TERMS STARTING WITH
postulate: Can be taken to mean an axiom, although some maintain a distinction between the two. Although there may not be any consenses in such distinctions.
postulated ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Postulate ::: a. --> Assumed without proof; as, a postulated inference.
postulate ::: n. --> Something demanded or asserted; especially, a position or supposition assumed without proof, or one which is considered as self-evident; a truth to which assent may be demanded or challenged, without argument or evidence.
The enunciation of a self-evident problem, in distinction from an axiom, which is the enunciation of a self-evident theorem.
postulates ::: things assumed without proof as being self-evident or generally accepted, esp. when used as a basis for an argument.
Postulate - A proposition which is considered as true in order to give a basis for further logical reasoning.
Postulate: (Lat. postulatum; Ger. Postulat) In Kant (1) An indemonstrable practical or moral hypothesis, such as the reality of God, freedom, or immortality, belief in which is necessary for the performance of our moral duty. (2) Any of three principles of the general category of modality, called by Kant "postulates of empirical thought." See Modality and Kantianism. -- O.F.K.
Postulate: See Mathematics. Potency: (Scholastic) Potency is opposed to act as asserted of being. It means the capacity of being or of being thus. Prime matter (q.v.) is pure potency, indetermined in regard to actual corporeal being. Any change or development or, generally, becoming presupposes a corresponding potency. Some potencies belong to the nature of a thing, others are merely passive and consist in non-repugnance. Thus to be thrown is not due to a potency strictly speaking in the stone which has, in regard to this a "merely obediential" potency. The first kind is also called operative potency. -- R.A.
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. "The postulate is that the only things which shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience. . . .
(2) a proposition about a method of obtaining knowledge: that every hypothesis should be subjected to continual testing; that the only or the best or a reliable method of obtaining knowledge of one or more of the above kinds is to doubt until something indubitable or as nearly indubitable as possible is found; that wherever evidence is indecisive, judgment should be suspended; that knowledge of all or certain kinds at some point rests on unproved postulates or assumptions;
2. The attempted clarification of the basic concepts, presuppositions and postulates of the sciences, and the revelation of the empirical, rational, or pragmatic grounds upon which they are presumed to rest. This aspect of the philosophy of science is closely related to the foregoing but includes, in addition to the logical and epistemological subject-matter, a large portion of metaphysics. Roughly, the task here is two-fold. On the one hand it involves the critical analysis of certain basic notions, such as quantity, quality, time, space, cause and law, which are used by the scientist but not subjected to examination. On the other hand it includes a similar study of certain presupposed beliefs, such as the belief in an external world, the belief in the uniformity of nature, and the belief in the rationality of natural processes.
(5) an attitude, belief, postulate, assumption, assertion, or tendency favoring any of the above propositions or methods; an attitude of complete or dogmatic disbelief, an attitude involving greater inclination to disbelief than to belief; an attitude involving no greater inclination to belief than to disbelief nor to disbelief than to belief, but favoring dispassionate consideration. Scepticism may be treated as such attitudes, beliefs, etc., as applied to all or only certain particular propositions;
(5) For a straight line L0 which intersects two other straight lines, L1 and L2, there are two pairs of angles formed between L0 and L1 as well as L0 and L2 on the same side of L0. If L1 and L2 were to be extended indefinitely on the side of L0 where the sum of the two angles add to less than half a revolution (180o) then those extensions intersect each other - This is also known as the parallel postulate, one important distinction between Euclidean geometry and non-Euclidean geometry.
(6) a proposition negating the sincerity, rectitude, or existence of motives of human conduct other than selfish or at least negating their significance in human affairs, or a proposition expressing lack of confidence in the worth or hope of success of any one or all of man's enterprises (cynicism), or an attitude, belief, postulate, assumption, assertion, or tendency favoring such propositions, or moroseness, surliness, or pessimism growing out of cynicism or any of the aforesaid attitudes, beliefs, etc. Confusion of cynicism with other conceptions of scepticism may result in great misunderstanding and harm. See Pyrrhonism, agnosticism. -- M.T.K.
According to a view which is widely held by mathematicians, it is characteristic of a mathematical discipline that it begins with a set of undefined elements, properties, functions, and relations, and a set of unproved propositions (called axioms or postulates) involving them; and that from these all other propositions (called theorems) of the discipline are to be derived by the methods of formal logic. On its face, as thus stated, this view would identify mathematics with applied logic. It is usually added, however, that the undefined terms, which appear in the role of names of undefined elements, etc., are not really names of particulars at all but are variables, and that the theorems are to be regarded as proved for any values of these variables which render the postulates true. If then each theorem is replaced by the proposition embodying the implication from the conjunction of the postulates to the theorem in question, we have a reduction of mathematics to pure logic. (For a particular example of a set of postulates for a mathematical discipline see the article Arithmetic, foundations of.)
Ahriman: (Middle Persian) Zoroaster, in building upon an ancient Indo-Iranian antecedent, expounded a thoroughgoing dualism in which Ormazd (s.v.) is the good, Ahriman the evil principle, corresponding to the Christian God and Devil, locked in combat on all levels of thought and existence. In that they are reciprocal and of a dialectic necessity, this dualism has, philosophically, the implication of a monism which was, indeed, ethically and eschatologically elaborated in the Zoroastrian optimism that postulates the ultimate victory of Ahura Mazdah (s.v.) or Ormazd. -- K.F.L.
Akasa: (Skr.) "Ether"; space) in Indian philosophy the continuum that is to be postulated in connection with the paramanus (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
A like result may be obtained for the functional calculus of order omega (theory of types) by utilizing a representation of it within the Zermelo set theory. It is thus in a certain sense impossible to postulate the non-enumerable infinite: any set of postulates designed to do so will have an unintended interpretation within the enumerable. Usual sets of mathematical postulates for the real number system (see number) have an appearance to the contrary only because they are incompletely formalized (i.e., the mathematical concepts are formalized, while the underlying logic remains unformalized and indefinite).
Als Ob: (Ger. as if) Fictional; hypothetical; postulated; pragmatic. The term was given currency by Hans Vaihinger's Die Philosophic des Als Ob (1911), which developed the thesis that our knowledge rests on a network of artfully contrived fictions which are not verifiable but pragmatically justifiable. While such fictions, employed in all fields of human knowledge and endeavor, deliberately falsify or circumvent the stream of immediate impressions, they greatly enhance reality. -- O.F.K.
Analogy: Originally a mathematical term, Analogia, meaning equality of ratios (Euclid VII Df. 20, V. Dfs. 5, 6), which entered Plato's philosophy (Republic 534a6), where it also expressed the epistemological doctrine that sensed things are related as their mathematical and ideal correlates. In modern usage analogy was identified with a weak form of reasoning in which "from the similarity of two things in certain particulars, their similarity in other particulars is inferred." (Century Dic.) Recently, the analysis of scientific method has given the term new significance. The observable data of science are denoted by concepts by inspection, whose complete meaning is given by something immediately apprehendable; its verified theory designating unobservable scientific objects is expressed by concepts by postulation, whose complete meaning is prescribed for them by the postulates of the deductive theory in which they occur. To verify such theory relations, termed epistemic correlations (J. Un. Sc. IX: 125-128), are required. When these are one-one, analogy exists in a very precise sense, since the concepts by inspection denoting observable data are then related as are the correlated concepts by postulation designating unobservable scientific objects. -- F.S.C.N. Analogy of Pythagoras: (Gr. analogia) The equality of ratios, or proportion, between the lengths of the strings producing the consonant notes of the musical scale. The discovery of these ratios is credited to Pythagoras, who is also said to have applied the principle of mathematical proportion to the other arts, and hence to have discovered, in his analogy, the secret of beauty in all its forms. -- G.R.M.
Anaximenes: (6th Cent. B.C.) With Thales and Anaximander he belongs to the Milesian School of Greek Philosophy; as an Ionian he sought a cosmic material element which would explain the manifold processes of the natural world and declared this to be air. Air, he felt, had the attribute of Infinity which would account for the varieties of nature more readily than water, which his predecessor Thales had postulated. Cf. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, Diels, Frag. d. Vorsokr. -- M.F.
An important mathematical example of continuous order is afforded by the real numbers, ordered by the relation not greater than. According to usual geometric postulates, the points on a straight line also have continuous order, and, indeed, have the same order type as the real numbers.
anitya. [alt. anityatA] (P. anicca; T. mi rtag pa; C. wuchang; J. mujo; K. musang 無常). In Sanskrit, "impermanence"; the first of the "three marks" (TRILAKsAnA) of existence, along with suffering (DUḤKHA), and nonself (ANATMAN). "Impermanence" refers to the fact that compounded objects (SAMSKṚTA) created by causes (HETU) and conditions (PRATYAYA) are inevitably subject to change, decline, and finally destruction. Because conditioned objects are subject to such impermanence, they are seen to be unsuitable objects for either desire (LOBHA) or hatred (DVEsA), thus prompting the meditator to turn away from conditioned objects and toward the unconditioned (ASAMSKṚTA). Mistaking what is in fact impermanent for something permanent is one of the four fundamental "inverted views" (VIPARYASA) and a primary cause of suffering. Two kinds of impermanence (see ER WUCHANG) are sometimes delineated: "impermanence marked by a successive period" (S. prabandhAnitya, C. xiangxu wuchang), i.e., when an event or length of time has elapsed, such as the ending of a human life or the waning daylight at dusk; and "impermanence that occurs at every thought-instant" (S. ksanikAnitya, C. niannian wuchang), i.e., the inexorable change that is taking place anytime and anywhere, even before an event has come to an end (e.g., even before a person's biological death, the person "dies" every instant in the continuum of flux that defines his existence). ¶ In the SARVASTIVADA ABHIDHARMA system, anityatA (more technically "desinence," viz., death) is treated as a "conditioned force dissociated from thought" (CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKARA), which functions as one of the four conditioned characteristics (CATURLAKsAnA, SAMSKṚTALAKsAnA) that are associated with all conditioned objects. Because the ontology of the SarvAstivAda school, as its name implies, postulated that "everything exists" in all three time periods (TRIKALA) of past, present, and future, the school had to posit some mechanism through which to account for the apparent change that conditioned objects underwent through time. Therefore, along with the other three characteristics of birth (JATI), continuance (STHITI), and senescence (JARA), desinence was posited as a "conditioned force dissociated from thought" that serves as the predominant condition of an object's death. The very definition of conditioned objects is that they are subject to these conditioned characteristics, including this inevitability of death, and this is what ultimately distinguishes them from the unconditioned (asaMskṛta), viz., NIRVAnA.
Antitypy: The property of concepts or objects of thought to resist attribution of qualities or postulates incompatible with their semantic value and ontological nature. -- T.G.
Aristotle's Illusion: See Aristotle's Experiment. Arithmetic, foundations of: Arithmetic (i.e., the mathematical theory of the non-negative integers, 0, 1, 2, . . .) may be based on the five following postulates, which are due to Peano (and Dedekind, from whom Peano's ideas were partly derived): N(0) N(x) ⊃x N(S(x)). N(x) ⊃x [N(y) ⊃y [[S(x) = S(y)] ⊃x [x = y]]]. N(x) ⊃x ∼[S(x) = 0]. F(0)[N(x)F(x) ⊃x F(S(x))] ⊃F [N(x) ⊃x F(x)] The undefined terms are here 0, N, S, which may be interpreted as denoting, respectively, the non-negative integer 0, the propositional function to be a non-negative integer, and the function +1 (so that S(x) is x+l). The underlying logic may be taken to be the functional calculus of second order (Logic, formal, § 6), with the addition of notations for descriptions and for functions from individuals to individuals, and the individual constant 0, together with appropriate modifications and additions to the primitive formulas and primitive rules of inference (the axiom of infinity is not needed because the Peano postulates take its place). By adding the five postulates of Peano as primitive formulas to this underlying logic, a logistic system is obtained which is adequate to extant elementary number theory (arithmetic) and to all methods of proof which have found actual employment in elementary number theory (and are normally considered to belong to elementary number theory). But of course, the system, if consistent, is incomplete in the sense of Gödel's theorem (Logic, formal, § 6).
As regards the evolution of mankind, the Secret Doctrine postulates three new propositions, which stand in direct antagonism to modern science as well as to current religious dogmas: it teaches (a) the simultaneous evolution of seven human groups on seven different portions of our globe; (b) the birth of the astral, before the physical body: the former being a model for the latter; and (c) that man, in this Round, preceded every mammalian — the anthropoids included — in the animal kingdom. — 2:1
Assumption: A proposition which is taken or posed in order to draw inferences from it; or the act of so taking, posing, or assuming a proposition. The motive for an assumption may be (but need not necessarily be) a belief in the truth, or possible truth, of the proposition assumed; or the motive may be an attempt to refute the proposition by reductio ad absurdum (q.v.). The word assumption has also sometimes been used as a synonym of axiom, or postulate (see the article Mathematics). -- A.C.
assumption ::: n. --> The act of assuming, or taking to or upon one&
Atom ::: This word comes to us from the ancient Greek philosophers Democritus, Leucippus, and Epicurus, andthe hundreds of great men who followed their lead in this respect and who were therefore also atomists -such, for instance, as the two Latin poets Ennius and Lucretius. This school taught that atoms were thefoundation-bricks of the universe, for atom in the original etymological sense of the word meanssomething that cannot be cut or divided, and therefore as being equivalent to particles of whattheosophists call homogeneous substance. But modern scientists do not use the word atom in that senseany longer. Some time ago the orthodox scientific doctrine concerning the atom was basically thatenunciated by Dalton, to the general effect that physical atoms were hard little particles of matter,ultimate particles of matter, and therefore indivisible and indestructible.But modern science [1933] has a totally new view of the physical atom, for it knows now that the atom isnot such, but is composite, builded of particles still more minute, called electrons or charges of negativeelectricity, and of other particles called protons or charges of positive electricity, which protons aresupposed to form the nucleus or core of the atomic structure. A frequent picture of atomic structure isthat of an atomic solar system, the protons being the atomic sun and the electrons being its planets, thelatter in extremely rapid revolution around the central sun. This conception is purely theosophical in idea,and adumbrates what occultism teaches, though occultism goes much farther than does modern science.One of the fundamental postulates of the teachings of theosophy is that the ultimates of nature are atomson the material side and monads on the energy side. These two are respectively material and spiritualprimates or ultimates, the spiritual ones or monads being indivisibles, and the atoms being divisibles -things that can be divided into composite parts.It becomes obvious from what precedes that the philosophical idea which formed the core of the teachingof the ancient initiated atomists was that their atoms or "indivisibles" are pretty close to whattheosophical occultism calls monads; and this is what Democritus and Leucippus and others of theirschool had in mind.These monads, as is obvious, are therefore divine-spiritual life-atoms, and are actually beings living andevolving on their own planes. Rays from them are the highest parts of the constitution of beings in thematerial realms.
