Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“To put this into the context of a life narrative, my dreams do not belong only to myself but to all of the people and non-human things and processes with which I share this earth. The earth flows through me, and my vision of the world, in turn, reverberates back out into my surroundings. Strictly…
“A central feature of any naturalism is that there is at least some form of continuity between mind and nature – or, that mind “stretches” to meet nature (in the words of John Dewey). But, what is “mind” within a naturalistic register? A basic premise for naturalists such as Charles S. Peirce, John Dewey, George…
“In other words: The only type of culture that can thrive is one in which there is prevalent trust, and in which there is also prevalent contempt and rejection of cheaters. But what happens when the person who is held in contempt is not the cheater, but the cheater is instead more often admired because…
“But there is no society in isolation…The environment, together with the society in question, must form a larger society in respect to more general characters than those defining the society from which we started. Thus we arrive at the principle that every society requires a social background, of which it is itself a part.” —…
“The idea is the same: Truth is not found, but made, and making truth means exercising power […] The reductive version is simpler and easier to abuse: Fact is fiction, and anything goes. It’s this version of critical social theory that the populist right has seized on and that Trump has made into a…
“What I am writing may seem very remote and abstract. However, it has one implication that can be sensed right away. If we talk about energy as being the most fundamental thing there is, and events as being the only units of reality we ultimately can know, we are immediately describing a world in which…
“What we see visually is not present inside of the tissue of our brain. It is not a physical phenomenon, or rather physics is actually a subset of a much larger psycho-physical context of nature. Unlike a computer simulation, which relies completely on a physical video screen to accomplish any sense of simulation, the brain…
“By introducing possibilities of such action that go beyond what the situation would otherwise allow, God expands our freedom. Violence as we ordinarily understand it restricts the freedom of its object.” –John B. Cobb, Jr., process-relational theologian Most of us have a decent understanding of what freedom is, or at least we think we do….
“Every process pushed far enough tends to reverse or flip suddenly. Chiasmus – the reversal to process caused by increasing its speed, scope or size.” —Marshall McLuhan I finally got to read Andrew Sullivan’s latest article in NY Magazine about technology and distraction sickness. I remember Sullivan for notably becoming one of the first journalists…
“It is evident that the more complex organisms have not evolved simply by adapting themselves to the environment. Instead, according to Whitehead, “the upward trend has been accompanied by a growth of the converse relation. Animals have progressively undertaken the task of adapting the environment to themselves.”[9] The primary evolutionary function of Reason is thus…