Epistemology

God has a very big heart, but there is one sin he will not forgive--if a woman invites a man into her bed and he will not go. I know because a very wise old Turk told me.

Anthony Quinn as Alexis Zorba in the movie Zorba The Greek, from Nikos Kazanatzakis' novel of that name.

Phineas Gage: Stuff Happens

The horrible accident of Phineas Gage became a case for brain scientists to study, but for me he also represents something else. In the long history of the world it has happened as people kneel in prayer. It can occur as we gaze at a seagull, feeling ocean breeze on our cheeks, or as we enjoy orange juice and the bright feathers of a cockatoo on the patio. Above all, we want our lives to be predictable, within our control, and they seem to be for a while but one day the biopsy comes back positive for pancreatic cancer or we didn't see the car that ran a red light.

It happened to Gage one sunny Vermont day. On September 13, 1848, Phineas Gage, a handsome 25 year old railroad foreman would have his life changed forever. He would go down in history as the Gage who was no longer Gage.

Known Unknowns

I can thank Donald Rumsfeld for the term "known unknowns." Indeed, there are known unknowns.

That much I know, though I can never show it to you.

But think about this. Thoughts come as perceptions. They are perceived.

The perceiver cannot be found. Whatever is located when searching is only another object of thought. Perception remains, out of reach as that which is aware of the search and the thought object.

To establish a model for discussion, consider this. We cannot see black holes but we can see the gravitational lensing they cause around astronomical objects. Black holes are inferred phenomena.

Argentina to Alaska in A 1928 Graham-Paige

Take an adventurous young couple. Add a 1928 Graham-Paige Model 610 Touring Car. Put them in it pointed north out of Buenos Aires.

Wilder Penfield, Brain Maps, with V.S. Ramachandran and The Man Who Mistook His Foot For A Penis

Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield performed pioneering experiments in the 1940s and 1950s. During extensive brain surgeries, he applied electrodes to different regions of the brain and stimulated them. He then asked patients what they felt. He recorded and correlated sensations, images, even memories, as reported by the patients. By this means he mapped the brain and found, for example, that the brain area involved with lips and fingers occupies as much space as the area which handles the entire trunk of the body.

Elly Beinhorn, The Most Famous Aviatrix You Never Heard Of

Mention Elly Beinhorn to somebody today and he or she will look at you blankly.
Not so, in the era between World Wars One and Two. During the twenties and thirties, hers was a household name on many continents. She was an aviatrix, a daring young woman in the mold of Amelia Earhart. Like other such women of her time, her goals were not properly feminine. Yet as she became famous, people said her flying skills were exceeded only by her femininity. That was it, a most unwomanly thing. She wanted to fly an aeroplane around the world. Alone. Her mother wept and her father threatened to send her to a psychiatrist, but an aunt had died and left Elly a little money.

William James Sidis: The Smartest Person Ever?

The following essay is about William James Sidis, whom Robert Persig (Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) discusses in his novel, Lila. Sidis's one great passion in life was collecting street car transfers.

The account comes from a web page I saved to my hard drive. Before uploading it, I checked it and found it dead, but still want to give credit, so here is the obsolete URL--http://members.aol.com/popvoid/TOC.html. Jim Morton, the essayist, uses Peridromophilia as a term for Sidis's love of street car transfers.

Peridromophilia Unbound:William James Sidis
By Jim Morton

The great geniuses of mankind are often said to be "born ahead of their time." William James Sidis, on the other hand, seems to have been born out of his time completely; on the wrong world, in the wrong dimension. Perhaps someday the world will understand "Willie" Sidis's strange genius, but that day is far off indeed.

Notes from "Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from The Biology of Consciousness," by Alva Noë

Are you your brain, or something else?


In this book Alva Noë presents his well-informed view of modern thinking and research on consciousness and the brain. He does not subscribe to the mainstream consensus.

Albert Einstein on Free Will and Ramana Maharshi on Freedom and Destiny

"If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will." Albert Einstein

Scientists in general accept that the universe is a closed system, deterministic and explainable by physical processes involving cause and effect. Yet we all experience the feeling that we can choose between option A and option B.

A Gloomy Prospect: Poverty, IQ, & Emergent Systems

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion. Democritus, 470 BC-380 BC*. Modern particle physics has broken things down even further and at CERN in Switzerland the Higgs Bosun ("God Particle") at the Large Hadron Collider is believed to have been found.

Down-to-the-nitty-gritty just doesn't work in some cases. It's called reductionism, and in its place we have a relatively recent concept of emergent systems.