Philosophy

"Was vernünftig ist, das ist Wirklich; und was wirklich ist, das ist vernünftig."

"Then philosophy was supposed to be the handmaiden of theology, humbly accepting its achievements, and asked to bring them into a clean logical order and present them in a plausible, conceptually demonstrable context. Now, philosophy is supposed to be the handmaiden of the other sciences. … Its task is to demonstrate the methods of the sciences."

"If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make reality the basis of our philosophy? I would say that I am a realist in the sense that I think there is a universe out there waiting to be investigated and understood. I regard the solipsist position that everything is the creation of our imagination as a waste of time. No one acts on that basis. But we cannot distinguish what is real about the universe without a theory. I therefore take the view, which has been described as simple-minded or naive, that a theory of physics is just a mathematical model that we use to describe the results of observations. A theory is a good theory if it is an elegant model, if it describes a wide class of observations, and if it predicts the results of new observations. Beyond that, it makes no sense to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what reality is independent of a theory. This view of scientific theories may make me an instrumentalist or a positivist --- as I have said above, I have been called both. The person who called me a positivist went on to add that everyone knew that positivism was out of date --- another case of refutation by denigration. It may indeed be out of date in that it was yesterday's intellectual fad, but the positivist position I have outlined seems the only possible one for someone who is seeking new laws, and new ways, to describe the universe. It is no good appealing to reality because we don't have a model-independent concept of reality."

"Two aspects of this older positivist view ... lack validity and impede understanding: ... the notion of a timeless based on rigorously objective observation and logic, and ... that earlier systems were either theory-free or theory-poor because explanation can only follow accurate description."

"If the positivist model of scientific knowledge is false, does it mean that the only cure is a thoroughgoing relativism? For the record, positivism is not the only game in town in the natural or social sciences. It is not the only conception of science. Marx's critique of bourgeois philosophy, political economy, and utopian socialism is the first stage leading to the affirmation of a dialectical materialist conception of science. Marx's rejection of empiricism, as the epistemological basis for science, is fundamentally a discarding of the empiricist premise—that science is exclusively descriptive and devoid of prescriptive tasks. The concepts of exploitation, class struggle, and the theory of reification, for example, possess both a descriptive and normative (critical) aspect for Marx. After all, Marx made it very plain: Capital is A Critique of Political Economy. Hence, Hume's fork has no place at a Marxist dinner table."

"Whatever the deity which satisfied Arnold's personal experience may have been, the religion which he gives us in Literature and Dogma and God and the Bible is neither Deism nor bare Pan-Deism, but a diluted Positivism. As an ethical system it is in theory admirable, but its positive value is in the highest degree questionable. Pascal's judgment upon the God who emerged from the philosophical investigations of Rene Descartes was that He was a God who was unnecessary. And one may with even greater truth say that the man who is able to receive and live by the religion which Arnold offers him is no longer in need of its help and stimulus. To be able to appreciate an ethical idealism a man must himself be already an ethical idealist."

"Positivism and ordinary language analysis … repel students who come with the humanizing questions. Professors of these schools simply would not and could not talk about anything important, and they themselves do not represent a philosophic life for the students."

"What is metaphysics? Let us explain clearly: if by metaphysics, in the broadest sense of the word, we mean “the general theory of the universe”, that theory which, in other words, embraces and explains all its manifestations, then positivism, which proclaims itself to be the negator and destroyer of metaphysics, has itself created a complete and proper metaphysics."

"The simple-minded positivism that believes it has found a firm ground of certainty if it only excludes all mental phenomena from consideration and holds fast to observable facts."

"The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same. The basic fallacy, taking precedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on the model of truth."

"The restriction of rationality to the use of means which is legitimized by this view [positivism], entails that the other aspect of the practical problematic, the realm of ends, falls prey to pure decisionism, the whim of mere decisions not reflected upon by reason. The decisionism of unreflected, arbitrary decisions in the realm of practice corresponds to the positivism implied by the restriction to pure value-free theories in the realm of cognition."

"Underlying the concept of positivity is the conviction that the positive is intrinsically positive in itself, without anyone pausing to ask what is to be regarded as positive. ... It is significant and really quite interesting that the term 'positive' actually contains this ambivalence. On the one hand, 'positive' means what is given, is postulated, is there—as when we speak of positivism as the philosophy that sticks to the facts. But, equally, 'positive' also refers to the good, the approvable, in a certain sense, the ideal. And I imagine that this semantic constellation expresses with precision what countless people actually feel to be the case."

