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One of life’s great ironies is that people who live near water are not always very good swimmers, if they are swimmers at all. And this is how it was on this island. < Back The Sultan and the Sea David Cowles Jul 12, 2022 One of life’s great ironies is that people who live near water are not always very good swimmers, if they are swimmers at all. And this is how it was on this island. (The events in this story happened a long time ago. We know about them only because the story has been passed down over the centuries by members of a religious group known as the Sufis.) Once upon a time, a young but very wealthy Sultan lived in a luxurious palace. He lived alone, but he was well taken care of by the palace staff - the folks who took care of the palace and kept things humming - including the Sultan’s Trusted Assistant and best friend, a man who had cared for the Sultan since birth. The Sultan’s life was lavish, but lonely…and, oh so boring! I mean, nothing ever happened. Nothing. No? Ok, did you ever see the movie, Groundhog Day ? Well, that’s what life was like for this Sultan. Each day was a nearly perfect copy of the day before. Things were so monotonous that the Sultan never knew whether it was Monday or Thursday, or even if today was still today and not yesterday…or tomorrow. “Who cares? What’s the difference anyway?” he thought. Today would begin for the Sultan just like every day began. Oh, did I mention that today was the Sultan’s 25th birthday? No matter, birthday or not, nothing would change, nothing ever changed, no matter what day it was. Sure enough, shortly after dawn, his assistant woke him up and poured a pitcher of warm water into a large basin so that the Sultan could wash his face and hands. Every day, the Sultan would immerse his face in the water for a few seconds; then his assistant would hand him a dry towel. “Today, will be just like every other day,” the Sultan thought, sighing. Did he just think that? Or did he mumble it under his breath just loud enough for his assistant to overhear? We’ll probably never know for sure. As expected, this day did begin just like every other day…until it didn’t! Something happened. Even though nothing ever happens in the Sultan’s world, something happened today! The Sultan immersed his face in the water as he did every morning, but today, when he lifted his face out of the water, he realized that he was no longer in his palace… not by a long shot. The Sultan found himself wet, naked, and gasping for breath on a deserted and unfamiliar beach. All alone – no Trusted Assistant to wipe his wet face. After laying there a while, trying to figure out what was going on and trying to gather his strength for whatever was to come, he spotted three young women walking up the beach towards him. Would these women be friendly or hostile? Or even worse, would they just ignore him and walk on by, unconcerned? But as it turns out, this might have been the Sultan’s lucky day after all. The women did stop, and they were friendly. One of them even-handed the Sultan her scarf so that he could tie it around his waist to cover his private parts. Of course, the women were all questions and of course the Sultan told them his story and of course they didn’t believe him, not one word. I mean, would you? They whispered among themselves and concluded that he must have escaped from a prison transport vessel as it passed through near-by waters. Even so, the women invited the Sultan to follow them home, and of course, he eagerly accepted. And what a home it was! It was a palace even grander than the Sultan’s own. Turns out, one of the women on the beach was a princess. As a guest of the King, the Sultan was bathed, fed, and offered a place to rest from his incredible adventure. But if the Sultan thought that this was going to be his new home, he was sorely mistaken. The King and the Princess had no idea their visitor was a fellow royal. Remember, they thought he was an escaped prisoner. He might have been a thief, a murderer even, or worse yet, a revolutionary…or God forbid, an anarchist. Yikes! Anyway, he was not welcome to stay for long in the King’s palace. Instead, the Princess took him to a small cottage at the outskirts of town. There, the Sultan met a couple whose business was making and repairing the large nets used on the island for fishing. At the Princess’ urging, they agreed to take him in and teach him their trade. In exchange, the Sultan agreed to stay and work for them for 10 years. Turns out, the Sultan was a good learner, and soon he was tying nets as proficiently as the other members of his newly adopted family. Thanks to the Sultan’s skill and hard work, his new family became quite prosperous. 10 years passed quickly, and the Sultan was finally ready to begin his new life. The net-makers were grateful to the Sultan for his hard work, and they gifted him a tidy sum upon his departure. The Sultan and the net-makers said goodbye, but only after a long and tearful embrace. The Sultan thought to himself, “This is the way goodbyes should be. I wish I had had a chance to say goodbye like this to my Trusted Assistant, my friend.” But there was no looking back for the Sultan. He hiked into town, rented a small room, and used the net-makers’ gift to open a small shop below it. The Sultan proved to be a gifted trader, as well as a skilled net-maker, and soon his shop was bustling; once again, the Sultan was prosperous. One day, while he was puttering around the shop, a woman walked in who would later become his wife. She walked straight up to the Sultan and began to ask very intelligent questions about his merchandise. It was love at first sight…for the Sultan! Not so much for the bride-to-be. But the Sultan had been through a lot. Though still young, he was beginning life from scratch, for the third time! He had finally found love, and he wasn’t about to give up on it now. Sure enough, his favorite customer soon became his fiancée. Once married, she gave birth to 6 children, 3 boys and 3 girls. The children grew, and eventually, they began having children of their own. Soon the Sultan was surrounded by a pride of children and grandchildren…and he loved every one of them with an intensity he never thought possible back in his Palace. One day, his 75th birthday as it happens, the Sultan decided to do something he hadn’t done since he arrived; he decided to go for a swim. It was the Jubilee (50 year) anniversary of his unceremonious arrival on the island. He invited his retinue of children and grandchildren to accompany his wife and himself as they retraced the Sultan’s first steps on the island. Now, one of life’s great ironies is that people who live near water are not always very good swimmers, if they swim at all. And that is how it was on this island. The Sultan had not been back to that beach, or any beach, since the day he arrived. Soon they were at the very beach where the Sultan had washed ashore 5 decades earlier. The Sultan walked slowly into the waves. Once the water was up to his waist, he dove in headfirst, but when he went to lift his head out of the water… We have all had unexpected, and sometimes unwelcome, experiences in our lives. They startle us at first, but for the most part, we muddle, though. The Sultan had two such experiences. The first occurred on his 25th birthday, when he put his face into the basin of water, only to find himself stranded on a foreign shore. I mean, has that ever happened to you? The second is happening right now. On this 75th birthday, surrounded by his family, the Sultan dove headfirst into the sea; but when he pulled his head up out of the water, guess what, he found himself back in his old Palace, a full wash basin in front of him and his assistant standing by with a dry towel…as usual. Suddenly, the Sultan caught a glimpse of his reflection on the surface of the water. What did he see? Challenge Answer the five questions below and be entered in a drawing for a $100 gift card. ( Hint : there are no right or wrong answers.) We will report the results in Issue #3 of AT Magazine (9/1/2022). The gift card drawing will occur on Labor Day 2022. 