Attempts to prove the parallel postulate from the other postulates of Euclidean geometry were unsuccessful. The undertaking of Saccheri (1733) to make a proof by reductio ad absurdum of the parallel postulate by deducing consequences of its negation did, however, lead to his developing many of the theorems of what is now known as hyperbolic geometry. The proposal that this hyperbolic geometry, in which Euclid's parallel postulate is replaced by its negation, is a system equally valid with the Euclidean originated with Bolyai and Lobachevsky (independently, c 1825). Proof of the self-consistency of hyperbolic geometry, and thus of the impossibility of Saccheri's undertaking, is contained in results of Cayley (1859) and was made explicit by Klein in 1871; for the two-dimensional case another proof was given by Beltrami in 1868.
Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430. St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents. Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided. Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients. S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings"). This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism). (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment. Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect. Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good." In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love. In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909). Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint. The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value. (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey). (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience. (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria. (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers: subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists); logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality); metaphysical objectivism (values --or norms or ideals --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.
belief revision ::: (artificial intelligence) The area of theory change in which preservation of the information in the theory to be changed plays a key role.A fundamental issue in belief revision is how to decide what information to retract in order to maintain consistency, when the addition of a new belief to a priority can be retracted. This ordering can be difficult to generate and maintain.The postulates of the AGM Theory for Belief Revision describe minimal properties a revision process should have.[Better definition?] (1995-03-20)
belief revision "artificial intelligence" The area of {theory change} in which preservation of the information in the theory to be changed plays a key role. A fundamental issue in belief revision is how to decide what information to retract in order to maintain consistency, when the addition of a new belief to a theory would make it inconsistent. Usually, an ordering on the sentences of the theory is used to determine priorities among sentences, so that those with lower priority can be retracted. This ordering can be difficult to generate and maintain. The postulates of the {AGM Theory for Belief Revision} describe minimal properties a revision process should have. [Better definition?] (1995-03-20)
postulate: Can be taken to mean an axiom, although some maintain a distinction between the two. Although there may not be any consenses in such distinctions.
postulated ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Postulate ::: a. --> Assumed without proof; as, a postulated inference.
postulate ::: n. --> Something demanded or asserted; especially, a position or supposition assumed without proof, or one which is considered as self-evident; a truth to which assent may be demanded or challenged, without argument or evidence.
The enunciation of a self-evident problem, in distinction from an axiom, which is the enunciation of a self-evident theorem.
postulates ::: things assumed without proof as being self-evident or generally accepted, esp. when used as a basis for an argument.
Causa sui: Cause of itself; necessary existence. Causa sui conveys both a negative and a positive meaning. Negatively, it signifies that which is from itself (a se), that which does not owe its being to something else; i.e., absolute independence of being, causelessness (God as uncaused). Positively, causa sui means that whose very nature or essence involves existence; i.e., God is the ground of his own being, and regarded as "cause" of his own being, he is, as it were, efficient cause of his own existence (Descartes). Since existence necessarily follows from the very essence of that which is cause of itself, causa sui is defined as that whose nature cannot be conceived as not existing (Spinoza). -- A.G.A.B. Causality: (Lat. causa) The relationship between a cause and its effect. This relationship has been defined as a relation between events, processes, or entities in the same time series, such that when one occurs, the other necessarily follows (sufficient condition), when the latter occurs, the former must have preceded (necessary condition), both conditions a and b prevail (necessary and sufficient condition), when one occurs under certain conditions, the other necessarily follows (contributory, but not sufficient, condition) ("multiple causality" would be a case involving several causes which are severally contributory and jointly sufficient); the necessity in these cases is neither that of logical implication nor that of coercion; a relation between events, processes, or entities in the same time series such that when one occurs the other invariably follows (invariable antecedence), a relation between events, processes, or entities such that one has the efficacy to produce or alter the other; a relation between events, processes, or entities such that without one the other could not occur, as in the relation between the material out of which a product is made and the finished product (material cause), structure or form and the individual embodying it (formal cause), a goal or purpose (whether supposed to exist in the future as a special kind of entity, outside a time series, or merely as an idea of the pur-poser) and the work fulfilling it (final cause), a moving force and the process or result of its action (efficient cause); a relation between experienced events, processes, or entities and extra-experiential but either temporal or non-temporal events, processes, or entities upon whose existence the former depend; a relation between a thing and itself when it is dependent upon nothing else for its existence (self-causality); a relation between an event, process, or entity and the reason or explanation for its being; a relation between an idea and an experience whose expectation the idea arouses because of customary association of the two in this sequence; a principle or category introducing into experience one of the aforesaid types of order; this principle may be inherent in the mind, invented by the mind, or derived from experience; it may be an explanatory hypothesis, a postulate, a convenient fiction, or a necessary form of thought. Causality has been conceived to prevail between processes, parts of a continuous process, changing parts of an unchanging whole, objects, events, ideas, or something of one of these types and something of another. When an entity, event, or process is said to follow from another, it may be meant that it must succeed but can be neither contemporaneous with nor prior to the other, that it must either succeed or be contemporaneous with and dependent upon but cannot precede the other, or that one is dependent upon the other but they either are not in the same time series or one is in no time series at all.
Circle In the description of cosmological symbols, the first figure is a circle: ever-eternal, universal nature, the abstract space of a cosmic hierarchy. The circle itself may be taken as the symbol of this first manifestation, the clean sheet of paper representing abstract space, the Boundless. This circle is in reality boundless, its circumference being ideal, representing the limits of our perceptions of physical or inner space, or the ideal boundary which must be postulated in our conceptions of infinitude.
Cohen, Hermann: (1842-1918) and Paul Natorp (1854-1924) were the chief leaders of the "Marburg School" which formed a definite branch of the Neo-Kantian movement. Whereas the original founders of this movement, O. Liebmann and Fr. A. Lange, had reacted to scientific empiricism by again calling attention to the a priori elements of cognition, the Marburg school contended that all cognition was exclusively a priori. They definitely rejected not only the notion of "things-in-themselves" but even that of anything immediately "given" in experience. There is no other reality than one posited by thought and this holds good equally for the object, the subject and God. Nor is thought in its effort to "determine the object = x" limited by any empirical data but solely by the laws of thought. Since in Ethics Kant himself had already endeavored to eliminate all empirical elements, the Marburg school was perhaps closer to him in this field than in epistemology. The sole goal of conduct is fulfillment of duty, i.e., the achievement of a society organized according to moral principles and satisfying the postulates of personal dignity. The Marburg school was probably the most influential philosophic trend in Germany in the last 25 years before the First World War. The most outstanding present-day champion of their tradition is Ernst Cassirer (born 1874). Cohen and Natorp tried to re-interpret Plato as well as Kant. Following up a suggestion first made by Lotze they contended that the Ideas ought to be understood as laws or methods of thought and that the current view ascribing any kind of existence to them was based on a misunderstanding of Aristotle's. -- H.G.
Concomitance: (Latin concomitantia, accompaniment), literally the act or state of being associated, the term has received wide currency in logic, particularly since John Stuart Mill clearly formulated the method of concomitant variations, as the concurrent existence, appearance or disappearance of certain characters which, under circumstances, admit but do not necessarily postulate causal interrelatedness. -- K.F.L.
Contradiction, law of, is given by traditional logicians as "A is B and A is not B cannot both be true." It is usually taken to be the theorem of the propositional calculus, ∼[p∼p]. In use, however, the name often seems to refer to the syntactical principle or precept which may be formulated as follows: A logical discipline containing (an applied) propositional calculus, or a set of hypotheses or postulates to be added to such a discipline, shall not lead to two theorems or consequences of the forms A and ∼A. The law is explicitly stated in a syntactical form, e.g. by Ledger Wood in his The Analysis of Knowledge (1940). -- A.C.
Cosmic Ideation Another name for divine thought, out of which springs the activity of universal mind — the collective aggregate of all individualized dhyani-chohanic consciousnesses everywhere. Theosophy postulates the appearance and disappearance of worlds, whether visible or invisible, as a continuous process, each world being a link in an endless chain of interlocking cosmic hierarchies. As one of these comes into manifested existence it is likened to an outbreathing of the divine breath, each such outbreathing being a thought of the cosmic ideation, this thought becoming a world. This divine breath, then, may be assumed to be cosmic ideation entering into the activity of manvantara; and cosmic ideation is the root again of all individual consciousness everywhere. Just as precosmic ideation is regarded as the root of consciousness, so precosmic substance is the spiritual substratum of matter. Thus manvantara is produced by means of the interlocking and interacting motion of cosmic ideation with primordial cosmic substance. Further, fohat is the intelligent energy behind this interlocking activity, which during manvantara joins these two together.
Darsana (Sanskrit) Darśana [from the verbal root dṛs to see, perceive] Seeing, vision, view, doctrine, philosophical opinion. In the plural, it refers particularly to the six schools (Shad-darsana) of ancient Hindu philosophy: 1) the Nyaya (Logical School); 2) the Vaiseshika (Atomistic School); 3) the Sankhya; 4) the Yoga; 5) the Purva-Mimamsa (First Vedantic School); and 6) the Uttara-Mimamsa (Latter or Superior Vedantic School). These are connected together by intimate links of philosophical principles and postulates, so that to understand accurately the full nature of the universe and of the entire human constitution as an entity, as elaborated by the great Indian thinkers who founded these six schools, one should study all six. The different systems of these schools comprise expositions, according to the ideas of the respective founders, of the mysteries of cosmic and human nature, from the spiritual to the physical, explained and philosophically illustrated.
Dedekind's postulate: If K1 and K2 are any two non-empty parts of K, such that every element of K belongs either to K1 or to K2 and every element of K1 precedes every element of K2, then there is at least one element x in K such that (1) any element that precedes x belongs to K1, and (2) any element that follows x belongs to K2. Here K is a class ordered by a relation R (see order), and it is said that y precedes z, and that z follows y, if yRz and y≠z. If K is densely ordered by R and in addition satisfies Dedekind's postulate, it is said to have continuous order. -- C.A.B.
Deduction: (Lat. deductio, a leading down) Necessary analytical inference. (a) In logic: inference in which a conclusion follows necessarily from one or more given premisses. Definitions given have usually required that the conclusion be of lesser generality than one of the premisses, and have sometimes explicitly excluded immediate inference; but neither restriction fits very well with the ordinary actual use of the word. (b) In psychology, analytical reasoning from general to particular or less general. The mental drawing of conclusions from given postulates. Deduction of the Categories: (In Kant: Deduktion der Kategorien) Transcendental deduction: An exposition of the nature and possibility of a priori forms and the explanation and justification of their use as necessary conditions of experience. Empirical deduction: Factual explanation of how concepts arise in experience and reflection. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.
Discrete: A class is said to have discrete order (e.g. the whole numbers), if (1) it satisfies Dedekind's postulate (q.v.) and (2) every element (except the first if any) has a next predecessor and also (except the last if any) a next successor. Contrasted with "dense" or "compact" order, such as that of the rational numbers, in which no element is next to any other. -- C.J.D.
Driesch, Hans Adolf Eduard: (1867-1940) An experimental biologist turned philosopher, he as a rationalist became the most prominent defender of a renovated vitalism. He excludes the physical-chemical level of reality from his vitalism. He asserts that every organism has its own entelechy. For what he terms phylogenetic development, a more inclusive vitalism of the whole evolutionary process, he postulates a super-personal phylogenetic entelechy. He offers an a priori justification of his vitalistic theory, and treats incisively the logic of the psychological. Main works: Philosophy of the Organism; Ordnungslehre, 1912; Wirklichkeitslehre, 1917; Alltagsrätsel des Seelenlebens, 1938; "Kausalität und Vitalismus" in Jahrbuch der Schopenhauer Gesellschaft, XVI, 1939.
epiphenomenalism ::: The view in philosophy of mind according to which physical events have mental effects, but mental events have no effects of any kind. In other words, the causal relations go only one way, from physical to mental. In recent times it is usually considered a type of dualism, because it postulates physical events but also non-physical mental events; but historically it has sometimes been thought a kind of monism, because of its sharp divergence from substance dualism.
(e) The problem of the A PRIORI, though the especial concern of the rationalist, confronts the empiricist also since few epistemologists are prepared to exclude the a priori entirely from their accounts of knowledge. The problem is that of isolating the a priori or non-empirical elements in knowledge and accounting for them in terms of the human reason. Three principal theories of the a priori have been advanced: the theory of the intrinsic A PRIORI which asserts that the basic principles of logic, mathematics, natural sciences and philosophy are self-evident truths recognizable by such intrinsic traits as clarity and distinctness of ideas. The intrinsic theory received its definitive modern expression in the theory of "innate ideas" (q.v.) of Herbert of Cherbury, Descartes, and 17th century rationalism. The presuppositional theory of the a priori which validates a priori truths by demonstrating that they are presupposed either by their attempted denial (Leibniz) or by the very possibility of experience (Kant). The postulational theory of the A PRIORI elaborated under the influence of recent postulational techniques in mathematics, interprets a priori principles as rules or postulates arbitrarily posited in the construction of formal deductive systems. See Postulate; Posit. (f) The problem of differentiating the principal kinds of knowledge is an essential task especially for an empirical epistemology. Perhaps the most elementary epistemological distinction is between non-inferential apprehension of objects by perception, memory, etc. (see Knowledge by Acquaintance), and inferential knowledge of things with which the knowing subject has no direct apprehension. See Knowledge by Description. Acquaintance in turn assumes two principal forms: perception or acquaintance with external objects (see Perception), and introspection or the subject's acquaintance with the "self" and its cognitive, volitional and affective states. See Introspection; Reflection. Inferential knowledge includes knowledge of other selves (this is not to deny that knowledge of other minds may at times be immediate and non-inferential), historical knowledge, including not only history in the narrower sense but also astronomical, biological, anthropological and archaeological and even cosmological reconstructions of the past and finally scientific knowledge in so far as it involves inference and construction from observational data.
Euclid's postulates were:
E. V. Huntington, A set of postulates for ordinary complex algebra, ibid., pp. 209-229.
E. V. Huntington, A set of postulates for real algebra, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 6 (1905), pp. 17-41.
E. V. Huntington, Sets of independent postulates for the algebra of logic, Transactions ot the American Mathematical Societv. vol. 5 (1904), pp. 288-309.
expostulated ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Expostulate
expostulate ::: v. i. --> To reason earnestly with a person on some impropriety of his conduct, representing the wrong he has done or intends, and urging him to make redress or to desist; to remonstrate; -- followed by with. ::: v. t. --> To discuss; to examine.
expostulating ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Expostulate
expostulator ::: n. --> One who expostulates.
First Cause The first cause is demiurgic, the originating principle or root-impulse unfolding a universe or some portion of a universe. By the very fact of individualized activity it must be finite, however immense, not infinite or eternal. If the universe is a chain of causation in which each link is the effect of a precedent cause, then if there is no first cause there can be no effects, and the principle of causality disappears altogether. Infinity has no first cause but is the all-fecund womb of literally infinite numbers of productive demiurgic first causes. We can therefore but recognize the necessary limits of human conceptual power, and postulate a causeless cause: parabrahman or what the Vedic sages called tad or tat (that).
