Lately I’ve been thinking about determinism… WTF you might think! Perhaps one of the most enduring conundrums of philosophy is the ongoing debate, the wrangle over whether freedom is possible, whether the word refers to anything at all, — in a rigorous cause and effect universe. Speculation about the topic can be traced as…
The rain falls steadily non-stop, then in sheets. Weeks of mounting drought, then today flood warnings. Nature is a condition of extremes. After all, is not “the mean” a quantity that humans judge to be “just right” for the purposes of life? Nature, being “blind,” the feedback of cause and effect, “knows” nothing of…
NASA: Earth is trapping ‘unprecedented’ amount of heat, warming ‘faster than expected’Catherine Garcia, Night editor Wed, June 16, 2021, 6:41 PM Since 2005, the amount of heat trapped by the Earth has roughly doubled, according to a new study by NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers. This is contributing to warming oceans,…
How much should I care? Is care involuntary? Can I choose to care or not to care? Or what to care about? It appears that all of life, that is all that I am aware of, is involuntary… The organism, you and I are no exception, is a concatenated layered system of bio-chemical cause…
It is tempting to believe that Nature is eternal, subsisting impervious to the erosion of time. A temptation, an illusion, one immature mistake made when we extract “resources” and increase the heat load to the atmosphere and to the oceans. Thus we give a collective shove-of-the-wheel toward global warming and climate change catastrophe. Whenever…
Several days ago a friend sent me this graphic. The three fates are pictured attending to their respective duties, measuring and allocating the course of good and the not-so-good fallout of “chance” in the life of the individual and also of nations. Our ancestors understanding of “determinism” had to do with the meta observation…
I was a participant in a rollicking discussion on the topic of determinism and free will earlier in the week. The topic is an ancient philosophical conundrum how the appearance of choice, true freedom can be real, given that cause and effect are seamless. That cause and effect are inviolate is the underlying premise…
ProPublica yesterday published a scoop on the tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans. Included were the returns of Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Aside from the issue of how ProPublica obtained the returns, is confirmation of what well informed Americans already knew. One would…
Why do I return to the old songs, the ballads that search the landscape of love and loss, of faithfulness and betrayal? Homer’s great tale, The Iliad, is such a story put into verse. I awakened at 4:30 AM this morning, with the chorus to this song, echoing in my waking consciousness. Laughing, is…
We visited the Flea Market at the Kane County Fairgrounds. Pandemic restrictions have recently been lifted here in Illinois. We are eager to freely move about in public. The fairgrounds had more exhibits of bric-a-brac, colorful 1950s vintage serving bowls, a collection of solid brass doorknobs embossed with a cross, — than we could…
