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< Back In Defense of Miracles David Cowles Nov 7, 2025 “Don’t believe in miracles? No problem. You’re a nihilist. Be proud. But… how do you account for events?” Like most children of the Enlightenment, I have struggled with the concept of Miracles : “They’re not reasonable, they’re illogical, irrational, and unscientific; they cannot be replicated and therefore they cannot be verified.” Duh! They’re called ‘miracles’ for a reason! We’re not talking about a package of Twinkies here…are we? But I digress. I still could not comfortably accommodate ‘miracles’ in my overly rationalistic theology, until I realized… “Miracles are reasonable, logical, rational, scientific, infinitely repeatable and therefore auto verified.” Ecce rem ! How so? As an historical document, the Bible begins with Exodus . Genesis is incredibly important, but it stands outside, and above, the rest of the document. It provides the mythological, cosmological, theological, and anthropological context for everything that follows. But Bible History per se starts with Jacob & Co. entering Egypt (Exodus 1: 1-5). From there, it’s not long before we find ourselves face to face with the miraculous. The Egyptians initially welcomed their Hebrew refugees but over time the welcome turned to exploitation. (What a surprise! At least that could never happen today…could it?) YHWH caught ‘sight and sound’ of these infernal goings on. According to Scripture, he declared “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt…” (Exodus 3). But I imagine his inner dialog continued along these lines: “…Best set things right. But that’s a problem, isn’t it? I ‘created’ the Heavens and the Earth; I didn’t just imagine them. So they’re free to evolve as they see fit…and that means no interference from moi .” We have previously established (Whitehead) that God is the paradigmatic exemplification of Natural Law, not an exception to it. God, it seems, is subject to something resembling Star Trek’s Prime Directive. Interference in the local order of nature is forbidden. “Still, enough is enough! This evil is intolerable. So what to do?” Et voila! The concept of ‘miracle’ was born. YHWH appears to Moses in the form of a burning bush . Now an ordinary bush, when it burns, leaves a mark in nature. Heat is generated, and smoke. A remnant of ashes is left on the ground. And of course, tornadoes devastate Chicago: Butterfly Effect! There’s a name for all these consequences: “Entropy” – the inexorable increase of disorder. But Moses’ burning bush is special : it does not generate entropy! Therefore, it does not ‘happen’ at all, at least not in any ‘ordinary’ (entropy generating) sense of ‘happening’. It leaves no record of itself…and yet it indirectly diverts the course of history. The Exodus is the mother of all butterflies . Now the scientists among you are shaking your heads, if not your fists, if you haven’t long since stopped reading this nonsense . I can’t blame you, can I? Admittedly, it’s far out ! But… According to Gregory Bateson, being is ‘a difference that makes a difference’. A miracle is certainly different, by definition, and it certainly makes a difference. Therefore, it is , according to Bateson’s standards, but it does not happen (according to the standard set by the Second Law of Thermodynamics). Now of course the Exodus generated an incalculable amount of entropy. But according to our model, the fact that there was an Exodus rather than not is entropy neutral. With or without the physical events associated with the Exodus, entropy would have increased. Living in slavery is just as entropic as escaping from it. Time advances, events happen, entropy increases. But the ‘shape of things to come’, the ‘subjective form’ of events (Whitehead), is a function of the future, not the past. Events shape themselves in pursuit of certain transcendent, universal Values. The aim of an event is its cause: the cause of the ‘burning bush’ is Freedom (Liberation). The ‘lure’ of the future is not entropic per se ; our response to that lure is. Robert Frost’s desire to return home is not entropic; the walk he takes to get there is . Now of course, the synaptic activity involved in forming an intention is entropic, but the intention itself is not. Reductionists notwithstanding, an intention is not merely the sum of its associated neurological processes. ‘God works in mysterious ways’ - backwards! That an event occurs is a function of causality, that it generates entropy is a function of thermodynamics, but which event (out of all possible events) occurs, when and where , is the function of teleology. We are all, always, Robert Frost . Life is a ‘walk in the woods’. Walking generates entropy, the mental processes associated with choosing a path are also entropic, but the preference of one specific path over all others is entropy neutral. Presumably, every human being alive today will die. At death, entropy = 1, order = 0. There is but one death and that one death is the common fate of all . On the other hand, each and every one of us will live a totally unique life. No two lives have even one event in common (therefore, the Other Minds problem). Each life unfolds behind its own event horizon; each of us is our own black hole. But on yet another hand, all lives are nodes in a single evolving entropy function linking all places and all times. Like Frost, our lives consist of a perpetual series of choices, choices within choices, choices leading to choices. Each time, the act of choosing is entropic; the choice made is not. That there are choices is the common fate of everything that is. The details of those choices are unique to each entity at each time and place. Making choices generates entropy but the particular set of choices that each of us makes is entirely free, undetermined, and entropy neutral. The quiddity of an event is causal…and entropic; the quality of that event is teleological, freely chosen, and entropy neural. Therefore, every event is a ‘burning bush’, every event is a miracle ! Back to Frost. One step always leads to another and with each step entropy increases in his hundred acre wood. But the peculiar details of each step, its trajectory, its gait, are purely a function of the goal, his ultimate destination. Still don’t believe in miracles? No problem. You’re a nihilist . Be proud. But be sure you understand the implications of your choice. If there are no miracles, how do you account for any events? Every event satisfies our definition of a miracle, every event is a burning bush. *** El Greco’s Christ Healing the Blind (c. 1560–67) shows Jesus restoring sight to a blind man amid a gathering of astonished onlookers, symbolizing both physical and spiritual illumination. The elongated figures and radiant colors heighten the sense of divine power breaking into ordinary life, reflecting faith’s transformative vision. 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 Identity David Cowles Oct 22, 2025 “I am who I am and that’s all that I am… I’m Popeye the Sailorman.” I am who I am and always have been, at least since my birth, and always will be, at least until my death. I will always be who I am; how could I not be? I mean, who else could I be? If I were not me, then either I would not be at all, bummer, or I’d be someone else. If I didn’t exist at all, oh well; but if I were someone else then that someone else would be who I am. So, any way you slice it, I am who I am. No matter what I am, I am always myself. Sum, ergo ipse sum. I never change no matter how much my circumstances (e.g. age, health, experience) may change. Gertrude Stein was perhaps the first modern thinker to point out that we do not undergo metamorphoses of any kind. As she explained it, “We are always to ourselves young men and young women.” Our conception of ourselves never changes, never varies; who I am to myself is always the same. So I am who I am, but what about U? Presumably, U R who U R. I am I, U R U, but why? Why am I, I? And why are U, U? Why am I not U? Well, suppose I were U and U were I. What would be different? Something? Everything? Or nothing? Answer: nothing! Nothing would be any different than it is now. In fact, it would not be possible to distinguish in any way between a world in which I am U and U R I and a world in which I am I and U R U. The two states-of-affairs would be identical because nothing would have changed. In either case, I would be I and U would be U. I would know then what U know now, and U would know what I now know, but neither of us would know what the other one knows. Each of us would still know only what each of us knows. I would know that I am I and not U and that U are U and not I, just as I do now. U would know the same. So, R U U or R U I? Am I, I or am I U? Obviously, these questions make no sense now. Wittgenstein would label the underlying propositions ‘meaningless’. They appear to be meaningful English sentences, but they are not. They are well formed pseudo- propositions, but they are nonsensical. We live in an Edward Lear world. So if nothing changes, if nothing is any different, if there is no way to distinguish ‘I am I’ from ‘I am U’ or ‘U R U’, then do we have one state-of-affairs or two? Answer: one! It is a fundamental principle of metaphysics that no two things can be identical because identical is identity. Two pseudo-things turn out to be one actual thing. Equality is not identity. We say A = B when A is not B but where A and B share something in common (e.g. quantity). Quantity is abstracted from concrete things. I have a pair of shoes; you have a pair of song birds. We can abstract quantity and, when we do, we find that the shoes and the birds are equal…but not identical; shoes do not sing! If U and I can be swapped freely and without consequence, then is it not the case that I and U are identical, i.e. one and the same? If two ordered pairs (a,b) and (b,a) are identical then a must be b, not in an abstract quantitative sense but in a concrete existential sense. It is possible that the first thing a baby learns after birth is the distinction between me and not-me and then secondarily the difference between me and U. Is it possible this bedrock distinction that forms the basis of a lifetime of cognition is utterly false? You bet it is! Talk about your original sin. Everything we think we know is an elaboration of a totally false premise; Everything we imagine we know is an elaboration of that premise By this account, knowledge is a ‘negative quantity’ with zero as its upper limit. If U and I are indistinguishable and therefore interchangeable, it doesn’t make any sense to speak of ‘U’ or ‘I’ in the first place, does it? But how so? “Indistinguishable” – I’m a short, fat senior age male, you’re a tall, slim, 20 something female; how can we be indistinguishable? Because either way, the world is left with one old man and one