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

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

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

“Divinity is a language unto itself, or as a five-year-old grandchild once explained to me, ‘God is outside the numbers’.” < Back The Probability of Nothing David Cowles Oct 15, 2024 “Divinity is a language unto itself, or as a five-year-old grandchild once explained to me, ‘God is outside the numbers’.” Riddle : How is language like Willie Mays? Answer : It rules center field! Of course, I am referring to ontological ‘center field’: the tiny, daily transactions (like photon exchange) that bind society (or the world) together. But language can play tricks on us…especially when it deals with stuff at the ends of the ontological spectrum. Take the word itself, ‘nothing’, for example. ‘Nothing’ is a noun and, as we know from primary school, a noun represents a ‘person, place, or thing’. Which of these does ‘nothing’ represent? None, obviously. The word itself tells you all you need to know about its meaning: ‘nothing’ = ‘no thing’. Now we have a word that fails to meet the definition of a noun playing the role of a noun in ordinary speech. What could possibly go wrong? Well, because we use the word, ‘nothing’, as a noun, we could begin to think of Nothing per se as something (some ‘thing’). This is an instance of what Alfred North Whitehead called “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” - the fundamental fallacy of Western metaphysics. Then what is ‘nothing’? Today, we have a number for it: zero. But we didn’t have that number until the 13th century (Fibonacci) and it wasn’t universally accepted into arithmetic until the 18th century (Leibniz). If zero is a real number like other real numbers, then is nothing something? We also have another mathematical symbol for Nothing, ø, the null set. This notation insulates Nothing from the domain of real numbers. We are used to the idea of ‘Ineffable God’: God so far transcends our world that nothing we say about God can be true or even meaningful. Divinity is a language unto itself, or as a five-year-old grandchild once explained to me, “God is outside the numbers.” We’re not used to the idea of ‘Ineffable Nothing’. And yet, ‘nothing’ transcends all things just as God does. God, aka Being, Value, Love, is the ontological opposite of Nothing, which is the absence of ‘I am’ ( Exodus ), ‘it is’ ( Genesis ), ‘you are’ ( Gospel of John ). We begin, as all serious philosophical essays must, with Robert Frost , the ‘Quantum Poet’. In his best known poem, The Road Not Taken , he sets out the quintessential existential dilemma: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” Happens a million times a day, every day! Frost, subject to the human condition , must pick a path, ‘sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler’. Frost makes his choice, ‘I kept the first for another day’; but hero that he is, Frost realizes that this is a forever decision, that the universe bifurcates at this point: ‘Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted I should ever come back’. Nor does our hero hide behind the rationalization of ‘objectivity’; he knows that the road chosen is in no way superior to the other, for ‘both that morning equally lay’. Standing at the point of divergence, at the moment of choice, both roads are equally real, equally attractive, equally effective, and therefore ontologically identical. Frost’s choice is apparently unconditioned. He is as likely to choose A as he is B. Initially, each option has a probability of P ≈ 50%. Since each P > 0, both exist! But whenever Frost’s choice of one path becomes irrevocable (P = 100%), then the alternate route (P = 0) ceases to exist…for Frost. It is no longer part of his Actual World. Proposition : ‘X exists, iff P(x) > 0’. Once P = 0, the alternate path no longer meets Gregory Bateson’s existential criterion: it’s no longer ‘a difference that makes a difference’. When there was no longer an option for Frost to pursue ‘the road not taken’, it ceased to exist… chez Frost. Much of Western philosophy is based on a false conception of Nothing. When we say ‘nothing’ we often have in mind something: a void or a vacuum, ‘nothing’ relatively speaking, but not absolutely nothing . Our ‘nothing’ tends to be ‘something…dimly lit’, a bit like Hades in Homer’s Odyssey . It’s even been called ‘a receptacle’, ‘a womb’, an ‘ether’, ‘pure potentiality’. Today, the cognoscente call it ‘negative vacuum pressure’. Nothing can’t be any of those things, not even metaphorically. Nothing can only be nothing. Nothing has no hair. It’s not a depression left in the fabric by ‘something’ when it departs. It’s not negative space, negative energy or negative vacuum pressure; it’s not positive or negative, it’s nothing. It’s good to know that we are not alone in our thinking. Perhaps we’re not mainstream (yet) but we’re definitely not flying solo . In fact, we share our perspective with Parmenides of Elea, the father of Western philosophy: “It is not to be said or thought that ‘it is not’…It is or it is not…let go the one (it is not) as unthinkable, unnamable, for it is not a real route.” ‘The road not taken’ cannot be ‘said or thought’ or even named because ‘it is not a real route’. When Frost reaches his destination, he is surrounded by reporters all with a single question: “Why did you choose that path?” To which Frost answered, “There was more than one path?” Parmenides viewed the World as both the ‘Realm of Things as they Appear’ ( Doxa ) and the ‘Realm of things as they Are’ ( Aletheia ). In the realm of Doxa , Frost confronts an apparent existential choice. In the realm of Aletheia , the apparent ‘choice’ is without consequence and so does not ‘exist’; it’s not a ‘difference that makes a difference’ because ‘both that morning equally lay’ and both led to the same destination. There was no objective reason to prefer one over the other. So there never was an existential dilemma because there was really only ever one path (a path and its mirror image). This perspective pops up all across ‘the fruited plain’ of Western philosophy, but for now, let’s stick with Quantum Mechanics (QM)! Hugh Everett’s ‘Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics’ states (roughly) that everything that can happen does happen…in its own universe. Corollary : Whatever did not happen could not have happened, because if it even might have happened, it would have happened. Try saying that 10 times! An entity’s worldline is its ‘route’ but apparent routes that pass through ‘counterfactual space’ are not real routes; their probabilities are all equal to 0. If it isn’t now, it never was, it could not have been, and it cannot come to be in the future. Only real routes are ‘real’. Everett channels