Kenneth B. McIntyre’s review of the book, Oakeshott on Rome and America by Gene Callahan, was published at the website of the magazine The American Conservative. I’ve not read that book but my comments deal with basic lines of thought found in Oakeshott’s major writings. In McIntyre’s review, Oakeshott vs. America, we can read: So … [Read more…]
I’ve claimed that we can see the world, at least after Jesus Christ’s ascension to His Father, as being the story of the growth and development of the Body of Christ, including the evolution and development of the organs of that Body. We can read the main purposes of God as Creator out of this … [Read more…]
Progressives have often founded and supported eugenics movements. This article,
E.O. Wilson is often a fount of common-sense bordering on wisdom; I don’t have to fully agree with a thinker to consider him sane and insightful. Wilson is a bit of a biological Calvinist but Jean Calvin and Jonathon Edwards were certainly sane if, in my opinion, quite wrong about some important matters. Oddly enough, … [Read more…]
Freedom as we idealize it is not at all an instrument or an agent to achieve our desires, good or bad. The lesser freedom of the tiger or the grazing deer can do that for us. Freedom as we idealize it is an aspect of the state of personhood, a state in which we are … [Read more…]
Years ago, I proposed that the immaterial feel of our minds might be the result of fields playing a major role in our thinking. An article, Neurons Talk Without Synapses, discusses recent work that shows neurons `talk’ to each other by way of changes in electromagnetic fields and not just by direct electrochemical contact. I … [Read more…]
A Little Background I haven’t been posting much over recent weeks because of a mild cold or sinus infection followed by a volunteer project at my parish. I’ve returned to serious reading and have started to write again, beginning with this brief introduction to what will be a series of essays describing my Christian understanding … [Read more…]
Human beings think and feel and act and do so in response to what lies around them. As various communities have advanced in the way of civilization, they’ve done so—thought and felt and acted—in response to some more or less plausible worldview covering created being in its abstract realms as well as this concrete realm. … [Read more…]
We’re born with certain physical characteristics, some good and some bad, some allowing us to excel and some limiting our possible accomplishments. Modern psychologists have shown that the physician Galen was largely right in his general principles which he taught nearly 2,000 years ago. We are born with relatively well-defined temperaments and with other relatively … [Read more…]
I’ve been delayed in my reading program, but I’m getting slowly back to work on Hans Reichenbach’s The Direction of Time. I’ve also gotten behind on my writing though I’ve already posted on some preliminary issues after reading Hilary Putnam’s preface for this the reprinting by the University of California Press: Why Does Time Move … [Read more…]