead on the process of philosophizing itself. In this way, they took philosophy down a road previously traversed only by art, music, and literature. Hence, Analytic Philosophy . Analysis , at least ab initio , attempted to apply standards of meaning and truth , borrowed from the so-called ‘hard sciences’, to philosophy. It was an effort doomed to fail from the get-go. Science is only Science when and to the extent that the events it studies are repeatable. Repeatability is the often-unstated assumption underlying all Science. Predictability rests on repeatability. But this itself is problematic. To the extent that an Event is predictable, it must be repeatable. Cool beans! Except in that case, every reiteration of an Event (i.e., each experiment) conveys no new information. It may reinforce a ‘subjective form’ of certainty, but that’s all. In fact, new information is generated only if the experiment fails! Remember, the purpose of experimentation is falsification, not verification. Doomed or not, every practicing philosopher today owes a debt of gratitude to Analysis. Methodologically, Analysis was a breakthrough; it put the bloated language of German Idealism on a starvation diet. We should all be conscious of what we eat, and we should all endeavor to eat healthily, but does that mean we can’t enjoy the occasional pepperoni pizza with extra cheese? Ludwig Wittgenstein was undoubtedly, if reluctantly, the most important member of this school; however, he realized early on that Analysis could never fully meet our need for gnosis . In fact, all the major concerns of ‘being human’ lie outside Science’s universe of discourse. According to Analysis , propositions are meaningful if and only if they are subject to falsification via the scientific method. Finally, we have a philosophy that purports to provide us with the ultimate Truth Test, 100% accuracy guaranteed or double your money back! But it’s a worthless guarantee. The only propositions we can test are propositions that restate what we already know and that we, as philosophers, don’t care about. Further, the set of all falsifiable but unfalsified propositions represents a tiny subset of the set of all the propositions I must entertain to function in my Actual World . In fact, these considerations lead me to propose a new pair of Heisenberg Uncertainty Relations: “The more I’m sure that P is true, the less I care.” “The more important P is to me, the less sure I can be that it is true.” There’s nothing new here! In Carroll’s Lookingglass World, the always alert Alice discovers that when she walks toward a destination, she ends up farther away from it: “…the nearer your destination, the more it’s sliding away. (Paul Simon)” Using her legendary Alice Acumen , supplemented by a bit of Euclid, she concludes, correctly as it turns out, that the only way to get to a destination…is to walk away from it. Analysis purports to divide propositions into two classes: (1) meaningful, and (2) meaningless. We don’t disagree. Consistent with that view, we expected to find that only falsifiable propositions (hypotheses) are meaningful, but we proved the exact opposite. To the extent that any proposition can be falsified experimentally, that proposition is meaningless. It conveys no new information. So Analysis ? Thanks, but no, thanks! 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 Dark Matter David Cowles Aug 24, 2025 “We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5%.” It’s straight out of MIT: We’re all in the dark; well, 95% anyway. One is tempted to paraphrase Lincoln: “Some of the people are in the dark all of the time, all people are in the dark 95% of the time, but 100% of the people cannot be 100% in the dark 100% of the time”… but I’ll refrain. Now, thanks to the blunt edge philosophers at the world’s leading school of technology, the universe just got a tiny bit darker. Consider the following excerpt from the 5/19/2025 issue of the MIT Technology Review : “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.” No, this is not a critique of the Dark Universe hypothesis; it’s a presentation of it! Even so, there’s nothing new here. But now just imagine this same paragraph written by a theist talking about ‘God’. It might go something like this: “We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5%. That’s how much of reality is knowable via our senses and reasoning faculties. The other 95% is what we call Mystery . Observation and reason alone are unable to shed light here. Only Revelation can enlighten us re what must otherwise remain dark . Theologians have cast God as the hidden glue binding all things together ( logos ) and as a force ( physis ) ripping apart what is now to make way for what is to come.” Public reaction would constitute a Tsunami. The Capitol itself would shake. Who knows, SCOTUS might even get involved. Does the 1 st Amendment protect such nonsense? Should it not be a crime to pollute the minds of our youth with such superstitious clap trap? Is this not a crime against humanity? Should we skip SCOTUS and bring the matter directly to The Hague? After all, Socrates was sentenced to death on these very same grounds: corrupting the youth (of Athens). Should modern day theologians not pay the same price? I mean, how dare these idol worshipers, these conjurers of spells, these alchemists place limits on the scope of my all powerful reasoning ability? "Their so-called ‘God’ is merely a god-of-the-gaps . Whatever we don’t know, whatever we don’t understand, they call that God – as if that settles anything. Like preschoolers everywhere, they imagine that giving something a name makes it real. Neither God nor Adam claimed that power ( Genesis ) but our modern day astrologers do not hesitate to claim it for themselves." This is the hypocrisy of secularism: Science is now the one true religion, established to the exclusion (or marginalization) or all others in direct contravention of the 1 st Amendment. There is no gnosis , and therefore no salvation, outside of the Academy. Even to question one of its tenets is tantamount to heresy. We are all now self-appointed Grand Inquisitors. By the age of 8, we are already rooting out apostasy like pigs nosing out truffles. Like Russian children in the days of Stalin, we are encouraged by our teachers to turn in non-conforming adults to the local ‘science police’; doing so can earn us a Fauci Medal (called the Hawking Medal in the UK), the highest honor a pre-teen can receive. As parents, we want our children to have every advantage. So…we encourage them to join science clubs at school, and we send them to science camp every summer. Bully! As a young boy, I joined the Cub Scouts (age 8). Later, many of my friends continued on as Boy Scouts. Had I lived in Russia in those days, I might have been a Little Octobrist (ages 7 – 9) and worn a star-shaped badge sporting the image of a young Lenin. Later, if I showed promise and commitment, I might have been invited to join the Pioneers (Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization); my parents would have been so proud to see me wearing the distinctive red scarf. Now please don’t misunderstand me: there’s nothing wrong with children receiving an education in science. In fact, it’s absolutely essential in our culture. But there was also nothing wrong with my friends and I learning survival skills at scouts; nor was there anything wrong with Russian children learning to campaign for social justice. The problem comes when we substitute dogma (“rite words in rote order” - Joyce) for discovery. Dogmatism breeds intellectual laziness. It was dogmatism that condemned Galileo, not true religion; it was dogmatism that undermined Glasnost , not true justice; and it is dogmatism, not true science, that’s placing the intellectual promise of the 21 st century at risk. Dogmatism encourages us to accept easy answers, even when those answers make no sense. We are no strangers to such dogmatics in the US. For 60 years, we lived under the spell of a race based ‘separate but equal’ education system ( de facto and de jure ). Then in the 1950’s a doctrine known as ‘my country right or wrong’ became part of our national identity. Today it’s ‘trust the science’. What’s interesting is that these dogmas all have something in common: they are not just moronic , they’re oxymoronic . How can two things be equal once you’ve invested even a quantum of energy to separate them? How can any country be right if it’s wrong? Worst of all, how can I trust something that I cannot verify? I can verify certain propositions within the scientific canon, but I cannot verify the canon itself. The essential nature of good science is to question everything and accept nothing solely on another’s authority: experimentation is to replace revelation. Inquiry is the antithesis of trust . I hear you: “You seem very sure of yourself. How can you be certain that the Dark Universe hypothesis won’t turn out to be true?” Ok, I’ll do you one better: “It will turn out to be true!” But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong either. Huh? How so? Scientists invented the Dark Universe hypothesis to give a name to things that they don’t understand and can’t explain. 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 is merely ‘solving’ one unknown in terms of another. But the headlines are already in the can: “Dark matter confirmed!” Of course it will be confirmed because any advance in our understanding of the Universe will now be labeled “Dark”. Whatever we discover down the road to resolve the paradoxes of modern cosmology will end up being called “dark matter/dark energy”. And why not? The phrase, Dark Universe , has no denotative content. It’s a place holder for whatever we don’t know right now. Once we learn something about the universe that we don’t already know, it will ‘fit the definition’ of ‘dark’. Of course it will. We don’t know what Dark Matter is so whatever turns out to solve the paradox will be quite correctly labeled Dark , and we will say, “That’s what Dark Matter is, we knew it all along.” Except of course, we didn’t. Following Heidegger, we know that Dark Matter is ( Dasein ); but don’t know what Dark Matter is ( Wassein ). Dark Matter will turn out to be whatever we need it to be…and we will look back and say, “Boy those 21 st century scientists were smart!” We have set up a math problem so that whatever answer we write down will be the correct one. If only we’d discovered this technique when I was in the 3 rd grade! Scientific reasoning is a wonderful thing. We couldn’t have left our caves without it. But it’s a lousy basis for a philosophy! *** Francisco de Goya, The Dog, 1820–23, oil mural transferred to canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid. Goya’s image of a lone dog nearly engulfed by an undefined, shadowy expanse echoes the essay’s theme of humanity straining for understanding while overwhelmed by the vast unknown of the “dark universe.” 