1. The Sultan disappeared from his Palace on the morning of his 25th birthday; he returned on his 75th. How old do you think the Sultan was when he got back to his Palace? (Choose one answer only.) He was 25 when he put his face into the basin of water, so he must still be 25 when he lifts his face back out. _____ He lived on the island for 50 years. He was 75 when he dived into the waves, so he must still be 75 when he picks his head back out. _____ Other (please comment): ________________________________ 2. How do you think the Sultan feels about what’s happened to him? (Check all the answers that you think are true.) He’s happy to be home in his palace at long last. _____ He’s angry that his life was turned upside down like this. _____ He misses his wife and kids and his life on the island. _____ He is grateful for this chance to live two full lives. _____ 3. What do you make of the Sultan’s Trusted Assistant? (Check all the answers that you think are true.) He had nothing to do with the Sultan’s disappearance from the Palace. _____ He is responsible for the Sultan’s disappearance? _____ He did it because he was angry with the Sultan. _____ He did it to teach the Sultan a lesson. _____ It was his 25th birthday gift to the Sultan. _____ When the Sultan returns to the Palace after 50 years, how old is the Trusted Assistant? He’s the same age he was when the Sultan was 25. _____ He’s 50 years older now than he was on the Sultan’s 25th birthday. _____ 4. Now that the Sultan is back in his Palace, will his life be different from it was before his great adventure ? (Check all the answers that you think are true.) No, nothing will change; things will go back to being just as boring as they were before the Sultan disappeared. ____ Yes, he will leave his Palace every day to look for the family he left behind on the island. ____ Yes, he will leave his Palace every day, looking for new romance, hoping to start a new family? _____ Yes, will adopt orphans to live with him in the Palace. ____ Yes, he will learn a useful and productive trade. ____ Yes, he will move out of the Palace entirely and turn it into public housing for the homeless citizens of his realm. ____ Yes, he will turn the Palace into a $1,000/night luxury resort. ____ 5. Our story occurs in two places: in the Sultan’s Palace and on the Island. Which is real and which isn’t? (Check one answer only) Only the Sultan’s palace is real; the island is not: _____ Only the island is real; the Sultan’s Palace is not: _____ Both the island and the palace are real: ____ Neither the island nor the palace is real: _____ Please feel free to elaborate on any of your answers (optional): Please submit your answers to editor@aletheiatoday.com. Be sure to put Sultan and the Sea Challenge in the subject line and tell us who you are and how we can reach you (name, email address, and phone number) so that your name can be entered into the $100 gift card drawing to take place on Labor Day. 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

Suppose we were to express our generation's secular worldview as a 'creed,' how would it read? < Back Competing Creeds David Cowles Jul 13, 2022 Suppose we were to express our generation's secular worldview as a 'creed,' how would it read? Christians are often chided for believing things that are, well, “unbelievable.” Maybe so — but is any of it any more unbelievable than what is generally, and for the most part uncritically, accepted as “Gospel” today, in our supposedly post-Christian era? I do not mean to insist that either model is necessarily right or wrong; rather, I want to point out that the two models are of a similar logical, epistemological, and ontological order. The fact is that our world is a many-splendored thing; it would be surprising if it did not require creative categories of explanation. 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 Click here. 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! 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, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Social Dynamics John O'Brien So, the thousands of people out there in America outside the herd are finding each other. “Egregious . Most people think that word means terrible or unheard of, or unforgivable. It has a much more interesting story than that to tell. It means outside the herd. Imagine that - thousands of people outside the herd .” Kurt Vonnegut Glancing at the crowd Dancing eyes keep their secrets No ticket for you. The year was 1969. I was going to the Woodstock Festival. Stopping at gas stations and convenience stores was a startling experience - talk about Social Dynamics! People “with hair down to their knees!“ This proved to be a more exciting experience than Jimi Hendrix walking out on stage at six in the morning. Freedom of expression in America, of all places ! Walking through the door of some other dimension with friendly smiling people was joyful. It may have been ‘69, but the herd was still quite buttoned up and obedient. I remember my brother-in-law asking me if I knew this guy he used to see when he had lunch in Harvard Square… cuz the guy had long hair. So, the thousands of people out there in America outside the herd are finding each other. Some of them for the most awful of reasons, with an underlying reality of the class system entrenched in the USA. But the emotions involved meeting like-minded people is a powerful motivator--see January 6 . (I don’t know if their emotional responses were similar to my joyful one in Woodstock, but emotions are involved.) Shared narratives are within their own groups. The Proud Boys don’t have shared narratives with Antifa. (Has anyone ever seen Antifa?) How could anyone be against an anti-fascist group? I mean, Hemingway would have joined, or at least, given money. Previous Next

< Back Transubstantiation for the Rest of Us Nicholas Senz For Aristotle, there is a real distinction between what a thing is and what a thing is like. Recently, we celebrated the great Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, colloquially known as the feast of Corpus Christi (“the body of Christ”). On this day we give special thanks for the great gift we celebrate every Mass: the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, one of the most central mysteries of our faith. Of course, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is also one of the most mysterious mysteries of our faith. Our eyes tell us it is bread and wine before us, but our faith tells us it is the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. The Church’s Tradition has handed down to us a word to describe this reality: transubstantiation, which says that the accidents of bread and wine remain while the substance becomes that of Christ Himself. For many, though, this term is no help: the technical philosophical explanations are just as head-scratch-inducing as the claim itself. Yet once some of the finer points are made clearer, this explanation can be quite helpful. First, a bit of background. To borrow a phrase from St. Anselm of Canterbury, our faith is always seeking understanding— fides quarens intellectum —and so we often turn to the tools of understanding, to philosophy, to contemplate the truths of the faith. The Church has found the philosophy of Aristotle in particular to be a fitting partner to the faith, so Aristotelian terms have often been employed in theological investigations. (This can be seen pre-eminently in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.) The concept of transubstantiation is one such instance of the Church making use of Aristotelian terms: substance and accident. What do these mean? To put it simply: for Aristotle, there is a real distinction between what a thing is and what a thing is like . This is a common sense observation, but one that Aristotle builds into his systematic thought about reality. Let’s use for our example a human being. What it is, as we’ve just said, is a human being. The human being will have all kinds of different characteristics—weight, height, hair style—but essentially, before anything else, apart from any other attribute, it is first and foremost a human being. The human being’s weight could fluctuate; his height could increase or decrease with age; his hair style could change from a crewcut to dreadlocks; but those changes do not put that human being out of existence and an entirely new one into being. There is something that endures beyond all these changes: the human being himself, in his essence. We could put it this way: with all the aspects of a human being and all the ways they can change, there is something that stands under those different attributes. “Stands under” in Latin is sub – stans , which gives us the word substance . All of these changeable, secondary aspects of the substance are, you might say, “attached” to the thing, but are not an integral part of the thing itself. “Attached” in Latin is accidens , which gives us the word accidents . Thus, substance refers to what a thing is, and accidents refer to what a thing is like. Thinking of things this way, we could say that there are two kinds of change a thing might normally undergo: substantial change and accidental change. In a substantial change, the