Parmenides…2400 years later. There is ‘is’ and that’s all there is…no might, no should, no would, no could, just is. Let’s apply this way of reasoning to questions involving probabilities, beginning with a traditional Hasidic folk tale: Once upon a time, a certain Rabbi was on his way home from Schule when he encountered an elderly widow crawling on her hands and knees under a streetlamp. Not wanting to play the part of passer-by in a future production of The Good Samaritan and eager to perform one last mitzvah before going to bed for the night, the Rabbi offered to assist. "I've lost my shiny penny, the only thing I have left in the world," the widow wailed. "And is this where you lost it?" the Rabbi inquired innocently. "No," she replied. "I lost it over there." The quizzical Rabbi, still hoping to be helpful, asked, "Then why are you looking for it here?" "Because the light is better!" This story is often presented as a commentary on the widow's folly, but in fact, the widow is the hero of the story. She defies conventional wisdom. Why look for a lost penny in pitch darkness where there's no hope of finding anything? Unlit space is not part of the widow’s world; from her perspective it is Nothing. So the only ‘rational’ thing for her to do is to search under the lamplight where P > 0. Let’s rephrase: the probability of the penny being under the light is actually 100% (P = 1) because the penny has to be somewhere (P=1), and every other possibility has zero probability (P = 0): 1 – 0 = 1. But the probability of her finding the penny under the light is much, much less (P < 1)…but not zero (P > 0). Ok, this sounds officially crazy. How can the probability of the penny being under the lamp be 100% when we said earlier that the penny is probably not there? Once again, we find our answer in Quantum Mechanics. According to QM, everything is everywhere all the time and anywhere you look there is a finite possibility (however low) that you will find your quantum there…as long as you’ve confined your search to places that exist for you. Now that we’re comfortable applying Parmenides’ ontology to situations involving probabilities, we’re ready to apply it to the greatest floating craps game of all: ‘Pascal's Wager’ (1670 CE). Confronted with the God Question , French mathematician, Blaise Pascal, employed a forerunner of what is today called ‘Game Theory’. Pascal divided a sheet of paper into four quadrants. Across the top of the page, he wrote, “I believe that God exists;” down the left-hand margin, he wrote, “God does exist;” and then he filled in the appropriate truth values: (0,0), (0,1), (1,0), (1,1). Pascal reasoned that one of four things must be true: (1) I do not believe that God exists, and he doesn’t; (2) I do not believe that God exists, but he does; (3) I believe that God exists, but he doesn’t; (4) I believe that God exists, and he does. So God is ‘free’ to exist or not and you are free to believe or not. Yet, scenarios 1, 2, and 3 are effectively identical. They amount to the same thing. Believe whichever one you choose; it makes no difference. They are interchangeable because they each produce the same incremental value: (0*0) or (0*1) or (1*0), i.e. Zero. Only #4 (1*1) is different; only #4 generates incremental value. Quadrants 1, 2, and 3 do not meet Gregory Bateson’s criterion (for ‘being’, above). They produce zero incremental value so there is no ultimate value difference among them and their contribution of value to the world is null (ø). Since all other options generate 0 incremental value, P(4) must be 100% (P=1): 1 – (0 + 0 + 0) = 1. To quote a medieval Irish poet, “Naught (0) is all else to me save than Thou art!” Centuries later, Pascal proved that this is not just a statement of subjective faith…it’s a statement of objective reality. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com ress, Literary Journal Spring 2023. Return to Harvest 2024 Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back What the Shepherds Saw When the Light Shone Upon Them Regis Martin "What really is going on at that moment, which so grips the artist’s imagination, moving him to bend every effort of will and skill to re-produce, under the sign of paint, the precise reaction of the shepherds on first seeing the Holy Infant? " Should it surprise anyone that countless artists from the past have sought to capture the precise moment when the shepherds, answering the angelic summons, find themselves gazing upon the human face of God? They were, after Mary and Joseph, the very first to see the Child about whom the angel had spoken. “This will be a sign for you,” he told them. “You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12; cf. 2:16). Filled with expectant longing, therefore, and with all possible haste, they leave their flocks behind and go at once to the place they’d been told the Child would be. Accompanied, to be sure, by choirs of angels singing with exultant voice the glory of the Lord, who has come among us as Savior and King. So, how does one capture that sudden look of stupefaction that surely must have illumined the faces of those few simple shepherds, who have come to witness the stupendous event of God’s entry into our world, wearing the disguise of a tiny child? Such is the challenge confronting any artist faced with the scandalous fact of the enfleshment of the Eternal Word in human history. None have pulled it off more masterfully, it seems to me, than the 17th-century Dutchman Mathis Stom, an artist steeped in the style of the baroque, who often wrestled with the problem, producing a half dozen or more separate versions of the same scene. Following upon the example of Caravaggio, who, earlier in the century, tried his own hand at depicting the scene, Stom managed to get it exactly right with brushstrokes of the most extraordinary realism. His Adoration of the Shepherds , commissioned in 1646 for a Capuchin monastery in Palermo, conveys an immediacy so startling that the viewer cannot look away. How, then, does he do it? Or, more to the point, what really is going on at that moment, which so grips the artist’s imagination, moving him to bend every effort of will and skill to re-produce, under the sign of paint, the precise reaction of the shepherds on first seeing the Holy Infant? A miracle, no less, of artistic monstration w ill be required to impart to the viewer something of that same realism and immediacy which the shepherds felt on seeing the Incarnate God. The answer, in a word, is chiaroscuro, a lovely Italian word suggesting an artful arrangement of light and dark, the interplay of which heightens the sense of drama suffusing the scene. So that we too might see with the most striking detail the hands and faces of the shepherds, their features literally flooded with light. Against the backdrop of shade, an