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[The following remarks were made by yours truly to open the 2008 Metanexus Conference in Madrid] Now to the business at hand…. MIHI QUAESTIO FACTUS SUM(I have become a question to myself.)Augustini Confessiones (liber X, caput xxxiii) Who are we? Why are we here? In our age, it is science that purports to answer these…
We noted that observation is a step beyond merely seeing or responding to our senses. It is a conscious and sustained mode of recording our sense impressions of the external world. In a scientific observation one tries to relate what is observed to its several parts or to other observed phenomena: In other words, one…
Last week I argued that we need names for the generic tough judgment calls we all deal with. I gave a few examples: Should I be receptive or assertive? Should I manipulate or be honest? I argued that we pretend we can live by one-sided principles – assert your rights, accept things as they are,…
In our efforts to understand natural phenomena, science divides the world of experience into specific domains which are then studied little by little; or else, we will be confronted with a staggering immensity far beyond any individual’s grasp. Once a field of study is chosen, every phenomenon related to it is carefully observed. If we…
I’m a musician. I’ll admit that when I was a teen, I got into it as a way to improve my status with women. I don’t know that it ever helped much; I’m no superstar. Still, I’ve stayed a musician. Music has stayed functional in my life. But now, music represents something other than status…
“I never feel so European as when I am in a cathedral” (Robert Shuman) While the signing of the EU Constitution in Rome in 2004 was hailed as a “new beginning” by the Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Galkenende, who at the time presided over the EU Council, there were, and there still are, ominous…
Neoconservative thinker Robert Kagan, originator of the popular slogan and rather naïve caricature “Americans from Mars, Europeans from Venus”, has suggested in his book Of Paradise and Power that the United States throughout its history has tended to view itself as an “exception” of sorts to international law; that at times it has been willing…
In ancient science, which drew analogies between the behavior of living entities and that of nature, there was the general belief that things happen with a purpose. We water the flower bed so that flowers may bloom. Likewise, it was argued, it rains so that there would be harvest. In Aristotelian science, an explanation was…
You’re in love, or so you think. You certainly feel in love, but now that you’ve been run through the mill a few times, you wonder what the feeling really means. You love being loved. But think about it, why does this person love you? What’s the motivation? When someone says, “I love you,” what…
Loosely speaking, time is like zipping up a very long zipper. The future is open; the past is closed. The present is like the zipslide closing up possibilities. While we may not be able to determine what happened in the past, the past is nonetheless determined. The future is not. It’s unknowably open. There is…