thing that was ceases to be and a new thing comes to exist, as when a log burns and becomes ashes, or when a lump of dough bakes and becomes bread. Something new has come into being. Substantial changes are virtually always accompanied by accidental changes, because different kinds of things typically have different attributes. The log that was hard and brown becomes fine and black. The dough that was, well, doughy and white becomes soft and golden. Here both what a thing is and what it’s like change. It can also happen that the thing remains but its characteristics change, as when a log is chopped in half and loses mass, or when a lump of dough is sprinkled with sugar and becomes sweet. This is only accidental change. Once we distinguish the difference between these two, what happens in the mystery of the Eucharist, in transubstantiation, becomes clearer. If it’s possible for the attributes of a thing to change while that thing remains the same, it’s intelligible for the thing itself to change while the attributes remain the same. This is precisely what happens in the Eucharist: the substances of the bread and wine change, but the accidents remain the same. That is, what they are is now different, but what they are like is not. Before the Mass, the bread is small, soft, and white, and the wine is wet, aromatic, and intoxicating. After the words of consecration are prayed, all of these attributes remain, but what is on the altar is no longer bread and wine, but the very substance and presence of Jesus Christ Himself. This explanation by no means exhausts the mystery of the Eucharist. As with all the sacraments, there is something here beyond our comprehension. But while reason cannot completely encapsulate the Eucharist, reason can at least show that what we claim about the Eucharist is not unreasonable. It is mysterious, but it is not absurd. The doctrine of transubstantiation helps us to understand how the eyes of faith can see what the eyes of the body cannot. This was republished with minimal edits and with permission from catholicexchange.com. Nicholas Senz is a husband and father who tries every day to live Galatians 2:20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." He is Director of Religious Education at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Mill Valley, CA, a managing editor at Catholic Stand, and a Master Catechist. A native of Verboort, Oregon, Nicholas holds master's degrees in philosophy and theology from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, CA. His work has appeared at Catholic Exchange, Crisis Magazine, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, and his own blog, Two Old Books . Nicholas is a science fiction aficionado, Tolkien devotee, avid Anglophile, and consumer of both police procedurals and popcorn in large quantities, usually together. Twitter at @NickSenz . Previous Next

< Back Finding Light: A Prayer for Wisdom and Forgiveness Bryon David Embracing clarity, forgiveness, and purpose Despite life's events, the acts I've chosen to participate in, even the most perspective-shifting times I've been through, leave me with the same sense of self I've always had. I thank God for the peace of having an immovable, strong place to return to. Choices are the sole navigation tool I've found to help keep me there. I don't choose what thoughts come, but I decide what to do with them. I don't always remember to hold myself to that level of responsibility, and I get off track. I will myself, with the help of the spirit I want with me versus the ones who are always attempting to mislead me, to find myself in a place that feels right. Some questions beginning to arise at this point include: how, knowing of all the great and small tragedies of the world, am I ever supposed to feel easy? Of the times I've chosen wrong, am I forgiven? How do I find forgiveness, and how much of my perspective is the same as others around me? Am I alone? A place I find myself in is looking at the meaning of infinity, full of fear but more full of hope. The vastness of it leaves a sense of loneliness, even when I know I’m not alone. It could all be a dream teaching me to be a certain way or produce something, but why me? I am convinced by reality. What is my goal, or what goal does God have for me? Is it the same for all of his followers? Jesus wants us to Love each other, be truthful, find understanding in him, and help or comfort anyone we can. Personally, my biggest struggles have been centered around truthfulness. In the confusion of the thoughts that arise, remember how to return to this or whatever your motivation may be. Stay with thoughts you know are true. A thought I can think of is always there if I’m awake. I am awake, but why am I here? This one always hits me. I was born, I have lived through my time, and every choice has led me here. Am I happy here? It’s hard to say I’m satisfied for reasons I’ve already mentioned, but what am I doing to help those I worry about? I work to help my family and feed myself, but what good do I do outside of them? I ask for help. Lord Jesus, let me hear and understand where the real problems are that I am supposed to work out, and help me act on them with the help of your spirit. Thank you for the opportunity to live and for all you do for us. Amen. Image: Feelings. Painted by Bryon David. Bryon David is just one “weird” person and a sinner trying to do his best. “I believe Jesus Christ is the one true God and my only hope. I believe this after much time spent challenging this belief in many ways. He truly is the only way I know. I write when I feel inspired–fiction, true stories, thought trains, and prayers when they can help someone.” Click above to return to Winter 2024. Previous Next

< Back The Concept of the Circle David Cowles Aug 31, 2025 “Imagine what it would be like to live in a world where circles actually existed! Perhaps that’s what Hell is.” Where would we be without circles? Well, I guess we’d have to make do with polygons. But that’s ok since a circle is simply a polygon (an n-gon) with n = ∞. So plane (Euclidean) geometry, from the lowly triangle (n = 3), the minimal building block of the material world (Plato, et al.), to the infinitely sided circle (n = ∞), is consistent. And solid geometry is just the projection of 2-dimensional plane geometry (d = 2) into 3-dimensional space (d = 3)…and so on (d’ = d+1). So what do all n-gons have in common? They divide a plane into two distinct regions: inside and outside. What is in is in and what is out is out and never the twain shall meet. Well, that’s not exactly true. Every ‘normal’ n-gon (including a circle) has an (n-1) dimensional border region consisting of points that can be considered both in and out (or neither in nor out), but those points are fixed. A point inside a circle is inside forever; a point outside is forever out. Imagine what it would be like to live in a world where circles (n-gons) actually existed! Perhaps that’s what Hell is. Since events often occur in the context of broader events (e.g. many battles in one war), our universe would consist of a nearly infinite progression of Russian dolls. Every ‘inside world’ would be a universe unto itself, entirely sealed off from, and unaware of, whatever might be outside it. On the other hand, an outside world could potentially experience the existence of an inside world, but only as an interruption, as a hole in the whole. But would a point in the outside world really experience the existence of an inside world or would the hole be imperceptible…like the ‘blind spot’ in humans’ visual field? Or the experience of a patient under general anesthesia who awakes unaware of any ‘hole in time’? Would we imagine a continuous plane? Does Swiss cheese even know it’s full of holes? If we lived in a world where circles (n-gons) were real, every definable entity (every object, event, experience, etc.) would be the functional equivalent of a ‘super black hole’: – a black hole because its event horizon, the circle, is a point of no return; what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Sin City is not part of the USA any more than Vatican City is part of Rome. – a super black hole because the circle would function as a ‘double event horizon’. In the case of a black hole, the outside world is unaware of anything inside the event horizon…but the inside world is still aware of whatever’s outside it. In the case of an n-gon, however, neither the inside nor the outside is aware of the other (except perhaps as a hole). Who’s afraid of a big black hole? Literally, everyone! And if you’re not, you darn well should be. Your body is ripped apart (spaghettification) and you are forever unable to communicate