Footnotes2Plato

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead

Month: July 2007

  • Spellbound: Magic Words and Minds Without Self

    Introduction There was a time when physics, still high on the spirit of the Enlightenment, took seriously the idea that its measurements of the fundamental stuff composing the universe could explain just about everything worth knowing about. Granted, it didn’t have all the necessary measurements compiled just yet, but it assured everyone that it was…

  • Reality is a Reel

    All my life, I’ve been drawn to the big questions, But I cannot even begin my story Without revealing my bias in the first line. Why “big” questions? Are the answers especially “full” of goodness? Does it take a “long” time to find them?Are there really “more” than one? Questions and answers… A captain seeking…

  • The Limits of Language

    The Limits of Language It seems ironic, at least in light of the premise of this paper, that the thoughts of a man such as Socrates could have given birth to the last twenty-four hundred years of Western philosophical discourse. Was it not he who said “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance”?…

  • Integral Spirituality

    “When we ponder on [realization], we begin to perceive how feeble in their self-assertive violence and how confusing in their misleading distinctness are the words that we use. We begin also to perceive that the limitations we impose on the Brahman arise from a narrowness of experience in the individual mind that concentrates itself on…

  • Subtle Energy and Machines

    I wonder if electronic devices are a form of “captured” subtle energy…. Machines are not alive, but what does it mean to be alive? Life grows itself. Machines must be built by an outside agency. Because life grows itself, it is always following some hidden inner law or creative principle. Henri Bergson called this the…