"The error in positivism is that it takes as its standard of truth the contingently given division of labor, that between the science and social praxis as well as that within science itself, and allows no theory that could reveal the division of labor to be itself derivative and mediated and thus strip it of its false authority."

"The departmentalization of mind is a means of abolishing mind where it is not exercised ex officio, under contract."

"Oh, never star Was lost here, but it rose afar! Look East, where whole new thousands are! In Vishnu-land what Avatar?"

"India has from ancient times held strongly a belief in the reality of the Avatara, the descent into form, the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In the West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it has been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without any roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But in India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedantic view of life and taken firm root in the consciousness of the people. All existence is a manifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be except as either a real figuring or else a figment of that one reality. Therefore every conscious being is in part or in some way a descent of the Infinite into the apparent finiteness of name and form. But it is a veiled manifestation and there is a gradation between the supreme being of the Divine and the consciousness shrouded partly or wholly by ignorance of self in the finite. 66"

""Waverley" was the avater of a new era ;"

"The Avatar appears in different forms, under different names, at different times, in different parts of the world. As his appearance always coincides with the spiritual birth of man, so the period immediately preceding his manifestation is always one in which humanity suffers from the pangs of the approaching birth."

"When I say I am the Avatar, there are a few who feel happy, some who feel shocked, and many who hearing me claim this, would take me for a hypocrite, a fraud, a supreme egoist, or just mad. If I were to say every one of you is an Avatar, a few would be tickled, and many would consider it a blasphemy or a joke. The fact that God being One, Indivisible and equally in us all, we can be nought else but one, is too much for the duality-conscious mind to accept. Yet each of us is what the other is. I know I am the Avatar in every sense of the word, and that each one of you is an Avatar in one sense or the other. It is an unalterable and universally recognized fact since time immemorial that God knows everything. God does everything, and that nothing happens but by the Will of God. Therefore it is God who makes me say I am the Avatar, and that each one of you is an Avatar. Again, it is He Who is tickled through some, and through others is shocked. It is God Who acts, and God Who reacts. It is He Who scoffs, and He Who responds. He is the Creator, the Producer, the Actor and the Audience in His own Divine Play."

"Irrespective of doubts and convictions, and for the Infinite Love I bear for one and all, I continue to come as the Avatar, to be judged time and again by humanity in its ignorance, in order to help man distinguish the Real from the false."

"Whether there have been 26 Avatars since Adam, or 124,000 Prophets, as is sometimes claimed, or whether Jesus Christ was the last and only Messiah, or Muhammad the last Prophet, is all immaterial and insignificant when eternity and reality are under consideration. It matters very little to dispute whether there have been ten or twenty-six or a million Avatars. The truth is that the Avatar is always one and the same, and that the five Sadgurus bring about the advent of the Avatar on earth. This has been going on cycle after cycle, and millions of such cycles must have passed by, and will continue to pass by, without affecting eternity in the least."

"Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us."

"While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information."

"The definition of random in terms of a physical operation is notoriously without effect on the mathematical operations of statistical theory because so far as these mathematical operations are concerned random is purely and simply an undefined term."

"One of us recalls producing a 'random' plot with only 11 planes, and being told by his computer center's programming consultant that he had misused the random number generator: 'We guarantee that each number is random individually, but we don’t guarantee that more than one of them is random.' Figure that out."

"Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin."

"For I do not believe that it is through the interference of Divine Providence … that the spittle of a certain person moved, fell on a certain gnat in a certain place, and killed it."

"Quand une regle est fort composée, ce qui luy est conforme, passe pour irrégulier."

"A random sequence is a vague notion in which each term is unpredictable to the uninitiated and whose digits pass a certain number of tests traditional with statisticians and depending somewhat on the uses to which the sequence is to be put."

"The sun comes up just about as often as it goes down, in the long run, but this doesn't make its motion random."

"Random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random."

"Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe — in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance."

"The fact that randomness requires a physical rather than a mathematical source is noted by almost everyone who writes on the subject, and yet the oddity of this situation is not much remarked."

"Fretting about a dearth of randomness seems like worrying that humanity might use up its last reserves of ignorance."

"Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen."

"Randomness is a very, very subtle concept with its study properly belonging to statisticians more than mathematicians."

"Perhaps randomness is not merely an adequate description for complex causes that we cannot specify. Perhaps the world really works this way, and many events are uncaused in any conventional sense of the word."

"Events may appear to us to be random, but this could be attributed to human ignorance about the details of the processes involved."