anything to anyone in the outside world. Hmm, sounds a lot like death! Now imagine a ‘super black hole’. You cannot communicate with anyone and no one can communicate with you. The outside world behaves like its own black hole from the perspective of the inside world. The universe would then consist of two black holes with a single, shared horizon which functions as a double-sided mirror; it precludes cross border communication, it precludes cross border awareness. Everything is reflected back on itself. Yup, this is Hell alright! Or call it Narcissus’ Paradise ? To see nothing but one’s own reflection for all eternity…I’ll pass on that, thank you very much. Alleluia, Alleluia, thanks be to God, we do not live in a world with n-gons. Ok, that sounds crazy: I can see 100 polygonal objects from my desk chair. Of course, n-gons exist in our world! Except they don’t. We’ve developed a massive series of hacks that allow us to model the world using n-gons while escaping the implications of total isolation. These ‘hacks’ allow us to imagine that we live in a polygonal world when in fact we do not. Take the biological cell for example; it’s the basic structure of all life on Earth. Every cell is ‘separated’ from its environment by a cell wall resulting in a closed geometric shape. But cell walls are not ‘walls’ at all; they are membranes that allow molecules inside the cell to migrate out and molecules outside the cell to migrate in. Ok, but is this cross border traffic anything more than a trickle? Not unless you call a billion molecules per second a ‘trickle’! If the walls of cells were not permeable, no cell could live more than a few seconds and all life on Earth would vanish in a matter of minutes. Who needs nuclear annihilation when sclerotic cell walls could do the trick so much quicker? But that’s organic chemistry. Flunked that class anyway. What about the inorganic world? Surely functional n-gons exist there, right? Sorry, no! First, “things fall apart.” (Yeats) Even inorganic matter ‘decays’. The polygonal books on my shelves are deteriorating, albeit imperceptibly; they are obeying the Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy). Second, inorganic matter consists of subatomic particles but these so-called ‘particles’ have no hardwired location. They enclose nothing and they are enclosed by nothing. In fact, it is impossible to determine the precise location of any particle at any moment. Every particle is a field and every field is cosmo-spanning. Position is a function of probability, not locale. Well, black holes then. Surely they have impermeable event horizons! I mean, we just said so (above). But we were ‘speaking loosely’, as my grandfather used to say. In fact, event horizons are never impermeable. Stephen Hawking proved that all black holes radiate mass (Hawking Radiation)! Does this mean that we must give up the dream of a geometry that approximates real world phenomena? By no means! We just need a different geometry, one that eliminates the bifurcation of the world into insides and outs. But how do we accomplish that? Step #1 : Add a Mobius Strip to our model. Any space that includes a Mobius Strip is ‘non-orientable’: (1) surfaces are ‘one sided’, (2) objects have no inside or out. Step #2 : Remove the Archimedean Property from our model. This property limits us to the set of Real + Complex Numbers. It specifically excludes infinite and infinitesimal quantities. Without the Archimedean Property, regions cannot overlap. C can be embedded in B (or vice versa)…or B and C can be disjoint. B and C can, in turn be embedded in A. But when B and C are disjoint subsets of A, a common metric across all three regions is no longer required for coherence. Each space is measured by its own metric. The size of a region measured internally need not be the same as the size of the same region measured from an external vantage point. In the long running BBC series, Doctor Who , there is a certain phone box/booth, the TARDIS, whose interior is vastly larger than its exterior. So, the volume of B (and/or C) and/or the volume of (B + C) can be greater than the volume of A...even though B and C are subsets of A. There is a region of A called X that is not part of B or C; in some cases the volume of X can actually be negative. If (B+C) > A, then X < 0. The Archimedean world imagined in our traditional geometries is a mere shadow, or surface, of the non-Archimedean world that underlies it. Think of the shadows in Plato’s cave ( The Republic ). Or think of the ‘skin’ that sometimes forms atop a liquid. If B and C are disjoint subsets of A, then B and C can impact A and A in turn can impact B and C. Influences flow freely and reciprocally between parts and wholes, but never directly between parts. B and C retain their autonomy at all times, but that does not mean they are locked in separate supermax cells. Step #3 : Remove the Axiom of Foundation (FA) from set theory. FA prohibits any set from being a member of itself. Step #1 eliminates the concept of inside/out. Step #2 allows entities to be embedded and to influence one another without compromising their independence and integrity and without lapsing into solipsism. Step #3 makes it possible for us to acknowledge that every set is a subset of itself. Combining these tweaks allows us to build a model that better resonates with the phenomenal world. It enables us to account for the permeability of the cell wall, the entropic decay of ordered systems, and the existence of cosmos-spanning fields (e.g. EM and Gravity). It accounts for Karma – “What goes around comes around”, for the Great Commandment – “Love your neighbor as yourself’, and for Newton’s Third Law of Motion - “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” Language is Logic’s fraternal twin. Orientable, Archimedean Geometry and the Axiom of Foundation are well suited to a language of active/passive verbs and subject/object nouns…like ours, for example. Of course, this language is just as unrepresentative of reality as its logical counterpart. But is it even possible for a language to model a non-orientable, non-Archimedean universe with no Axiom of Foundation? You bet it is! In fact, Indo-European used to be just such a language. Our active/passive voices are corruptions of a single reciprocating voice, the Middle Voice . The Middle Voice redefines ‘subjects and objects’. Now every subject is its own object (reflection) and every object its own subject (recursion). Bonus : Middle Voice allows us to talk about ‘what we talk about when we talk about love ’. (Raymond Carver) And as we all know, Love is what makes the world go round. ( Carnival ) No one knows better than lovers the gulf that separates a loved one’s objective exterior from their subjective interior. “Lord, we don’t need another (Archimedean) mountain…what the world needs now is love sweet love.” (Jackie DeShannon) But to realize that vision, we first need to overcome our addiction to mythical enclosed spaces, like circles. *** William Blake’s The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun (1805–10) stages a vision of beings locked inside their own enclosing arcs of wings and shadow, a painterly hell of circles within circles that mirrors the isolation a true n-gon world would impose. 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< Back The Crucible Challenge Winner: Integrity vs. Life Grace Krzenski We are thrilled to share with you the winning essay from our first Young Writers Challenge, this one conducted exclusively at Cabrini High School in New Orleans. Our winner, Grace Krzenski, answered the prompt, "Why do you think Arthur Miller decided to call his play 'The Crucible' and which definition of crucible do you think Miller had in mind when he wrote his play?" Grace's essay has also awarded her $100. Congratulations, Grace! In the spring of 1692, Abigail Williams and Betty Parris, two children, started what would become a full-blown witch hunt that would result in the death of twenty people and the imprisonment of at least one hundred. Today we refer to this as The Salem Witch Trials. Arthur Miller, author of the 1953 play entitled The Crucible uses this unfortunate period of history to reveal what happens when fear and hysteria take control. According to dictionary.com , the word crucible is “used to refer to [a situation] that represents an extreme trial for someone, especially a situation that tests courage or preparedness.” Arthur Miller titled his play as he did in order to show that the residents of Salem were put to a moral test: they could tell the truth and die, or lie and live. Characters John Proctor and Tituba personify this moral dilemma and the two courses of action it presents. More