Like many students who had to take an intro philosophy class in college, I was forced read Plato’s Five Dialogues. For those who don’t know, These five dialogues focus primarily on the historical character of Socrates, Plato’s teacher. In them, Socrates discusses or debates a subject, often an ethical one (friendship, piety) with a friend…
Category
Philosophy
Is Space Really Empty?
So space can bend and drag; but is it really empty? Don’t say there’s nothing there to a physicist. Space has a seething quantum structure to it. I like to think of it as a pot of water on the stove with bubbles coming out. Space is like that. It’s always bubbling. We could see…
Reading Plato While Wearing a Walkman | Art by Matthew Rangel
You have argued that new technologies are a threat to the “silence” and “intimacy” necessary for an encounter with great works… Yes, the quality of silence is organically linked to the quality of language. You and I are sitting here, in this house surrounded by a garden, where there is no other noise other than…
Is Space Really Empty?
So space can bend and drag; but is it really empty? Don’t say there’s nothing there to a physicist. Space has a seething quantum structure to it. I like to think of it as a pot of water on the stove with bubbles coming out. Space is like that. It’s always bubbling. We could see…
Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved
Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved; also it is a little oblivious to morals. It dwells upon the tender elements of the world which slowly and in quietness operate by love. –Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 353 Painting by Mark Lawrence
Dostoevsky explains the monastic way
“Very different is the monastic way. Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet they alone constitute the way to real and true freedom: I cut away my superfluous and unnecessary needs, through obedience I humble and chasten my vain and proud will, and thereby, with God’s help, attain freedom of spirit, and with that,…
Dostoevsky explains the monastic way
“Very different is the monastic way. Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet they alone constitute the way to real and true freedom: I cut away my superfluous and unnecessary needs, through obedience I humble and chasten my vain and proud will, and thereby, with God’s help, attain freedom of spirit, and with that,…
Daniel Pink Explains How to Kill Creativity
Solving model problems or creating something the world didn’t know it was missing relies heavily on Harlow’s third drive, a model he calls the Intrinsic Motivation Principle of Creativity–which holds in part: intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity, controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity. This quote comes from Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising…
This is what it means to be a Christian, are there any questions?
We’re against all the death squads, the ruling families, the paramilitaries, the US military aid, the bombings, the violence of the rebels and the violence of hunger, starvation and disease. We’re against violence on all sides; and everyone on all sides hates us and wants to kill us. This is what it means to be…
Kings vs. bookish men, vowed to celibacy and destitute of armed force.
The king had to share his power with the feudal aristocracy, but all alike expected to be allowed occasional outbursts of passion in the form of war, murder, pillage, or rape. Monarchs might repent, for they were sincerely pious, and, after all, repentance itself was a form of passion. But the church could never produce…