On Philosophy: 2023

On Philosophy: 2023
“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” Anais Nin
"It is a failing common to a good many contemporary metaphysical theories that they can be applied to all things except themselves but that, when so applied, they extinguish themselves; and experience has taught me that, when men are really attached to such a theory, most of them will, after this has been pointed out to them, continue nevertheless to apply it to all things (except it itself)."1 Owen Barfield

Unziker's,2 Penrose's,5 and Baggott's3 books (titles and references below) aim their criticism at the state of being of physics today, one which depends less and less upon reproducible experiments (who is going to build a second Hadron Collider?) and relies more and more upon a tautological mathematics which, like Schrodinger's world picture, it is often forgotten, is also an invention of man(kind), and, in which, that mankind cannot be found — because it is itself that invention. Lakoff and Núñez's book: Where Mathematics Comes From4 is valuable here. And, I am a philosopher by choice, in that I choose to employ the guiding ideas of 'a love of knowledge,' — an appropriate etymology of philosophy, the word — to my own understanding of the world. As someone has said of art: "All the past, up to a moment ago is your legacy. You have a right to it." Robert Henri. In truth, everything is your legacy.

One of my irritations about a common approach to philosophy is the tendency to focus on the recorded ideas of a small number of dead persons, commonly giving to them, through the magic of thought, characteristics and features they may not have owned. But worse than that is the sensation of worship, a religious quality; the dead writers become god-like in their significance. There can be no exchange with the dead writer, no dialectic; we are stuck with interpretations and preferences, beliefs. H. L Mencken brought this down to earth by saying: "Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all other philosophers are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself." It seems true that the argumentation of academic philosophy consists largely of references to other philosophers, in one way or another. But other philosophers, or other individuals are, in my view, stepping stones we use to form the pathway to what becomes our personal 'world view.' And this understanding of how the process works is just another doorway to the realm of belief; beyond this door is world of bizarre ideation, of which probably not much can be done.

Erwin Schrodinger, better known for his cat, wrote a delightful book titled: Mind and Matter,6 1959 in which his thesis asserted that it was man(kind)'s mind that became aware of the cosmos perhaps only 100,000 years ago, and that mind, in effect, created the universe we accept as our world picture. But, he says, is it not interesting that no-where in that world can we find the mind (or the self) that created it. He says: "The reason why our sentient, percipient and thinking ego is met nowhere within our scientific world picture can easily be indicated in seven words: because it is itself that world picture."

Own Barfield: "Science deals with the world which it perceives but, seeking more and more to penetrate the veil of naive perception, progresses only towards the goal of nothing, because it still does not accept in practice (whatever it may admit theoretically) that the mind first creates what it perceives as objects, including the instruments which Science uses for that very penetration. It insists on dealing with ‘data’, but there shall no data be given, save the bare percept. The rest is imagination. Only by imagination therefore can the world be known. And what is needed is, not only that larger and larger telescopes and more and more sensitive calipers should be constructed, but that the human mind should become increasingly aware of its own creative activity."1

Barfield continues: "The difficulty lies in the fact that, outside poetry and the arts, that activity proceeds at an unconscious level. It has to be dug for. I have said that in the business of law the logical faculty operates more externally, at a slower pace and in a realm of voluntary effort which makes its elusive operation easier to detect. This is also true of the business of poetry. But here the problem is, no longer to proceed from life to thought, but to start from thought and move from there back to life. If law is the point where life and logic meet, perception is the point where life and imagination meet. But the point is out of sight — though not out of mind. Consequently, if men are ever to grow aware of it, they must start, in this case, from the other, the more subjective end. And I maintain that, just as the study of law was once a valuable exercise for other purposes besides the practice of law, so today the study of poetry and of the poetic element in all meaningful language is a valuable exercise for other purposes than the practice or better enjoyment of poetry. The secondary imagination can be our pointer to the primary. I do not say it is the only pointer, the only exercise that can lead to the desired end, namely, awareness of the part played by the imagination in perception, and by the individualized imagination in knowledge. I say it is a valuable one. To write poetry, said Wordsworth, a man must ‘loaf and invite his soul’. I say nothing of the ethics of loafing, but it is certain that a man cannot understand what poetry is without inviting the soul, or in the words of Locke already quoted, reflecting on what passes in his own mind. Empiricists who question the mind’s existence should not logically refuse to try the experiment. The best way to convince yourself that there is a world of inner experience is to explore it."

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” Thoreau

"Without poets, without artists... everything would fall apart into chaos. There would be no more seasons, no more civilizations, no more thought, no more humanity, no more life even; and impotent darkness would reign forever. Poets and artists together determine the features of their age, and the future meekly conforms to their edit." Guillaume Apollinaire

1. Own Barfield, Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning, Wesleyan University Press, 1984; ISBN 978-0819560261, 2nd Edition.
2. Alexander Unzicker and Sheilla Jones, Bankrupting Physics: How Today’s Top Scientists Are Gambling Away Their Credibility, Palgrave Macmillan, (288p) ISBN 978-1-137-27823-4
3. Jim Baggott, Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth; Pegasus Books, 2013; ISBN- 978-1605984728
4. George Lakoff, Rafael E. Nunez, Where Mathematics Comes From: How The Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being; Basic Books, 2000; ISBN-978-0465037704
5. Roger Penrose, Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe; Princeton University Press, 2016; ISBN-978-0691119793
6. Erwin Schrodinger, Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press, 1959
Jack Leissring.
Santa Rosa, CA,
www.jclfa.com