specifically, John Proctor chooses integrity over life, while Tituba forfeits her integrity to live. John Proctor, a farmer in his mid-thirties, is cast as a morally challenged man who is not afraid to stand alone. Early in the play, we learn that he has chosen to stop going to church because he despises the sermons, and we also learn that he has had an affair with his servant, Abigail Williams. Clearly, John Proctor is an imperfect man; however, he has one incredibly redeeming quality: he cannot cling to a lie in order to save himself. Despite his absence from church and his infidelity, he passes the ultimate moral test when he refuses to perpetuate the lies that resulted in the death and imprisonment of so many in Salem. He stands alone when it would have been easier to do what so many others did; they lied to save their lives. Shortly before he is hung, he says, “I cannot throw away my life in a lie, even though it would save my life.” To John Proctor, life without the goodness of your word is not worth living. On the other hand, Tituba, Reverend Parris’s slave from Barbados, chooses life over integrity. Tituba is the first to be accused when Abigail Williams, Reverend Parris’s niece, claims that Tituba made her drink blood. Abigail does this to shift blame from herself to Tituba because at the time, witchery was a “hangin’ error.” When Tituba realizes that she will be faced with a fatal beating or hanging on the gallows, she confesses to witchcraft and quickly incriminates two others, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, both easy targets in the community. While one can empathize with Tituba’s choice, certainly John Proctor is the more admirable character; he chooses integrity above all else. However, it’s likely that Miller wants us to understand that this “crucible,” this test, is complicated, and that the way one responds cannot be so easily judged because fear and hysteria obscure both reason and the truth. So, while Tituba lies to save her life, it’s hard to condemn her. In short, Arthur Miller prompts readers and viewers to carefully consider the moral dilemmas in their own lives and to think about what lessons they might learn from what happened in Salem. At what point is it okay to lie? Is life more important than one’s integrity? Moreover, is it vain to choose integrity over life? These are the questions that Miller’s masterpiece raises. So, did John Proctor pass the test? Did Tituba pass it? It’s difficult to say definitively because it all depends upon what is most important to each individual. Grace Krzenski is a junior at Cabrini High School , New Orleans, where she enjoys studying science and English. Grace is on the varsity Cabrini basketball team, and in her spare time enjoys reading, playing basketball, and spending time with family and friends. She is looking forward to attending college somewhere in the southern states to study marine biology. Do you run an English or philosophy program at a school in search of a publisher for your students' content? Look no further! Email editor@aletheitoday.com for more information about how ATM can bring your young writers to the next level and get your department the publicity it deserves. Previous Next

< Back A Prayer for Comfort Hadassah Treu "Dear Lord, thank you that you are Jehovah Shammah–"the Lord is there". (Ezekiel 48:35) Dear Lord, thank you that you are Jehovah Shammah–"the Lord is there". (Ezekiel 48:35) You showed up centuries ago in the least likely place the Jews expected You–in the place of their captivity and exile; You showed in Babylon! Thank you, that You will show up in my place of bondage and oppression, too. You are always present and intimately involved in my earthly life, while preparing me for eternity with You. I can see the signs of Your presence being there in my preservation, endurance, and overcoming adversity. The Lord is there is my greatest possible comfort! He is there in the ruins, in the pain, in the garbage, in the suffering, in the darkness and in hopelessness. He not only knows; He also feels my pain. When I doubt–the Lord is there. When I am overwhelmed with grief–the Lord is there. When I break down–the Lord is there. When I can't take it anymore–the Lord is there. When I worry and fret- the Lord is there. The Lord is there–knowing, feeling, holding, comforting, and working. Lord, remind me always of this truth that brings the greatest possible comfort. Remind me You are with me, knowing me and the problem in all intimate details and feeling my anguish and pain. I am grateful that You are working on my behalf, sustaining and strengthening me until I see the light again. Whatever happens, help me remember that You are with me. Because the Lord is there, I may be "hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed". (2 Corinthians 4:8-9) I just need to stand and wait for You and Your perfect timing. In Jesus' name. Amen. Hadassah Treu is an international Christian author, blogger, and poet, and the Encouraging Blogger Award Winner of 2020. She is passionate about encouraging people in their journey to faith and a deeper walk with God. Hadassah is a contributing author to several faith-based platforms and devotional and poetry anthologies. She has been featured on (In)courage, Living by Design Ministries, Thoughts About God, Today’s Christian Living (Turning Point), and other popular sites. You can connect with Hadassah at www.onthewaybg.com. Return to our Summer 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Kandinsky: The Painter of Other Worlds David Cowles The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. All art forms have a fascination with alterity , the idea of the other. Many 20th century painters explored this idea in depth. Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944), however, stands out as a painter who devoted his entire career to the exploration of other worlds, and who developed a tool kit and a language to help us continue that exploration. It’s 1910 and a young Russian, Wassily Kandinsky, is starting to paint. Even in his earliest works, Kandinsky explores worlds that differ from the world of ordinary experience. Part dream, part hallucination, part fantasy, Kandinsky’s early works preserve the identity of the subject and the structure of the ground, but he makes the two nearly interchangeable, and he invests the whole with a dynamism, a palette and a perspective unlike anything we would ever call mundane . The name of a 1911 work, Romantic Landscape , sums up this early period. As Kandinsky’s work matured, his landscapes became more abstract, and the relationship of colors and forms became the real subject of his painting. Then in 1913, in Painting with White Border , Kandinsky experimented with a new technique. He situated his imagined world within another, wider world by means of a “white border.” While he is not yet exploring substructural worlds, he is moving conceptually toward the recognition that the world of subject-object, space-time, and sense perception is situated in a much broader cosmos. Later that same year, Kandinsky began to paint canvases without any representational features. Light Picture and Black Lines begin a new era. No longer is Kandinsky abstracting from the world of everyday experience and reformatting that world according to a new logic and a new aesthetic; now he is creating (or unveiling, aletheia ) entirely novel worlds via paint. In 1919, he painted White Oval , a rounded rhombus containing an entire physics of fanciful forms, situated within a dark, vague border that suggests nearly empty space. This world is like a womb, self-contained within the larger body aka ’reality’. Modern cosmologists might recognize this as a bubble universe, an apparently self-contained and finite universe that is really just one “bubble” in a foam of bubbles (all universes, similar or not so similar to our own). During this period, Kandinsky regularly organizes paintings around irregular geometric shapes. For example, Red Oval (1920) depicts what cosmologists might call a brane, a space situated within a higher dimensionality. In Red Oval , all the inhabitants link to the brane (or to something else that links to the brane). Some objects link to the brane at one end point only, others at both end points; does this remind you of today’s strings ? Objects may equally well link to either side of the brane, or they may run through the brane like arrows. All the activity in this world takes place in or just above/below this brane. Compared to the higher dimensional universe in which it is situated, the brane is something like a pancake. Beginning in 1922, Kandinsky’s paintings show the influence of the Bauhaus. However, he