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…]
In reading Richard Gregory’s Mind in Science, I find that he raises a seemingly plausible objection to those thinkers who `regress’ to seeing abstractions, including knowledge, in the objective world. He states his objection in a short and loaded way: [The psychologist Kenneth] Craik is suggesting that human inference has its validity and logical power … [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…]
Wikipedia tells us that metaphor is: language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. In the simplest case, this takes the form: “The [first subject] is a [second subject].” More generally, a metaphor is a rhetorical trope that describes a first subject as being or equal to a second object in some way. Thus, the first … [Read more…]
In a number of writings, I deny both the monisms of matter and spirit or thought. I also deny the dualism of body/soul, brain/mind, etc. Yet, I use the terms ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ on a regular basis. What gives? I think of being as richer than ‘mere’ matter, yet, I see no reason to speak … [Read more…]
Pilgrims travel paths, journeying from one location on earth to another, sometimes those places are fictional but usually quite concrete. To be sure, Dante’s pilgrim found (as some of the more recent translations of The Inferno attest) that the path could wander away from him, a strange event from a fully concrete view of paths. … [Read more…]
The lead paragraph of this article, Genomic Changes Found In Brains Of People Who Commit Suicide, asks questions which I’ve been handling in my first book and my blogs for the past two years: Are genes destiny? Alternatively, are we simply the products of our environment? There is a growing sense that neither of these … [Read more…]
Einstein, Feynman, and perhaps other major scientists have made the claim that “philosophers of science” have contributed nothing that’s useful to scientists. While not sure exactly what the contexts of their comments really were, I’d generally say in response, “Yes, and why would anyone expect anything different?” I would think philosophers of science move in … [Read more…]
I’ve just finished reading Roberto Torretti’s Relativity and Geometry, a somewhat demanding philosophical discussion of the foundational ideas of Einstein’s two theories of relativity. Over the course of the book, as he discussed those foundational ideas of relativity, he builds up to a conclusion which is true enough, but does beg some questions. He points … [Read more…]
In order to move on in my work, I’m studying advanced physics and mathematics, concentrating for now on general relativity — broadly speaking since I have to take various diversions to refresh my old knowledge or to acquire new knowledge in basic physics and matrix algebra and differential geometry and so forth. One of the … [Read more…]