young woman, and because U have the exact same relationship to what U R (young and…) as I have to what I am (old and…). “Interchangeable” – if U and I are indistinguishable in what sense is one of us different from the other? Answer: in no sense! So why distinguish between us? It is a distinction without a difference, so we are interchangeable. This is not a new epiphany. A guy named Jesus said much the same thing 2000 years ago: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and he was quoting Leviticus, one of the five books of the Old Testament attributed to Moses himself (aka, the Torah). Not like yourself: U = I; as yourself: U R I and I am U and ‘that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know’ (Keats). Four 20th century prophets (John, Paul, George & Ringo) expressed the idea even more directly: “I am he as you are he and you are me and we are all together” ( I am the Walrus) . I and U and he are indistinguishable. So, ‘shake me up, Sally’, it won’t matter; nothing will change. Everything will be exactly the same, identical to how things are now. Nothing would have changed. I would still be I and U would still be U. I would know then what U know now, and U would know what I now know, but neither of us would know what the other one knows or what we’d know if our identities were swapped. Each of us would still know only what each of us knows. I would know that I am I, and not U, and U would know that U are U, and not I. Ultimately, we would both know the same thing (I am I) but we would each know it individually. Common known, uncommon knowing! So, R U U, or R U I? Am I, I…or am I, U? Obviously, these questions make no sense now. Wittgenstein would label the underlying propositions ‘meaningless’. They are well formed pseudo-propositions; they look like English sentences but in fact they are non-sensical. I am who I am, always and forever, never changing. Likewise U R who U R. Since we are indistinguishable and interchangeable (above), I am who U R and you who I am. Our identities are identical. On the other hand, what I am changes continuously over my lifetime as does what U R. Further, what I am and what U R never intersect. No part of what I am is ever part of what U R. We may share some phenomenal qualities, but common qualities do not constitute identity. Shoes are not song birds. We imagine we live in a world where permanence and change exist dialectically in perpetual flux. We don’t live in such a world. In our world there is but a single ‘I’, manifested identically in uncountably many unique contexts. No context ever repeats. Who I am or who U R never changes; who I am is who U R. On the other hand, what I am varies continuously. What I am never duplicates what I was or what I will be. Nor does it ever duplicate what U R, were or ever will be. What I am is perpetually novel and always unique. To be is to be once and only once but to be is to be (not to not be ). Being is not something that can be taken away from something that is. U R or U R not. Schoedinger notwithstanding, there is no in between, there is no superposition, there is no becoming, there is no perishing. Since the Enlightenment, our doctors of philosophy have been proud: they debunked the Scholastics’ ontological proofs for the existence of God by showing that Being is not a Quality. Exactly! Accept the implications of your own triumph: what is not can never be and what is can never not. That’s the world we live in…now if only we could get used to living here. Perhaps Aletheia Today can help. Stay tuned for future articles that will elaborate on the wide and crucial implications of this one realization. *** Image: Frida Kahlo’s The Two Fridas (1939) portrays two versions of herself seated side by side, connected by a single exposed artery that joins their hearts. One Frida, dressed in European-style clothing, represents her broken, rejected self after divorce; the other, in traditional Tehuana dress, symbolizes strength and cultural pride. The dual figures reflect her inner conflict between vulnerability and resilience, as well as the evolving complexity of her identity. 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 Europhilia to Europhobia David Cowles Oct 29, 2025 “How Europe digs itself out of its cultural morass is unclear… until it does, you can color me Europhobic…though I do miss a good espresso.” Remember when we all wanted to live in Europe? We were mesmerized by the slower pace of economic activity, and we admired the communitarian values. Today, I’m guessing fewer of us with US or UK passports are looking to swap them for EU docs, at least not anytime soon. Relative to China and the US, Europe is on a long term trajectory of economic decline. Recently, a big pharma CEO brought attention to the trend: “AstraZeneca plans to invest $50 billion to boost US manufacturing and research by 2030 to shore up its position in the crucial market. The US accounts for over 40% of revenue, which CEO Pascal Soriot said Thursday could be “half of our potential revenue by 2030.” He also issued warnings to Europe and the UK , where R&D spending lags behind that of the world’s two largest economies, that they might lose their health sovereignty. A recent editorial by Lidia Borrell-Damian in Science Magazine (October 16, 2025) summarized weaknesses in the European approach to the global innovation economy. Let’s reprise her article, highlighting Europe’s ‘fault lines’ as we go: “The European Union (EU) has the world’s largest funding program exclusively for research and innovation (R&I)—Horizon Europe—which is now preparing its 10th edition for 2028–2034. ”The good news is that the EU aims to raise Horizon Europe’s budget by 83% and (1) continue the trend of supporting all types of institutions and partnerships, including universities, research institutes, small-and medium-sized enterprises, nonprofit organizations, and a widening circle of international collaborations . “Horizon Europe is the nickname given to both the 9th and 10th EU Framework Programmes for Research and Innovation, with goals that require a careful (2) balance among long-and short-term gains, security and openness, and economic growth and social well-being . “Horizon Europe will be structured across (3) four ‘pillars’ ( Excellent Science ; Competitiveness and Society; Innovation; and European Research Area ) for continuity with previous programs . The first pillar … will continue to fund projects that embrace scientific curiosity and freedom of inquiry exclusively on the basis of scientific excellence. (4) Safeguarding their governance and independence from policy-driven objectives is essential… “The new Framework Programme is meant to (5) coordinate with the European Commission’s European Competitiveness Fund, a merger of multiple funding initiatives primarily focused on scaling up the EU’s industrial and economic development. “Horizon Europe’s continued commitment to (6) reduce persisting disparities in R&I capacity across Europe through its “Widening” program promises a more integrated and cohesive European R&I environment. Here, more focus should be placed on “brain circulation” to increase the research capacity of regions and countries that lag behind to achieve a level playing field across the continent… “There are other important issues in Horizon Europe that require more detailed consideration, such as (7) administrative simplification, environmentally sustainable research practices, and inclusivity .” Sounds great! So what’s my problem? Ms. Borrell-Damian is endeavoring to defend Europe’s technology initiatives and, if possible, to push them toward an even greater emphasis on pure science. However, postmodern as we are, she can’t help but betray cultural biases (above) that will likely undermine her project: It is not the job of science to promote institutional diversity or democratization. It is not for science to achieve ‘balance’; at most, that is a regulatory function of government. The job of science is discovery. Four pillars, only one of which includes the word, ‘science’; one pillar (‘curiosity…innovation…excellence’) would suffice. Politics has no place in science. Of course, that’s naïve…but it’s a goal. ‘Coordinate…with a merger of…multiple funding initiatives.’ How many times can you step on ‘product’ before it becomes just talcum powder? It is not the job of science to reduce sociological disparities or to level the economic playing field. Once again, it is not up to science to ensure inclusivity. That is not to say that these points lack merit. On a number of these issues society does have a legitimate interest which it should promote through appropriate organs of government. But these are not the proper burdens of theoretical physicists, research biologists, or lab technicians. They have their hands (and minds) full creating the next century for us. But cheer up, this dark cloud has a charcoal lining. Not only is the EU allowing sociological concerns to erode the energy, resources, and enthusiasm of its brightest scientists, it is also trivializing the very socioeconomic issues it purports to prioritize. Consider: (1) Strengthening the research infrastructure, (2) balancing short and long term goals, openness and security, productivity and well-being, (3) optimizing the research milieu, (4) insulting science from politics, (5) coordinating with other programs, (6) managing and mitigating economic disparities, and (7) ensuring the efficiency, sustainability, and inclusivity of all projects. Don’t these concerns merit the concerted attention of their own dedicated professionals? Does it make sense to think that these issues will be taken seriously by scientists for whom such matters are afterthoughts at best? Just as it is foolish to leave the waging of war to the generals, so it is counter-productive to burden research scientists with the task of correcting society’s structural flaws. Whether and how Europe digs itself out of this cultural morass is unclear. Suffice to say, until it does, you can color me Europhobic…though I do miss a good espresso. Lidia Borrell-Damián is the secretary general of Science Europe, Brussels, Belgium. lidia.borrell-damian@scienceeurope.org *** The Astronomer (1668) by Johannes Vermeer portrays a scholar deeply absorbed in the study of the heavens, symbolizing humanity’s quest for knowledge and divine understanding. The soft, directional light from the window illuminates both the man and his instruments, emphasizing enlightenment through reason and observation. Vermeer’s meticulous use of detail and composition transforms this quiet interior scene into a meditation on science, faith, and intellectual discovery. 