incorporates that influence into his own style. In the Black Square (1923), he inserts the architectural forms of Bauhaus into his brane-world. During this period, Kandinsky’s painting becomes increasingly dynamic, and he begins to explore motion as a “thing in itself.” In Yellow Accompaniment and One Center (1924) the subject of the piece is dynamics. The colors, forms, and constructed objects just serve to make otherwise invisible ‘motion’ visible. Remember Zeno’s Paradox , the work of an early Greek philosopher of the same name. Zeno demonstrates that the phenomenon of motion is not possible in any world where the axioms of arithmetic apply. Zeno’s radical conclusion, attacked anew by each generation of mathematicians and logicians, remains unrefuted…2,500 years later. Kandinsky seems to accept both Zeno’s conclusion and the challenge it poses. Kandinsky’s canvasses illustrate the reality of motion, but only in worlds where the axioms of arithmetic do not hold. Using paint, Kandinsky offers us a syllogism: (1) Motion can only be real in a world where the rules of arithmetic do not hold; (2) Motion is real; therefore, (3) the rules of arithmetic do not hold. (I know a bunch of third graders who will be very happy to hear this news!) Accent in Pink (1926), for example, depicts a brane-world, inhabited not by shapes but by bursts, eruptions of color. Kandinsky paints these bursts in cross-sections so that the viewer actually sees the eruptions in process. He anticipated by decades the concept of a ‘block universe’ where time consists of a sequence of slices off the block. Can you say, “Cheese?” Music had a profound influence on Kandinsky, and his works began to take on the quality of musical composition rather than architecture. At the same time, Kandinsky began to explore the semantic nature of artistic forms. In Levels (1929), Kandinsky creates a hieroglyphic language, a kind of Rosetta Stone, and adds a grid to help the “reader” decipher the “text.” Striped (1934) and Delicate Accents (1935) continue this trend, but the apex of this period may be Succession (1935), which presents symbols on a grid reminiscent of musical notation. In the context of other worlds, Kandinsky is here exploring the notion known today as “It from Bit” (Wheeler). Reality is information. It is essentially a code; perceptions are merely clues to that code. But it is with Movement 1 (1935) that Kandinsky's embrace of other-world cosmology ripens fully . This canvas presents a fantastic assemblage of branes, self-contained mini-verses, hieroglyphs and geometric forms of varying dimensionality linked by strange, string-like objects running throughout. From 1935 on, Kandinsky’s works are predominantly characterized by these elements. Until recently, philosophers exploring the idea of ‘other worlds’ were limited by the notion that any viable world must be self-consistent. Beginning with Movement 1 , Kandinsky rejects that assumption. After all, Emerson wrote that “…Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” and literally no one has ever accused Kandinsky of having a ‘little mind.’ Moving forward, Dominant Curve (1936) presents a chaotic variety of topologies, somehow co-existing harmoniously on the representational plane of a canvas. It suggests that a multiplicity of inconsistent realities may lie beneath the more routine world we accept as real. Those of us raised on Heisenberg, Godel, Bell, and Feynman will not find any of this the least bit surprising. Might it be that the treasured consistency we claim to find in our world is put there by us? Grouping (1937) continues to explore this theme; it explicitly shows these incongruous regions co-existing and in some strange way, perhaps even using that incongruity to reinforce one another. Could it be the case that meta-reality is the consistent interaction of many worlds, at least some of which lack internal consistency? Capricious Forms (1937) situates a foreground of perpetually moving and morphing organic entities in a static, rectilinear background. Kandinsky is using the elements of his multi-verse to construct a universe that reminds us, at least in some ways, of our familiar world. He may be suggesting that our rectilinear world is emergent from, or a special case of, this sub-structural multiverse. All of which leads naturally to Thirty , another 1937 piece, that suggests 30 unique solutions, some rectilinear, some organic, some musical, some hieroglyphic to the basic problems of ontology. Like M Theory, Thirty suggests that there may be more than one right answer to the riddle of cosmology. Finally, Around the Circle (1940) begins with a somewhat typical assemblage of unexpected ontological entities, all approximately coplanar. But then it adds a window which suggests a sort of “wormhole,” an escape into another far-off multiverse which is itself a collection of varied, yet perhaps subtly different, entities. From Kandinsky’s window, one can see into Carroll’s Looking-glass World. With this work, Kandinsky suggests that dimensional democracy may not only exist within worlds but also between worlds; the process of deconstructing classical reality could turn out to be infinitely regressive. Kandinsky avoids the temptation to offer his own systematic ontology; that is not the job of the artist. The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. This Kandinsky did, brilliantly! At one time, it was in vogue to classify worlds as “real” or “imaginary.” For many centuries, Parmenides' “Way of Seeming” was misunderstood as an illusion compared to his eminently real “Way of Truth.” But that facile way of thinking won’t cut it anymore! Today, we know that we have to take all worlds into account in order to understand the universe. As we continue on this intellectual journey, we would be well advised to return to Kandinsky for inspiration. His paintings provide us with rich and varied models of alterity . Image: Movement I. (1935). Wassily Kandinsky . Public Domain 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

< Back LLMs and Language David Cowles Jan 9, 2024 “The written word itself is a form of AI…it’s been around for about 10,000 years.” We devoted the Fall 2023 Issue of Aletheia Today Magazine to the implications of Artificial Intelligence for philosophy, theology, culture, and spirituality. We regard the rise of AI as one of the defining events of our era, but we need to view it in context, lest we create another Golden Calf. Recent work by Yiu, Kosoy, & Gopnik reported in Perspectives on Psychological Science does a good job of putting things in perspective: “In its current state of development, AI relies on so-called Large Language Models (LLMs) to decode reality.” So, how are LLMs like (or unlike) everyday Language? How does Artificial Intelligence compare with Native Intelligence?” “Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are often depicted as sentient agents poised to overshadow the human mind. But AI lacks the crucial human ability of innovation… While children and adults alike can solve problems by finding novel uses for everyday objects, AI systems often lack the ability to view tools in a new way…” “AI language models like ChatGPT are passively trained on data sets containing billions of words ( Large Language ) and images produced by humans. This allows AI systems to function as a ‘cultural technology’ similar to writing that can summarize existing knowledge…but unlike humans, they struggle when it comes to innovating…” (italics mine) “Instead of viewing these AI systems as intelligent agents like ourselves, we can think of them as a new form of library or search engine. They effectively summarize and communicate the existing culture and knowledge base (back) to us.” Hmm, ‘they effectively summarize and communicate the existing culture and knowledge base to us’…like all technology! What is that ‘vast wasteland’ (Newton Minow) known as television other than an idealized reproduction of everyday life? And with rare exceptions, the same may be said of contemporary theater, film, and popular music. Roland Barthes referred to media as "mythologies,” while Jacques Ellul went further and labeled media’s products, “propaganda." But according to 20th-century philosopher Jacques Derrida, these concerns reflect the nature of all language per se , especially written language. Homer’s epics organized and reported back to Achaeans the collective knowledge of his time, but it was plastic. Because it was oral literature, it was subject to modification over time and place and from bard to bard. Homer’s epics were cultural records, but they were living cultural records. As with a $500 bottle of vintage wine, breaking the seal freezes the product in the moment and kick-starts its gradual but inexorable deterioration. We drink wine ‘at the hour of its death’. A written manuscript is like a corkscrew; we can drink no wine before or after its time. Then Guttenberg’s printing press came along and ushered in intellectual history’s version of the ‘screw-top era’. The written word itself is a form of AI…and it’s been around for about 10,000 years. Yiu, Kosoy, & Gopnik compared the performance of various AI systems against that of children (ages 3 to 7) and adults. 