Sunday morning, and I do remember saying to myself that if the pace of work made this an occasional blog, I would at least keep it to once a week. Not "try to keep it to", because "try" so often seems to encapsulate an asumption of failure. So that answers today's first question: do I keep up with the flow of work, or deliberately interrupt it? The latter, for once. I've been busy, and for the next short while, I'm not busy. Maybe Malpas at lunchtime, after the train, and the weekend papers. And maybe one day I should think about broadening my horizons.
Although maybe they're broad enough for this current life, and maybe that isn't my decision anyway. I shall listen to the teachers, finally, and stop/start fighting it - can't decide which is more appropriate. Debate for today: the virtues of "grounded" in context. Alternative debate for today, the scientific/religious debate again; two man-made standpoints that (a) assume that they're in opposition to each other, and (b) seem to assume - or one of them (perhaps necessarily) does - that they can adequately be addressed from inside the experience.
I shall [not] write a short story one day in which it is discovered, beyond doubt, that all this was set in train by a white-bearded old patriarch sitting on a throne on a cloud, attended by angels, with a set of pearly gates at the entrance to his, er, property. All the trimmings. And I shall ensure - this being the point of the story - that the discovery is made in accordance with scientific principles, observation, etc., so that the existence of the old fellow is, let's say, "legitimised" by virtue of its status as a scientific discovery.
Because it occurs to me, sometimes, that science moves forward by invalidating the previous hypothesis. And it also occurs to me that all scientific enquiry is tentative except in the debunking of a belief system that has been adopted without recourse to scientific method. As if "method" is all. Liked the letter in the Sunday papers today, pointing out that belief in an afterlife doesn't necessarily require a belief in a deity. If an atheist can believe in this life, why not the next?
I really should cut down on the caffeine.
Although maybe they're broad enough for this current life, and maybe that isn't my decision anyway. I shall listen to the teachers, finally, and stop/start fighting it - can't decide which is more appropriate. Debate for today: the virtues of "grounded" in context. Alternative debate for today, the scientific/religious debate again; two man-made standpoints that (a) assume that they're in opposition to each other, and (b) seem to assume - or one of them (perhaps necessarily) does - that they can adequately be addressed from inside the experience.
I shall [not] write a short story one day in which it is discovered, beyond doubt, that all this was set in train by a white-bearded old patriarch sitting on a throne on a cloud, attended by angels, with a set of pearly gates at the entrance to his, er, property. All the trimmings. And I shall ensure - this being the point of the story - that the discovery is made in accordance with scientific principles, observation, etc., so that the existence of the old fellow is, let's say, "legitimised" by virtue of its status as a scientific discovery.
Because it occurs to me, sometimes, that science moves forward by invalidating the previous hypothesis. And it also occurs to me that all scientific enquiry is tentative except in the debunking of a belief system that has been adopted without recourse to scientific method. As if "method" is all. Liked the letter in the Sunday papers today, pointing out that belief in an afterlife doesn't necessarily require a belief in a deity. If an atheist can believe in this life, why not the next?
I really should cut down on the caffeine.