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< Back Descartes David Cowles Oct 29, 2025 “To be conscious is to be aware of being oneself and to be aware of being oneself is to be aware of oneself as a potential object of another’s awareness.” Cogito ergo sum , ‘I think therefore I am’ - possibly the best known meme in all of Western philosophy. Who has not marveled at its simple wisdom? And welcomed the comfort of a stable launching pad for further philosophical speculation? It answers so many questions…especially when you’re in middle school. But like most easy answers, it’s flawed; and like most flaws, the devil is in the language. I think…I am. Simple. But the ‘I’ is deceptive. It suggests that the ‘I’ that thinks is the ‘I’ that is; it isn’t! ‘I think’ describes an action. It discloses an agent, and it makes some sense to call that agent, ‘I’. I mean, what else would you call it? Agency is an ‘I-experience’. We can impute agency to other subjects but the only agency I can ever experience directly is my own; only an ‘I’ thinks and knows that it thinks. The authors of the Book of Job understood this c. 3,000 years ago: “I know that my redeemer lives, and on the last day he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes him – I, not another.” (19: 25 – 27) Only first person experience counts, Alfred North Whitehead notwithstanding. This discloses something unexpected about the meaning of ‘I think’. I think only if I am aware that I think. Computers think…but as far as we know they are not aware that they think. This is not the ‘thinking’ Descartes has in mind. The ‘I’ of his cogito is not the ‘I’ that thinks. It is the ‘I’ that knows that it thinks. What Descartes called ‘thinking’ ( cogito ) is more like what we mean by ‘being conscious’. ‘I think’ discloses ‘I’ to Descartes, not because Descartes thinks, but because Descartes knows that he thinks. The Descartes that knows that he thinks is the Descartes that is ( sum ) and that is not the Descartes who merely thinks. Sum (I am) describes a state, not an act. There is no agent so there is no warrant to invoke the ‘I-word’ in this context. A better presentation of the existential reality would have been cogito ergo est (‘I think therefore it is’ or ‘I think therefore something is’). Alternatively, we can retain the ‘I-word’ ( sum ) if we remove it from the cogito : cogitator ergo sum (‘it is thought therefore I am’). That an entity thinks and knows that it thinks means that being has a subject after all and that subject is what I call ‘me’. When I say, “I think,” I am both the stated subject and the implied object of the act. Thinking, as Descartes uses to term, is an inherently recursive process. Being, again per Descartes, is not. Thinking and being are not the same thing…not by a long shot! Bottom line : what is essential is that we scrupulously respect the ontological (not just semantic) distinction between the ‘I’ of cogito and the ‘I’ of sum . But there is more. Being conscious is a process and, like all process, it is trinitarian: (1) I am aware of x (not-me); (2) I am aware that I (me) am aware of x (not-me); (3) since x is and x is not me, I must assume that x may be aware of me as I am of x. I cannot assume that I am ontologically special, much less unique. What goes around may come around! You may say, “I don’t believe that x is aware of me.” Ok, so what? First, I don’t care what you believe; second, I don’t care whether x is aware of you or not. The real nature of x is unimportant. To be conscious is to be aware of being oneself and to be aware of being oneself is to be aware of oneself as potentially the object of another’s awareness. Consciousness does not require the existence of ‘other’ minds; it requires the possibility of ‘other’ minds. It requires me to harbor a model of the ‘other’ inside my model of myself, like an incubus . I cannot be aware of x unless x is distinct from me. Otherwise, x is just part of me and my awareness of it is just an awareness of myself. But if x is distinct from me, then I must concede that it may be a copy, a reflection, of me and that would mean that x could be aware of me. I am aware of x-not-me. I am aware of me being aware of x-not-me. If x is x-not-me then x is ‘me minus me’ (equality, not identity). From the point of view of x, I am x’-not-x. I am ‘x minus x’. The idea that The Other is a fundamental category of ontology goes back to the birth of Western philosophy with Anaximander (6th century BCE). Anaximander apparently (evidence is fragmentary) believed that Being was inherently ‘mutual’ – I come to be by ‘letting’ another come to be. We are all monkeys with our hands stuck inside our own personal bottles. (Apologies to my Simian cousins.) We are only free to become ourselves if we are willing to let go of the prize we’re clutching. Who among us can let go? We can only become by letting another be. It’s counter-intuitive and counter-instinctual but it is the origin of Love and, by extension, of all Virtue. *** Maurits Cornelis Escher — Hand with Reflecting Sphere (1935) Escher’s self-portrait shows him gazing into a polished glass sphere held in his own hand, where the entire room — including himself — curves and folds within its reflection. The image explores the act of perception itself, merging the observer and the observed into a single, infinite loop of awareness. It perfectly captures the Cartesian idea of consciousness reflecting upon itself — the mind as both subject and object in the search for truth. 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 Good God Paul Tillich David Cowles Oct 4, 2025 “…It makes no difference what direction we look, it’s utter devastation everywhere. Oh, the price we pay to have no God!” In 1959, existentialist theologian, Paul Tillich, kicked off a logical cascade when he innocently defined Faith as ‘ultimate concern’. What’s your ‘ultimate concern’? Is it sex, drugs or rock-and-roll? Is it power, status, or fame? Money or security? Family or friends? Health or happiness? Whatever your ‘ultimate concern’, that is your Good and therefore that is your God . Tillich’s surprise definition puts idolatry on the same footing as monotheism. It’s simply a matter of ‘ultimate concerns’. If my ‘ultimate concern’ is a lump of clay, so be it. As in AA and other 12 step programs, each person is free to designate anything as their personal Higher Power . If I make a Faith commitment to inorganic matter, then I am at most guilty of misplaced concreteness (Whitehead) – i.e. considering something to be something it isn’t, for example a ‘god’ that is not and could not possibly be God. (I’m not just in the wrong pew, I’m in the wrong church…but I’m still living a life of Faith per Tillich.) It is comforting to think that everything we do is motivated by our conception of what is Good (i.e. our Faith) because whatever is Good is ‘God’. There is just one fly in this ointment: we decide what is Good for us and therefore we each define, i.e. create, our own God. By definition, Good and God must transcend our immanent world (otherwise, per Nietzsche, they would have no normative function or value and without that, they would be meaningless terms). But we have turned that relationship on its head; we have made the Immanent normative. Sometimes, you can invert a relationship and everything runs smoothly; the relationship is symmetrical and reciprocal. This is not one of those times. If the Immanent is normative then what-is is normative for what will be. Therefore any change is ‘bad’, i.e. a reduction of Good. Talk about radical conservatism! Assuming that ‘things’ are motivated to act (or change) by their sense of what’s Good (for them), no such motivation could exist, ever. Given an Entity A in State X, there is no State Y that would be better than X for A. “Every way you look at this, you lose.” (Simon & Garfunkel) We would be living in Leibniz’ Best of all Possible Worlds . Therefore, the status quo would be locked-in and the Universe would be a frozen solid. Is that bad enough for you? It gets worse ! Assuming a state of non-being is logically, not temporally, prior to a state of being, then non-being would be the eternally preferred state. There would be no universe, and in fact no universe of any sort would ever be possible because anything that might be would be less good than status quo, i.e. nothing at all. And so, Good, God, and even Being itself would be precluded. So we’d be living in Leibniz’ Best of all Possible Worlds but only from the perspective of the present moment. Our Present would by definition be somewhat less good than what immediately preceded it, and what preceded that, and so on. With ‘every move we make, every breath we take’ we regress in value, back toward our origin or forward toward our destiny, which are exactly the same, i.e. nothing. Like Noah, it makes no difference what direction (in space or time) we look, it’s utter devastation everywhere. Oh, the price we pay to have no God! But this is not the way things seem to be. Something is. Value seems graded across a variety of events and options. Devastation is not total, universal, or eternal. So let’s assume this is not the way it is IRL. That there is something immanent means that there must be something transcendent and what is transcendent is also normative for what is immanent. Being is not symmetrical…or democratic. Get over it! The father of Western philosophy, Parmenides (5th century BCE), captured it perfectly in his epic poem, On Nature: “To come to be and to perish, to be and not to be, to shift place and to exchange bright color…all things have been named light and night...” This is Doxa, the realm of appearances. To this Parmenides counterposed the realm of truth, Aletheia : “…What-is is ungenerated and imperishable…whole…steadfast and complete; nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, one… It is not lacking, but if it were, it would lack everything…Therefore, it must either be completely, or not at all.” Certainly, Parmenides’ Aletheia is Augustine’s Bonum . Jean-Paul Sartre, a fitting bridge connecting Parmenides and Tillich, devoted an entire novel, Nausea , to this point. We view things as tools or obstacles strewn in the path of life’s projects. We treat life as a video game, avoiding pitfalls and acquiring weapons at every turn. Sartre invites us to encounter things as they are in themselves ( en soi ), as raw existents apart from every context, but he warns us: the experience is likely to make us sick (hence, nausea ). We have no experience viewing the world other than through various mediating membranes; coming in contact with ‘the real thing’ can be shocking – imagine a lifelong Pepsi drinker having her first can of Real Coke! Sidebar : Sartre is an interesting character. An avowed materialist, communist and atheist, he finds himself sharing overnight accommodations with some very unexpected bed fellows: for example, Pope Leo XIII on the matter of absolute freedom and the Baal Shem Tov ( Hasidism ) on meeting things in the world on their own terms, undisguised by noisy utility . So we don’t have to accept the reality of God if we don’t want to but we pay a heavy price. We have to give up Good (as defined philosophically) and ultimately we have to give up Being itself. But hey, that’s a small price to pay to keep our pride: “Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.” (John Milton) *** Giorgio de Chirico’s The Disquieting Muses (c. 1916–18) depicts two mannequin-like figures set in an eerie, empty piazza framed by classical architecture and long, unsettling shadows. The stillness and distorted perspective create a dreamlike tension between the familiar and the uncanny, suggesting a world stripped of human warmth yet charged with metaphysical meaning. Through its haunting calm and timeless setting, the painting evokes questions about existence, solitude, and the mysterious workings of consciousness. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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< Back Is it ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’...or Homer’s? David Cowles Oct 14, 2025 “Schrödinger is certainly a worthy recipient of the Nobel Prize. But when Sweden called, there was no mention of his debt to Homer...” Erwin Schrödinger (ES) is famous for many things but none more than his ‘existential cat’, perpetually suspended, like a certain Danish prince, between life and death. “To be or not to be” takes on a whole new meaning in Quantum Mechanics (QM): "To be and not to be." According to the canons of QM, the biological status of ES’ puss is unknown, and therefore , undetermined…until it is somehow ‘measured’. Being ‘observed’ in this way forces the quantum to declare itself. Like many millennials, quanta abhor commitment. They prefer to keep their options open right up to the end. Measurement does not determine the cat’s fate, nor does it simply reveal what is already a fait accompli . Rather, it forces the quantum ‘to decide’, to determine its own fate and declare it publicly. Riddle : How is a science lab like a casino? Try your luck at roulette. You can bet that the ball will land on a black space (vs. red) or on an even number (vs. odd) or you can bet that it will land on some specific number. Unless your casino is crooked, your wager will not affect the outcome of the spin, but it does determine that there is an outcome. (The croupier will not spin the wheel until at least one player has placed a bet.) Prior to the spin, all possible outcomes, weighted on a probability curve, exist in superposition. After the spin, only one outcome remains, and its probability is 100%. The outcome is not just unknown prior to the spin, it is undetermined. Your bet and the croupier’s spin simply ensure that there will be an outcome. Dasein (that it is), not Wassein (what it is) – Heidegger. In the same way, the croupier at CERN fires up the particle accelerator and collapses Schrödinger’s wave function by measuring it. The spin of a wheel at Bellagio is functionally equivalent to the read-out on a dial at CERN. You’re 10 years old (too young to be betting in casinos) and your coach offers to take you and your teammates to Baskin-Robbins after the ‘big game’; you immediately and instantaneously sample all 31 flavors in your head. Based on past history at BR, you are more likely to choose Pralines’n Cream than Wild’n Reckless Sherbet , but at this point, all options are still on the table. When you arrive at the shop, you let your teammates order first. You want to keep those options open as long as possible. You’re in a dilemma: you cannot taste any ice cream until you commit, but once you do, 30 ‘virtual’ tastes disappear. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, even with a spoonful of Rocky Road to make the medicine go down. Finally your coach intervenes, “Order now or get nothing!” And so you do; you blurt out your decision, “ Strawberry Cheesecake please.” (Desperate as you are, you remember your manners.) But you surprise yourself, you’ve never had this flavor before, and heck, you’re only 10, you’ve never even tasted a cheesecake before. Immediately, you regret your decision, “Why did I order this?” But you dare not reverse that decision and risk getting nothing. The loss of 30 potential tastes is devastating…until your first actual lick. OMG, it’s delicious! All other flavors vanish from your mind. You made the right choice after all, and now you have a new ‘favorite flavor’. Of course, had you ordered Nutty Coconut instead, nothing would have been any different. ‘Schrodinger’s Cat’ is a brilliant thought experiment. Like ‘Zeno’s Tortoise’, it makes a good pet for the long run. Erwin Schroedinger is certainly a worthy recipient of the Nobel Prize. But when Sweden called, there was no mention of his debt to Homer, the blind poet of the Eastern Mediterranean, c. 8th century BCE. Turns out, Homer had already conducted the exact same thought experiment in his Odyssey . Schrödinger merely showed that Homer’s model was applicable to Quantum Mechanical phenomena. For all his brilliance, ES was upstaged by a poet of all things! Whispers of ‘plagiarism’ filled the air in the Faculty Lounge that day, along with more than the usual click-clacking of slide rules. Let’s set the stage: Penelope is the wife of the King of Ithaca, Odysseus, hero of the Trojan War. Odysseus failed to return from Troy with the rest of the Greek armada and Penelope is under tremendous pressure to declare her husband dead so that she can marry one of her many parasitic suitors. But Penelope is not just the wife of some warrior; she has a mythological identity all her own. Truth to tell, she is higher up the ontological food chain than her husband. Part of the multi-cultural tradition of Indo-Persian Norns , she is ‘one who weaves the fate of the world on her loom’. We encounter Norns in the Norse Edda , in the ‘Scottish Play’ (three witches), in Wagner’s Ring , and elsewhere in Indo-European culture. As Penelope weaves, history unfolds. When she finishes, the fate of Odysseus will be a settled matter of fact, and she will have no choice but to declare him dead. She will be ‘free at last’ (i.e. she will have ‘nothing left to lose’ – Janice Joplin) - free to marry one of her suitors, doesn’t matter which one, and she dreads it. Penelope’s weaving converts potentiality, hope, into actuality, despair. But as long as she continues weaving, she ‘keeps hope alive’ (Jesse Jackson). Odysseus may yet return to Ithaca. History remains in suspense. So she hatches a brilliant scheme. Every day she weaves but every night she unravels her prior day’s work. She obstructs the course of history; she suspends the flow of time. Odysseus’ fate remains undetermined. He may still be alive; he may yet return. He’s not dead until Penelope says he’s dead. Does Odysseus, adventuring around the Mediterranean, taking advantage of an archipelago of ‘all-inclusives’, have any idea how much he owes his wife? Each day, she recreates the wrinkle in time that allows Odysseus the additional space he needs to ‘find himself’, i.e. to find his way back home. Penelope gives Odysseus the luxury of a ‘gap decade’. Penelope is the real hero of Homer’s Odyssey just as Molly Bloom is in James Joyce’s retelling. They are the Norns whose weaving holds together the fabric of their worlds. They are the homing beacons that tether Odysseus and Leopold to the real world. But even Homer was upstaged…but by none other than God himself. The opening verses of Genesis describe cosmic superposition metaphorically: “…The earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” The primordial interaction with God, a transcendent consciousness, forces the Cosmic Wave Packet to collapse, revealing a specific value, i.e. a photon, light , triggering cosmogenesis and kindling the chain reaction that has so far resulted in the Universe we have today. So perhaps the cat is neither Schrödinger’s nor Homer’s. Perhaps it is God’s. In any case, it makes a great pet. *** Franz Marc’s Two Cats, Blue and Yellow (1912) depicts two vividly colored cats reclining together, rendered in Marc’s signature bold hues and simplified geometric shapes. The complementary colors—cool blue and warm yellow—create a visual and emotional tension that expresses harmony and duality between calm introspection and alert vitality. Through color symbolism and abstraction, Marc elevates the domestic animals into spiritual beings that embody his belief in the purity and instinctive innocence of nature. 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 Universal Theocracy David Cowles Nov 3, 2025 “The King (ruler) is responsible only to the people and the people are responsible only to God!” Democratic Republic, Constitutional Monarchy, Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Tyranny (e.g. Dictatorship) – Constitutional Theocra cy doesn’t make the cut, at least not according to most 21st century textbooks. Perhaps that’s because every form of government is a Constitutional Theocracy ! Whether acknowledged or not, every government, regardless of its form , has built into it certain guardrails…and an escape hatch. These extra-constitutional devices base their claim to legitimacy on a power higher than any mere political process. Existentialist theologian Paul Tillich defined Faith as ‘ultimate concern’. Whatever your ‘ultimate concern’, that is the Good as you conceive it, that is where you place your trust, and therefore that is your higher power, your God . It is everyone’s court of last resort; it is the common venue for every final appeal. Applying Tillich geo-politically, every ‘state’ grounds its claim to authority on something beyond itself. For example, consider how King James I of England (VI of Scotland), articulated the doctrine known as the Divine Right of Kings : “Kings are justly called Gods, for they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth. For if you will consider the attributes to God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king…God hath power to create, or destroy, make or unmake at his pleasure, to give life or send death, to judge all, and to be judged nor accountable to none…And the like power have Kings...