F. V. Huntington, Postulates for assertive conjunction, negation, and equality, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 72, no. 1, 1937.
Gnosiology: (Gr. gnosis, knowledge + logos, discourse) Theory of knowledge in so far as it relates to the origin, nature, limits and validity of knowledge as distinguished from methodology, the study of the basic concepts, postulates and presuppositions of the special sciences. -- L.W.
Gnosiology: Theory of knowledge in so far as it relates to the origin, nature, limits and validity of knowledge as distinguished from methodology, the study of the basic concepts, postulates and presuppositions of the special sciences.
God In its widest sense, the origin and root of all that is. Absolute Being may be regarded perhaps as one equivalent expression, but even Being itself may be regarded as a condition or attribute, and beyond it we must therefore postulate Be-ness. The idea of a root or origin sometimes connotes supreme power and governance; but such conception of a rootless root or infinite origin does not exist, for whatever is, or has been, or ever will be, must ultimately spring from the womb of boundless infinitude, and we can speak only of a power and governance in connection with the subordinate or minor — however supernal or sublime they may be — which spring forth from the Boundless in virtually infinite numbers through beginningless and endless duration.
God: In metaphysical thinking a name for the highest, ultimate being, assumed by theology on the basis of authority, revelation, or the evidence of faith as absolutely necessary, but demonstrated as such by a number of philosophical systems, notably idealistic, monistic and dualistic ones. Proofs of the existence of God fall apart into those that are based on facts of experience (desire or need for perfection, dependence, love, salvation, etc.), facts of religious history (consensus gentium, etc.)), postulates of morality (belief in ultimate justice, instinct for an absolute good, conscience, the categorical imperative, sense of duty, need of an objective foundation of morality, etc.)), postulates of reason (cosmological, physico-theological, teleological, and ontological arguments), and the inconceivableness of the opposite. As to the nature of God, the great variety of opinions are best characterized by their several conceptions of the attributes of God which are either of a non-personal (pantheistic, etc.) or personal (theistic, etc.) kind, representing concepts known from experience raised to a superlative degree ("omniscient", "eternal", etc.). The reality, God, may be conceived as absolute or as relative to human values, as being an all-inclusive one, a duality, or a plurality. Concepts of God calling for unquestioning faith, belief in miracles, and worship or representing biographical and descriptive sketches of God and his creation, are rather theological than metaphysical, philosophers, on the whole, utilizing the idea of God or its linguistic equivalents in other languages, despite popular and church implications, in order not to lose the feeling-contact with the rather abstract world-ground. See Religion, Philosophy of. -- K.F.L.
Hebbian learning "artificial intelligence" The most common way to train a {neural network}; a kind of {unsupervised learning}; named after canadian neuropsychologist, Donald O. Hebb. The {algorithm} is based on Hebb's Postulate, which states that where one cell's firing repeatedly contributes to the firing of another cell, the magnitude of this contribution will tend to increase gradually with time. This means that what may start as little more than a coincidental relationship between the firing of two nearby neurons becomes strongly causal. Despite limitations with Hebbian learning, e.g., the inability to learn certain patterns, variations such as {Signal Hebbian Learning} and {Differential Hebbian Learning} are still used. {(http://neuron-ai.tuke.sk/NCS/VOL1/P3_html/node14.html)}. (2003-11-07)
Hebbian learning ::: (artificial intelligence) The most common way to train a neural network; a kind of unsupervised learning; named after canadian neuropsychologist, Donald O. Hebb.The algorithm is based on Hebb's Postulate, which states that where one cell's firing repeatedly contributes to the firing of another cell, the magnitude of what may start as little more than a coincidental relationship between the firing of two nearby neurons becomes strongly causal.Despite limitations with Hebbian learning, e.g., the inability to learn certain patterns, variations such as Signal Hebbian Learning and Differential Hebbian Learning are still used. .(2003-11-07)
homaloidal ::: a. --> Flat; even; -- a term applied to surfaces and to spaces, whether real or imagined, in which the definitions, axioms, and postulates of Euclid respecting parallel straight lines are assumed to hold true.
Hypothesis: In general, an assumption, a supposition, a conjecture, a postulate, a condition, an antecedent, a contingency, a possibility, a probability, a principle, a premiss, a ground or foundation, a tentative explanation, a probable cause, a theoretical situation, an academic question, a specific consideration, a conceded statement, a theory or view for debate or action, a likely relation, the conditioning of one thing by another. In logic, the conditional clause or antecedent in a hypothetical proposition. Also a thesis subordinate to a more general one. In methodology, a principle offered as a conditional explanation of a fact or a group of facts; or again, a provisional assumption about the ground of certain phenomena, used as a guiding norm in making observations and experiments until verified or disproved by subsequent evidence. A hypothesis is conditional or provisional, because it is based on probable and insufficient arguments or elements; yet, it is not an arbitrary opinion, but a justifiable assumption with some foundation in fact, this accounts for the expectation of some measure of agreement between the logical conclusion or implications drawn from a hypothesis, and the phenomena which are known or which may be determined by further tests. A scientific hypothesis must be proposed after the observations it must explain (a posteriori), compatible with established theories, reasonable and relevant, fruitful in its applications and controllable, general in terms and more fundamental than the statements it has to explain. A hypothesis is descriptive (forecasting the external circumstances of the event) or explanatory (offering causal accounts of the event). There are two kinds of explanatory hypotheses the hypothesis of law (or genetic hypothesis) which attempts to determine the manner in which the causes or conditions of a phenomenon operate and the hypothesis of cause (or causal hypothesis) which attempt to determine the causes or conditions for the production of the phenomenon. A working hypothesis is a preliminary assumption based on few, uncertain or obscure elements, which is used provisionally as a guiding norm in the investigation of certain phenomena. Often, the difference between a working hypothesis and a scientific hypothesis is one of degree; and in any case, a hypothesis is seldom verified completely with all its detailed implications. The Socratic Method of Hypothesis, as developed by Plato in the Phaedo particularly, consists in positing an assumption without questioning its value, for the purpose of determining and analyzing its consequences only when these are clearly debated and judged, the assumption itself is considered for justification or rejection. Usually, a real condition is taken as a ground for inferences, as the aim of the method is to attain knowledge or to favor action. Plato used more specially the word "hypothesis" for the assumptions of geometry (postulates and nominal definitions) Anstotle extended this use to cover the immediate principles of mathematics. It may be observed that the modern hypothetico-deductive method in logical and mathematical theories, is a development of the Socratic method stripped of its ontological implications and purposes.
Ideal of Reason: (Ger. Ideal der Vernunft) Kant: The idea of an all-comprehending reality, God, containing the determination of all finite existence. In the Cr. of Pure Reason Kant shows how and why the mind hypostatizes this Ideal, the source of "transcendental illusion" (q.v.). He concluded that while the traditional proofs of God's existence were all fallacious, the idea of God had a regulative use for reason, and was a necessary postulate for practical reason (q.v.). See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.
Ideas of Pure Reason: (Kant. Ger. Ideen der reinen Vernunft) Ideas, expounded and criticized in the "Transcendental Dialectic" of the Cr. of Pure Reason, in which an absolute whole determines the parts in an aggregate or as series. For Kant there were three such Ideas: the soul, the world, and God. He maintained that these Ideas did not constitute "objects", but claimed for them a regulative use in pure reason, and asserted their reality as postulates of practical reason. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.
If the Peano postulates are formulated on the basis of an interpretation according to which the domain of individuals coincides with that of the non-negative integers, the undefined term N may be dropped and the postulates reduced to the three following: (x)(y)[[S(x) = S(y)] ⊃[x = y]]. (x) ∼[S(x) = 0]. F(0)[F(x) ⊃x F(S(x))] ⊃F (x)F(y). It is possible further to drop the undefined term 0 and to replace the successor function S by a dyadic propositional function S (the contemplated interpretation being that S(x,y) is the proposition y = x+l). The Peano postulates may then be given the following form: (x)(Ey)S(x, y). (x)[S(x,y) ⊃y [S(x,z) ⊃x [y = z]]]. (x)[S(y,x) ⊃y [S(z,x) ⊃x [y = z]]]. (Ex)[[(x) ∼S(x,y)] ≡y [y = z]]. [(x) ∼S(x,z)] ⊃x [F(z)[F(x) ⊃x [S(x, y) ⊃y F(y)]] ⊃F (x)F(x)]. For this form of the Peano postulates the underlying logic may be taken to be simply the functional calculus of second order without additions. In this formulation, numerical functions can be introduced only by contextual definition as incomplete symbols.
In a mathematical development of the real number system or the complex number system, an appropriate set of postulates may be the starting point. Or the non-negative integers may first be introduced (by postulates or otherwise -- see arithmetic, foundations of) and from these the above outlined extensions may be provided for by successive logical constructions, in any one of several alternative ways.
Independence: In a set of postulates for a mathematical discipline (see Mathematics), a particular postulate is said to be independent if it cannot be proved as a consequence of the others. A non-independent postulate is thus superfluous, and should be dropped.
In his chief work, the Ethica, Spinoza's teaching is expressed in a manner for which geometry supplies the model. This expository device served various purposes. It may be interpreted as a clue to Spinoza's ideal of knowledge. So understood, it represents the condensed and ordered expression, not of 'philosophy' alone, but rather of all knowledge, 'philosophy' and 'science', as an integrated system. In such an ideal ordering of ideas, (rational) theology and metaphysics provide the anchorage for the system. On the one hand, the theology-metaphysics displays the fundamental principles (definitions, postulates, axioms) upon which the anchorage depends, and further displays in deductive fashion the primary fund of ideas upon which the inquiries of science, both 'descriptive' and 'normative' must proceed. On the other hand, the results of scientific inquiry are anchored at the other end, by a complementary metaphysico-theological development of their significance. Ideally, there obtains, for Spinoza, both an initial theology and metaphysics -- a necessary preparation for science -- and a culminating theology and metaphysics, an interpretative absorption of the conclusions of science.
In logic: Given a relation R which is transitive, symmetric, and reflexive, we may introduce or postulate "new elements corresponding to the members of the field of R, in such a way that the same new element corresponds to two members x and y of the field of R if and only if xRy (see the article relation). These new elements are then said to be obtained by abstraction with respect to R. Peano calls this a method or kind of definition, and speaks, e.g., of cardinal numbers (q.v.) as obtained from classes by abstraction with respect to the relation of equivalence -- two classes having the same cardinal number if and only if they are equivalent.
In many (interpreted) logistic systems -- including such as contain, with their usual interpretations, the Zermelo set theory, or the simple theory of types with axiom of infinity, or the functional calculus of second order with addition of Peano's postulates for arithmetic -- it is impossible without contradiction to introduce the numerical name relation with its natural properties, because Grelling's paradox or similar paradoxes would result (see paradoxes, logical). The same can be said of the semantical name relation in cases where symbols for formulas are present.
In most arguments about the nature of space, space is unconsciously assumed at the outset of the inquiry, so that the reasoning becomes viciously circular. Is space the ultimate residue left after we have removed everything conceivable? In that case how can we define it in terms of anything which is supposed to be derived from it? We must either leave it undefined, as a primary postulate, or else define it in terms of something which lies beyond the physical plane altogether.
In Peano's postulates for arithmetic (see Arithmetic, foundations of) the possibility of proof by recursion is secured by the last postulate, which, indeed, merely states the leading principle of the simplest form of proof by recursion. In the Frege-Russell derivation of arithmetic from logic, the non-negative integers are identified with the inductive cardinal numbers (q.v.), the possibility of proof by recursion being implicit in the definition of inductive. -- A.C.
In the Frege-Russell derivation of arithmetic from logic (see the article Mathematics) necessity for the postulates of Peano is avoided. If based on the theory of types, however, this derivation requires some form of the axiom of infinity -- which may be regarded as a residuum of the Peano postulates.
Ionian or Ionic School A school of Greek philosophers of the 5th and 6th centuries BC in Ionia, considered to have been founded by Thales of Miletus (640-550 BC) and including Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Diogenes of Apollonia, Archelaus, and Hippo. They were astronomers, geometers, and geographers who sought to explain the universe in terms of matter, movement, and force. Thales and Hippo make the cosmic element water the primordial originating element; Anaximenes and Diogenes of Apollonia make it the cosmic element air; Heraclitus, the cosmic element fire. Anaxagoras postulates a supreme hierarchical mind (nous) as imparting evolutionary form and order to chaos, the undeveloped substance of nature.
It (or statements to that effect) was assumed in formulation and application of classical mechanics and explicitly stated as a postulate in Albert's Einstein's theories. It's influence is particularly important that Albert Einstein's theories of Special Relativity and General Relativity were class="d-title" named after this idea (the Principle of Relativity).
jarā. (T. rga ba; C. lao; J. ro; K. no 老). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "senescence," "aging," or "decay." Aging and death (JARĀMARAnA) are one of the varieties of the suffering (DUḤKHA) that is said to be inherent in the conditioned realm of existence and together constitute the last of the twelve links of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA). The future buddha is said to have left the life of the householder in search of a state beyond birth, aging, sickness, and death. In the SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMA system, senescence is treated as a "conditioned force dissociated from thought" (CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKĀRA), which functions as one of the four conditioned characteristics (SAMSKṚTALAKsAnA) that is associated with all conditioned objects. Because the ontology of the Sarvāstivāda school, as its name implies, postulated that "everything exists" in all three time periods (TRIKĀLA) of past, present, and future, there had to be some mechanism to account for the apparent change that conditioned objects underwent through time. Therefore, along with the other three characteristics of origination (JĀTI), continuance (STHITI), and desinence (ANITYATĀ; viz., death), aging was posited as a "conditioned force dissociated from thought," which causes the active functioning (kāritra) of a conditioned object to degenerate, initiating the process that leads to its inevitable death. The very definition of conditioned objects is that they are subject to these conditioned characteristics, including this process of decay and change; this is what ultimately distinguishes them from the unconditioned (ASAMSKṚTA), viz., NIRVĀnA.
jāti. (T. skye ba; C. sheng; J. sho; K. saeng 生). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "birth," "origination." Birth is one of the varieties of the suffering (DUḤKHA) that is inherent in the conditioned realm of existence and the eleventh of the twelve links in the chain of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA). The future buddha is said to have left the life of the householder in search of a state beyond birth, aging, sickness, and death. In the SARVĀSTIVĀDA ABHIDHARMA system, origination is treated as a "conditioned force dissociated from thought" (CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKĀRA), which functions as one of the four conditioned characteristics (SAMSKṚTALAKsAnA) that is associated with all conditioned objects. Because the ontology of the Sarvāstivāda school, as its name implies, postulated that "everything exists" in all three time periods (TRIKĀLA) of past, present, and future, there had to be some mechanism to account for the apparent change that conditioned objects underwent through time. Therefore, along with the other three characteristics of continuance (STHITI), senescence (JARĀ), and desinence (ANITYATĀ; viz., death), origination was posited as a "conditioned force dissociated from thought," which prepares an object to be produced and thus pulls that object out of the future and into the present. The very definition of conditioned objects is that they are subject to these conditioned characteristics, including this process of production, and this is what ultimately distinguishes them from the unconditioned (ASAMSKṚTA), viz., NIRVĀnA. In less technical contexts, beginning with the Buddha's first sermon (see DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANASUTTA), jāti appears in various lists of the sufferings of SAMSĀRA, with a variety of texts describing at length the pain experienced in the womb and during birth.