astonishment of wonder unfolds before the viewer’s eye. And, then, all at once, we realize that the source of the light, the shining incandescence of the scene, is not coming from them at all, but from the Child, in whom all light may be found. Indeed, he is the light. The light of eternity itself bursting into time. Yes, the shepherds are clearly bathed in the light, but it is Christ’s own light that envelops the scene. Inviting us as well, with eyes wide open, to enter into the same experience, the same epiphany of light. But, again, how can this be? One is struck over and over by the sheer incredibility of the moment. It is no longer the mere technical question that the artist himself feels constrained to answer. No, not that at all. But the theological puzzle which the scene itself presents. How is it possible that simple shepherds should evince such wonderment and delight before a mere baby? It is the complete and utter disproportion between the figure of the mysterious child, and that of the simple shepherds, that leaves the mind baffled and confused. It is, in other words, the sheer overwhelming mystery of Christmas morning itself that we must try and make sense of. “That is where God is,” Pope Francis reminds us at Holy Mass on this Christmas Eve, “in littleness. This is the message: God does not rise up in grandeur, but lowers himself into littleness. Littleness,” he continues, “is the path that he chose to draw near to us, to touch our hearts, to save us and to bring us back to what truly matters.” Thus, by making himself helpless and small he reveals the true majesty and power of the Godhead. Pope Benedict has likewise expressed this sentiment, from a Christmas homily preached in the final months of his pontificate, reminding us that here is the secret sign- language God himself prefers when communicating with his children. And in God’s eyes we are all his children, a bond forged by the blood of his Son forever. “God’s sign is that he makes himself small; he becomes a child; he lets us touch him and he asks for our love.” What better way of dealing with so frail and finite a creature as man? Notice that there is no heavy artillery blasting away at bunkers piled high with reasoned resistance. He does wish to pulverize our minds with clever syllogisms. But to offer himself to us in the least intimidating, least prepossessing way possible. As a little child wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger . Could things be made more simple than this? Originally published on National Catholic Register and republished with permission from the author. Image: Matthias Stom, “The Adoration of the Shepherds,” ca. 1650 (Turin). Public Domain Regis Martin Regis Martin , S.T.D., is a professor of theology and a faculty associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. He podcasts at In Search Of The Still Point and his latest book, Looking for Lazarus: A Preview of the Resurrection , was released in 2021. Previous Next

< Back Can AI Save Healthcare? David Cowles Jan 18, 2026 “What was once a healing art has become physiological engineering… the healthcare system treats me as if I were a cheap knock-off of the 6 million dollar man.” When was it that the US Medical establishment stopped providing healthcare? The kindly family doc, making house calls and practicing medicine intuitively, is a relic of another century. Today, what was once a ‘healing art’ has become ‘physiological engineering’. Yet we are not ‘bionic’ men and women…and we never will be. (AI has already superseded mechanical robotics.) But the healthcare system treats me as if I were a cheap knock-off of the 6 million dollar man. To be clear, if you have a clearly diagnosed and reasonably serious health condition, you have never been better off. We can do things today with laser knives and designer drugs that were the stuff of science fiction only a generation ago. But if you’re a poor slob who just doesn’t feel good, you’re sh*t-out-of-luck. Show up at your PCP’s office, at Urgent Care, or at the ER and you will be put through a battery of generic tests and a lengthy ‘true or false’ intake questionnaire. Your healthcare professional is undoubtedly well intentioned and would like nothing better than to see you leave the building feeling great. But that concern is no longer center stage in medical practice. For most Americans, healthcare consists of a series of check lists imposed by insurance carriers, government regulators, and our tort system (malpractice). A successful engagement has the patient leaving a doctor’s care with no possible grounds for a lawsuit. Not that you leave empty handed. Your test and interview scores trigger a series of recommendations that are ‘evidence based’ and reflect ‘best practices’. Your data is analyzed by inflexible algorithms that deliver totally predictable results, but you are receiving the best care that Machine Medicine can offer. The current system is well designed to diagnose conditions such as elevated blood pressure or high cholesterol. It is much less suited to discovering the causes of these conditions in a given patient and, if you’re looking for creative ways to treat the patient’s condition, forget about it. And so we treat symptoms and move on. AI First healthcare is something all together different. Yes, AI runs on algorithms, but it has the flexibility to think outside the box and the capacity to suggest novel diagnoses and treatment strategies. Working with a highly trained professional, AI can bring intuition, the gut, back into the practice of medicine. AI is able to build a model of each patient that includes vastly more variables than any human (or any check list) could possibly keep in mind at one time. AI combines virtually limitless memory and instant recall with a full medical school curriculum at its finger tips. The smartest, best trained, and most compassionate human care giver cannot possibly compete. Plus, medical knowledge is now doubling every 5 years. All the continuing education in the world cannot keep a doctor current, but AI is 100% current all the time. It makes no sense to think that any human doc could compete. Now to be clear, we are not proposing to remove the MD from the healthcare team; human oversight remains absolutely essential. But in the future, the practice of medicine must be AI First . Already, AI consumer sites are fielding 50 million health-related inquiries every day. That’s an average of 50 health inquiries per American per year…as compared to the current 20 minute annual check-up. Today’s Machine Medicine relies on discrete answers to specific questions but Ars Medica , the art of medicine, requires clinical reasoning capability. To test for that, scientists turned to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) – one of the world’s leading medical