About 20 years ago, a Ph.d. psychologist working for an executive placement firm told me that, out of all the people he’d ever tested or interviewed, I was the one least suited for life in a corporation. Some might say that to be good news in terms of the potential for good moral character, but … [Read more…]
While reading an abridged version of the cosmological sections of Pierre Duhem’s massive study of Medieval science, Medieval Cosmology — published by the University of Chicago, I paid closer attention to some mathematical discussions by later Scholastics. As Duhem noted, those discussions were very sophisticated anticipations of the concept of limit which matured in the … [Read more…]
Are we determined by our genes or by our environments? Yes. But, it’s not so simple as that. Those genes are us and we are part of those environments which are hardly independent of human technology — culture in general — these days. But the complications are still more than that. We are what’s shaped … [Read more…]
The brain-scientist and philosopher Patricia Churchland is giving some lectures on a specific and partial answer to the question: What can neuroscience tell us about morality? A short news article about these lectures can be found here. Her main point according to the article is hardly a surprise to those who’ve been keeping up at … [Read more…]
On Tuesday, 2010/11/09, I posted an article Engaging the Thought of Pope Benedict: The Promise and Comedy of Modernity commenting on a talk he gave while in Spain to consecrate the basilica of the Sagrada FamÃlia in Barcelona, though I mistakenly implied it was in Santiago de Compostela which was his other stop. (I made … [Read more…]
I wouldn’t wish to complete the sentence in the title because I think the obvious completions are too pessimistic, yet, there is little room left to claim that human beings place a generally high value on freedom. Or that they can even recognize it. It might be the case that a desire for freedom, the … [Read more…]
Analogies can be taken too far and too literally, yet I wonder if we can apply to the human social organism, ultimately the Body of Christ, the example of a long-ago and primitive immune system ‘spinning off’ a neurological system. As I understand this particular line of speculation in evolutionary biology, and it was years … [Read more…]
We have to learn to move forward in our thought by trying to honestly perceive reality and to openheartedly respond to it while becoming aware of the distortions of the preconceptions we always bring to such tasks. This is a logical development of the insight we have inherited from Aquinas and a few of his … [Read more…]
I’ll be writing articles on some aspects of politics and the history of government which interest me and doing so in terms of my concepts of created being. I’ll concentrate on American politics and will cover some interesting phenomena often seen as indicative of conspiracies. These articles will reflect both some of my reading of … [Read more…]
Nearly all human beings, nearly all the time, think only thoughts which have been thought already within their sphere of knowledge, typically some level and region of a particular culture. Few and far between are the identifiable creative thinkers, though we must remember that creative thinkers are also members of specific communities which provide the … [Read more…]