Karma(Karman, Sanskrit) ::: This is a noun-form coming from the root kri meaning "to do," "to make." Literallykarma means "doing," "making," action. But when used in a philosophical sense, it has a technicalmeaning, and this technical meaning can best be translated into English by the word consequence. Theidea is this: When an entity acts, he acts from within; he acts through an expenditure in greater or lessdegree of his own native energy. This expenditure of energy, this outflowing of energy, as it impactsupon the surrounding milieu, the nature around us, brings forth from the latter perhaps an instantaneousor perhaps a delayed reaction or rebound. Nature, in other words, reacts against the impact; and thecombination of these two -- of energy acting upon nature and nature reacting against the impact of thatenergy -- is what is called karma, being a combination of the two factors. Karma is, in other words,essentially a chain of causation, stretching back into the infinity of the past and therefore necessarilydestined to stretch into the infinity of the future. It is unescapable, because it is in universal nature, whichis infinite and therefore everywhere and timeless; and sooner or later the reaction will inevitably be feltby the entity which aroused it.It is a very old doctrine, known to all religions and philosophies, and since the renascence of scientificstudy in the Occident has become one of the fundamental postulates of modern coordinated knowledge.If you toss a pebble into a pool, it causes ripples in the water, and these ripples spread and finally impactupon the bank surrounding the pool; and, so modern science tells us, the ripples are translated intovibrations, which are carried outward into infinity. But at every step of this natural process there is acorresponding reaction from every one and from all of the myriads of atomic particles affected by thespreading energy.Karma is in no sense of the word fatalism on the one hand, nor what is popularly known as chance, onthe other hand. It is essentially a doctrine of free will, for naturally the entity which initiates a movementor action -- spiritual, mental, psychological, physical, or other -- is responsible thereafter in the shape ofconsequences and effects that flow therefrom, and sooner or later recoil upon the actor or prime mover.Since everything is interlocked and interlinked and interblended with everything else, and no thing andno being can live unto itself alone, other entities are of necessity, in smaller or larger degree, affected bythe causes or motions initiated by any individual entity; but such effects or consequences on entities,other than the prime mover, are only indirectly a morally compelling power, in the true sense of the wordmoral.An example of this is seen in what the theosophist means when he speaks of family karma as contrastedwith one's own individual karma; or national karma, the series of consequences pertaining to the nationof which he is an individual; or again, the racial karma pertaining to the race of which the individual is anintegral member. Karma cannot be said either to punish or to reward in the ordinary meaning of theseterms. Its action is unerringly just, for being a part of nature's own operations, all karmic actionultimately can be traced back to the kosmic heart of harmony which is the same thing as saying pureconsciousness-spirit. The doctrine is extremely comforting to human minds, inasmuch as man may carvehis own destiny and indeed must do so. He can form it or deform it, shape it or misshape it, as he wills;and by acting with nature's own great and underlying energies, he puts himself in unison or harmonytherewith and therefore becomes a co-worker with nature as the gods are.
Karma (Sanskrit) Karma [from the verbal root kṛ to do, make, denoting action] Action, the causes and consequences of action; that which produces change. One of the primary postulates of every comprehensive system of philosophy, described as a universal law, unceasingly active throughout universal nature and rooted in cosmic harmony, in its operations existing from eternity, inevitable, inherent in the very nature of things. It is action, absolute harmony, the adjuster; it preserves equilibrium by compensating and adjusting all actions, excessive or defective. Hence it is called the law of retribution, implying neither reward nor punishment, based on nature’s own urge of harmonious equilibrium. As such it has been personalized as Nemesis and by many other names, a practice which lends itself to popular imagining of avenging deities, such as God or Gods, Furies, Fates, Destiny, etc. As there are no such things as inanimate beings in the universe, it is not surprising to hear of karmic agents and of scribes or lipika who record karma. Karma must necessarily be transmitted by living beings of one grade or another, because there is no other means possible, and universal nature is but a vast, virtually frontierless being whose entire structure, laws, and operations are the innumerable hierarchies of beings in all-various grades, which thus not only condition nature, but are in fact universal nature itself. By our acts we create living beings which act upon other people and ultimately react upon ourselves. These beings, then, are agents of karma on one plane; on higher planes other orders of beings are such agents.
Logical, physical, and moral necessity are founded in logical, physical, and moral laws respectively. Anything is logically necessary the denial of which would violate a law of logic. Thus in ordinary commutative algebra the implication from the postulates to ab-ba is logically necessary, since its denial would violate a logical law (viz. the commutative rule) of this system.
Logic, formal: Investigates the structure of propositions and of deductive reasoning by a method which abstracts from the content of propositions which come under consideration and deals only with their logical form. The distinction between form and content can be made definite with the aid of a particular language or symbolism in which propositions are expressed, and the formal method can then be characterized by the fact that it deals with the objective form of sentences which express propositions and provides in these concrete terms criteria of meaningfulness and validity of inference. This formulation of the matter presupposes the selection of a particular language which is to be regarded as logically exact and free from the ambiguities and irregularities of structure which appear in English (or other languages of everyday use) -- i.e., it makes the distinction between form and content relative to the choice of a language. Many logicians prefer to postulate an abstract form for propositions themselves, and to characterize the logical exactness of a language by the uniformity with which the concrete form of its sentences reproduces or parallels the form of the propositions which they express. At all events it is practically necessary to introduce a special logical language, or symbolic notation, more exact than ordinary English usage, if topics beyond the most elementary are to be dealt with (see logistic system, and semiotic).
Lullic art: The Ars Magna or Generalis of Raymond Lully (1235-1315), a science of the highest and most general principles, even above metaphysics and logic, in which the basic postulates of all the sciences are included, and from which he hoped to derive these fundamental assumptions with the aid of an ingenious mechanical contrivance, a sort of logical or thinking machine. -- J.J.R.
magician ::: Magician Someone who is skilled in the mysterious and hidden art of magick, with the ability to attain objectives, acquire knowledge, and perform 'works of wonder' using supernatural or non-rational means. Some of the more modern magicians, such as Aleister Crowley and those who follow the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or the Ordo Templi Orientis, describe magick in rational terms, using definitions (meanings of words, terms or phrases), postulates (starting assumptions from which other statements are logically derived) and theorems (statements which can be proved on the basis of explicitly stated or previously agreed assumptions).
Materialism: A proposition about the existent or the real: that only matter (q.v.) is existent or real; that matter is the primordial or fundamental constituent of the universe; atomism; that only sensible entities, processes, or content are existent or real; that the universe is not governed by intelligence, purpose, or final causes; that everything is strictly caused by material (inanimate, non-mental, or having certain elementary physical powers) processes or entities (mechanism); that mental entities, processes, or events (though existent) are caused solely by material entities, processes, or events and themselves have no causal effect (epiphenomenalism); that nothing supernatural exists (naturalism); that nothing mental exists; a proposition about explanation of the existent or the real: that everything is explainable in terms of matter in motion or matter and energy or simply matter (depending upon conception of matter entertained); that all qualitative differences are reducible to quantitative differences; that the only objects science can investigate are the physical or material (that is, public, manipulable, non-mental, natural, or sensible); a proposition about values: that wealth, bodily satisfactions, sensuous pleasures, or the like are either the only or the greatest values man can seek or attain; a proposition about explanation of human history: that human actions and cultural change are determined solely or largely by economic factors (economic determinism or its approximation); an attitude, postulate, hypothesis, assertion, assumption, or tendency favoring any of the above propositions; a state of being limited by the physical environment or the material elements of culture and incapable of overcoming, transcending, or adjusting properly to them; preoccupation with or enslavement to lower or bodily (non-mental or non-spiritual) values. Confusion of epiphenomenalism or mechanism with other conceptions of materialism has caused considerable misunderstanding. -- M.T.K.
Morals, Morality ::: What is the basis of morals? This is the most important question that can be asked of any system ofthought. Is morality based on the dicta of man? Is morality based on the conviction in most men's heartsthat for human safety it is necessary to have certain abstract rules which it is merely convenient tofollow? Are we mere opportunists? Or is morality, ethics, based on truth, which it is not merelyexpedient for man to follow, but necessary? Surely upon the latter! Morals is right conduct based uponright views, right thinking.In the third fundamental postulate of The Secret Doctrine [1:17] we find the very elements, the veryfundamentals, of a system of morality greater than which, profounder than which, more persuasive thanwhich, perhaps, it would be impossible to imagine anything.On what, then, is morality based? And by morality is not meant merely the opinion which somepseudo-philosophers have, that morality is more or less that which is "good for the community," based onthe mere meaning of the Latin word mores, "good customs," as opposed to bad. No! Morality is thatinstinctive hunger of the human heart to do righteousness, to do good to every man because it is good andsatisfying and ennobling to do so.When man realizes that he is one with all that is, inwards and outwards, high and low; that he is one withall, not merely as members of a community are one, not merely as individuals of an army are one, butlike the molecules of our own flesh, like the atoms of the molecule, like the electrons of the atom,composing one unity -- not a mere union but a spiritual unity -- then he sees truth. (See also Ethics)
Nevertheless, theosophy postulates the existence of atomic and subatomic ethers of various degrees of tenuity, ranging from physical to spiritual. Collectively these ethers are the different planes or ranges of akasa, the fundamental substratum of the universe and the garment in which the kosmic divinity clothes itself — the various prakritis as outlined especially in the Sankhya philosophy. Any scientific ether is not the akasa or aether, but solely the lowest plane of the akasic plenum, some of the ranges of the astral light, which in one sense is the highest principle of the earth’s atmosphere — a subtle ethereal energy-stuff permeant through and interpenetrating physical matter of all kinds. See also Aether; Ether
Niepan zong. (J. Nehanshu; K. Yolban chong 涅槃宗). In Chinese, "Nirvāna tradition," an eclectic Chinese lineage of scholiasts who dedicated themselves to exegesis and dissemination of the MAHĀYĀNA recension of the MAHĀPARNIRVĀnASuTRA ("Nirvāna Sutra"). The Niepan zong did not exist in any formal sense; the term is instead used to designate a group of exegetes with analogous intellectual interests. Foremost among these exegetes is DAOSHENG (355-434), a member of KUMĀRAJĪVA's (343-413) translation team in Chang'an, whose views are emblematic of teachers in this lineage. Daosheng was strongly critical of statements appearing in the first Chinese translation of the Mahāparnirvānasutra, made in 418 by FAXIAN and BUDDHABHADRA, which asserted that all sentient beings except the incorrigibles (ICCHANTIKA) are endowed with the buddha-nature (FOXING). Daosheng opposed this view, which at the time had the authority of received scripture; instead, he made the radical claim that even icchantikas must also retain the capacity eventually to attain enlightenment, thus calling into question the accuracy of these two eminent monks' scriptural edition. DHARMAKsEMA's new translation of the text four years later did not include the controversial statement and thus vindicated Daosheng's position. Daosheng also explored the soteriological implications of the buddha-nature doctrine in the Mahāparnirvānasutra. If the buddha-nature were inherent in all sentient beings, as the scripture claimed, then enlightenment was not something that would unfold through the mastery of a gradual series of steps, but would instead be experienced in a sudden moment of insight-a "re-cognition" of the enlightenment that has always been present. Hence, Daosheng claimed, buddhahood is in fact attained instantaneously (see DUNWU), not progessively. This position initiated an extended examination within East Asian Buddhism of sudden versus gradual theories of enlightenment that played out in many of the mature traditions, including the TIANTAI ZONG, HUAYAN ZONG, and CHAN ZONG. The teachings of the Niepan zong were also influential in promoting Chinese Buddhism's turn away from "apophatic" forms of discourse emblematic of MADHYAMAKA styles of argumentation, to the more "kataphatic" or positive forms of discourse that are typical of the later indigenous schools, including Tiantai, Huayan, and Chan. Following Daosheng, his disciple Daolang (d.u.) in his Niepan jing yishu ("Commentary to the 'Nirvāna Sutra'") postulated congruencies between the buddha-nature and emptiness (suNYATĀ), which suggested how the seemingly "apophatic" notion of emptiness found in Indian materials could actually serve as a dynamic force revealing the truth that underlies all conventional existence in the world. Still other Niepan zong exegetes devoted themselves to the text of the Mahāparnirvānasutra itself, producing a new edition of the scripture known as the Southern Edition (Nanben), which collated the two earlier renderings and restructured the chapter headings. By the beginning of the Tang dynasty, the tradition of Mahāparnirvānasutra exegesis had become moribund, and its intellectual concerns were subsumed into the Tiantai zong, which derived much of its teachings from the "Nirvāna Sutra" and the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra").
Nineteenth-century science postulated matter and motion as two bases on which to build, but the attempt to define the nature or cause of motion within the limits of the science thus set up was futile. Motion was defined as an effect of force, force being itself expressed in terms of motion. To reach the cause of physical motion we must go outside of physics and refer it to spirit or some ultraphysical agency.
non-Euclidean geometry: Any system of geometry not based on (all 5 of the) Euclidean axioms/postulates. e.g. hyperbolic geometry, spherical geometry.
Non-Euclidean geometry: Euclid's postulates for geometry included one, the parallel postulate, which was regarded from earliest times (perhaps even by Euclid himself) as less satisfactory than the others. This may be stated as follows (not Euclid's original form but an equivalent one) Through a given point P not on a given line l there passes at most one line, in the plane of P and l, which does not intersect l. Here "line" means a straight line extended infinitely in both directions (not a line segment).
Noosphere - a postulated sphere or stage of evolutionary development dominated by consciousness, the mind, and interpersonal relationships.
Noumenon: (Gr. noumenon) In Kant: An object or power transcending experience whose existence is theoretically problematic but must be postulated by practical reason. In theoretical terms Kant defined the noumenon positively as "the object of a non-sensuous intuition," negatively as "not an object of the sensuous intuition;" but since he denied the existence of any but sensuous intuitions, the noumenon remained an unknowable "x". In his practical philosophy, however, the postulation of a noumenal realm is necessary in order to explain the possibility of freedom. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.
objective idealism ::: An idealistic metaphysics that postulates that there is in an important sense only one perceiver, and that this perceiver is one with that which is perceived.