publications. NEJM publishes Case Records from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), presenting a patient’s care journey in a detailed, narrative format. These cases are among the most diagnostically complex and intellectually demanding in clinical medicine, often requiring multiple specialists and diagnostic tests to reach a definitive diagnosis. How does AI perform in this arena? Surely here we need the empathy and imagination of a well-trained and highly experienced human agent, right? To answer these questions, Microsoft created a series of interactive diagnostic challenges based on 304 recent NEJM case studies. Clinicians, be they AI Bots or human physicians, were able to ask iterative questions and order appropriate tests. As information became available, the clinicians could update their reasoning, gradually leading to a final diagnosis. This diagnosis was then compared to the gold-standard outcome published in the NEJM. The Microsoft AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO) is a system designed to emulate a virtual panel of physicians with diverse diagnostic approaches collaborating to solve cases.  The Orchestrator can integrate diverse data sources. It can turn an LLM into a ‘panel’ of virtual clinicians that can ask follow-up questions, order tests, deliver a diagnosis, and then run a cost check before deciding to proceed.  MAI-DxO solved 85% of the NEJM benchmark cases. Pretty good! But how does this compare with the recommendations of real life, flesh and blood specialists? For comparison, Microsoft created a panel of 21 practicing physicians from the US and UK, each with 5-20 years of clinical experience. On the same problem sets, these experts achieved a mean accuracy of…wait for it…just 20%. Astonishing! AI is 4 times better at diagnosing complex medical conditions than MDs. If Microsoft’s findings are confirmed, traditional medicine is, or should be, dead. The big question now is how long it will take society ‘to stop life support and pronounce’. In the meantime, the surest evidence of malpractice is the practice of medicine without AI support. Another measure comes from healthcare quality watchdog, Healthgrades. Each year for the past 20, they have monitored patient outcomes at 4,500 US hospitals. According to Healthgrades, if all hospitals delivered care at the quality level of the best 250, more than 200,000 lives would have been saved in 2025: 1 in every 14 in-patient deaths can be attributed to subpar healthcare. An article by Kristen Brown, published in the New York Times on 1/8/2026 caught the spirit: “Amid rising interest in alternative medicine and growing skepticism of physicians , health and wellness companies have begun providing Americans a more direct route to medical testing that does not require a doctor’s visit. “In November, the telehealth giant Hims & Hers debuted extensive laboratory testing for customers, just weeks after Oura and Whoop unveiled blood-testing products of their own. The national laboratory network Quest Diagnostics now sells its own consumer-facing tests. LabCorp does, too. “But perhaps no other company has capitalized as explicitly as Function has on frustrations with the U.S. health system …For $365 a year, the company provides its hundreds of thousands of members with access to more than 160 lab tests.” Of course, there are downsides to an AI Only approach to healthcare. False positives and unwarranted patient anxiety lead the list. That is why we don’t recommend such an approach. Our AI First model includes the genius of the human physician, interpreting results and presenting them to the patient in context and with specific recommendations. But this can only happen after AI has done its thing. *** Nurse in Red (1991–1993) by Keith Holmes portrays a nurse in a vibrant red uniform with calm authority and professional poise, conveying her expertise and readiness within a clinical setting. The painting reflects the evolving professional identity of nurses in the late 20th century, highlighting their competence and command in modern healthcare through her composed demeanor and the presence of medical equipment in the background. 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 Introducing - ATM 2025 David Cowles May 29, 2025 “Our goal is…to build a 21st century version of the Library at Alexandria.” Aletheia Today (AT) launched AT Magazine (ATM) on June 1, 2022. Since then, we have published more than 250 in-depth articles spread over 23 issues. We have supplemented those essays with approximately 300 shorter form Thoughts While Shaving (TWS), published twice weekly. Now it seems appropriate to change-up our format. Our site will no longer group articles by issue number and publication date; instead they will be separated into 10 topical groups (Philosophy, Culture, etc.) with 2 additional groupings for the contributions of Guest Authors and for Archived materials. Our goal is to make our site easier to navigate and more useful as a research tool; or as one of our members says, “To build a 21st century version of the Library at Alexandria.” Beginning June 1, 2025, each ATM will consist of a limited number of articles focused on a single topic. For example, this Sunday’s edition will focus exclusively on the Beatles , their function as modern myth makers and their many contributions to contemporary philosophy and theology. Many of the articles curated for these single topic issues will be drawn from our published inventory, edited and updated to reflect new developments and the current state of our thinking. A fresh overview will introduce each edition and brief article specific commentaries will be added as appropriate. In addition, we will also continue to publish Thoughts While Shaving but on an ad hoc rather than scheduled basis. Subscribe (at no cost) HERE (guaranteed FREE for life) to ensure you don’t miss a single ATM issue or TWS post. We are hoping these changes will make AT more accessible and more useful as a research tool. As always, we invite you to let us know how we’re doing (Click Here ). We appreciate your continued support and hope you are profiting from your engagement with us. 