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 John Vianney David Cowles Aug 2, 2022 “He used to travel…to isolated barns for clandestine Masses…” (I am indebted to The Pilot , Boston, 7/28/22, for Vianney’s words and for the details of Vianney’s life.) Aletheia Today is all about seeing the world in different ways and living out those differences in our lives. Meet Fr. John Vianney. He saw things differently and he lived his life accordingly. On August 4, the Roman Catholic Church will celebrate the life of this 19th century parish priest, the cure of Ars in rural France. As a young boy during the bloodiest years of the French Revolution, John used to travel with his parents in the middle of night to isolated barns for clandestine Masses with hunted priests as volunteer sentinels kept vigil. The penalty for getting caught, for clergy, hosts, and attendees alike, was the guillotine. Nevertheless, the Vianney family deemed attending Mass, worshiping the Son of God made man in the Eucharist, and receiving him, important enough to die for. In Vianney’s mind, martyrdom was a small price to pay for the physical presence of Jesus. "All good works taken together do not equal the sacrifice of the Mass, because they are the works of men (sic), and the holy Mass is the work of God. The martyr is nothing in comparison, because martyrdom is the sacrifice that man makes to God of his life while the Mass is the sacrifice that God makes for man …" Roman Catholics (and members of some other Christian denominations) believe that in the sacrifice of the Mass, we participate in Christ's sacrifice on Calvary. In the consecration, bread and wine are totally changed into Jesus Christ, really, truly, and substantially present under sacramental appearances ... "He is there!" Vianney would often preach amidst tears, reminding his people that God himself was among them on the altar and in the tabernacle. "…We are like someone who dies of thirst next to a river, just needing to bend down the head to drink, or like a poor man next to a treasure chest, when all that is needed is to stretch out the hand." Image: St. John Vianney Credit: Joachim Schäfer - Ökumenisches Heiligenlexikon Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! 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 Inside/Outside David Cowles Jul 21, 2022 Living in an orientable universe is no fun! Thank God we don’t live in such a universe! *Editor's Note: Pssst, be sure to check out the challenge at the end of this blog. Nothing could be more important, or more obvious, than this: all 3-dimensional objects have an inside and an outside! Imagine you’re caught in an unexpectedly powerful New England blizzard. Whether you’re inside or outside could be a matter of life or death. At minimum, it would make the difference between comfort and misery. 3-d surfaces divide spaces into inside and outside. I am inside, you are outside. Barring some kind of ‘tear in the fabric’ (e.g., a door), it is certain that we will never meet. (Is that a sigh of relief I’m hearing?) Space divided into inside and outside is what a ‘thing’ is, it’s what makes a thing a thing. A house divides space into interior and exterior. So does a gift wrapped Christmas present. Otherwise, there would be no surprises on Christmas morning! Every kid would know exactly what she was getting as soon as the box was placed under the tree. But that’s not all. Without a well-defined inside/outside, there could be no such thing as a glass of wine…or a bottle of wine…or a cask…well, you get the picture. You may be thinking that you could do without Christmas. You might even welcome a slower paced, less commercial holiday season. But could you live without wine? Didn’t think so! But wine is the least of your worries. Human beings have skin that divides their internal organs from the external environment…unicellular animals have membranes that do essentially the same thing. Obviously, the relation we know as ‘inside/outside’ must be universal, right?…except it isn’t! Turns out that objects with a defined inside/outside are only a special class of 3-d objects. The phenomenon of inside/outside only occurs as a property of closed 2-d surfaces in 3-d spaces whose topology is “orientable." How can there be an object without an inside or an outside? Simple, meet Mr. Mobius! But before you do, take a strip of paper, about two inches wide and 24 inches long. Connect the ends to make it into a band, like the rim of a paper hat. Notice that it has an inside surface and an outside surface. If you’re inside, well sorry, you’re inside forever. Topology has no parole board. And if you’re outside, well, worse yet, ‘you’re dead to me!’ In fact, you don’t even exist, never have, never will; you are quite literally ‘nothing.' Living in an orientable universe is no fun! Thank God we don’t live in such a universe! Just disconnect the two ends of your 24” paper strip; then before you put them back together again, give one end of the band a 180° twist. Now reconnect the two ends. Voila! No more inside, no more outside. If I decide to go for a walk, I can cover the entire surface of the band, without ripping a whole the fabric. Like Alice in Through the Looking Glass , when I walk one way, I end up back right where I started. Except I’m upside down! Wait, am I upside down or is the world upside down? Who cares, if I want to get right side up again, I just have to retrace my steps back to my starting point, right? Yes, that will do it, or I could just resume walking without changing directions. Either way, I end up back at ground zero and I’m right side up again. If you are interested in non-orientable space, check out Science and the Yellow Submarine or, for younger readers, Vacuum Monster in AT Magazine Issue #1 . Reader’s Challenge: write a short story about an adventure you might have in a non-orientable universe, i.e., a universe with no insides or outsides. Email your short story to editor@aletheiatoday.com. We'll publish the winner in a future issue of ATM! Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! 