Orphism, Orphic Mysteries [from Greek orphikos] Orphism originally taught of the Causeless Cause on which all speculation is impossible; the periodical appearance and disappearance of all things, from atom to universe; reimbodiment; cyclic law; the essential divinity of all beings and things; and the duality in manifestation of the universe. It postulated seven emanations from the Boundless: aether (spirit) and chaos (matter), from which two spring the world egg, out of which is born Phanes, the First Logos; then Uranus (and Gaia) the Second Logos, with Kronos (and Rhea, mother of the Olympian gods) a later phase of the Second Logos; and Zeus, the Third Logos or Demiurge — who starts a minor sevenfold hierarchy of emanation by begetting Zagreus-Dionysos the god-man, the divine son. Characteristic of Orphic cosmogony is the important place given to the number seven. “The rise of the Orphic worship of Dionysos is the most important fact in the history of Greek religion, and marks a great spiritual awakening. Its three great ideas are (1) a belief in the essential Divinity of humanity and the complete immortality or eternity of the soul, its pre-existence and its post-existence; (2) the necessity for individual responsibility and righteousness; and (3) the regeneration or redemption of man’s lower nature by his own higher Self” (F. S. Darrow).
parallel postulate: An assertion by Euclid in his book Elements. It was presented as a postulate (after 4 others) without being proven. It effectively states that two non-parallel lines must meet.
Parmenides: 6th-5th century B.C., head of the Eleatic School of Greek Philosophy, developed the conception of "Being" in opposition to the "Becoming" of Heraclitus. To think at all we must postulate something which is, that which is not cannot be thought, and cannot be. Thought without being or being without thought are impossible, and the two are therefore identical. At the same time the "Being" of Parmenides is that which fills space, non-being is empty space Empty space therefore cannot be, and if empty space or the "Void" cannot be then the plurality of individual things is equally not real since this results from the motion of the "full" in the "void". There is thus for Parmenides only one "Being" without inner differentiation; this alone really is, while the particularity of individual things is appearance, illusion. Homogeneous and unchangeable "Being" is the only reality. -- M.F.
Peano's first publication on mathematicil logic was the introduction to his Calcolo Geometrico, 1888. His postulates for arithmetic (see arithmetic, foundations of) appeared in his Arith¦metices Principia (1889) and in revised form in Sul concetto di numero (Rivista di Matematica, vol. 1 (1891)), and were repeated in successive volumes (more properly, editions) of his Formulaire de Mathematiques (1894-1908). The last-named work, written with the aid of collaborators, was intended to provide a reduction of all mathematics to symbolic notation, and often the encyclopedic aspect was stressed as much as, or more than, that of logical analysis.
Point In mathematics a point is regarded as having no parts or magnitude, but is postulated for the purpose of defining position, for it cannot in itself have position unless space has been previously assumed. An abstract point cannot have location or relation to anything; it is devoid of attributes, unless we consider unity as an attribute. It is equivalent to the whole universe — Philo has said that the Chaldeans regarded the kosmos as a single point.
Posit: (Lat. ponere, to put or place) (a) In logic and epistemology, positing is the act of entertaining or asserting a proposition immediately i.e. without recourse to inference. A proposition may be posited either because it is regarded as (1) a self-evident truth or (2) a postulate arbitrarily assumed. The postulational sense of positing is the more common at present. See Postulate.
Postulate - A proposition which is considered as true in order to give a basis for further logical reasoning.
Postulate: (Lat. postulatum; Ger. Postulat) In Kant (1) An indemonstrable practical or moral hypothesis, such as the reality of God, freedom, or immortality, belief in which is necessary for the performance of our moral duty. (2) Any of three principles of the general category of modality, called by Kant "postulates of empirical thought." See Modality and Kantianism. -- O.F.K.
Postulate: See Mathematics. Potency: (Scholastic) Potency is opposed to act as asserted of being. It means the capacity of being or of being thus. Prime matter (q.v.) is pure potency, indetermined in regard to actual corporeal being. Any change or development or, generally, becoming presupposes a corresponding potency. Some potencies belong to the nature of a thing, others are merely passive and consist in non-repugnance. Thus to be thrown is not due to a potency strictly speaking in the stone which has, in regard to this a "merely obediential" potency. The first kind is also called operative potency. -- R.A.
postulating ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Postulate
postulation ::: n. --> The act of postulating, or that which is postulated; assumption; solicitation; suit; cause.
postulatory ::: a. --> Of the nature of a postulate.
postulatum ::: n. --> A postulate.
Practical Reason: (Kant. Ger. praktische Vernunft) Reason or reflective thought concerned with the issues of voluntary decision and action. Practical reason includes "everything which is possible by or through freedom." In general, practical reason deals with the problems of ethics. Kant asserted the primacy of practical reason over theoretical reason, and also asserted as practical postulates (q.v.) certain conceptions which were not theoretically demonstrable. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.
Presupposition: That which must antecedently be assumed if a desired result is to be derived, thus, a postulate That which is logically necessaiy, thus, that which is implied, an implicate. That which is causally necessary, thus a condition or result.
Principle: (Lat. principe, from principium, a beginning) A fundamental cause or universal truth, that which is inherent in anything. That which ultimately accounts for being. According to Aristotle, the primary source of all being, actuality and knowledge. (a) In ontology: first principles are the categories or postulates of ontology. (b) In epistemology: as the essence of being, the ground of all knowledge. Syn. with essence, universal, cause. -- J.K.F.
Proposition: This word has been used to mean a declarative sentence (in some particular language); the content of meaning of a declarative sentence, i e., a postulated abstract object common not only to different occurrences of the same declarative sentence but also to different sentences (whether of the same language or not) which are synonymous or, as we say, mean the same thing; a declarative sentence associated with its content of meaning. Often the word proposition is used ambiguously between two of these meanings, or among all three.
Pythagoras "person" (Pythagoras of Samos, Ionia; about 569-475 BC) The Greek mathematician who founded a philosophical and religious school in Croton (now Crotone) in southern Italy. Pythagoras is most famous for {Pythagoras's Theorem} but other important postulates are attributed to him, e.g. the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles. (2004-02-12)
Pythagoras ::: (person) (Pythagoras of Samos, Ionia; about 569-475 BC) The Greek mathematician who founded a philosophical and religious school in Croton (now Crotone) in southern Italy.Pythagoras is most famous for Pythagoras' theorem but other important postulates are attributed to him, e.g. the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles.(2004-02-12)
Reason is a clarified, ordered and organised Ignorance. It is a half-enlightened Ignorance seeking for truth, but a truth which it insists on founding upon the data and postulates of the Ignorance. Reason is not in possession of the Truth, it is a seeker. It is [unable to] discover the Truth or embody it; it leaves Truth covered but rendered into mental representations, a verbal and ideative scheme, an abstract algebra of concepts, a theory of the Ignorance. Sense-evidence is its starting point and it never really gets away from that insecure beginning. Its concepts start from sense-data and though like a kite it can fly high into an air of abstractions, it is held to the earth of sense by a string of great strength; if that string is broken it drifts lazily [in] the clouds and always it falls back by natural gravitation to its original earth basis—only so can it receive strength to go farther. Its field is the air and sky of the finite, it cannot ascend into the stratosphere of the spiritual vision, still less can it move at ease in the Infinite.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 256
Recursion, definition by: A method of introducing, or "defining," functions from non-negative integers to non-negative integers, which, in its simplest form, consists in giving a pair of equations which specify the value of the function when the argument (or a particular one of the arguments) is 0, and supply a method of calculating the value of the function when the argument (that particular one of the arguments) is x+l, from the value of the function when the argument (that particular one of the arguments) is x. Thus a monadic function f is said to be defined by primitive recursion in terms of a dyadic function g -- the function g being previously known or given -- by the pair of equations, f(0) = A, f(S(x)) = g(x, f(x)), where A denotes some particular non-negative integer, and S denotes the successor function (so that S(x) is the same as x+l), and x is a variable (the second equation being intended to hold for all non-negative integers x). Similarly the dyadic function f is said to be defined by primitive recursion in terms of a triadic function g and a monadic function h by the pair of equations, f(a, 0) = h(a), f(a, S(x)) = g(a, x, f(a,x)), the equations being intended to hold for all non-negative integers a and x. Likewise for functions f of more than two variables. -- As an example of definition by primitive recursion we may take the "definition" of addition (i.e., of the dyadic function plus) employed by Peano in the development of arithmetic from his postulates (see the article Arithmetic, foundations of): a+0 = a, a+S(x) = S(a+x). This comes under the general form of definition by primitive recursion, just given, with h and g taken to be such functions that h(a) = a and g(a, x, y) = S(y). Another example is Peano's introduction of multiplication by the pair of equations aX0 = 0, aXS(x) = (aXx)+a. Here addition is taken as previously defined, and h(a) = 0, g(a, x, y) = y + a.
Relativity Associated with Einsteinian physics; the first postulate of the theory of relativity is the relativity of all motion, a return to the idea of Newton, which holds that there is no stationary ether or any fixed system of coordinates in space, with regard to which motion can be measured. The second postulate states that the velocity of light in free space appears the same to all observers regardless of the relative motion of the source of light and of the observer. A well-known feature of the theory is that by which space and time are no longer treated as independent, but as component elements of a four-dimensional continuum, space-time, and in which the objects whose position and motion are measured are called events. This is a movement in the direction of simplification, since it economizes the number of separate data which we must assume in order to build up our system of interpretation. Einstein also postulates the relativity of the force concept, thus obviating the objection that the Ptolemaic system is dynamically inadequate as compared with the Copernican.
Relativity ::: The modern scientific doctrine of relativity, despite its restrictions and mathematical limitations, isextremely suggestive because it introduces metaphysics into physics, does away with purely speculativeideas that certain things are absolute in a purely relative universe, and brings us back to an examinationof nature as nature is and not as mathematical theorists have hitherto tacitly taken it to be. The doctrine ofrelativity in its essential idea of relations rather than absolutes is true; but this does not mean that wenecessarily accept Einstein's or his followers' deductions. These latter may or may not be true, and timewill show. In any case, relativity is not what it is often misunderstood to be -- the naked doctrine that"everything is relative," which would mean that there is nothing fundamental or basic or real anywhere,whence other things flow forth; in other words, that there is no positively real or fundamental divine andspiritual background of being. The relativity theory is an adumbration, a reaching out for, a groping after,a very, very old theosophical doctrine -- the doctrine of maya.The manner in which theosophy teaches the conception of relativity is that while the universe is a relativeuniverse and all its parts are therefore relative -- each to each, and each to all, and all to each -- yet thereis a deathless reality behind, which forms the substratum or the truth of things, out of which thephenomenal in all its myriad relative manifestations flows. And there is a way, a road, a path, by whichmen may reach this reality behind, because it is in man as his inmost essence and therefore primal origin.In each one is fundamentally this reality of which we are all in search. Each one is the path that leads toit, for it is the heart of the universe.In a sense still more metaphysical, even the heart of a universe may be said to exist relatively inconnection with other universes with their hearts. It would be quite erroneous to suppose that there is oneAbsolute Reality in the old-fashioned European sense, and that all relative manifestations flow forth fromit, and that these relative manifestations although derived from this Absolute Reality are without links ofunion or origin with an Absolute even still more essential and fundamental and vaster. Once theconception of boundless infinitude is grasped, the percipient intelligence immediately realizes that it issimply hopeless, indeed impossible, to postulate ends, absolute Absolutes, as the divine ultima thule. Nomatter how vast and kosmic an Absolute may be, there are in sheer frontierless infinitude alwaysinnumerable other Absolutes equal to or greater than it.
remonstrate ::: v. t. --> To point out; to show clearly; to make plain or manifest; hence, to prove; to demonstrate. ::: v. i. --> To present and urge reasons in opposition to an act, measure, or any course of proceedings; to expostulate; as, to remonstrate with a person regarding his habits; to remonstrate against
Schlick, Moritz: (1882-1936) Taught at Rostock, Kiel, Vienna, also visit, prof.; Stanford, Berkeley. Founder of the Vienna Circle (see Scientific empiricism.) Called his own view "Consistent Empiricism." Main contributions: A logically revised correspondence view of the nature of truth. A systematic epistemology based on the distinction of (immediate) experience and (relational) knowledge. Clarified the analytic -- a priori character of logic and mathematics (by disclosing the "implicit definitions" in postulate systems). Repudiation of Kantian and phenomenological (synthetic) apriorism. Physicalistic, epistemological solution of the psycho-physical problem in terms of a double language theory. Earlier critical-realistic views were later modified and formulated as Empirical Realism. Greatly influenced in this final phase by Carnap and especially Wittgenstein, he considered the logical clarification of meanings the only legitimate task of a philosophy destined to terminate the strife of systems. Important special applications of this general outlook to logic and methodology of science (space, time, substance, causality, probability, organic life) and to problems of ethics (meaning of value judgments, hedonism, free-will, moral motivation). An optimistic, poetic view of the meaning of life is expressed in only partly published writings on a "Philosophy of Youth."
Scottish philosophy: Name applied to the current of thought originated by the Scottish thinker, Thomas Reid (1710-1796), and disseminated by his followers as a reaction against the idealism of Berkeley and empiricism and skepticism of Hume. Its most salient characteristic is the doctrine of common sense, a natural instinct by virtue of which men are prompted to accept certain fundamental principles as postulates without giving a reason for their truth. Reason is subordinated to the role of a servant or able assistant of common sense. Philosophy must be grounded on common sense, and skepticism is a consequence of abandoning its guidance. -- J.J.R.
Spranger, Eduard: (1882) Developed Dilthey's thought, favoring like him, descriptive instead explanatory psychology. As leading exponent of the Verstehungspsychologie, he postulates ideal types representing ultimate categories of value. These types of personality represent merely "schemata of comprehensibility," theoretical guides or aids in understanding people. -- H.H.
Tat, Tad (Sanskrit) Tat That; used by Vedic and archaic Hindu writers to describe the unutterable Principle or boundless All, from which all in a universe springs, in contrast to idam (this), the manifested universe. The old sages would ask their disciples, “Kas twam asi?” (who are you?); and then would tell them, “Tat twam asi” (That [the Boundless] you are). The ancient wisdom teaches as one of its fundamental postulates, that we are inseparable parts of the universe, and therefore we have all within us, whether active or latent, that the universe contains.
Term: In common English usage the word "term"' is syntactical or semantical in character, and means simply a word (or phrase), or a word associated with its meaning. The phrase "undefined term" as used in mathematical postulate theory (see mathematics) is perhips best referred to this common meaning of "term " In traditional logic, a term is a concept appearing as subject or predicate (q.v.). of a categorical proposition; also, a word or phrase denoting such a concept. The word "term" has also been employed in a syntactical sense in various special developments of logistic systems (q.v.), usually in a way suggested by the traditional usage.