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 Mentoring for His Kingdom Magesh "I believe the role of a Christian mentor is ongoing, and it’s important to consider our role in the salvation of others." I have taught music for more than 25 years. As a session musician, I got to work with some of the biggest artists in the world. Practice and natural talent are prerequisites to becoming a successful musician. Although I could never have done any of the things I did without the help of the Lord, I realize that sometimes he used me as a tool to help others fulfill their destiny. I remember the first drum lesson I gave this one kid. He was 15-year-old and filled with enthusiasm and curiosity. Even after a few lessons, I realized he had a lot of talent and tremendous potential. But the music business is not for the faint of heart. There was no doubt he would be a great musician, but I worried he may be seduced by dark forces if not guided to stay on a righteous path. You see, although I am in a business filled with temptations, I have never given in. To this day, I have never been drunk nor have I engaged in any drug use. My belief in the Lord has kept me moving in the right direction. And as a music teacher, I believe I have a responsibility to teach my students not just about theory and notes, but also about how to conduct themselves professionally and develop good character. This meant showing up on time, learning the music, and treating people the way you would like to be treated. In my role as teacher, I experience great pride in watching my students’ music career take off, especially the one student I mentioned above. When he was an up-and-coming musician, I allowed him to sit in with bands that I was playing in. They were usually low-pressure situations. Maybe a song or two at a local bar on a Monday night. This is when there would be a small audience. By doing this, I allowed him to feel what it felt like to play with other professional musicians and how to interact with people in a social setting. Years went by, and my student went on to great things. He performed with multiple bands every week, making a living by playing music. So, I was surprised when he called me out of the blue, crying his eyes out one day. I asked him what was wrong. He was so emotional, it was hard to hear his first few sentences through his weeping. He had auditioned for a band that was starting to make a name for themselves. He got called back three times, and it came down to him and another musician. They ended up picking the latter. He felt nothing but dismay, even going as far as telling me he wanted to quit music altogether. As soon as I heard him say that, I went into super mentor mode. I told him, "You're upset because YOUR plan was to get the gig with this band. What you need to do is believe in God's plan. He will have bigger things in store for you. All you need to do is believe in him and trust him." I then told him this reminded me of Ephesians 1: 3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” I told him that he thought being blessed was to be given the gig, but the real blessing was the talent he had been given. This changed his perspective on the spot. Two months later, he called me elated. He had been given the gig with Australia's number one pop singer. She was off to do a major tour of Europe, and if he had gotten the gig with the band he auditioned for two months prior, he would not have been able to do this major tour. I was ecstatic for him. He told me he wouldn't doubt God's plan again; only the Lord could make his destiny unfold in positive ways he couldn't imagine. A year went by, and I didn't hear from my student. The next time I heard his name come up, however, was at a rehearsal for a charity gig. This event was to help raise money for children in need. It's important to note that I wasn't being paid to perform at this event. The following week, my student sent me a message saying he was confused about why I was performing at the charity event. He then told me they asked him to perform, but he refused as he would not be paid for his performance. I told him that he was looking at the situation with blinders on again. I felt the best way to explain was to reference Romans 8:28 as I interpret it: God works for our good in all things and in a few different ways. I told my student to not focus on the money as it was only one performance out of so many. If we gave a great performance, we would add to the amount of money raised to help sick children who desperately needed our God-given talent to help their circumstance. There was no price we could put on that kind of opportunity. I also said giving our talents and time to this situation was giving back to God, a form of praise and worship. He blessed us with our talents, not just to benefit ourselves, but to help others. I believe the role of a Christian mentor is ongoing, and it’s important to consider our role in the salvation of others. I believe this student of mine will always be a student, no matter how successful he becomes, because just as we are an ongoing masterpiece of God, we, too, must continuously mold one another to help build his kingdom. Image artwork by Magesh. Magesh has written for “Lessonface,” “Aeyons,” “The Modern Rogue,” “Euronews,” “The Roland corporation,” “Penlight,” and “Elite Music.” He writes several monthly publications on music education. In the past, Magesh has written for parenting, humor, mental health, and travel websites as well. Return to our Summer 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

“The first known application of Occam’s Razor occurred 50,000 years ago, not in 14th century England as is generally supposed.” < Back Particularity David Cowles Jan 15, 2023 “The first known application of Occam’s Razor occurred 50,000 years ago, not in 14th century England as is generally supposed.” From the earliest times, human beings have wondered about the world around them. Perhaps fascination with the motion of heavenly bodies is what kicked us off. Here was an almost impossibly diverse set of phenomena that could be studied safely and dispassionately from the mouth of one’s cave. The cosmic dance has all the elements necessary for ‘scientific’ inquiry: the relatively fixed background (stars) serves as a measuring device, the periodic motion of sun, moon and planets constitutes a clock. In this context we can identify, measure and now sometimes even predict ‘one-off events’ such as meteor showers and comet fly-bys. Even better, the heavens can be studied without any appreciable interaction between observer and observed. It is a paradigm for ‘objective inquiry’. Human beings are funny; we crave objectivity but when we find it, we are terrified. A world that engages with us is dangerous, but not nearly as frightening as a world that doesn’t. Whispers in the corner rarely betoken good . Today we are baffled by the interactivity of observer and observed in quantum mechanics, but interactivity is the nature of things. What’s truly baffling is the motions of bodies that can be painstakingly recorded but that we cannot impact in any way and that do not appear to impact us. This situation is intolerable. Impotence is more terrifying than engagement. Engagement, even in situations of extreme danger, gives us a measure of, or at least the illusion of, control. I’d rather wrestle with a lion than listen to its ominous roar in the night. It is said that nature abhors a vacuum; so do we! And is