Category: Blague

Raymond Kurzweil makes a fascinating observation: “Computers are about one hundred million times more powerful for the same unit cost than they were a half century ago. If the automobile industry had made as much progress in the past fifty years, a car today would cost a hundredth of a cent and go faster than… Continue reading Hello, Silicon; Goodbye, Carbon

Just what is reality, and what makes for a good model of reality? One model that offers both clarity and simplicity and, upon reflection, turns out to be most satisfying, was used by Buckminster Fuller in one public lecture after another as he toured cities all over the world speaking to audiences about his new… Continue reading Knot So Simple: Self-Interfering Patterns

Along with three and seven, four is a richly symbolic and mythic number that seems to turn up all over the place: four elements, four seasons, four directions, four dimensions (in our universe), DNA and RNA both have four bases . . . the list is long. The number “four” figures prominently and frequently in… Continue reading Meta-Fours

But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first. That verse (Matthew 19:30) is a good example of chiasmus, a rhetorical figure that reverses the terms of the two clauses that make up a sentence, or a part of a sentence. Chiasmus is thus a linguistic twist or turn that… Continue reading The Greek Letter Chi Illuminates the Way

For your contemplation—a “koan” by the writer and Episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeault: The kingdom of heaven is not later,it is lighter . . . And this by Peter Matthiesssen: “like that waterfall on the upper Suli Gadthat turns to mist before touching the earthand rises once again into the sky.” The Snow Leopard, p. 176… Continue reading A Koan To Lift You Up, Up and Away

The American poet Jonathan Williams surely sowed high mischief, not to mention irony, when he gave the following title to one of his volumes of verse: No-No Nse-Nse. Rearranged, these words reveal: No Nonsense. I discovered this only recently and, to my surprise, found that JW coined the word “Meta-Fours” early in the 1990s. I… Continue reading No-No Nse-Nse

In process philosophy’s social conception of reality, even atoms are social beings. Consider the simplest case: the hydrogen atom with its one proton and electron. Did you ever stop and wonder what holds such an atom together—that is, what holds the electron and proton together, and at the same time apart, in dynamic and elegant… Continue reading Sublimity of Structure: The Hydrogen Atom

This question presents an ambiguity that reveals at least two questions, at one and the same time. The least interesting has to do with Nietzsche’s assertion that “God is dead,”1 a bold claim that summarily denies God any future—period! Far more interesting are the entwined questions of whether God is, in an important sense, temporal… Continue reading Does God Have a Future?

Einstein once remarked, famously, that God does not play dice with the universe. He said this in reaction to Quantum theory which, based fundamentally on probability, robustly affirms that God does play dice with the universe and, to mix metaphors, that there might even be a Joker in nature’s deck of cards. Is the universe… Continue reading A Joker in Nature’s Deck of Cards?

“No thinker thinks twice.”Alfred North Whitehead Here’s the quote in context: The ancient doctrine that “no one crosses the same river twice” is extended. No thinker thinks twice; and, to put the matter more generally, no subject experiences twice. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 29. If you’re still wondering about this, hold that… Continue reading Stop and Wonder