That the Torah was originally conceived and set down in Hebrew is a widely postulated
That Translating the Sanskrit tat or tad, the nameless or ineffable. Beyond the utmost that can be defined must necessarily be postulated that which cannot be defined; beyond the utmost confines of the comprehensible must be placed that which cannot be comprehended: the All, symbolized by the circle without a central point. It is abstract space, and the point in the center is Aditi or potential space. It is the One, which is Brahman and pums (spirit) and pradhana (primordial matter), immutable because being abstract infinite space without attributes, preceding all manifestations, remaining after all manifestations have vanished in pralaya. Therefore it is nonbeing to us in the sense that it is Be-ness, abstract space and frontierless duration as one. The Qabbalistic equivalent, ’eyn soph (without bounds), is before all numbers, and is that from which all numbers proceed.
The difficulty encountered by vitalists, as regards the nature of the vital principle and its power of acting upon matter, is fundamental in the entire materialistic philosophy. The matter and force of materialistic science are highly metaphysical abstractions. No such thing as an inert material particle exists or can exist, for all such inert matter is but life or force in one of its multiform phases of quiescence or equilibrium. Nor can there be an absolutely immaterial force, without relation of function or action in the material worlds. The universe consists of living beings, whose activities may be expressed collectively by the word life. The term matter has been applied to the static aspect of life, and the term force to the dynamic aspect. No distinction valid for this purpose can be drawn between organic and inorganic beings. If there is need of a vital principle for animals and plants, working upon yet other than essential stuff or substance, there is equal need in the case of minerals; but there is no need to postulate such divorce between force and matter in either case.
The doctrine that the concepts of mathematics are empirical and the postulates elementary experimental truths has been held in various forms (either for all mathematics, or specially for geometry) by J. S. Mill, H. Helmholtz, M. Pasch, and others. However, the usual contemporary view, especially among mathematicians, is that the propositions of mathematics say nothing about empirical reality. Even in the case of applied geometry, it is held, the geometry is used to organize physical measurement, but does not receive an interpretation under which its propositions become unqualifiedly experimental or empirical in character; a particular system of geometry, applied in a particular way, may be wrong (and demonstrably wrong by experiment), but there is not, in significant cases, a unique geometry which, when applied in the particular way, is right.
The employment of definition by recursion in the development of arithmetic from Peano's postulates, or in the Frege-Russell derivation of arithmetic from logic, requires justification, which most naturallv takes the form of finding a method of replacing a definition by recursion by a nominal definition, or a contextual definition, serving the same purpose. In particular it is possible, by a method due to Dedekind or by any one of a number of modifications of it, to prove the existence of a function f satisfying the conditions expressed by an admissible set of recursion equations, and f may then be given a definition employing descriptions as the function f such that the recursion equations, with suitable quantifiers prefixed, hold. See the paper of Kalmar cited below.
The Greek Skeptics and Pyrrhonists demonstrate that rigid logic leads to contradictory conclusions (antinomies), a fact which led them to doubt the efficacy of the mentality as a means of ascertaining truth. A strictly logical system may be found in pure mathematics, where we lay down axioms and postulates, which are to be treated as not open to question; and then proceed by rigid rules to the inevitable conclusion. But what is possible in an ideal science is not possible in an actual world of infinite variety and fluidity. Theosophy places the subject in a different light, because it recognizes the existence in man of powers of direct cognition by the awakened faculties of buddhi. Thus man has the means of a true deductive system; but even so, deduction must be considered together with induction, analogy, and other methods, as merely one of the various means by which we arrive at a knowledge of truth.
The influence of Pietism and of Rousseau's gospel of Nature are apparent in the essentially Christian and democratic direction in which Kant develops this rigorous ethics. The reality of God and the immortality of souls -- concerning which no theoretical demonstration was possible -- emerge now as postulates of practical reason; God, to assure the moral governance of a world in which virtue is crowned with happiness, the "summum bonum"; immortality, so that the pursuit of moral perfection may continue beyond the empirical life of man. These postulates, together with moral freedom and popular rights, provide the basis for Kant's assertion of the primacy of practical reason.
Theism: (Gr. theos, god) Is in general that type of religion or religious philosophy (see Religion, Philosophy of) which incorporates a conception of God as a unitary being; thus may be considered equivalent to monotheism. The speculation as to the relation of God to world gave rise to three great forms: God identified with world in pantheism (rare with emphasis on God); God, once having created the world, relatively disinterested in it, in deism (mainly an 18th cent, phenomenon); God working in and through the world, in theism proper. Accordingly, God either coincides with the world, is external to it (deus ex machina), or is immanent. The more personal, human-like God, the more theological the theism, the more appealing to a personal adjustment in prayer, worship, etc., which presuppose either that God, being like man, may be swayed in his decision, has no definite plan, or subsists in the very stuff man is made of (humanistic theism). Immanence of God entails agency in the world, presence, revelation, involvement in the historic process, it has been justified by Hindu and Semitic thinkers, Christian apologetics, ancient and modern metaphysical idealists, and by natural science philosophers. Transcendency of God removes him from human affairs, renders fellowship and communication in Church ways ineffectual, yet preserves God's majesty and absoluteness such as is postulated by philosophies which introduce the concept of God for want of a terser term for the ultimate, principal reality. Like Descartes and Spinoza, they allow the personal in God to fade and approach the age-old Indian pantheism evident in much of Vedic and post-Vedic philosophy in which the personal pronoun may be the only distinguishing mark between metaphysical logic and theology, similarly as in Hegel. The endowment postulated of God lends character to a theistic system of philosophy. Much of Hindu and Greek philosophy stresses the knowledge and ration aspect of the deity, thus producing an epistemological theism; Aristotle, in conceiving him as the prime mover, started a teleological one; mysticism is psychologically oriented in its theism, God being a feeling reality approachable in appropriate emotional states. The theism of religious faith is unquestioning and pragmatic in its attitude toward God; theology has often felt the need of offering proofs for the existence of God (see God) thus tending toward an ontological theism; metaphysics incorporates occasionally the concept of God as a thought necessity, advocating a logical theism. Kant's critique showed the respective fields of pure philosophic enquiry and theistic speculations with their past in historic creeds. Theism is left a possibility in agnosticism (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
The name non-Euclidean geometry is applied to hyperbolic geometry and generally to any system in which one or more postulates of Euclidean geometry are replaced by contrary assumptions. (But geometries of more than three dimensions, if they otherwise follow the postulates of Euclid, are not ordinarily called non-Euclidean.)
Theosophic philosophy postulates four methods of reproduction (chatur-yoni) in the manifested realms which run from the divine through many intermediate degrees to the physical: 1) the highest or self-born (aupapaduka), such as the inner birth at will of gods and bodhisattvas; 2) birth from the seeds of life of various kinds on the different planes, whether they be monads or physical seminal germs; 3) egg-born (andaja), such as reptiles and birds; and finally 4) womb-born (yonija), such as man and other mammalia. These four modes of birth are not given here in the order of their importance or spirituality, for human beings, who are womb-born, at a later stage through initiation and inner development finally attain the aupapaduka birth again.
The precipitates of the propaedeutical effort are to be found, for Spinoza, in the definitions, axioms, postulates, and within the structural plan expressed in the geometrical ordering. It is highly probable that Spinoza would have admitted the tentative character of at least some of the definitions, axioms, and postulates formulated by him. He doubtless saw the possibility that the process of inquiry, revising, augmenting, and re-coordinating the fund of knowledge, might demand alteration in the structural bases of systematic expression as well as in the knowledge to be ordered. Such changes, however, would occur within limits set by the propaedeutical disclosures and the general framework. Advance might require the abandonment of an older metaphysical element, and the substitution of a new one. But with equal likelihood, the advance of knowledge would make possible a richer and deeper apprehension of the content of fixed principles. To illustrate: The first definition of the Ethica, that of Causa sui, might well be for Spinoza a principle that awakened reason must accept, a truth whose priority and validity could not be undermined. He might regard it as a minimal definition of reality, of the nature of the ultimate object of inquiry. On the other hand, Spinoza, it may be conjectured, would not claim for every element of his system a similar finality. Just as he recognizes the role of hypothesis in science, in a similar way, he would recognize the tentative character of some metaphysical and theological elements.
There is also another sense in which it has been held that mathematics is reducible to logic, namely that in the expressions for the postulates of a mathematical discipline the undefined terms are to be given definitions which involve logical terms only, in such a way that postulates and theorems of the discipline thereby become propositions of pure logic, demonstrable on the basis of logical principles only. This view was first taken, as regards arithmetic and analysis, by Frege, and was afterwards adopted by Russell, who extended it to all mathematics.
The standpoint of occultism is that no cosmic force, or manifestations of any cosmic force, is different from cosmic life itself — except in its svabhava or characteristic attributes; and furthermore, that no smallest particle or point of infinite space is lifeless, so that the grossest matter is to be looked upon as a dense composite of vital action. From these two postulates it follows that electricity is not only vitality, but vitality controlled by intelligence, and our own inability to sense the intelligence in electric action lies solely in our ignorance of how cosmic intelligence acts, for it is all-permeant and virtually infinite in its manifestations, whereas our own ideas of vital action are limited to the very small compass of our acquaintance with particular units which we call living.
The theory amounts to trying to correct one error by means of another. If we suppose the physical universe to be composed of inert particles, how can we explain their activity? Materialistic science has simply shelved the difficulty. It is necessary to postulate an immaterial force, which in its origin is immaterial and in its manifestations substantial or material, but materialistic science does not recognize anything basically immaterial. It speaks of energy and matter as twin in destructibles, but merely assumes the former without explaining its nature. Moreover the words force and energy are used by science to denote effects occurring in matter. Are these effects without causes?
This "postulate" has resisted proof for many centuries before consideration is given to the possibility that it is simply not necessarily true. This leads to the development of non-Euclidean geometry, while the familiar geometry in which the fifth postulate is true is known as Euclidean Geometry. It should be noted that we now know of the parallel postulate's independence from the other postulates, that is, the parallel postulate cannot be proven from the four other postulates. In that sense, the parallel postulate of Euclid is more of an axiom for a particular geometric system.
T'ime: The general medium in which all events take place in succession or appear to take place in succession. All specific and finite periods of time, whether past, present or future, constitute merely parts of the entire and single Time. Common-sense interprets Time vaguely as something moving toward the future or as something in which events point in that direction. But the many contradictions contained in this notion have led philosophers to postulate doctrines purporting to eliminate some of the difficulties implied in common-sense ideas. The first famous but unresolved controversy arose in Ancient Greece, between Parmenides, who maintained that change and becoming were irrational illusions, and Heraclitus, who asserted that there was no permanence and that change characterized everything without exception. Another great controversy arose centuries later between disciples of Newton and Leibniz. According to Newton, time was independent of, and prior to, events; in his own words, "absolute time, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without regard to anything external." According to Leibniz, on the other hand, there can be no time independent of events: for time is formed by events and relations among them, and constitutes the universal order of succession. It was this latter doctrine which eventually gave rise to the doctrine of space-time, in which both space and time are regarded as two systems of relations, distinct from a perceptual standpoint, but inseparably bound together in reality. All these controversies led many thinkers to believe that the concept of time cannot be fully accounted for, unless we distinguish between perceptual, or subjective, time, which is confined to the perceptually shifting 'now' of the present, and conceptual, or objective, time, which includes til periods of time and in which the events we call past, present and future can be mutually and fixedly related. See Becoming, Change, Duration, Persistence, Space-Time. -- R.B.W.
Triad A group of three, a triple unity, three-in-one, the number three; it represents the limits of ratiocinative thought, for we cannot go beyond the duality of subject and object, and must postulate a unitary essence common to both. A triad stands at the head of all great cosmogonies and philosophies: spirit-matter, Purusha-prakriti, subject-object, male-female, father-mother, motion-space, etc., plus the fundamental unity and source enclosing each emanated duad — the ineffable, parabrahman, ’eyn soph, etc. Theosophy shows three distinct triadic representations of the universe, making nine, or with a synthesis ten: the ever-existing, the pre-existing, and the phenomenal, allegorized as the initial, the manifested, and the creative triads.
U. Cassina, L'oeuvre philosophique de G. Peano, Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, vol. 40 (1933), pp. 481-491. Peirce, Charles Sanders: American Philosopher. Born in Cambridge, Mass, on September 10th, 1839. Harvard M.A. in 1862 and Sc. B. in 1863. Except for a brief cireer as lectuier in philosophy at Harvard, 1864-65 and 1869-70 and in logic at Johns Hopkins, 1879-84, he did no formal teaching. Longest tenure was with the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey for thirty years beginning in 1861. Died at Milford, Pa. in 1914 He had completed only one work, The Grand Logic, published posthumously (Coll. Papers). Edited Studies in Logic (1883). No volumes published during his lifetime but author of many lectures, essays and reviews in periodicals, particularly in the Popular Science Monthly, 1877-78, and in The Monist, 1891-93, some of which have been reprinted in Chance, Love and Logic (1923), edited by Morris R. Cohen, and. together with the best of his other work both published and unpublished, in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (1931-35), edited by Charles Hartshorne ¦ind Paul Weiss. He was most influenced by Kant, who had he thought, raised all the relevant philosophical problems but from whom he differed on almost every solution. He was excited by Darwin, whose doctrine of evolution coincided with his own thought, and disciplined by laboratory experience in the physical sciences which inspired his search for rigor and demonstration throughout his work. Felt himself deeply opposed to Descartes, whom he accused of being responsible for the modern form of the nominalistic error. Favorably inclined toward Duns Scotus, from whom he derived his realism. Philosophy is a sub-class of the science of discovery, in turn a branch of theoretical science. The function of philosophy is to expliin and hence show unity in the variety of the universe. All philosophy takes its start in logic, or the relations of signs to their objects, and phenomenology, or the brute experience of the objective actual world. The conclusions from these two studies meet in the three basic metaphysical categories: quality, reaction, and representation. Quality is firstness or spontaneity; reaction is secondness or actuality; and representation is thirdness or possibility. Realism (q.v.) is explicit in the distinction of the modes of being actuality as the field of reactions, possibility as the field of quality (or values) and representation (or relations). He was much concerned to establish the realism of scientific method: that the postulates, implications and conclusions of science are the results of inquiry yet presupposed by it. He was responsible for pragmatism as a method of philosophy that the sum of the practical consequences which result by necessity from the truth of an intellectual conception constitutes the entire meaning of that conception. Author of the ethical principle that the limited duration of all finite things logically demands the identification of one's interests with those of an unlimited community of persons and things. In his cosmology the flux of actuality left to itself develops those systematic characteristics which are usually associated with the realm of possibility. There is a logical continuity to chance events which through indefinite repetition beget order, as illustrated in the tendency of all things to acquire habits. The desire of all things to come together in this certain order renders love a kind of evolutionary force. Exerted a strong influence both on the American pragmatist, William James (1842-1910), the instrumentalist, John Dewey (1859-), as well as on the idealist, Jociah Royce (1855-1916), and many others. -- J.K.F.