88% of children and 84% of adults were able to pick, out of a group of objects, the two that would “go best” together. 85% of children and 95% of adults were also able to repurpose everyday objects (innovate) to solve novel problems. Wait! So children (3 to 7) outperformed adults on the mix-and-match test? Yup! It’s like we’ve always said here at AT, “ Children are smarter than you; deal with it .” Then, Yiu & Co. tested five popular AI systems on the same tasks. No model outperformed either the children or the adults in either test! On object pairing, the models ranged from a low of 59% to a high of 83%. But on the innovation test, AI scores ranged from a low of 8% to a high of 75%. So, it’s children: 1, adults: 1, AI: 0. “Children can imagine completely novel uses for objects that they have not witnessed or heard of before…,” Yiu said. “Large models have a much harder time generating such responses.” In a related experiment, most children were able to figure out how a new machine worked just by experimenting and exploring. But when the researchers gave the same problem set to selected LLMs, AI failed miserably. AI relies on statistically predicting linguistic patterns; so do you! That’s why it’s so difficult for you to converse in a foreign language, even if it’s familiar: you don’t have enough experience with the language to be able to predict its phonetic sequences. That’s why people speaking foreign languages seem to be talking much faster than you. But sorry, AI, statistically predicting linguistic patterns is not enough to generate new discoveries about the world. “AI can help transmit information that is already known, but it is not an innovator,” Yiu said. “These models can summarize conventional wisdom, but they cannot expand, create, change, abandon, evaluate, and improve on conventional wisdom in the way a young human can.” “The development of AI is still in its early days, though, and much remains to be learned about how to expand the learning capacity of AI,” Yiu said, adding: “Taking inspiration from children’s curious, active, and intrinsically motivated approach to learning could help researchers design new AI systems that are better prepared to explore the real world.” 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. 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< Back Harvard/Stanford David Cowles Apr 22, 2025 “There’s a reason why lawyers often tell their clients not to testify in court; frequently, such witnesses end up hanging themselves.” You don’t have to be a MAGA Republican to realize that something is terribly wrong with the academic establishment in the United States. In ‘my day’ almost everyone aspired to be a college graduate. Not everyone succeeded but most at least paid homage to the goal. Not so today! When a 14 year old grandchild recently announced, “And I am not going to college,” barely an eyebrow was raised. Today, everyone knows that there are multiple paths to a fulfilling life and not all of those paths run through ivy. It was a bit eye-catching, however, when a major international defense contractor, Palantir Tech, announced that it was offering prospective employees a $100,000 signing bonus if they promised not to go to college. Stunning! Clearly, our universities have long since abandoned their mission of educating Americans to live meaningful, examined, and productive lives. Today, major universities have become gigantic money mills, insatiably fueled by confiscatory tuition, crippling student debt, misguided donations, and government grants. Case in point: over a decade ago we learned that now Senator Elizabeth Warren had been paid a $300,000 annual salary by Harvard University…to teach a single class. Who says teachers are underpaid? In lieu of fulfilling their educational mission, our institutions of higher learning are now focused on so-called ‘research’. Some of that research is no doubt meaningful and promises to deliver benefits in the medium-to-long term. Universities should be free to pursue their research without government interference. (Exception: when national security is involved.) The problem comes when they expect us to pay for that research without our having any control or any ownership interest in the results! The reaction of academia to the Trump administration’s efforts to rebalance this equation tells us everything we need to know. There’s a reason why lawyers often tell their clients not to testify in court; frequently, such witnesses end up hanging themselves. And so… Lawrence Summers , the former Treasury secretary and former president of Harvard, and ironically, ‘one of the good guys’: “Removal of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) status, which won’t happen because we are a nation of laws, would, if it did happen, devastate progress in medical and scientific research, the maintenance of American and Western values, opportunity for the next generation of Americans and an important magnet for the United States in the world.” Universities value their ‘academic freedom’ and rightly so but that does not mean that they are entitled to tax payer financing. Currently, the federal government subsidizes unregulated university activity in three ways: Direct grants Lost tax revenue on tax deductible donations The cost of publicly financed tuitions, aka Student Loans, that enable universities to squeeze more money out of their customers (students) than would be possible in a free market. This state-of-affairs is nothing short of a human rights violation…on two scores: The diversion of public funds for private purposes over which the government has no control is a form of taxation without representation. Didn’t we fight a war over that? Perhaps as much as 40% of income tax revenue comes from households with annual incomes less than $250,000. Using those receipts to bail out cash rich universities amounts to a massive income redistribution scheme that further benefits the already more fortunate. In terms Robin Hood would relate to, we are robbing the lower middle class and giving the proceeds to the upper middle class. Is it time to fire up The Hague? As troubling as all this is, the self-important arrogance and sense of entitlement displayed by spokespersons for university interests is even more dazzling. According to Larry Summers (above), the withdrawal of public financing from private institutions would… “ Devastate progress in medical and scientific research (Undermine) American and Western values (Compromise) opportunity for the next generation of Americans (Sacrifice) an important magnet for the United States in the world.” Really, Larry? That’s all? And BTW, re #4 , whatever happened to ‘Truth, Justice, and the American Way’? Guess that went out of vogue after the ‘50s. The icing on this cake came in a letter of support for Harvard University from the President and the Provost of its west coast academic rival, Stanford. “America’s universities are a source of great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth… This strength has been built on government investment but not government control. The Supreme Court recognized this years ago when it articulated the essential freedoms of universities under the First Amendment as the ability to determine who gets to teach, what is taught, how it is taught, and who is admitted to study.” Wow! Would you send your child to be taught by these geniuses? Yes, universities are entitled to First Amendment protections. But did the Supreme Court also state that they are entitled to tax payer funding? I think not! I attended college in the turbulent ‘60s. Among my professors were men (sic) of genius and integrity like John Rawls, Willard van Orman Quine, Hilary Putnam, and H. Stuart Hughes. Today apparently, anyone can say anything, no matter how foolish, and be taken seriously, so long as they have the proper initials after their name. One more time: “America’s universities are a source of great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth… This strength has been built on government investment but not government control.” Let’s unpack: First, if America’s universities really are a source of ‘great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth’, then