there a better model of ‘vacuum’ than ‘outer space’? So, the first known application of Occam’s Razor occurred 50,000 years ago, not in 14th century England as is generally supposed. Nature could not be so wasteful as to perform this incredible cosmic dance each night with no effect. It must have a purpose, that purpose must include us as an end, and therefore the ‘motion of the heavens’ must impact our terrestrial lives in some perceptible and significant way. Et voilà , proto-astronomy becomes astrology! Simultaneously, we humans were presumably becoming conscious of our identity as somehow distinct from the physical world around us. As before, the disconnect was intolerable. Et voilà encore , astrology becomes mythology! There must be a layer of ‘intentional being’ that mediates our interaction with our environment. What better solution than the gods ! These entities have a foot in both worlds. They are part human, part ‘nature’: they are humanesque representations of natural processes (e.g., Poseidon and the Sea). The pagan pantheon is ready-made to explain our interaction with our world. Could our intellectual history have evolved differently? Probably not. It was not until the 20th century CE that anyone fully explored the implications of the alternative, i.e., that we confront ‘the external world’ directly, without the cloud cover of Mount Olympus. It was not pretty, but Jean-Paul Sartre chronicled that experience in his aptly named 1938 novel, Nausea . To summarize, the experience was unbearable and the situation intolerable. We need ‘the gods’ if we are to stay sane. What’s the use of ‘mediating gods’ unless those gods give us some influence over the world they mediate? Influence, not control. If we could control the world, we wouldn’t need the gods, or if we did, they would be like the knobs that we pull to get a candy bar out of a hospital vending machine at 2 in the morning. Instead, we influence the gods, and the gods in turn influence events in our world. But how does one go about influencing the gods? Today we might pray, but this would have been much too ‘cerebral’ for our ancestors. They had no concept of a purely mental event. If the gods were to be propitiated, it must be via a physical process. There was, as yet, no concept of benevolence , so we must be willing to give if we hope to get. How much do you want a good hunting/gathering season? How much are you willing to give to get it? A pile of gathered nuts? A freshly killed antelope? Or your firstborn child? Gradually, the interaction of human beings with spirits became regularized as ritual. Liturgy is technology , and reliance on technology assumes some degree of regularity in the external world; and so ritual morphed into proto-science and proto-theology. Overtime, our understanding of the external world deepened and ultimately science, theology, and philosophy emerged as distinct, albeit related and overlapping, methods of inquiry and avenues of discovery. Once we liberated the genie from its lamp, ‘knowledge’ exploded along all three axes; but it didn’t change its basic character. It was and still is a road map through the minefields of life. In much of the world, monotheism replaced polytheism, logic replaced speculation, and experiment replaced observation. But still the basic premise: the world must be ‘systematic’ if it supports technology that enables us to exert a modicum of influence over the course of events. What are the qualities that make a world systematic? First, the progression of events must follow a trajectory that is consistent with what each epoch knows as ‘reason’. That may be cause and effect or habit or like from like or just plain ole common sense . Whatever, future events must feel compatible with past events. Events, if they really are ‘events’, should be repeatable under comparable conditions; otherwise, they are not ‘events’ at all but miracles . When things appear to happen by chance , we can still find confirmation for our model by sublimating ‘chance’ to the laws of probability. Bottom line, every event should instantiate and confirm our models. Happenings that seem to fall outside that ‘big ontological tent’ are dealt with harshly in one of several ways: (1) We deny that the event occurred. We deny the evidence of our senses and trust instead the presuppositions of reason . After all, if we can’t repeat what happened, how do we know it really happened in the first place? (2) We deny that what happened was an ‘event’. We assume it must just be an anomalous part of a larger ‘happening’ that does instantiate and confirm our model and (therefore?) does constitute an event. (3) We accept that what happened was an event, and we admit that it does not fit into any of our presupposed schema. However, we attribute this disconnect to our ignorance rather than to the event itself. We assume that our understanding of the world will grow and eventually encompass all seemingly errant happenings. (4) We attribute the event to something ‘ineffable’ – e.g., magic, an extra-terrestrial intelligence, or spiritual agency. (5) We don’t see the ‘event’ at all. What event? What happened? I didn’t see anything, did you? A model, by definition, abstracts from reality and so simplifies reality. The models we have today, especially in science, are extremely accurate…as far as they go. We have done a great job of identifying life’s regularities and explaining them in terms of other regularities. We don’t let ourselves get overly concerned by the fact that our various models don’t mesh; we’ll figure that out somewhere down the road. Most events can be made to appear reasonable . Those that can’t, we can marginalize as random (see above). But there is another aspect of life that this dichotomy totally ignores: Particularity. Life is not all random or regular. There is another whole class of events that falls outside this classification scheme. These events are not obscure; they do not take place only in Tibet. In fact, you could argue that events in this third class, the class of particular events , are really the substructure of reality from which the concepts of regular and random are abstracted. Stochastic (one-off) events are not miracles . They are entirely consistent with the mainstream tenets of science, philosophy, and theology; but neither can they be predicted nor exhaustively described. They have no identifiable cause, but they may have innumerable verifiable consequences. Let me get specific! Good examples of particularity come from the world of genetics. By 1,500 BCE, Homo sapiens had been around for at least 50,000 years and the human population was somewhere between 25,000,000 and 50,000,000. Many of these folks contributed DNA to our current gene pool. That said, every one of us living today contains DNA from one single human couple (so-called ‘Adam and Eve’) who lived just 3,500 years ago (not 5,500 years ago as in Jewish tradition). ‘Adam and Eve’, unremarkable fellow-travelers in some caravan, most likely in Africa (not Mesopotamia), launched a cascade of events that materially affects every single human being alive today. So, same old story: boy meets girl, makes baby; what’s the big deal? Well, what if that exact ‘Adam’ had never met this exact ‘Eve’? What if they had never made love? Or produced live offspring? I could go on…and on. The event we’re calling ‘Adam and Eve’ is the product of innumerable past events and a contributor to innumerable future events. ‘Adam and Eve’ have revealed a world structure that is an hourglass shaped funnel: The sum of innumerable past events accounts for (but does not in any way determine) a particular event (e.g., ‘Adam and Eve’) which in turn influences (but in no way determines) innumerable future events. One-off ‘stochastic’ events can often appear to have virtually no consequences, and sometimes that may, in fact, be the case. But other times the consequences may just be long delayed; or they may be monumental and immediate. For example, every single human being on the face of the earth today would have a slightly different genetic code than they do now had it not been for ‘Adam and Eve’. How different would such a world be? Who knows? Who could possibly ever know? Things are not quite as systematic as we had hoped. Now consider this: What if every event is actually the neck, the focal point, of its own funnel? What if the collective past (a multiplicity) is feeding innumerable current events simultaneously, each of which in turn is projecting that collective past, uniquely modified by the pivotal event itself, into a collective future? Interestingly, 20th century British Philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, presented just such a model in his magnum opus , Process and Reality . If Whitehead is right, what happens to our reason and random model of reality? The Intellectual History of the Western World, at least since 50,000 BCE, can be characterized as the steady advance of models suggested by and consistent with the hypothesis of system . Obviously, these models work. They have unleashed a torrent of economic activity and technological development. Well and good, but what if it turns out that reality has a much deeper structure, not appreciated by our models? What if it turns out that this deeper structure is incompatible with the hypothesis of system ? Are we back to square one? How will we live with the lion’s roar now? How will we face the existential abyss? How will we deal with death? How will we propitiate nature to do our bidding? Must we revert to child sacrifice? Or have we ‘grown up’ to where we can accept the fact that we have no ultimate control over events? I am reminded of the Serenity Prayer : “Accept the things I cannot change…change the things I can…know the difference.” We are all alcoholics . We may not all crave booze, but almost all of us crave control. We come by it naturally; it’s in our genes ! Image: William of Ockham, from a stained glass window at a church in Surrey. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Parmenides and Time Crystals David Cowles Feb 9, 2026 “Our earliest model of Being reappears as the latest in a string of recent cosmological breakthroughs that began with Relativity.” 1000 words, 5 minute read On Nature is the oldest work of European philosophy still extant. The verse epic was composed in the 5th century BCE by Parmenides of Elea, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, widely regarded as ‘the father of Western philosophy’ and ‘the father of Western science’. Parmenides divides Being into two modes: the “Way of Truth” ( Aletheia ) and the “Way of Seeming” ( Doxa ). Most scholars hold that the realm of Aletheia is preeminently real…and Doxa ? Not so much! But Parmenides anticipated such a misinterpretation and took pains to refute it at the outset: “But nevertheless you shall learn…how the things that seem had to have genuine existence, permeating all things completely .” In other words, there is no ‘thing’ without Doxa . Doxa is real, genuine, and universal…as is Aletheia ! Which words did you not understand, Herr Plato (4 th century BCE)? Doctor Popper (20 th century CE)? Nothing spreads quicker or endures longer than interpretive error. For example, we’ve completely misunderstood the 5 th century Book of Job as well. “…What-is (in the mode of Aletheia ) is ungenerated and imperishable…whole, single-limbed, steadfast, and complete; nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, one, continuous…Thus coming-to-be is extinguished and perishing not to be heard of…it is not right for what-is to be incomplete; for it is not lacking, but if it were, it would lack everything…Therefore, it must either be completely, or not at all.” Every actual event needs a little Aletheia in its life. It is not enough to say with Heraclitus, “Everything flows!” Whatever ‘flows’ flows relative to what is static. Nor can we define stasis solely in terms of variations in the rate of change. Change is necessarily ‘change from’ and/or ‘change to’. Aletheia is the immobile point from which every actual event must be evaluated; it is the universal measure, ergo the Truth. On the other hand, by applying Bateson’s criterion, ‘a difference that makes a difference’, we see that participation in Aletheia alone cannot constitute an actual event. Aletheia is undifferentiated and inert: imperishable, whole, steadfast, complete, one, continuous. It cannot pass Bateson’s test. Nor can an actual event exist exclusively in the realm of Doxa . As card waving Heraclitians, we like to say that change is the only constant; what we used to call ‘stability’ is just a measure of variations in the rate of change. However attractive to our modern sensibilities, this view makes no sense, empirically or logically. In the realm of Doxa , everything is perpetually coming to be and/or perishing. Therefore, nothing ever really is. There is Past and there is Future but there is no Present; without Aletheia , eternal presence, there is no now . “To come to be and to perish, to be and not to be, and to shift place and to exchange bright color,” – Parmenides describes what it is to exist in the realm of Doxa. An actual event needs Doxa , ‘genuine existence permeating all things completely’, as much as Aletheia – ‘ungenerated and imperishable’. Like sex and marriage before the Summer of Love (1967), Aletheia and Doxa are inseparable. Actual events occupy a space between Aletheia and Doxa and resonate with both. Since Plato, the pre-Socratic philosophers, Parmenides included, have been ignored by the academy . However, their ideas and models, often without attribution, pop-up, most recently