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 Riddle of the Sphinx David Cowles Jul 18, 2023 “What to do? Obviously, you buy a flame red Italian sports car…or not.” What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening? The answer, of course, is a human being (baby, adult, senior), but the riddle conceals a much deeper truth. The course of human life, at least in our civilization, does indeed break into three relatively isolated blocks of time: childhood, adulthood, and seniority, but these distinctions are only incidentally related to locomotion . The labels themselves are imprecise and controversial. My 13-year-old considers herself an adult, and she is quick to remind me whenever I forget. On the other hand, I’ve met superannuated children as old as 30. Lest you think I’m exercising literary license to amuse, think again. Like the prophet Ezra, I am merely reading out the law of the land: My 13-year-old’s medical records are sealed (I can’t see them because she is ‘already an adult’); my 29-year-old is covered under my health insurance policy (I can cover him because he is ‘still a child’). And don’t even think of referring to my 50 hour/week working dad (75 years old now) as a ‘seasoned citizen’…unless you undervalue the current arrangement of your facial features. Most of us get to spend the first 15 to 30 years of our lives engaged in an activity best described as Exploration . This includes formal instruction, peer-to-peer information exchange, and that hair-raising teenage practice known as ‘lifestyle experimentation’. After the Age of Exploration , the focus shifts: now we ‘get to use’ everything we’re supposed to have learned. Remember school – where you complained incessantly about almost every subject: “When will I ever use this?” Well, the answer is, “Now!” After the Age of Exploration comes the Age of Production . For most, the transition from Exploration to Production is gradual; we hardly know it’s happening while it’s happening, but we certainly know it’s happened once it has. When we’re in exploration mode, we’re impatient for the day we become productive; but once we’re ‘productive’, we find ourselves nostalgic for the days of pencils, books, and dirty looks. Overnight, the puddles we used to run through splashing have become sticky pits of steaming tar, compliments of the local DPW. One day, we ‘wake up’ to find we have a ‘forever partner’, ‘forever children’, and a ‘forever career’. In place of a generous parental allowance supplemented by earnings from part-time and seasonal employment, we have student loans to repay, a mortgage to amortize, taxes to withhold, and a 401(k) to fund. Thanks, Sphinx! Plus, those bundles of love you brought home from the hospital have become disobedient, disrespectful, and rebellious. Don’t they know what you gave up for them? And your ‘forever partner’ now seems more ‘forever’ and less ‘partner’. The career you trained for has you doing busy work in a cube; and from here, the road to advancement seems long and tortuous. Oh, and that salary that looked so awesome just a few years back? Well, it’s no longer nearly enough to meet your needs. Unfortunately, you were poorly prepared for the exigencies of real life! You were raised on a diet of force-fed propaganda. First, “ What do you want to be when you grow up?” Then, “ Do something with your life. Be someone. Make something of yourself.” Good Lord! Had you been captured at birth and raised by a cruel enemy, you could not have been more ill-treated. You were confined in a hermetically sealed box known as childhood ; there you were bombarded by parents, teachers, and media with a single message: Be something you’re not! So you find yourself in a bit of a pickle, don’t you? Your kids are grown (no grandkids yet) and your job’s a dead end. Worst of all, you sense that you are now, on average, 5/8ths of the way through your ‘productive period’…with nothing to show for it. What to do? Obviously, you buy a flame red Italian sports car (or at least a Harley), you open that restaurant you’ve always dreamed of, and you dump your ‘forever partner’ in favor of a ‘trophy’ for your final lap. Or not! Either way, now you have a rasher of grown kids and a slew of grands; you have been successful…after all; in fact, some would say you’re ‘rich’. You belong to the most exclusive clubs, eat in the trendiest restaurants, and take your family on the most luxurious holidays. You’re on your local parish council, and last year you were elected to the Board of Selectmen (sic) in your town. But are you happy? Of course not! How could you be? You’ve accomplished everything you ever dreamed of (rather, everything others dreamed of for you). You’ve spent your whole adult life trying to ‘be someone’ or ‘something’ – a loving spouse, a caring parent, a loyal employee, a generous employer, a pillar of your community - and you’ve come as close as anyone ever has to achieving these objectives. And yet… The problem is that you can never actually be any of these ‘things’ and even if you could, it would not make you happy. ‘Being something’ is not the sort of hairpin you are. In fact, you’re the sort of thing that can never be anyone or anything. Correction : You will be something…at death; you will be ashes! Your life has been an incessant effort to be what you can never be, and so you live in a state of perpetual longing…and loss. So now what? Well, if you’re very, very lucky, your play may have a 3 rd act – call it the Age of Reflection . “What’s it all about, Alfie?” Now at last you’re in a position to ask that question…and maybe even answer it. Don’t let me 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. 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.