Unmanifest or Unmanifested Usually used of the First Logos in contradistinction to the manifest-unmanifest or Second Logos; though this unmanifested Logos is correctly said to be the first manifestation of the Absolute or the summit or primordial originant of a cosmic hierarchy, of which there are innumerable multitudes in boundless space. The unmanifest corresponds to primordial unity where the totality of the manifested universe is “all numbers.” Behind the ultimate which can be conceived, we have to postulate an unknown indefinable antecedent, which may therefore be called unmanifest.
Vacuum Emptiness, the necessary correlative of plenum or fullness: the two being one of those pairs of opposites which the mind is bound to postulate as a basis of reasoning. It stands for the spiritual condition of a cosmic hierarchy before it emanates its streams of manifestation — “the symbol of the absolute Deity or Boundless Space, esoterically” (TG 357). Democritus taught that the first principles are atoms and a vacuum, which is equivalent to the manifest and the unmanifest, deity latent and deity patent, but the atoms of Democritus, being spiritual indivisibles, are not the atoms of science but what in theosophy are called monads, and likewise the vacuum of void of Democritus is the equivalent of the archaic Buddhist sunyata or the ancient Buddhist or Brahmanic arupa (formless) spheres.
value pluralism ::: The idea that two or more moral values may be equally ultimate (true), yet in conflict. In addition, it postulates that in many cases, such incompatible values may be rationally incommensurable. As such, value pluralism is a theory in metaethics, rather than an ethical theory or a set of values in itself. Isaiah Berlin is accredited with having done the first substantial work on value pluralism, bringing it to the attention of general academia.
VII. Probability as a Physical Magnitude determined by Axioms.. This theory, which is favoured mainly by the Intuitionist school of mathematics, considers probability as a physical constant of which frequencies are measures. Thus, any frequency is an approximate measure of one physical constant attached to an event and to a set of trials: this constant is the probability of that event over the set of trials. As the observed frequencies differ little for large numbers of trials from their corresponding probabilities, some obvious properties of frequencies may be extended to probabilities. This is done without proceeding to the limit, but through general approximation as in the case of physical magnitudes. These properties are not constructed (as in the axiomatization of Mises), but simply described as such, they form a set of axioms defining probability. The classical postulates involved in the treatises of Laplace, Bertrand or Poincare have been modified in this case, under the joint influence of the discovery of measure by Borei, and of the use of abstract sets. Their new form has been fully stated by Kolmogoroff and interpreted by Frechet who proposes to call this latest theory the 'modernized axiomatic definition' of probability. Its interpretation requires that it should be preceded by an inductive synthesis, and followed by numerical verifications.
VI. Probability as a Limit of Frequencies. According to this view, developed especially by Mises and by Wald, the probability of an event is equal to its total frequency, that is to the limit, if it exists, of the frequency of that event in n trials, when n tends to infinity. The difficulty of working out this conception led Mises to propose the notion of a collective in an attempt to evolve conditions for a true random sequence. A collective is a random sequence of supposed results of trials when (1) the total frequency of the event in the sequence exists, and (2) the same property holds with the same limiting value when the sequence is replaced by any sequence derived from it. Various methods were devised by Copeland, Reichenbach and others to avoid objections to the second condition: they were generalized by Wald who restricted the choice of the "laws of selection" defining the ranks of the trials forming one of the derived sequences, by his postulate that these laws must form a denumerable set. This modification gives logical consistency to this theory at the expense of its original simplicity, but without disposing of some fundamental shortcomings. Thus, the probability of an event in a collective remains a relative notion, since it must be known to which denumerable set of laws of selection it has been defined relatively, in order to determine its meaning, even though its value is not relative to the set. Controversial points about the axiomatization of this theory show the possibility of other alternatives.
V. Probability as an Operattonal Concept: In this interpretation, which is due particularly to Kemble, probability is discussed in terms of the mental operations involved in determining it numerically. It is pointed out that probability enters the postulates of physical theories as a useful word employed to indicate the manner in which results of theoretical calculations are to be compared with experimental data. But beyond the usefulness of this word, there must be a more fundamental concept justifying it; this is called primary probability which should be reached by an instrumentalist procedure. The analogy of the thermometer, which connects a qualitative sensation with a number, gives an indication for such a procedure. The expectation of the repetition of an event is an elementary form of belief which can be strengthened by additional evidence. In collecting such evidence, a selection is naturally made, by accepting the relevant data and rejecting the others. When the selected data form a pattern which does not involve the event as such or its negative, the event is considered as probable. The rules of collecting the data and of comparing them with the theoretical event and its negative, involve the idea ol correspondence which leads to the use of numbers for its expression. Thus, probability is a number computed from empirical data according to given rules, and used as a metric and a corrective to the sense of expectation, and the ultimate value of the theory of probability is its service as a guide to action. The main interest of this theory lies in its psychological analysis and its attempt to unify the various conceptions of probability. But it is not yet complete; and until its epistemological implications are made clear, its apparent eclecticism may cover many of the difficulties it wishes to avoid. -- T.G.
wave-particles ::: the properties of photons and subatomic particles to exhibit properties of both waves and particles. Wave-particle duality is an important part of quantum mechanics postulate that all particles exhibit both waves and particles.
which, by altering the positions of the whole and broken lines form the changes in the diagrams. This has been assigned by scholars to Fu-Hsi (30th century BC). The first extant commentary on it is assigned to Ching Wen, founder of the Chou dynasty in 1122 BC, and his son. There have been many explanations offered regarding this work, called by many the Qabbalah of China: some see in it only a system of divination, a lunar calendar, phallic worship, or again the vocabulary of a tribe whose very existence had to be postulated for this purpose. Both Taoists and Confucianists regard the I Ching as the holiest of books; Confucius declared that he would like to give another 50 years of his life to its study, while the only Chinese commentator who is said to have understood it was Chu Hsi (1130-1200).
William James, who first adopted this philosophical position, and so named it, described it in The Meaning of Truth (Preface, xii-xiii) as consisting "first of a postulate, next of a statement of fact, and finally of a generalized conclusion.
KEYS (10k)
2 Max Planck
1 Aleister Crowley
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
3 Walter A Shewhart
3 Carl Jung
3 Bertrand Russell
3 Anonymous
2 William Shakespeare
2 Sun Tzu
2 Stephen King
2 Robert A Heinlein
2 Richard Dawkins
2 Mark Helprin
2 Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
2 Isaac Asimov
2 Dalai Lama XIV
2 Antonio Machado
1:III. THEOREMS: 1. Every intentional act is a Magical Act. 2. Every successful act has conformed to the postulate.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Magick,#KEYS
2:Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow this is what evolution is. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS
3:II. POSTULATE: ANY required Change may be effected by application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object.
(Illustration: I wish to prepare an ounce of Chloride of Gold. I must take the right kind of acid, nitro-hydrochloric and no other, in sufficient quantity and of adequate strength, and place it, in a vessel which will not break, leak or corrode, in such a manner as will not produce undesirable results, with the necessary quantity of Gold, and so forth. Every Change has its own conditions.
In the present state of our knowledge and power some changes are not possible in practice; we cannot cause eclipses, for instance, or transform lead into tin, or create men from mushrooms. But it is theoretically possible to cause in any object any change of which that object is capable by nature; and the conditions are covered by the above postulate.)
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Magick,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:You may postulate a world beyond the mind, but it will remain a concept, unproved and unprovable. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 2:There is divine beauty in learning... To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 3:Once you abstract from this, once you generalize and postulate Universals, you have departed from the creative reality, and entered the realm of static fixity, mechanism, materialism. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 4:There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 5:It is ridiculous to think of the creation of the world as occurring on a certain date—say, in the autumn of 4004 B.C.E.! It is equally ridiculous to describe a creator as a vengeful, adoration-hungry patriarch who lives in the clouds and whose scowling, bearded face is guaranteed to frighten children and intimidate the pious. And indeed, it is just as ridiculous to go to the other extreme and postulate a quantum creator-god who is discernible only as a sort of fuzzy cosmic hologram of all there is. ~ bernard-haisch, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Man has to postulate weirdness,
before reaching the new science. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
2:Postulate 2. Constant systems of chance causes do exist in nature. ~ Walter A Shewhart, #NFDB
3:"To be ideal is impossible, and remains therefore an unfulfilled postulate." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
4:Postulate 3. Assignable causes of variation may be found and eliminated. ~ Walter A Shewhart, #NFDB
5:Consciousness and logic are not reliable standards. —COGITORS, Fundamental Postulate ~ Brian Herbert, #NFDB
6:The quantum postulate, said Bohr, led to no clear separation of the observer and the observed. ~ Manjit Kumar, #NFDB
7:The basic postulate from which I start is that the goal of the social sciences is the liberation of man. ~ Jon Elster, #NFDB
8:Inelegant to reproach a man for his sterility, when that is his postulate, his mode of achievement, his dream…. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
9:I don't dare postulate about science, but I know that it takes both emotion and intellect in order for art to happen. ~ Lukas Foss, #NFDB
10:Those who deny the existence of the truth postulate the truth of their denial and plainly contradict themselves. ~ Antonio Machado, #NFDB
11:Buddhism and science share a fundamental reluctance to postulate a transcendent being as the origin of all things. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
12:The form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy. ~ Lord Acton, #NFDB
13:Postulate 1. All chance systems of causes are not alike in the sense that they enable us to predict the future in terms of the past. ~ Walter A Shewhart, #NFDB
14:III. THEOREMS: 1. Every intentional act is a Magical Act. 2. Every successful act has conformed to the postulate.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Magick,#NFDB
15:Abstract pictures are fictive models, because they make visible a reality that we can neither see nor describe, but whose existence we can postulate. ~ Gerhard Richter, #NFDB
16:The First Amendment makes confidence in the common sense of our people and in the maturity of their judgement the great postulate of our democracy. ~ William O Douglas, #NFDB
17:I have tried to avoid long numerical computations, thereby following Riemann's postulate that proofs should be given through ideas and not voluminous computations. ~ David Hilbert, #NFDB
18:It is crazy to postulate a trillion (causally unconnected) universes to explain the features of one universe, when postulating one entity (God) will do the job. ~ Richard Swinburne, #NFDB
19:The scientific attitude implies the postulate of objectivity-that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan; that there is no intention in the universe. ~ Jacques Monod, #NFDB
20:We physicists know that a beautiful postulate is more likely to be correct than an ugly one. Why not adopt this Postulate of Eternal Life, at least as a working hypothesis? ~ Frank J Tipler, #NFDB
21:There is divine beauty in learning... To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
22:One might lay down as a postulate: All conceptions of God which are incompatible with a movement of pure charity are false. All other conceptions of him, in varying degree, are true. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
23:Once you abstract from this, once you generalize and postulate Universals, you have departed from the creative reality, and entered the realm of static fixity, mechanism, materialism. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
24:The fundamental postulate of the theory of relativity, as it was called, was that the laws of science should be the same for all freely moving observers, no matter what their speed. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
25:Some physicists postulate that the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously and that we simply experience whatever present slice of the universe we happen to be in at the moment. ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
26:The democratic concept of man is false, because it is Christian. The democratic concept holds that . . . each man is a sovereign being. This is the illusion, dream, and postulate of Christianity. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
27:I think that science fiction has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that idea. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
28:The elimination of war. Did the Ancient Hainish postulate that continuous sexual capacity and organized social aggression, neither of which are attributes of any mammal but man, are cause and effect? ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
29:To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery. Not only Planck but also other physicists were intially at a loss as to what the proper context of the new postulate really was. ~ Abraham Pais, #NFDB
30:Evolutionary game theory was originally developed as an alternative to the hypothesis of group selection; now it is clear that game theory models postulate group selection, even if they do not use the g-word. ~ Elliott Sober, #NFDB
31:Love is not easy. All great religions postulate love as one of the greatest accomplishments. If it were that easy, or as easy as most people think, certainly, the great religious leaders would have been rather naive. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
32:Cats didn't start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function. ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
33:There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
34:Why do people have such an interest in my interest – and in their own? I believe that, more than anything else, it’s because we all have a postulate buried deep in our minds: that an interest in horror is unhealthy and aberrant. So ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
35:Some speak of the public as if it were someone with whom they have had dinner at the Leipzig Fair in the Hotel de Saxe. Who is this public? The public is not a thing, but rather an idea, a postulate, like the Church. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, #NFDB
36:The whole of theology, in regard to hell no less than to heaven, takes it for granted that Man is what is of most importance in the Universe of created beings. Since all theologians are men, this postulate has met with little opposition. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
37:All religions first postulate three principles, the world, the soul and God. To say that one principle alone appears as the three principles or that the three principles are always three principles is possible only as long as the ego exists.1 ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
38:My idea in terms of managing a narrative, or in thinking in my creative life, is that you could easily argue that the past, the present and the future all occur simultaneously, and if you can postulate that, then you're not strictly bound to a linear narrative. ~ Tommy Lee Jones, #NFDB
39:We can postulate that there must be diseases founded on a conflict between ego and super-ego. Analysis gives us the right to infer that melancholia is the model of this group, and then we should put in a claim for the name of "narcissistic psychoneuroses" for these disorders. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
40:We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction, yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them for security - and indeed to continue to refine their capacities and postulate plans for their use ~ Mohamed ElBaradei, #NFDB
41:if two closely related species act the same under similar circumstances, the mental processes behind their behavior are likely the same, too. The alternative would be to postulate that, in the short time since they diverged, both species evolved different ways of generating the same behavior. ~ Frans de Waal, #NFDB
42:The pragmatic method starts from the postulate that there is no difference of truth that doesn’t make a difference of fact somewhere; and it seeks to determine the meaning of all differences of opinion by making the discussion hinge as soon as possible upon some practical or particular issue. ~ William James, #NFDB
43:I had never thought that I would be involved in narrative structures. As a young guy, I was more interested in abstract modeling. But as I got older, I began to see that there was no reason to limit myself to any intellectual or conceptual postulate, when in fact I'm a professional student of music. ~ Anthony Braxton, #NFDB
44:ago he had made a pact with himself to postulate a created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days—since each hypothesis, whole paradoxical, avoided the paradoxes of the other—with a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
45:Proofs of the Euclidean [parallel] postulate can be developed to such an extent that apparently a mere trifle remains. But a careful analysis shows that in this seeming trifle lies the crux of the matter; usually it contains either the proposition that is being proved or a postulate equivalent to it. ~ Johann Heinrich Lambert, #NFDB
46:It is quite possible to imagine and postulate a unified truth that requires a plurality of consciousnesses, one that cannot... be fitted into the bounds of a single consciousness, one that is, so to speak, by its very nature full of event potential and is born at a point of contact among various consciousnesses.... ~ Mikhail Bakhtin, #NFDB
47:What made Newton's postulate nevertheless a modern Law of Nature, was his mathematical formulation of the mysterious entity to which it referred. And that formulation Newton deduced from the discoveries of Kepler - who had intuitively glimpsed gravity, and shied away from it. In such crooked ways does the tree of science grow. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