(to) make of their subjects like men at the chess, pawn to take a bishop or a knight…” Closer to home, consider the United States today. There is a complex system of checks and balances in place, a tri-partite separation of powers, a federal system of shared sovereignty with states, and a Bill of Rights bolted onto the Constitution itself. Even so, one wonders what would happen if these democratic processes produced a result that was perceived to be an existential threat to the nation itself or a radical and irredeemable violation of objective standards of Justice. Farfetched? Not at all! Turns out, the founders anticipated just such an eventuality…and provided several escape hatches : Private citizens have the right to bear arms; and They have the right to participate in well-regulated militias. Juries have the (much contested) right to nullify unjust laws at the time of their application. In fact, the Declaration of Independence , the nation’s birth certificate, confirms the right of people to take up arms against a government whose policies abridge divine principles: “We hold these truths to be self-evident , that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men (sic), deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed… “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it… it is their right, it is their duty , to throw off such Government…” According to this doctrine, the ‘King’ (ruler) is responsible only to the people and the people are responsible only to God! MMA Headliner : Jefferson takes on James for the soul of the millennium. (Catch it live on ESPN and ABC.) Speaking of the UK, a similar function is served by Common Law, the Magna Carta , the parliamentary system, and the constitutional monarch. Even so, freedom of speech was substantially curtailed during the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and political participation by certain extremist political groups has recently been prohibited. In Iran, the secular authorities are subservient to the clerics. In Algeria, elections were cancelled when it appeared that a fundamentalist party ( FIS ) was poised for victory. In Germany, certain political parties have been outlawed and use of symbols and rhetoric invoking the Nazi era is considered a crime. In some countries, the military serves as the final court of appeal. Plus there is a trend, snowballing around the world, to bring legal actions, criminal and civil, against one’s political opponents. In some cases (e.g. France, Italy) certain politicians have been barred from participating in the electoral process as a result. Finally, during the death throes of the Soviet Union several ‘constitutional’ Eastern European governments simply stepped aside to allow a new wave of Western looking leaders to take charge. I pass no judgment, pro or con, on any of these arrangements. I cite them simply to demonstrate that all states, regardless of titular form, recognize some sort of ‘higher power’ to which their constitutional institutions are based and to which they are subject. In the perpetual shunting of the loom from process to policy and from function back to form, the space reserved for society’s constitutional organs varies…but it always exists within limits imposed by a transcendent standard from which they derive their ‘limited and contingent’ legitimacy. We all live in a Constitutional Theocracy . Acknowledge it! *** The Triumph of Marat by Louis-Léopold Boilly (1794) depicts the revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat being carried triumphantly through a cheering crowd after his acquittal by the Revolutionary Tribunal. Painted during the height of the French Revolution, it captures the fervent idolization of Marat as a hero of the people and symbol of resistance against tyranny. Boilly’s composition, with its dense crowd and celebratory energy, reflects both the passion and the volatility of revolutionary zeal in a society on the brink of chaos. 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 World Series David Cowles Oct 27, 2025 “The World Series is stochastic. A team cannot carry over excess runs from one game to offset a future scoring deficit.” In professional baseball, the champion is the team that wins 4 games (out of 7) in the World Series. Typically, the first two games are played on the home field of one team, the next three games on the home field of the other, and then back to the initial venue for the final two games (if needed). It’s not rocket science; a precious 6 year old can grasp it. It is not uncommon for the ‘home team’ to win the first two games. That does not by any means guarantee that that team will win the series. The other team now has ‘home field advantage’ (i.e. 3 out of the 5 remaining games will be played on its home field). After the first two games, we still have no idea which team will win the Series but we do know that one team will win it and that it will take no more than 5 additional games to determine that winner. This much is certain. Still, after the first two games, our ‘home field winner’ is half way to the goal of 4 wins while their opponent is just getting started…maybe. Does this remind you of anything? How about a certain road race alleged to have taken place in Greece more than 3000 years ago? According to legend, as reported by the philosopher Zeno, a certain tortoise challenged the great Achilles (the Usain Bolt of his day) to a road race. As expected, Achilles declined; it would be demeaning for him to leave a lowly reptile in the dust. So the tortoise upped the ante, “Ok then, how about you give me a head start, say half the distance to the Finish Line?” Now Achilles was a clever boy; he knew that he could run at least 10 times as fast as the tortoise so catching up should not be a problem. By giving the tortoise a substantial head start, he can blow him away and still preserve his precious classical honor. Plus, his Saudi friends had put up a sizeable pot of prize money. And then there’s always the chance of making some lucrative side bets with naïve punters in the crowd. So, honor intact, Achilles accepts the challenge! Gotcha! Not so clever after all, are you, Troy Boy ? Achilles has fallen into the tortoise’s trap; he has agreed to a wager he cannot possibly win. But the future hero of Troy positions himself at the Starting Line, brimming with bravado. The challenger takes his place half way to the Finish Line; the crowd is surprised, and somewhat disconcerted, by the reptile’s quiet air of sly self-confidence. “Is there something going on here that we’ve missed?” You ‘bet’ there is (pun intended)! Achilles knows that he can run 100 meters in 10 seconds or less without breaking a sweat. So just 5 seconds after the starting gun is fired, Achilles has caught up to the tortoise; except, of course, he hasn’t. While Achilles was busy getting himself to the 50 meter line, the tortoise was also moving forward, albeit at a slower pace. After the same 5 seconds, the tortoise has just 45 meters left to go (vs. Achilles’ 50). So once again, Achilles needs to catch up and this time he only needs a half second to do so (5 meters); except of course, once again, the tortoise has moved on. Our contestants repeat this process over and over, but Achilles never quite catches his nemesis. Gradually it dawns on Achilles, the punters, and the fans that Achilles will not catch the tortoise…ever! The tortoise made a lot of money on side bets that day and he used it to build a Jurassic theme park dedicated to the preservation of endangered reptilian species. The world is a better, richer, more diverse place because of Achilles’ blind arrogance. But why is this result different from the outcome of the World Series (above)? Achilles’ difficulties stem from the fact that we all assume that spacetime is continuous, i.e. that it is infinitely divisible into ever smaller units. The World Series is not continuous; it is stochastic. It consists of no more than 7 games, and each game is a discrete event with a definite outcome. One game does not bleed into another. A team cannot carry over ‘excess runs’ from one game to jump start the next or use those runs to offset a future scoring deficit . Are you posh enough to play golf? Or are you, like me, content to watch Rory on the tube? Either way, you know that a game of golf can be organized in either of two ways: Match Play works like the World Series. Every hole stands on its own: you win, you lose, or you tie. With Medal Play shots accumulate over 18 holes and the winner is not determined until the last ice cube drops into a glass on the 19th green. Now, here’s what’s kept us focused on Zeno’s Paradox for more than two millennia: IRL, we all know that Achilles wins easily…even though we’ve proven that he can’t. There must be something wrong with our assumptions… and indeed there is! Our assumption (above) that spacetime is continuous must be false. In fact, we now know thanks to Einstein & the Quantum Mechanics that spacetime is made up of tiny, Planck size units; it’s not a flowing river, Heraclitus, it’s a post-industrial foam. The Planck bubbles are so small that for most purposes we can treat spacetime as though it were a continuum…but it isn’t. And because it isn’t, no slimy reptile stands a chance against our GOAT…and no World Series lasts more than 7 games. *** Marjorie Phillips — Night Baseball (1951) depicts a vivid evening at Griffith Stadium under the glow of newly installed floodlights. The artist captures the tension of the game as players, umpires, and fans are illuminated by artificial light, emphasizing the novelty and spectacle of night sports. Her use of bold color and simplified forms reflects both the excitement of baseball and the mid-century fascination with progress and modern leisure. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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< Back Sins Against the Holy Spirit David Cowles Oct 23, 2025 “Are my sins ‘sins against the Holy Spirit’ and therefore unforgivable?” There are several so-called “hard verses” in the New Testament, passages where Jesus is quoted as saying things that seem out of character for him and/or in conflict with the overall trajectory of Biblical teaching. One such verse concerns the forgiveness of sins: “…Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness…” (Mark 3: 28 – 28) Matthew adds an interesting gloss: “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven…” (12: 32) Jesus does not drill down on what constitutes ‘blaspheming against the spirit’ and so appears to leave us guessing: Are my sins ‘sins against the Holy Spirit’ and therefore unforgiveable? That there could be sins that cannot be forgiven is understandably off-putting for many would be believers. So what might Jesus have meant? God is ineffable. No words, no thesaurus of words can begin to exhaust God’s nature. On the other hand, we can and do associate certain virtues with God ‘by analogy’. In that sense, we say, “God is good,” and we can define Good by reference to certain values . These ‘values’ are essentially applications of Good in concrete circumstances. So what patchwork of values best represents God’s goodness in our world? I have settled on Beauty, Truth, and Justice as the three values that primarily characterize God’s presence for me. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, and I freely admit that people of goodwill might propose an entirely different and perhaps equally valid list. On the other hand, there is an intriguing parallel between Jesus’ self-characterization, God’s values, and these sins: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14: 6) Presumably, Truth is Truth, whatever the context. Life and Way, together , embody the essential features of Beauty and Justice. How so? Beauty is an application of Good to a concrete state of affairs; justice applies Good to process. Beauty is never changing; justice is never static. Beauty refers to order, structure, and form; justice refers to change, redistribution, and remediation. In real life they appear unrelated; in fact, they are both just applications of the Good to different phenomena. Similarly, the Way is structure, direction, and order; Life is balance, homeostasis, flux, and generation. Together, the Way and the Life are a homologous representation of ‘Beauty + Justice’. Here Matthew’s gloss is helpful. Sins against Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, are not unforgiveable. Those who abused and crucified Jesus can be forgiven (“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” Luke 23: 24). Those who persecuted the early Church (e.g. Paul) can be forgiven. In our age, those who entertain doubt, lack faith or lose it have done nothing unforgivable. So what’s left? Sins against the Holy Spirit are sins, not against God per se but against God’s values. In the Trinitarian economy it is the Holy Spirit, ‘the giver of life’, who reveals God’s values to the world. Life, to the extent it is worth living, is the pursuit of Beauty, Truth, and Justice. “Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it…people say in Boston even beans do it…romantic sponges do it…Oysters down in Oyster Bay do it…Even lazy jellyfish do it…” (Cole Porter re love ). All living things have an innate attraction to Beauty, Truth, and Justice and support and pursue those values, each in its own way. So do we! What can’t be forgiven then are sins directed against these Divine Values, specifically: To destroy Beauty To distort Truth To pervert Justice Scripture uses the word ‘blasphemy’ in this context, because these values collectively constitute God’s essence (i.e. the Good), and God’s essence is his name . In this context, it is easy to see why these activities would be regarded as sins; what is less clear is why these sins specifically should be unforgiveable. I propose that the destruction of Beauty, the distortion of Truth, and the perversion of Justice leave indelible marks. The 2 nd Law of Thermodynamics guarantees that order, once destroyed, can never be reproduced…without sacrificing even more order in the process. Manifestations of Beauty, while everywhere, are always unique, never repeatable. The beauty is ‘one and done’. The destruction of Beauty is unforgivable because it is irreparable. I prefer to believe that the sinner may yet experience redemption, but the sin itself can never be forgiven because its consequences can never be remediated. You can’t stuff entropy back in its box. The same applies to distortions of Truth. Once a false statement enters the noosphere, it becomes a meme with the capacity to persuade others and a tendency to enter into the collective chain of reasoning…like the ‘forever chemicals’ polluting our environment. Remember that per Jacques Derrida, ‘97% of what we think we think consists entirely of the thoughts of others. Giants sit heavy on our shoulders! Finally, Justice. In the Book of Job , God replaces Job’s lost sons and daughters and his possessions with more children and even greater riches, but it's not the same. What is lost can be compensated but it can never be replaced, much less restored. Some losses are simply irreparable. Injustice can be reformed but its effects can never be entirely erased from the social record. So, sins against the Holy Spirit are indeed unforgivable. In colloquial terms, the sinner may be forgiven but the sin itself (in these cases) can never be forgotten. *** Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19) depicts the desperate survivors of a French naval shipwreck clinging to a makeshift raft after being abandoned at sea. Géricault’s monumental composition captures the raw extremes of human suffering, hope, and despair as figures oscillate between death and a final wave of salvation on the horizon. Painted with intense realism and political charge, it serves as both a harrowing meditation on grief and a searing indictment of governmental negligence. 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 Put the ‘Uni’ back in Universe David Cowles Oct 23, 2025 “For millennia reluctant students have been trained in a system of geometry (Euclidean) that is incompatible with stability in any real world.” Just about everything you need to know about the Universe can be found in its name. It is ‘forever one’ (uni); and it is ‘perpetual change’ (verse). It is permanence ( Aletheia ) and transience ( Doxa ) – Parmenides. “Abide in me/Fast falls the eventide” – Whitehead (from an Anglican Hymn). For reasons probably rooted in culture generally and language specifically and possibly even in biology (neurology), we find it difficult to think organically, i.e. to embrace complementarity (e.g. wave/particle duality). We are much more comfortable thinking hierarchically. We prefer ‘decision trees’ over‘virtuous cycles’. We prefer to explain phenomena via ‘causality’ rather than ‘recursion’. We like to attribute an event to ‘external causes’rather than to the event itself. We are born to shirk responsibility: “The devil made me do it.” Accordingly, for decades scientists sought in vain to establish either the particle or the wave as the ‘primary’ (default) state of a quantum. There is no ‘primary’. As a result of this bias, Plato could no longer understand Parmenides, less than 100 years after the latter’s death; nor could Karl Popper, 2 millennia later. Be assured, this same virus still infects our thinking today. When we think ‘Universe’, we likely imagine a collection of discrete objects and events and a network of relationships connecting them. Universe, the whole, is the consequence, not the cause, of everything that is in it. We reason from parts to the whole. That’s us! We are much less likely to imagine Universe as an organic whole, precipitating unique, knot-like events along pre-established threads of relatedness ( logos ). We are less comfortable deducing the parts from the whole. We didn’t notice then that the Emperor had no clothes and we don’t seem to notice now that our preferred model makes no sense. We are lazy detectives, anxious to close our cases, less concerned with identifying the actually guilty parties. According to this hierarchical model, Universe is merely a mathematical construct, a shorthand way of referring to the multiplicity of things. As such, it is inert. It is at most the arithmetic sum of its parts. Taking redundancies into consideration, the whole may even be less than its parts. Illustration : Suppose we have a Universe, X, made up of three events, A, B, and C with the elements of each as follows: A = (l, m), B = (m, n), C = (n, p). So we have 3 events made up of 2 elements each, or 6 elements in total. But note, 2 of those elements (m and n) occur twice . Therefore, Universe X contains just 4 discrete elements (l, m, n, p) and so in one sense at least, the whole (4) is less than the sum of its parts (6). Universe is nothing if not economical. It doesn’t ‘chew its cabbage twice’ (that’s a theorem, BTW.) As mentioned above, such a Universe is inert. It lacks agency. It is an accumulation of influences, exerting no influence of its own. Its virtual existence is a fragile function of arbitrary forces accidentally interconnecting various nodes. According to today’s Standard Cosmological Model, these connections will gradually weaken and eventually evaporate resulting in ‘Heat Death’ (i.e. Max Entropy) aka ‘Big Freeze’. The Universe we are describing is known as an ‘Archimedean Universe’. In my view, if such a universe existed, it would necessarily be unstable. It begins at some arbitrary point (e.g. Big Bang) and its demise (e.g. Big Freeze) is inevitable; it’s all just a matter of time . As stated above, an Archimedean Universe lacks agency. It cannot regenerate; it cannot adjust its elements via homeostasis. Its only function is the elimination of redundancy. In other words, according to such a model, Universe is DOA. That said, it’s amazing that from 300 BCE to 1900 CE, Archimedean geometry was thought to be the only game in town. For millennia reluctant students have been trained in a system of geometry (Euclidean) that is incompatible with stability in any real world. Add to this the fact that Aristotle et al. thought the Universe was ‘infinite’ in space and time, and you can see the metaphysical mess we’re in. On the other hand, all of these problems disappear if we imagine that Universe is primary and its parts secondary. Such a Universe is One before it is Many. Interestingly, a Universe in which the Whole and its Parts are co-primary, i.e. complementary, achieves the same result. Only an entirely derivative Universe is terminally unstable. Alfred North Whitehead, a legendary monist , defined the Universe in terms of three elements: Unity, Multiplicity, and Creativity (i.e. change). While he did not specifically address the Archimedean issue, it’s clear that his cosmology is at least compatible with a non-Archimedean formulation of geometry. Appropriately, he described his thoughts as a ‘Philosophy of Organism’. R. Buckminster Fuller on the other hand, ‘designated’ spokesperson for pluralists everywhere, often said, “Universe is plural and at minimum two;” but he also said, “I seem to be a Verb.” As ‘verb’, Fuller sublimates primal plurality into organic unity. Fuller’s ‘Verb’ is roughly equivalent to Whitehead’s ‘Creativity’; it balances unity (permanence) with multiplicity (change). Fuller developed his ‘pluralism’ in the context of an Archimedean model, but I think that, taking his work as a whole, he fits more comfortably alongside Parmenides in a Universe based on a complementary relationship between the Whole and its Parts. For Whitehead, the Universe consists solely of events. Whatever is not itself an event is a derivative of an event. Since Universe (Unity) is a primary existent in Whitehead’s model, Universe must itself be an event. As an event, it can…and must…exert influence on the events that constitute it. I take Fuller’s concept of ‘verb’ as congruent with Whitehead’s concept of ‘event’. Both models rely heavily on the concept of Synergy . The title of Fuller’s master work is Synergetics . In Whitehead, the agency of the whole complements the synergy of its parts. All of which leads to a very peculiar conclusion: Universe can be more, or less, than the sum of its parts! How can that be? In fact, it cannot be otherwise! Universe is an event, and every event represents a creative advance relative to its logical antecedents. (Otherwise, it is not an ‘event’ and so not a primary existent, according to Whitehead.) Every event ‘prehends’ all the events in its ‘Actual World’ but contributes something unique and novel to that World going forward. Therefore, every event is by definition more than its elements. Likewise, borrowing a concept from set theory, each part within a Whole plays a unique role; it does not repeat. Potential redundancies are pruned and overlaps are conflated. In fact, a critical theorem in all non-Archimedean geometries states that no two entities can ever ‘overlap’. Even tangency is prohibited. Suppose we have a Universe that consists of just 3 events. If these events collectively constitute one Universe, each event must be embedded in another and/or it must embed another in itself. That’s the solidarity of Universe. So, in a Universe consisting of just 3 events, there are only two possible configurations: (1) C is embedded in B and B in A; (2) B and C are disjoint but both are embedded in A. Config #1 is straight forward. C is less than or equal to B and B is less than or equal to A. The whole is greater than or equal to the sum of its parts. Config #2 is more interesting. Depending on a variety of case specific variables, B + C can be less than, greater than, or equal to A. A is greater than or equal to B and A is greater than or equal to C but A is not necessarily equal to or greater than B + C, even though B and C are subsets of A. This is only counter intuitive because we trained at the feet of Euclid and Archimedes. The #10 (A) is greater than #7 (B) which is greater than #5 (C). One way of looking at natural numbers is to say that #10 contains #7 and #7 contains #5 . In that case A (#10) > B (#7) > C (#5). No surprises here! On the other hand if B and C are disjoint (neither contains the other), then A (#10) > B (#7) and A (#10) > C (#5), but A (#10) is not necessarily greater than B + C (#12). 5 year olds can understand this, but when we adults move from arithmetic to geometry, we magically introduce a new constraint based on the concept of a Venn Diagram. If we picture A (above) as a circle and B and C as circles within A, it is clear that A (#10) cannot contain both B (#7) and C (#5) unless B and C overlap. Try it, you can’t draw it! But we also know that B and C cannot overlap in a non-Archimedean universe, unless one wholly contains the other (above). But who says that the Universe has to behave like a Venn Diagram? After all, John Venn only developed his famous sketch 150 years ago. Unconsciously, Venn’s Universe assumes the axioms of Euclidean Geometry. We need a more powerful model if we are going to understand how the ‘real world’ works. A, the whole, must have a degree of independence from its parts (B and C). A must be a player in its own right and it must play a part in the constitution of B and C. Today, we are all Heracliteans; we worship change, often for its own sake. We see change, and call it ‘progress’, everywhere we look. But change ( Doxa ) cannot occur other than in the context of stability/permanence ( Aletheia ) and in order for change and stability to co-exist, we must live in a non-Archimedean Universe. The state of the world today, Century 21, does not allow us to wallow in parts, no matter how beautiful. We must begin to focus on the whole and note how it shapes each of its parts; we must put the ‘uni’ back in Universe! *** Image: Salvador Dalí’s Galatea of the Spheres (1952) depicts the face of Gala, his wife and muse, fragmented into a constellation of floating spheres that form a harmonious, three-dimensional grid. The work reflects Dalí’s fascination with atomic theory—suggesting that matter, love, and spirit are all unified through invisible cosmic order. By dissolving the human form into molecular orbs, Dalí portrays the interconnectedness of all existence, where the microcosm and macrocosm mirror each other. 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< Back Uranus Meets Erik Erikson David Cowles Oct 23, 2025 “The uber-pattern of the world is the logo that liberates us, that turns our free will into agency.” No, this is not the title of a Bevis and Butthead episode, nor is it a Wayne’s World retrospective. It is an article about the intriguing astronomical behavior of the ‘7th ice chip from the Sun’, the planet Uranus. Discovered in 1781 with the aid of a telescope, Uranus orbits the Sun once every 84 Earth years. During that ‘year’, the planet passes through all 12 signs of the Zodiac, effectively taking 7 years to transit each ‘house’. Of course, 7 is a prime number (3+4), closely related to its composite number, 12 (3 x 4). In many numerological systems, the #3 is associated with the divine and the #4 with the terrestrial, giving #7 (3 + 4) and #12 (3 x 4) their special significance. The numbers 7 and 12 have outsized importance in various human sub-cultures: The 7 days of creation The 7 day week The 7 sacraments (RCC) The Sabbath (7th day) The Sabbatical (7th year) The Jubilee, the year immediately following the 7th sabbatical year 7 fat years followed by 7 lean The 7 visible bodies in the ancient ‘solar system’ The 7 year itch A ‘natural’ (winner, winner, chicken dinner) in the game of Craps. The 12 signs of the Zodiac The 12 tribes of Israel The 12 apostles The 12 days of Christmas The 12 members of a jury A dozen eggs. The ‘Science of Astrology’ specifically studies the motions of celestial bodies relative to the signs of the Zodiac. It seeks to identify macrocosmic patterns in the behavior of those celestial bodies that harmonize with the microcosmic patterns we encounter in everyday life. The examples listed above span a gamut ranging from the large scale structure of the cosmos to familiar events in the lives of ordinary human beings. There is no claim here that one ‘causes’ the other; in my view, they don’t. As David Hume pointed out 250 years ago, causality is overrated. However, looking at phenomena on multiple scales allows us to use patterns evident on one scale to locate patterns, often less evident, operative on other scales. In this way, the Science of Astrology helps us discover scale-agnostic patterns that can enrich our understanding and appreciation of life’s experiences. In that context, the symmetries exhibited by Uranus’ orbital path help us identify patterns with similar symmetries on other scales. Let’s apply this ancient discovery to contemporary phenomena to see if patterns well identified and understood on one scale can help us identify and understand patterns on other scales. Let’s introduce the Three Wise Guys (Zoroastrian Astrologers from Persia) to Erik Erikson, a 20th century psychologist. We previously pointed out Uranus’ 7 year journeys through each of the 12 signs of the Zodiac. Erikson developed a theory of human development that identified distinct stages ‘scheduled’ to unfold at certain critical junctures over the course of Normal Life Expectancy (NLE). At first glance, the two models have little in common: While 84 years might be a valid approximation of NLE, Erikson’s model consists of just 8 stages, some as short as 18 months, others at least as long as 22 years. Worse still, Erikson’s model human ‘completes’ 5 stages in just 18 years and takes 66 years to complete the last three. Clearly, these models have nothing in common; or do they? What happens if we apply Uranus’ 12 ‘stages’, each lasting approximately 7 years, to Erikson’s theory of stages in human development? We might end up with a revised model of human development based on 12 stages of 7 years each. Would that shed any useful light on actual experience? You bet it would! Such a project would direct us to look for flex points in the development of a human being spaced by reasonably uniform 7 year intervals. Does that help elucidate reality? Let’s take a look: If there is a genuine harmony between these patterns, we’d be looking for flex points in the development of a human being that correspond to the following birthdays: 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th, 35th, 42nd, 49th, 56th, 63rd, 70th, and 77th. Wow! Can anyone fail to see the remarkable co-incidence of these specific birthdays with empirically identified developmental plateaus? Age 7 is the traditional ‘age of reason’ and the age at which immersive, structured ‘education’ often begins. Roman Catholic children are introduced to the Sacraments of Penance and Eucharist and for the first time become subject to the Laws of the Church. It marks the end of infancy. The organism (child) sacrifices some of its neuroplasticity, native curiosity, and unfettered imagination in exchange for certain perceived advantages - the status and ‘privileges’ associated with ‘growing up’. Age 14 marks the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence. It often corresponds with full sexual maturity and the final development of gender specific organs. A cascade of hormones often leads to reckless and rebellious behavior. Curiosity and creativity endure but they are now more likely channeled toward specific projects. Then comes the much awaited 21 st ! Ah, my first legal bone dry martini. Extra olives, please, to help me cope with the taste! By now I can drive (preferably not after drinking) and I may have completed my formal, or at least my state mandated, education. I can live on my own, I can get a job, I can enter into legally binding contracts, taking on Student Loans and Credit Card debt. I am a taxpayer now, a productive member of society. I have arrived…sort of. In reality, the 21 – 28 stage remains a period of intense development at least in modern cultures. At 21, there is still a lot of play left in life. By 28, I need to have thought seriously about such issues as marriage, children, and career. Now I am 35. Everyone expects me to be settled and on a charted life course. At 35, one may, perhaps, answer for the first time the age old question, “What will you be when you grow up?” You may wish to say, perhaps for the first time, “ This is who I am.” Terrifying! I must open a 401k and take up the game of golf. 42 now…it’s time to take stock: What’s my career (advancement) path? Am I saving enough? Will my kids ‘amount to anything’? Do I still want to be married? By 49, you’d better belong to a posh country club, sport a single digit handicap, and drive a Jaguar (if not a Lamborghini, you Loser!). By now, you should be working on your second marriage. 56, just checking-in. On course? 