in Kant, Heidegger, Sartre, and Whitehead. In 2025 a team of physicists led by Leo Joon Il Moon discovered a configuration of matter that is reminiscent of the ideas found in On Nature . In a ‘Rondeau Time Crystal’ (RTC), aka ‘Time Rondeau Crystal’, a pattern repeats indefinitely across time . Immediately, you can see that these new entities combine permanence ( Aletheia ) with proliferation ( Doxa ). An RTC consists of three phases which I’ve labeled: Alpha , Delta, and Omega . I propose that we equate RTC’s Alpha phase with Parmenides’ Aletheia and Omega with Doxa . Drawing heavily on the work of Alfred North Whitehead, I understand Alpha to be the set of permanent, objective values that motivate, guide, and judge every actual event. Doxa , then, is the set of eventualities, possible outcomes , all potential matters-of-fact to the extent that they embody, reflect, and are not inconsistent with, Alpha values. The relationship between Alpha and Omega is determined. The realm of Delta , on the other hand, is the home of indetermination: free will, intentionality, agency…plus chaos. Nothing that happens in Delta is caused or even influenced by anything else. Whatever happens is causa sui and sui generis . But there’s more! The topology (shape) of Delta is a function of its position between Alpha and Omega – like a hammock strung between two trees. As a result, conditions in Delta are conducive to the emergence of ‘local’ islands of low entropy, i.e. increased order. That order takes the form of patterned relationships among elements and patterns resonate. Specifically, patterns, actual but transient in Delta , resonate with potential but eternal patterns in Omega . Patterns in Alpha resonate 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 fuse: one pattern, many manifestations. The Parmenidean-Moon model channels Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Actual events in Delta resonate with potential events in Omega and eternal values in Alpha , resulting in a World that is both concrete and atemporal. Again, Parmenides was out in front: “…She (the goddess) devised Love ( Erota ), first of all the gods…” Erota ↔ Resonance. Our earliest model of Being reappears as the latest in a string of recent cosmological breakthroughs that began with Relativity . What a gift it is to be alive today, curious and conscious! *** Hilma af Klint — The Ten Largest (1907) presents human life as a continuous process of growth, transformation, and renewal, from childhood through old age. Using vibrant color, spirals, and organic forms on monumental canvases, the series visualizes invisible forces—spiritual, emotional, and biological—that shape becoming rather than fixed identity. The paintings suggest endless possibility by treating change not as disruption, but as the fundamental rhythm of existence 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 Aletheia Today Magazine Issue #3 David Cowles Aug 25, 2022 Countdown to our next issue... It's only five days until the release of our Fall Issue (Issue #3 ) of Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM). We’ll publish online on 9/1, but, as usual, we’ll make the content available to our subscribers (you) a day early (8/31). In our Fall Issue, we’ll finish our two-part series on Science and the Yellow Submarine . Then we’ll move on to consider The Nature of Time itself. In Theology, we’ll look at the Final Psalms (146 – 150) and at Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians . Plus, we’ll continue our discussion about the Piraha of the Amazon in Speaking Piraha and Why Xiaoki Can’t Count . Rabbi Aharon Loschak walks us through what it would be like to Be a Bee, and John O’Brien considers Social Dynamics in today’s world. Next, we take a fresh look at the Serenity Prayer and guest writer E.C. Argus shares with us how the infamous Judas taught her the Beatitudes. In short, we’ll continue to draw from Philosophy, Theology, Science, Culture and Spirituality to create a Living GUT (a Grand Unified Theory of our lives). All just ahead, coming soon to a computer screen near you! If by chance you've missed either of our previous issues – Issue #1, Summer, 6/1 , or Issue #2, Beach, 7/15 -- this would be a great time to get caught up. Here's a sprinkling of some of our previously published essays to pique your interest: Science & Yellow Submarine – Part I , the first in our ongoing Yellow Sub series. How’s & Why’s , the intersection of science and philosophy. How to Coach an Undefeated Football Team , or play for an undefeated team, or be personally undefeated yourself! The Riddle of Job , a contemporary interpretation of an ancient source. The Problem of Good , the traditional problem of evil, stood on its head. Finally, we kicked off our ongoing reflections on the nature of time with Yesterday, the Very Tomorrow , the phrase you didn’t know you needed! Thanks for being a loyal subscriber. Do share Aletheia Today with like-minded friends, and help us grow our online community! 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 Aletheia Today Needs YOU! David Cowles Nov 10, 2022 “Satisfaction…is potentially limitless.” Consultants Wanted! Help us build our new online magazine from the ground up! Aletheia Today™ (AT) publishes Aletheia Today Magazine ™ (ATM) 8 times a year and our blog, Thoughts While Shaving ™ (TWS), twice weekly. Check us out at www.aletheiatoday.com . AT is focused on the ongoing convergence of science, philosophy, theology, culture, and spirituality in the 21 st century. We tackle controversial topics but we do so in a non-ideological, non-sectarian way. We welcome constructive controversy! New ideas and unpopular opinions have a home with us The successful applicant must have mad skills but should also have a commitment to AT’s mission of promoting intellectual convergence in our increasingly fragmented world. This is a chance to earn some money and change the world, all at the same time. Would that interest you ? If so, please read on: Potential Responsibilities Strengthen our technology backbone (e.g., website). Enhance our access to and presence on social media. Manage our metrics. Standardize fields and frequency. Brand AT/ATM/TWS: Logo(s)? Tchotchkes? Help us turn our ideas into curricula for secondary schools. Enable ecommerce. Create ad revenue. Compensation Modest. Currently, AT has no revenue ; so, don’t quit the day job. On the other hand, we hope to generate revenue in 2023 and advancement is possible based on the overall success of the enterprise. We’re happy to share but “no one’s getting’ fat ‘cept Mama Cass.” Next Step : Is this your dream job or what? Tell us why you should join us on our quest. Please send us a cover letter of 100 words or less: Why you? Why us? And please, no resumes! 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.