It’s intriguing to learn that Buckminster Fuller, one of the most inventive minds ever, had two of his major intuitions while gazing at water. One example: “In 1917 . . . Buckminster Fuller was watching the bubbles boiled up in the wake of a Navy ship, and concluding from those millions of changing spheres that… Continue reading Water: Speaking from the Depths
Month: April 2023
“Intuition” in One, Just for Fun
Whereas one concept of intuition is drawn along religious or metaphysical lines, positing that “Intuition is God in man, revealing to him the Realities of Being,” I would make my case by discussing intuition in a more rigorously philosophical manner, revealing—with syllogistic clarity admitting only an occasional lapse (aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus)—its theoretical underpinnings, eschewing… Continue reading “Intuition” in One, Just for Fun
The Body Electric
“I sing the body electric.” — Walt Whitman Whitehead derived his metaphysics, in part, from a keen observation and analysis of his own everyday experiences as a human subject. Much of the time we tend to ignore the body, or to take it for granted. But for Whitehead the human body is “the starting point… Continue reading The Body Electric
Countdown to Silence
Did you ever “go ballistic,” or “blow your top” with such steam that someone had to “scrape you off the ceiling”? Have you ever “festered” with resentment, “nursed” a grudge, or “come unglued” in LA gridlock? Do some people so rub you the wrong way that they make you “fly off the handle”? Did you… Continue reading Countdown to Silence
What Do You Have in Mind?
In a pithy sentence that has been quoted many times since he first wrote it more than three hundred years ago, the English philosopher John Locke declared: Nothing is in the mind that was not first in the senses. Another great philosopher, Leibniz, came up with a clever, and insightful, reply to Locke: Nothing is… Continue reading What Do You Have in Mind?
Hauntology or Ontology: That Is the Question
The French writer Jacques Derrida coined the word “hauntology” for his variation on the philosophical term “ontology.” Since the initial “h” is silent in French, the two words are the same in sound. For my purposes, the general sense of “hauntology” is about revealing the absences that haunt, or are present in, all presences.1 Whereas… Continue reading Hauntology or Ontology: That Is the Question
Hold Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand
Michael Gelb celebrates the power of play as our most effective way to learn. Most widely known, perhaps, for his best-selling book, How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, which has been translated into 24 languages, Gelb is the author of a number of other books and a pioneer in the fields of accelerated learning,… Continue reading Hold Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand
Book of Many Happy Returns: “Process and Reality”
Whitehead’s magnum opus, the magisterial Process and Reality, began as the Gifford Lectures he presented at the University of Edinburgh. Process and Reality is a book of legendary difficulty but it repays the considerable exertions required to come to terms with its neologisms, and to come to an understanding of the speculative metaphysics in this… Continue reading Book of Many Happy Returns: “Process and Reality”
The Magic Number 34
In the year 1514, the great German artist Albrecht Dürer completed a famous engraving that he named Melancholia. In the upper right-hand corner he placed a “magic square” that contained an arrangement of the numbers 1 through 16, as pictured below: Is there something really magic about this square? See for yourself: if you add… Continue reading The Magic Number 34
Whitehead Turns Things Upside Down
One of the many surprising adventures of reading Whitehead is to discover what to some may seem an extravagant claim: that much of our received wisdom is not only wrong but that some of our most venerated thinkers got it exactly backwards. Whitehead reminds us that “the doctrines which best repay critical examination are those… Continue reading Whitehead Turns Things Upside Down