they should do just fine…without public financing. Second, “government investment but not government control” is a politically attractive way of saying, “free money, taken from the less fortunate and given to the more fortunate, with no strings attached”. Civics 101 : There is no such thing as ‘government investment’; there is only ‘taxpayer investment’ but that investment takes two forms: (1) actual taxes paid, (2) inflated prices driven up by government borrowing to fund deficit spending. The taxpayer pays twice and gets nothing back except a promissory note: “We’ll educate your children, provided they are in the most gifted 5% and can come up with at least $250,000 in non-deductible tuition.” How generous! Criticizing the American economic system is a favorite pastime of “writers and critics who prophesize with your pen” (Bob Dylan). But there is no injustice in that system greater than forced taxpayer funding of elite private institutions. Image: René Magritte’s 1929 oil painting The Treachery of Images is housed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Proust, Derrida and La Differance David Cowles Aug 12, 2025 “Effectively, consciousness effects/reflects a ‘fold’ in spacetime that invalidates the familiar Euclidean metric.” La differance ( Jacques Derrida ) may be understood as a bit of information or as a quantum of consciousness. Either way, it is irreducible. The ‘cold’ that I experience directly and the ‘cold’ that I experience through my being aware that I am cold are both the same and different. Whenever A = -A (same = different) we know we’re not in ‘Kansas’ ( aka the Set of Real Numbers) anymore. It is the same ‘cold’ but the different media of transmission means that my experiences of that same cold differ slightly. La differance is short for ‘infinitesimal difference’ and infinitesimal quantities lie outside the Set of Real Numbers. How ironic is it that our go-to model of the real world cannot account even for a quantum of actual experience! No wonder I want to repeal the Laws of Arithmetic . Marcel Proust shares a similar insight in his Remembrance of Things Past (RTP): “The sensation which I had once experienced as I stood upon two uneven stones in the Baptistry of St. Mark’s had, recurring a moment ago, been restored to me, complete with all the other sensations linked on that day to that particular sensation… “…the past was made to encroach upon the present, and I was made to doubt whether I was in the one or the other … The moment to which I was transported seemed to me to be the present moment…” And so it was! The Proust you know from the cafes was once the Proust of Italy and then the Proust of France but the Proust you know from RTP is the Proust of both Italy-then and France-now. Every there is, potentially, here; every then is, potentially, now and every now is eternal. Proust does not remember Italy, he relives Italy, which is perhaps to say, he really lives it for the first time…but in France. When Proust was in Italy, his attention was divided between his experiences of Venice and his experience of himself experiencing Venice. But when Proust relives Italy from France, his intermediary physical body disappears and now, for the first time, he can fully experience Venice. “Marcel, how was your trip to Italy?” “Fine, except for my traveling companion.” “Who was that?” “Me!” We spoil every experience by being there! (That was Sartre’s insight in Nausea .) When Proust relives an event, he does not recall selected, superficial qualia associated with that event, like a tourist with a smart phone; he recreates the event entire, and like an Ephesian Kierkegaard, he steps into it, re-experiencing all its qualia at once…not from outside-in, as perception and/or memory, but from inside-out, as something unknowable to Kant, noumenal experience . When Proust was in Venice, he was aware of Venice, but he was also aware of himself (as above) being in Venice. Quelle Domage! Likewise, when Proust is in France. But when Proust relives Italy-in-France, he is no longer aware of himself per se . Finally, he can be directly aware of experience itself. But he remains conscious. He does not lose himself in some sort of mystical union with the world. He remains conscious because the infinitesimal separation between Italy-then and France-now functions for him as la differance . Actually, the phenomenon of differance enters into Proust’s experience twice, once as the infinitesimal unevenness of the titles, again as the infinitesimal spacetime separation between France-now and Italy-then. Separated in spacetime, the two moments are united by something more substructural, i.e. experience itself; viva la differance! Effectively, consciousness effects/reflects a ‘fold’ in spacetime that invalidates the familiar Euclidean metric. A tiny difference in the pitch of the tiles, the tinier the better, ideally the tiniest perceptible difference possible, becomes a worm hole for Proust, bending spacetime to make proximate points ordinarily far distant from one another. I am reminded of p-adic numbers: the closer they are to zero, the larger the quantity they represent. In Proust’s case, the narrower the differance , the wider the wormhole it creates. I am also reminded of Bell’s non-locality (entanglement): two events indefinitely separated in space and time can nonetheless behave as one event. Is this a manifestation of the non-Archimedean structure of the real world? Check it out: If A is the combined experience of France-now and Italy-then, and B is the experience of ‘France-now’, and C is the experience of ‘Italy-then’, then both B and C are subsets of A but, counter intuitively, (B + C), France-and-Italy-now-and-then, has more value/weight/intensity for Proust than A itself…much more! A > B + C but (B+C) > A. In the real world, ‘operations’ are never commutative, transitive, associative, or distributive…unless by accident or coincidence. In every process, order is definitive! Or, for you fans of Doctor Who , the Universe is simply a collection of red ‘phone boxes’…tiny phone booths that house vast, hexagonal interior spaces, like the TARDIS . Either way, this potentiality for heightened intensity is a product of living consciously in a non-Archimedean universe. Revel in it! The competing cosmology is summarized critically by T.S. Eliot in Ash Wednesday : “Because I know that time is always time, and place is always and only place, and what is actual is actual only for one time, and only for one place, I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessed face…” I’d rather live in Proust’s world; how about you? Fortunately, we do ; and for that may I say, “Thank God!” For Proust, space and time are folded so that any two points may be arbitrarily close to one another. Events, no matter how far apart, may abut. While Proust’s epiphanies are dramatic, we all experience something similar most every waking moment of every day. Consciousness is the superposition of two images, slightly askew - differance as described above. Surprisingly, consciousness can be easily and simply modeled using just the lowly triangle, the fundamental building block of the material world according to Plato ( Timaeus ). Consciousness can be modeled simply by treating the ordinarily static triangle as a dynamic process: X ↙ ↘ X’ → Z In this diagram, X is directly aware of Z and of itself (X’) being aware of Z. We could say that ‘X’s experience of Z’ proceeds from X’s awareness of Z and from A’s awareness of being aware (X’) of Z. In which case we would be characterizing ‘consciousness’ using the language adopted by the Council of Nicaea (c. 325 CE) to describe ‘God’, i.e. Trinity. Does that mean that you are God? Far from it! But it does mean that you, and perhaps every conscious being, is ‘made in the image and likeness of God’…and that’s not half bad, is it? Trinity is not the esoteric mystery we have been (mis)led to believe. Rather, Trinity is a fundamental structure of Being itself. It is just one way, an important way, in which creation mirrors the creator and we are indebted to Proust, Sartre, and Derrida for pointing this out! *** Magritte, René. Time Transfixed. 1938, oil on canvas, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.René Magritte’s Time Transfixed disrupts ordinary perception by merging incompatible realities, a locomotive emerging from a fireplace, much like Proust’s Italy-then and France-now collapse into the same experiential moment. Both challenge the fixed boundaries of time and place, revealing how consciousness can fold reality into unexpected juxtapositions. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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