The REM state of reason

11/8/2017

Whether or not a hypothesis can be falsified is not the point. It's a point, but not the point. The human mind comes up with gods as well as monsters, moralities as well as their opposites. It can't prosper if it is limited to the middle ground between the two. Pace Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World, Random House, 1995), I'm happy with the dragon in my garage, and when I think about it, I'm not concerned with proving it true or false.
Deferring also to Karl Popper (various, but let's go with The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Routledge, 1959), susceptibility to falsification does not imply an obligation to falsify; quite the opposite, IMH(sic)O. The human mind, the creative imagination, does not perform most effectively under test conditions. It is there to be encouraged, guided, educated in the possibilities of the world, the universe, and if you like, the Creation. Not stopped. Not met with contradiction. In our understanding of everything around us, I suspect, we are as children.
The dragon in Carl Sagan's garage may (or may not) have died with him, but the dragon in my garage is still keeping me busy. We don't make progress by identifying what can't be done. We don't innovate by placing sensible limits on our creativity.

Long before the road was built, the owner of Gyllyngdune House and its Gardens in Falmouth, the Reverend Coope, built this as a place to meditate. See also the picture below. In the distance is Pendennis Castle.

Mind you, if we're looking for revealing inconsistencies in human behaviour, the opposition of organised science to the wilder shores of imagined truth pales into insignificance next to the opposition of organised religion to spirituality. In the West, whole studio discussions about religion and its purpose can go by without mention of the Deity. What are we suppressing when we organise ourselves - sorry, organise each other?

Known as the 'Chapel', apparently, although not in any formal way adopted for that purpose. Bottom right.

Not that this means anything necessarily, and I'm only mentioning it because it just came into my head, but I've noticed that ghosts are going viral. By which I don't mean that they're everywhere (although ... cue creepy music), but that these days, formerly supernatural afflictions have become viruses. Today's vampire, or zombie, is as likely to be infected by a virus as to have been bitten by something (that's great; keep playing!) from beyond the grave. Am I watching the wrong box sets?

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

What happens here

This site is updated weekly, usually on a Friday although I might change that (again). I write it because (1) I like writing it and (2) I like having a deadline. More often than not, it works out as a commentary on the week just passed*.
There are no ads, no pop-ups and no tricky business with cookies. I don't take money for my own opinions. [Except when they come out in book form.] I write this for myself, without a set agenda, on any subject that catches my attention. If you're interested enough, it's not hard to work out my interests. Not impossible, anyway.
*Although I seem to have gone away from that recently. Normal service may or may not be resumed.

No data is kept on this website overnight. Blog posts are usually shared to my Facebook page. We can discuss them there if you feel so inclined.

There's a page for this, but maybe you'd like to see the cover here?

Where are we now? We're hurtling round the sun, held to the ground by a weak force that we don’t begin to understand, arguing about trade deals between the land masses on a planet mostly covered by water.
The dolphins must think us ridiculous. No wonder they only come to the shallow water to play with us, not to signal their most complex philosophies. More.

Riddle. It takes two to make me, but when I'm made, I'm only a memory. What am I? Scroll down to find out.

Is that a catastrophe I see before me? Could be. There was a clear sky earlier, but now clouds are encroaching from the North. We could be in for a storm. More.

You found me!
Welcome. Thank you for coming. But am I the right
William Essex? Click here
to meet some more.

Read My Shorts?

Here is yet another page of old blog posts and other writings. Sorry, but I need my metaphorical sock drawer for metaphorical socks. The link to the page is right at the end of the paragraph here.

A very green picture. I can't remember where I took this.

Roads without end

Here is a passage from a review of the book The Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart. I haven't read the book (yet), but the collected reviews would make a worthwhile set of political arguments in their own right. More.

Also available in English. Look further down.

State of the Union

Several commentators today saying that they've lost confidence in the US. Making their point by talking up the glories of the past. After two weeks of this administration, they're not going back.
Were they wrong, and they've seen the light? Or has the US changed? I guess the latter is the intended meaning. But we should at least acknowledge the possibility... More.

Categories
(Started 4th November 2017; forgotten shortly after that.)

Kitchen parenting

I have teenage children. When they're home, sooner or later one of them will come to me and say: "Dad! We're going to make a mess in the kitchen!
   "Great!" I will reply, picking up on the tone of voice. "What are you going to do?"
    "We thought we'd slice up some peppers and onion and bits of chicken and leave them glued to the bottom of the frying pan. Burn something in one of the saucepans and leave it floating in the sink."
    "Anything else?" More.

Variously available online, in a range of formats.

No pinpricks

Okay, so a certain President recently made a speech to his people, in which he told them that their country's military "don't do pinpricks". His intention was to get across that when those soldiers do a "limited" or even "targeted" strike, it hurts. But those of us in the cynical wing of the listening public took it the other way. More.

Making mistakes

We all make mistakes in our relationships. Some are mistakes that can be corrected with an apology. Sometimes - "if only I'd said that, and not that." Sometimes, they're mistakes that are incomprehensible even to ourselves, and sometimes, we do things that show us up as not quite the likeable hero of our own story that we want to think we are. More.

Man down?

There's a report by the Samaritans about men and suicide. It's titled Men, Suicide and Society, and it finds that men are more likely to take their own lives than women (in the UK and ROI). More.

Offending the status quo

Looking at both the US election and the revived Brexit debate in the UK, the question is not: who wins? but: how did we get here? More.

Thinks: populism

Bright, sunny morning. Breeze. Weather forecast said fog, but it's a blue sky overlaid with vapour trails. Windy season, drifts of Autumn-coloured leaves. Thinking, on this morning's walk, about populism. More.

Early morning, Church Street, Falmouth

9th May 2014

On the day that I wrote this, the early news told us of a parade in Moscow to celebrate Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Crimea remained annexed, and the Russia/Ukraine crisis was not resolved. At around half eight, the BBC’s reporter in Moscow was cut off in mid-sentence summarising the military display; the Today programme on Radio 4 cut to the sports news. More.

Riddle. What are you? You're a conversation!