"The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."

"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."

"He who believes this (atomism) may as well believe that if a great quantity of the one-and-twenty letters, composed either of gold or any other matter, were thrown upon the ground, they would fall into such order as legibly to form the Annals of Ennius. I doubt whether fortune could make a single verse of them."

"How dare we speak of the laws of chance? Is not chance the antithesis of all law?"

"God is everywhere. There is no place where God is not. The more you pay attention to Him, the more He pays attention to you. You cry out to Him, “Where art Thou, my God?” And He answers, “I am present, my child! I am always beside you.” Both inside and outside, above and below, wherever you turn, everything shouts, “God!” In Him we live and move. We breathe God, we eat God, we clothe ourselves with God. Everything praises and blesses God. All of creation shouts His praise. Everything animate and inanimate speaks wondrously and glorifies the Creator. Let every breath praise the Lord!"

"These distinctions make sense only when AR [absolute perfection in some respects, relative perfection in all others] is assumed (hence Spinoza's failure, who assumed mere A). Just as AR is the whole positive content of perfection, so CW, or the conception of the Creator-and-the-Whole-of-what-he-has-created as constituting one life, the super-whole which in its everlasting essence is uncreated (and does not necessitate just the parts which the whole has) but in its de facto concreteness is created — this panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations. Thus ARCW, or absolute-relative panentheism, is the one doctrine that really states the whole of what all theists, if not all atheists as/well, are implicitly talking about."

"The panentheistic God/universe setup is like a mutual admiration society: God needs you, and you need God. … God depends on the world, and the world depends on God … Since God is always growing, or "in process," he never perfectly achieves his aims. In metaphorical terms, God is always on the path but he never reaches his destination. The actual is what he is; the potential is what he is eternally becoming."

"It is impossible to place any high value on mental work, unless we believe that it has a cosmic setting, and that behind human undertakings there is the support of a Divine Power. Thus religious conviction is looked upon with no disfavour, but it is rather an admission of infinity into man's finite life, an acknowledgment of an unseen order of things, than a movement toward a new world not to be gained save through shock and revolution. There is much closer kinship to Panentheism, the creed of the noblest minds of the Renaissance, than to the distinctively Christian view which these men incline to look upon as a mere refuge for the weak and sickly. Religion for them is rather an invisible Presence which attends their work than a specific form of spiritual experience."

"Various advocates and critics of panentheism find evidence of incipient or implicit forms of panentheism present in religious thought as early as 1300 BCE. Hartshorne discovers the first indication of panentheistic themes in Ikhnaton (1375–1358 BCE), the Egyptian pharaoh often considered the first monotheist. In his poetic description of the sun god, Ikhnaton avoids both the separation of God from the world that will characterize theism and the identification of God with the world that will characterize pantheism … Early Vedantic thought, as well as some modern Indian thought, implies panentheism in non-Advaita forms that understand non-dualism as inclusive of differences."

"In Emerson's case, we know who the god was — even his name and address. His utterances are too highly differentiated for mistake. The divine voice is of course one. All things are one to Emerson. But the one in this instance seems sufficiently distinguished from its other articulatenesses to involve a polytheistic rather than a generally immanent explanation. To us the god is inescapably Emerson himself; it is at least excusable, practically, to identify what you find in no other conjunction. Naturally the inference is that we are all gods, and no doubt Emerson would willingly have adopted, with whatever modifications, the current “panentheism” which unites his pantheism with theism, for though he never lost sight of the existence of the many he always saw them as ultimately resident in the one."

"Since God is continuously present, why do you worry? For in Him we live and move. We are carried in His arms. We breathe God; we are vested with God; we touch God; we consume God in the Mystery. Wherever you turn, wherever you look, God is everywhere: in the heavens, on the earth, in the abysses, in the trees, within the rocks, in your nous, in your heart."

"It is important here to underscore panentheism (with the en in the middle) which is not to be confused with 'pantheism' (without the 'en' in the middle). The former signifies the immanent nature of God without a transcendent spirit, whereas the latter is nature worship characteristic of many pagan faiths, at least as characterized by their opponents. Panentheism refers to the world as God and at the same time God remaining transcendent. This dual character of God is central to integral unity. God is the unchangeable transcendent and also everything that exists, and hence ever in flux. Charles Hartshorne, a prominent philosopher and theologian, introduced the term 'panentheism' into the Western lexicon after his detailed study of Hindu metaphysics in the 1930s (especially Ramanuja and Sri Jiva Goswami)."