Fred Reed is a smart and insightful man. Courageous as well, caring more for truth than for conventional opinions and public myths. And a friendly, neighborly sort of fellow so that just “Fred” is usually sufficient. In the recent article, The 145 Solution: Sapience, not Sentience, Fred writes: If fourteen percent [of American voters] are … [Read more…]
We think ourselves now so sophisticated because we know the world isn’t designed, at least not in the way of a human engineer. But there are patterns and the ways of thought which provide some serious understandings of those patterns arising from states of seeming disorder are difficult and are certainly not yet part of … [Read more…]
In my last three essays I posted, Mathematical Models of Human Communities: Parts and Wholes, Mathematical Models of Human Communities: We Live in Narratives, Not in Models, and Mathematical Models of Human Communities: Randomness, I acknowledged the usefulness and potential truthfulness of mathematical models but claimed we need to consider wider aspects of this world … [Read more…]
In a recent essay, What is an Explanation?: The Context of Thought and Language, I opened up a line of discussion which might provide a new view of some of my basic ideas, a view which might lead me to more fruitful explorations and perhaps others to better understandings of what I’m trying to do … [Read more…]
I use the term `empirical science’ to include any field of disciplined study of Creation, physics and chemistry and engineering sciences but also including mathematics and history and literature. The modern empirical sciences have advanced ahead of philosophy and very far ahead of Christian theology. Philosophers and theologians would be wise to start borrowing from … [Read more…]
According to a couple of dictionaries, an `explanation’ is “Something that explains” or equivalent definitions of the sort which would gain a failing grade on a junior high school test back in the days when American schools were so tough we had to write essays explaining how it was possible to walk uphill going to … [Read more…]
Col Pat Lang (ret), a Green Beret and military intelligence officer, has written another of many short and authoritative commentaries on the current messes which are the US civilian government and US military. Of the two, the military seems to be the far lesser mess, even to the point of being reformable so long as … [Read more…]
Judith Curry is Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Curry’s blog is well worth reading for reliable commentary on climate science and more general matters of science practice and of public policy in its relationship to science. One of her recent articles, More scientific … [Read more…]
In an interesting article, How Our Brains Go the Distance, Virginia Hughes tells us: People think about distances all day… long. Distance can describe physical spaces (a far-flung city; a nearby store), time (distant past; near future), and social relationships (near-and-dear pals; a quarreling couple needing some space). Researchers have long thought that these various … [Read more…]
In my most recent post, the essay: How a Christian Finds Metaphysical Truths in Empirical Reality, I argued that Christians should respond confidently to what lies around us, to our concrete and thing-like realm of Creation and to all the other realms which remain yet in our universe which is our world when seen in … [Read more…]