Category Archives: Philosophy

The Age of Reason

26 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by in History, Philosophy, Science

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Throughout the history of modern astronomy the scientific method has played an important role in helping to guide scientist in correctly modeling a theory of how our solar system interacts in the whole cosmology of the universe. The history of scientific method and the history of astronomy seem to develop hand in hand. A development in astronomy seems to coincide with a refinement in the method of studying the sciences. The ancient Egyptians, using a form of the method in their surgical manuals, stated the basic forms of examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. The ancient Greeks formalized at tradition of a scientific method that included some of the steps that we include today. However, it was during the renaissance period that we get a more defined version of a method. The philosopher/scientists Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Newton all played a part in defining this process and in turn used it to prove to the world that the model of the universe was not geocentric, but was in fact, heliocentric, the Earth revolved around the Sun.

The Heliocentric model of the solar system was put forth by an ancient astrologer  Aristarchus of Samos in 200 BCE, however without any method to prove this theory, this model was overshadowed by the geocentric model of the Solar System and common sense.The method commonly accepted today, in its simplest form, includes the following four steps: The first step involves observing and describing a phenomenon or group of phenomena. The ability to observe what was happening up in the heavens in ancient times was limited at best. With out the aid of telescopes ancient man resorted to using mathematics to explain what the thought they saw in the sky. Claudius Ptolemy (85 -165 CE) used mathematics to portray a very complicated geocentric model trying to explain how the sun, the moon, the stars and the planets revolved around the Earth. This model of the universe was accepted by the Catholic Church and survived and prevailed for almost 1400 years due to the church’s heavy influence.

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Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

26 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by in Humor, Philosophy

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Plato:
For the greater good.

Karl Marx:
It was ahistorical inevitability.

Machiavelli:
So that its subjects will view it with admiration,as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken’s dominion maintained.

Hippocrates:
Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Jacques Derrida:
Any number of contending discourses may be discovered
within the act of the chicken crossing the road,and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Thomas de Torquemada:
Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I’ll find out.

Timothy Leary:
Because that’s the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Douglas Adams:
Forty-two. Continue reading →

Wake Up!

25 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by in Personal Experience, Philosophy

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Most people go through their lives like machines, creatures of habit. They get up in the morning, eat breakfast on the way to work, work eight or nine hours and come home. They live their lives for the chance to do something for themselves on the weekend. These people are creatures of habit. They follow the role model of their parents before them; go to school, get an education, get a good job, start a family, work for forty years, and retire for a while and then die.

Living your life by rote is not living life, in my opinion. There are underlying meanings to concepts like truth and justice, concepts that we take for granted on a daily basis. Most people in the United States today have no idea what or how our society came in to being. What are the fundamental ideologies that serve as the foundation for American thought process? Each of the founding fathers of this country have many philosophical roots in the great thinkers prior to the birth of this nation. Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates stand as the cornerstone of great societies. Aquinas and Descartes server as the foundation of Western thought, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Hobbes, Marx, Hegel, Kant, and Mill stand as pillars that we based the last several centuries on.

Aldous Huxley: A Blind Man Who Saw the Future

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Philosophy, Science

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At birth, Aldous Huxley immediately found himself surrounded by England’s Literary and Scientific elite. His father, Leonard Huxley was teaching classic literature at Charterhouse School in Surry England. Leonard later wrote biographies on Robert Scott, Charles Darwin, and his own father Thomas Henry Huxley. Aldous’s grandfather, biologist Thomas Henry Huxley or as he was better known as, “Darwin’s Bulldog”; was an avid defender of evolution and a supporter of Charles Darwin. His mother Judith or Julia Arnold was the granddaughter of Dr. Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby School and the niece of English Poet Matthew Arnold. His older brother Julian followed his grandfather’s example and become an excellent biologist, philosopher, and educator. Huxley’s half brother Andrew went on to win the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Born during the height of Victorian era in England, Aldous Leonard Huxley came into this world on July 26 1894, in Godalming, Surrey England.

Educated at home by his mother, Aldous attended Eton and after graduating Balliol College, Oxford in 1916, Huxley started his career as a writer and an author. Starting as a journalist, writing primarily satire, Huxley’s later works offered more in depth thoughts about politics, society, and psychology. Aldous Huxley’s first full-length novel Chrome Yellow, written in 1921, continued in a similar satirical vein. During the 1920s and 30s Huxley spent much of his time traveling the world visiting the United States, India, and Europe, spending much of it in Italy during the rise of Fascism. It was in this setting in 1932 that he wrote his classic novel, “A Brave New World.” In 1937, Huxley immigrated to the United States and settled in California. Continue reading →

Thoughts On God

23 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Personal Experience, Philosophy

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The concept of god/God has developed over thousands of years. The concept has evolved and has been reshaped, multitude of times separate of what God may actually be. In Man’s attempt to understand their surroundings, they initially did take the concepts around them and started to form them into an all-purpose, and all in one god. The Canaanite deity Elyon was adopted and reshaped into El. Many human like attributes were said to be his, like jealousy, angry, demanding, loving, and forgiving god. As time went by and after the Semite peoples known as the Hebrews, then the Israelites, then once establishing Judea, they became the Jews. During several tumultuous periods of captivity and rebirth, the concept evolved even more. Just before the time of Christianity, the concept of God changed into something less emotional and more of a spiritual being. As Christianity took over the Jewish God El who became Elohim, and eventually YHWH/Adonai and under the Roman Catholics Jehovah, this concept of spirit was “fleshed out” a bit. God is all-good, God is all-wise. God is all powerful, God is all knowing. This description was not about defining the Universe, but the One who could create this or any universe. If you read the Old Testament of the Bible, you will find many laws that were actually just plain common sense for the times. Like don’t eat the pig (because the creatures eat its own feces you will not be able to cook it enough to kill all the diseases in it) or don’t make the latrines within your camp, etc… My personal thoughts on the subject of Worship come down to this. We are meant to worship our creator by being the best human I can be and treating all other humans with dignity and respect as well. For what purpose would a god or God want offerings of blood, sacrifices, or anything of this world, for he needs them not? I do not worship laws of physics but I obey them, as I have not yet achieved the ability to forgo them and create my own laws of physics…yet.