In The Meaning of Truth, William James makes the claim: The pragmatist view … of the truth-relation is that it has a definite content and that everything in it is experienceable. Its whole nature can be told in positive terms. The `workableness’ which ideas must have, in order to be true means particular workings, physical … [Read more…]
This article, One Thing Is Certain: Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle Is Not Dead, gives an interesting summary of one important aspect of what is called Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. [T]he uncertainty principle comes in two superficially similar formulations that even many practicing physicists tend to confuse. Werner Heisenberg’s own version is that in observing the world, we … [Read more…]
The bishops of the American Catholic Church are upset with President Obama’s mandate that all participants in regulated health-care programs should have coverage for contraceptives, abortions, and perhaps some other services and products considered immoral by Catholics and many others. But this Catholic layman has a question: What right have the bishops to object in … [Read more…]
Love is probably undefinable but we can at least understand some aspects of that love and can probably come to a substantial narrative understanding of some loves in their specific contexts. We can maybe even understand some of the ways in which a truer and incorruptible love will make the world of the resurrected, heaven, … [Read more…]
I’ve advocated the view that our imaginations can encompass what God has created, what the Almighty has manifested in this Creation, but we need examples and stimuli — in a manner of speaking. We need to be courageous and open-minded in our responses to Creation if we are to learn from God, who has a … [Read more…]
Near the end of this amusing article, In Physics, Telling Cranks from Experts Ain’t Easy, John Horgan raises an interesting point about theories of physics: Great scientists are great because they discern patterns in the flux of nature that elude us ordinary mortals; we should not be surprised when some patterns turn out to be … [Read more…]
See the article, Physicists find that an ultrahigh-energy proton looks like a black disk, for what I’d consider a preliminary but interesting analysis of what happens when protons are energized to an extremely high-level, higher than we can conceive of reaching with current technology. There are a few questions it raises in my half-educated mind … [Read more…]
Mind and body are not separate nor is body for real and mind a mere epiphenomenon. The body is concrete, objective stuff but mind is a set of relationships with both concrete and abstract being. During recent weeks, I picked up links to various articles which reaffirm our embodied natures. From our bodies of physical … [Read more…]
Let me state a certain political position as: The United States of America are but Massachusetts is. This is a grammatical statement of the classic States’ rights doctrine which was one of the matters so violently dealt with in the American war between the states. It was, in fact, a matter of contention from the … [Read more…]
I stretch the truth when I sometimes talk as if I were the only one who sees being as a spectrum from the abstract to the concrete. Clearly, there is a sense in which Platonic and Neoplatonic Realists see being in two forms, abstract being (what they call the Real) and concrete being (the real … [Read more…]