63, the process of aging begins in earnest. Whether it’s changing a tire or shooting b-ball with the neighborhood kids, you’re not 21 anymore, and now you know it; heck, you’re not even 40! It’s amazing! By the age of 14 most of us realize that we will eventually grow old and die. Yet when the aging process begins to affect us in perceptible ways, we’re always caught completely off-guard. Somehow we fall into the trap of believing we can age without changing. When you’re 7, you anticipate and welcome the changes promised at 14 and 21, but when you’re 63 you have no idea what’s in store for you. 63, 70, and 77 represent somewhat arbitrary breakpoints but the decline they catalogue is all too real. And it’s not a continuous process; you age in chunks. There is an enormous difference between being 63 – 70 and being 77 – 84, a difference most of us are not even slightly ready for. Of course, 77 – 84 is a lot better than what comes next! Using Uranus’ 84 year trek through the Zodiac to reconfigure Erikson’s stages of human development has suggested a pattern which has proven (above) to have significant heuristic value. This is the sense in which Astrology can be called a science and can be applied to enhance our lives and expand our horizons . Yet there is an obvious fallacy here; have you picked up on it yet? Astrological projections are typically linked with the date (and time) of one’s birth. That time is unlikely to coincide with the moment of Uranus’ transit between signs of the Zodiac. Therefore, if the stages of human development were perfectly aligned with Uranus’ itinerary, each of us would have a unique 7 year cycle. Where I am focused on my 7th and 14th birthdays, you might be looking at your 5th and 11th birthdays. Nonsensical! In my defense, I simply point out that patterns do not have to be identical to be instructive. We are only looking for congruence and the progress of Uranus forms a pattern that is congruent with the stages of human development, regardless of any one person’s DOB. The alternative, to approach life’s experiences as if they occurred chaotically would be utterly paralyzing. Free will notwithstanding, my fate would merely be the by-product of the Brownian motion around me. That changes, however, once we start to recognize congruent patterns in our world. Patterns allow us to create tools, to imagine and accomplish projects, and to measure their results. The uber-pattern of the world is the logos that liberates us, that turns our free will into agency. We should search for its reflection in everything we encounter, from a grain of sand to a drop of water, from the roar of a crowd to the smell of a bonfire, from the motion of the solar system to the structure of the cosmos itself. That’s Astrology! And we are grateful to Uranus for the lesson. *** The Copernican World by Andreas Cellarius is a 17th-century celestial illustration that beautifully presents Copernicus's heliocentric model, with the Sun at the center and planets, including Earth, orbiting around it. This work blends scientific innovation with artistic detail, reflecting the shift from geocentric to heliocentric understanding in the history of astronomy. 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 Plutarch +/- Christ David Cowles Oct 23, 2025 “What direction would Western philosophy have taken if Christianity had not come along to divert the course of history?” Our earliest records of ‘professional philosophers’ in Europe date from 6th century BCE Greece. The ‘naturalists’ (e.g. Thales) were quickly followed by the pre-Socratics (5th century), Plato (4th century) and Aristotle (3rd century). That was a lot to digest in a short period of time; we’re still burping. It is as if Europe were working double time to make up for a slow start: philosophy had already been around for a millennium in China, India, Persia, Palestine and Egypt. After Aristotle, Greco-Roman philosophy was dominated by the Stoics, the Skeptics, and the Epicureans. Toward the end of the 1st century CE, Christianity began to breathe new life into Western philosophy, but it was not until the 5th century that Christian Europe found its Plato…Augustine of Hippo. Between Aristotle and Augustine (750 years), there were dozens of important philosophers, both Christian and Pagan but the polymath Plutarch (c. 100 CE) may help us answer a crucial question: What path would Western philosophy have taken if Christianity had not come along to divert the course of history? Best known for historical biographies, Plutarch’s philosophical, cosmological, and theological writing is often overlooked. Unbeknownst to many, toward the end of his life (c. 120 CE) Plutarch served 20 years as one of two priests responsible for maintaining the Oracle at Delphi. This gave him the opportunity to examine the relationship between traditional Greco-Roman polytheism and the Eastern monotheisms he had encountered in the course of his extensive travel and study. One of his most insightful works is also one of his shortest: On the Cessation of Oracles . As if he were reading from the transcript of a 21st century episcopal synod, Plutarch notes declining public interest in the ideas and practices of ‘established’ religion (sound familiar?) and he even bemoans the potential impact on the financial prospects of future clergy. (Am I reading Jane Austen?) Surrounded by his cadre of 1 st century Greco-Roman influencers, Plutarch asks the timeless question: Why is religious belief and practice in such decline? (Or, “What’s the matter with kids today?”) He suggests several possible answers: (1) The gods have withdrawn their support and aid in the face of humanity’s persistent transgressions. (2) It was never the divine intent to manage the affairs of human beings beyond a certain stage in their development. Reason was given to humanity to enable it to wean itself off reliance on the miraculous. (3) It is the natural course of events, akin to what we today would call ‘entropy’: “Nature produces a wasting away and a deprivation… God gives many good things to men (sic), but not one that is everlasting, so ‘the things of the gods do die but not God’.” (Sophocles) Sometimes, it can be hard to distinguish 1st century Delphi from 20th century Cambridge (UK or US). And speaking of the 20th century, Ammonius and Theophrastus are clearly channeling Wittgenstein when they question whether things possible but unproven should be given weight and, if not, whether it is safe to ignore them entirely. One problem remains unsolved, chez Plutarch. How do the divine and human worlds communicate and interact? According to Plutarch, miracles, rituals, sacrifices are not the province of the gods per se but of an intermediary class of beings (‘daemons’, our angels & devils) who facilitate and effectuate divine-human communication with no guarantee of permanence or even benevolence. This is an unattractive aspect of Plutarch’s thinking but really, is it all that unusual? Our tendency, even today, is to plug any hole in our intellectual wall by positing a brand new class of being(s) to fill it; can you say aether …or dark matter …or multiverse …or? Every God is a ‘god-of-the-gaps’…as is everything else. To be is to fill a material gap; to know is to fill a cognitive lacuna. Even so, most philosophers find Plutarch’s solution unsatisfactory. Daemons may facilitate communication between God and World but who or what facilitates communication between God and Daemon and/or Daemon and World? The doctrine of ‘intermediaries’ just kicks the can down the road. The crystallizing Christian doctrine of Trinity avoids this pitfall. The Holy Spirit is ‘intermediary’ between Father and Son, but Holy Spirit is also God. Each of God’s personae (persons) is God, whole and entire. Communication is not intermediation; it’s a state of being. That’s one reason why John, the evangelist, calls Christ, logos (‘word’). Nonetheless, the doctrine of daemons opens a window onto the theological churn of the era. For example, in Cessation , one of Plutarch’s interlocutors, Cleombrotus, suggests that there exists a single ‘God’ backed by a multitude of ‘gods’ who function as daemons, angels, heroes (Norse), and superheroes (Marvel). Homer attempted to invest his Olympians with transcendent powers and immanent appetites. The result is great literature but poor theology. By the time of Plutarch it was still possible to apply the word ‘god’ to a nymph whose life is co-terminal with a particular tree or spring. It was also possible to refer to our sun as ‘god’ or to Apollo as ‘sun-god’. And it was beginning to be possible to speak of god more abstractly: “The True One…does not behold an infinite vacuum nor contemplate himself in solitary grandeur…but looks down on the many operations of god and men (sic).” Plutarch testifies to a theological crisis in progress: the categories of Western philosophy are not yet up to the task of balancing immanence with transcendence. John and Paul offered a ‘first of its kind’ solution to a very real philosophical problem. At the time of Plutarch, the twin doctrines of Incarnation and Trinity were still ‘in development’. Jesus’ life and teachings gave us all the necessary data points…but we’re dense. It took 300 years for us to catch on. Even so, Plutarch had better models available to him than Daemonology. It is hard to imagine that Plutarch had not come across the Christian doctrine of Incarnation. “Who are those folks being eaten by lions?” But if not, he certainly had access to the ideas of Anaxagoras: Pan in Panti “Everything in everything!” Anaxagoras gave us the raw intellectual material we needed to formulate a Trinitarian theology…but nobody made the connection, not even Plutarch. When a proliferation of entities fails to solve your problem, the best thing to do is to invent even more entities, obviously…right? Isn’t that the ‘definition of sanity ’ – to repeat the same thing over and over and expect a different result each time? No, it’s not! So, next stop, other worlds ! Plutarch considers the possibility that our universe is one of an infinite number of universes… or one of 5, or of 50 or 100. Can you say multiverse ? In this context, Plutarch considers a model that grabs our attention: “…What absolute necessity is there for there being several Jupiters…and not one Ruler and Director for the Entirety…a God possessing Reason and Intelligence…entitled Lord and Father of all?” This is dangerously close in concept, and even in vocabulary, to the doctrines emerging in Christianity. It is tempting to assume that we are seeing its influence in Plutarch’s work…but there’s zero evidence to support that interpretation and numerous reasons to suspect it. Of course, it is always possible that Plutarch was unintentionally and perhaps unwittingly influenced by an unrelated third party. But it is also possible that we are seeing evidence here of convergent evolution. The time was right for radical monotheism! *** Image: Hilma af Klint’s Altarpieces (Group X, 1915) mark the culmination of her spiritually guided abstract series, presenting radiant geometric forms that ascend toward unity and divine order. The three large canvases use gold, blue, and rose tones to symbolize the merging of spirit and matter into a higher consciousness. Together, they serve as visual “portals” between earthly existence and transcendent realms—an abstract expression of multiple, coexisting planes of reality. 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.