48:It would be foolish to give credit to Euclid for pangeometrical conceptions; the idea of geometry deifferent from the common-sense one never occurred to his mind. Yet, when he stated the fifth postulate, he stood at the parting of the ways. His subconscious prescience is astounding. There is nothing comperable to it in the whole history of science. ~ George Sarton, #NFDB
49:Some authors have conceptualized depression as a "depletion syndrome" because of the prominence of fatigability; they postulate that the patient exhausts his available energy during the period prior to the onset of the depression and that the depressed state represents a kind of hibernation, during which the patient gradually builds up a new story of energy. ~ Aaron T Beck, #NFDB
50:It is difficult, almost impossible, in fact, for the scientific community to recognize the fact that Cartesian bifurcation is a philosophic postulate, for which there is absolutely no scientific basis [...] It is not that they can conceive or imagine a scientific proof of that hypothesis; it is rather that they are unable to conceive that it might not be true. ~ Wolfgang Smith, #NFDB
51:There is divine beauty in learning... To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
52:[The] first postulate of the Principle of Uniformity, namely, that the laws of nature are invariant with time, is not peculiar to that principle or to geology, but is a common denominator of all science. In fact, instead of being an assumption or an ad hoc hypothesis, it is simply a succinct summation of the totality of all experimental and observational evidence. ~ M King Hubbert, #NFDB
53:Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow this is what evolution is. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
54:There would be no history as we know it, no religion, no metaphysics or aesthetics as we have lived them, without an initial act of trust, of confiding, more fundamental, more axiomatic by far than any “social contract” or covenant with the postulate of the divine. This instauration of trust, this entrance of man into the city of man, is that between word and world. ~ George Steiner, #NFDB
55:Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow this is what evolution is. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
56:The soaring, imaginative minds of men, constructing lofty, shimmering piles of abstract thought, and taking as their postulate a revelation from God, gaveus relgions which coule not possible maintained without belief and obedience: ... we find them most permanent and changeless among people who make the least effort to swquare their beliefs with the laws of life. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, #NFDB
57:The most basic act of awareness or knowing that we can demonstrate in science. I postulate that that is the very basis of why we're conscious at all, that it is this relationship at the quantum level as matter evolves into more complex form, including plants and animals and living substance and ourselves, that this area of consciousness as an awareness becomes more and more complex. ~ Edgar Mitchell, #NFDB
58:Economy and ideology. The claim (presented as an essential postulate of historical materialism) that every fluctuation of politics and ideology can be presented and expounded as an immediate expression of the structure, must be contested in theory as primitive infantilism, and combated in practice with the authentic testimony of Marx, the author of concrete political and historical works. ~ Antonio Gramsci, #NFDB
59:An amino acid residue (other than glycine) has no symmetry elements. The general operation of conversion of one residue of a single chain into a second residue equivalent to the first is accordingly a rotation about an axis accompanied by translation along the axis. Hence the only configurations for a chain compatible with our postulate of equivalence of the residues are helical configurations. ~ Linus Pauling, #NFDB
60:The two basic maxims of the so-called historical criticism are the postulate of the common and the axiom of the ordinary. Postulate of the common: everything really great, good, and beautiful, is improbable, since it is extraordinary and therefore at least suspect. Axiom of the ordinary: our conditions and environment must have existed everywhere, for they are really so natural. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, #NFDB
61:It is at least scientifically respectable to postulate that at the centre of a black hole the laws of nature no longer apply. Since most scientists are just a bit religious and most religious are seldom wholly unscientific we find humanity in a comical position. His scientific intellect believes in the possibility of miracles inside a black hole while his religious intellect believes in them outside it. ~ William Golding, #NFDB
62:Hitherto the principle of causality was universally accepted as an indispensable postulate of scientific research, but now we are told by some physicists that it must be thrown overboard. The fact that such an extraordinary opinion should be expressed in responsible scientific quarters is widely taken to be significant of the all-round unreliability of human knowledge. This indeed is a very serious situation. ~ Max Planck, #NFDB
63:Mike did not seem to grasp the idea of Creation itself. Well, Jubal wasn't sure that he did, either--he had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days--since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other--with, of course, a day off each year for sheer solipsist debauchery. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
64:Mike did not seem to grasp the idea of Creation itself. Well, Jubal wasn’t sure that he did, either—he had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days—since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other—with, of course, a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
65:I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers. ~ Francis Collins, a geneticist who led the U.S. government’s effort to decipher the human genome (DNA). cnn.com., #NFDB
66:To the extent that we are free we are like God, who has no need of an idea of a God over Godself or of an incentive other than the moral law itself. But to the extent that we are also natural beings, we desire our own happiness in everything else that we desire, and we need the practical postulate of God to bring that happiness together with morality. ~ John E. Hare, “Ethics and Religion: Two Kantian Arguments,” Philosophical Investigations, vol. 34, no. 2 (April 2011), p. 165, #NFDB
67:...the scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity-that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe. Now, this is basically incompatible with virtually all the religious or metaphysical systems whatever, all of which try to show that there is some sort of harmony between man and the universe and that man is a product-predictable if not indispensable-of the evolution of the universe. ~ Jacques Monod, #NFDB
68:With the failure of these many efforts, science was left in the somewhat embarrassing position of having to postulate theories of living origins which it could not demonstrate. After having chided the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the inevitable position of having to create a mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort could not prove to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past. ~ Loren Eiseley, #NFDB
69:Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism, confirmed by the work of population genetics, and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record. ~ Ernst Mayr, #NFDB
70:"Methodological naturalism" and "metaphysical naturalism" are terms that often surface in the continuing battle between evolutionary biology and creationism/intelligent design. The methodological thesis says that scientific theories shouldn't postulate supernatural entities; the metaphysical thesis says that no such entities exist. In this debate, God is the supernatural entity at issue; the question isn't whether science gets to talk about mathematical entities if Platonism is correct. ~ Elliott Sober, #NFDB
71:It is ridiculous to think of the creation of the world as occurring on a certain date—say, in the autumn of 4004 B.C.E.! It is equally ridiculous to describe a creator as a vengeful, adoration-hungry patriarch who lives in the clouds and whose scowling, bearded face is guaranteed to frighten children and intimidate the pious. And indeed, it is just as ridiculous to go to the other extreme and postulate a quantum creator-god who is discernible only as a sort of fuzzy cosmic hologram of all there is. ~ Bernard Haisch, #NFDB
72:Evidence indicates that cats were first tamed in Egypt. The Egyptians stored grain, which attracted rodents, which attracted cats. (No evidence that such a thing happened with the Mayans, though a number of wild cats are native to the area.) I don't think this is accurate. It is certainly not the whole story. Cats didn't start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function. ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
73:museums are unknown among the Igbo people. They do not even contemplate the idea of having something like a canon with the postulate: “This is how this sculpture should be made, and once it’s made it should be venerated.” No, the Igbo people want to create these things again and again, and every generation has a chance to execute its own model of art. So there’s no undue respect for what the last generation did, because if you do that too much it means that there is no need for me to do anything, because it’s already been done. ~ Chinua Achebe, #NFDB
74:In romanul „Grednel”, John Gardner vorbeste despre un om intelept care isi sintetizeaza meditatiile asupra misterelor vietii in doua postulate simple ”Lucrurile pier incet, alternativele exclud”. [...] Cel de-al doilea, „alternativele exclud”, este o cheie importanta pentru a intelege de ce nu e usor sa iei decizii. Decizia presupune invariabil o renuntare: pentru fiecare da trebuie sa existe un nu, fiecare decizie eliminand sau distrugand alte optiuni (radacina cuvantului „decide” inseamna „ucidere”, ca in omucidere sau sinucidere). ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
75:Like Spinoza, Einstein did not believe in a personal God who interacted with man. But they both believed that a divine design was reflected in the elegant laws that governed the way the universe worked. This was not merely some expression of faith. It was a principle that Einstein elevated (as he had the relativity principle) to the level of a postulate, one that guided him in his work. “When I am judging a theory,” he told his friend Banesh Hoffmann, “I ask myself whether, if I were God, I would have arranged the world in such a way.” When ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
76:The diversity of mankind is a basic postulate of our knowledge of human beings. But if mankind is diverse and individuated, then how can anyone propose equality as an ideal? Every year, scholars hold Conferences on Equality and call for greater equality, and no one challenges the basic tenet. But what justification can equality find in the nature of man? If each individual is unique, how else can he be made 'equal' to others than by destroying most of what is human in him and reducing human society to the mindless uniformity of the ant heap? ~ Murray Rothbard, #NFDB
77:My view is that consciousness, the seat of "personalness," is the ultimate reality, and is also scientifically impenetrable. In other words, there is no scientific test one can postulate that would definitively prove its existence in another entity. We assume that other biological human persons, at least those who are at least acting conscious, are indeed conscious. But this too is an assumption, and this shared human consensus breaks down when we go beyond human experience (e.g., the debate on animal consciousness, and by extension animal rights). ~ Ray Kurzweil, #NFDB
78:Our currently accepted conceptions of the beginning of the universe postulate much more uniformity than exists now. One way entropy could increase in the universe is by the process of reduction of its state function by some other system. Since the universe, by definition, cannot have any other matter in it, it becomes essential to postulate a mechanism other than that of physical laws, which permits the state function to reduce. This other mechanism may be the working of the “consciousness principle” which can just by the process of “observation” increase entropy ~ Subhash Kak, #NFDB
79:It had belonged to that idea of the exasperated consciousness of his victim to become a real test for him; since he had quite put it to himself from the first that, oh distinctly! he could "cultivate" his whole perception. He had felt it as above all open to cultivation--which indeed was but another name for his manner of spending his time. He was bringing it on, bringing it to perfection, by practice; in consequence of which it had grown so fine that he was now aware of impressions, attestations of his general postulate, that couldn't have broken upon him at once. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
80:If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that deity must have been vastly complex in the first place. The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an already existing being of prodigious intelligence and complexity. If we are going to allow ourselves the luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation, we might as well make a job of it and simply postulate the existence of life as we know it! ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
81:K’Vruck is so much more complete than death. It is the reduction of matter to a state of utter inertness, from which nothing can ever rise again. It is less than nothing. Nothing is something. K’Vruck is absolute. Your species would postulate the loss of soul to try to wrap their puny brains around it.
I stiffen. I know this voice. This mockery. My spear will be no use against it. If I kill the Hunter, it would probably just hop a ride on me.
I will tell you a secret, it says silkily. You do go on. Humans. Unless you are—it laughs softly—K’Vrucked. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
82:I think our science is a marvelous tool. Of course it has its politics, its failings, its mistakes, like all other human endeavors, but I think the methodology of our science - using it to postulate and to use the proper approach of creating falsifiable hypotheses and then testing them to see if they ring true, and then progressing by finding the anomalies to our theoretical structure, and then improving our theoretical structure to take care and test the anomalies - is the way to go, because that helps us discover what the universe.is all about and our relationship to it. ~ Edgar Mitchell, #NFDB
83:Ironically, the serious study of the impossible has frequently opened up rich and entirely unexpected domains of science. For example, over the centuries the frustrating and futile search for a “perpetual motion machine” led physicists to conclude that such a machine was impossible, forcing them to postulate the conservation of energy and the three laws of thermodynamics. Thus the futile search to build perpetual motion machines helped to open up the entirely new field of thermodynamics, which in part laid the foundation of the steam engine, the machine age, and modern industrial society. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
84:Thus, there exist models, principles, and laws that apply to generalized systems or their subclasses, irrespective of their particular kind, the nature of their component elements, and the relations or „forces‟ between them. It seems legitimate to ask for a theory, not of systems of a more or less special kind, but of universal principles applying to systems in general. In this way, we postulate a new discipline called General Systems Theory. Its subject matter is the formulation and derivation of those principles, which are valid for „systems‟ in general. ~ Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General System Theory, #NFDB
85:In the beginning of this record i tried to explore the nature of journeys, how they are things in themselves, each one an individual and no two alike. I speculated with a kind of wonder on the strength of the individuality of journeys and stopped on the postulate that people don't take trips--trips take people. That discussion, however, did not go into the life span of journeys. This seems to be variable and unpredictable. Who has not known a journey to be over and dead before the traveler returns? The reverse is also true: many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
86:In modern physics, symmetry has proved a fruitful guide to predicting new forms of matter and formulating new, more comprehensive laws. For example, the theory of special relativity can be considered a postulate of symmetry. It says that the equations of physics should look the same if we transform all the entities in those equations by adding a common, constant "boost" to their velocities. That boost takes one world into another, distinct world moving with a constant velocity relative to the first. Special relativity says that that distinction makes no difference-the same equations describe behavior in both worlds. ~ Frank Wilczek, #NFDB
87:Kant explained that the consciousness of good and evil is innate to mankind, written indelibly into the human heart. Earthly life, however, reveals a glaring contradiction: the virtuous in this world, those who choose to live by the good and obey the moral law, are not always the ones who prosper and receive their just reward. But if, as we must assume, the Eternal Creative Mind is rational and beneficent, then we must also assume that this contradiction will not be left unresolved. Hence we postulate the existence of an immortal life after physical death in which the good receive their reward, even though this postulate can never be proven by human reason. ~ Joseph Frank, #NFDB
88:Most moral philosophers consciously or unconsciously assume the essential correctness of our cultural sexual code — family, monogamy, continence, the postulate of privacy, ... restriction of intercourse to the marriage bed, etcetera. Having stipulated our cultural code as a whole, they fiddle with details - even such piffle as solemnly discussing whether or not the female breast is an "obscene" sight! But mostly they debate how the human animal can be induced or forced to obey this code, blandly ignoring the high probability that the heartaches and tragedies they see all around them originate in the code itself rather than the failure to abide by the code. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
89:Reason excludes faith," Alessandro responded, watching the blood-red mite as it made a dash for the rim. "It's deliberately limited. It won't function with the materials of religion. You can come close to proving the existence of God by reason, but you can't do it absolutely. That's because you can't do anything absolutely by reason. That's because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason. God is a postulate. I don't think God is interested in the verification of His existence, and, therefore, neither am I. Anyway, I have professional reasons to believe. Nature and art pivot faithfully around God. Even dogs know that. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
90:The universe of his own feelings keeps crowding everyone else's out. It is a constant struggle to see other people as people, rather than as denizens of a dimension one level below the one in which he's doomed to wander, imperially alone. That someone close to him might right now be awake in a different part of the city, feeling a pain every bit as real as his own . . . he can think it, but cannot seem to remember it. And is 'remember' even the right word for something for which you have zero empirical evidence? Postulate, maybe. Imagine. He sweeps the lens back toward the window, where the cat hasn't stirred. Her tail twitches. An idea threatens to form, but doesn't. ~ Garth Risk Hallberg, #NFDB
91:Yet [134] even though the sense world mimics the divine like a shadow,
and the divine world is self-sufficient and totally independent, still it is
impossible to postulate complete nonexistence for the sensory world, for
the very reason that it does reflect the world of the divine. The destruction
of the world, then, can mean only that it is transformed, not that it goes
out of existence altogether. The Holy Book speaks clearly to this effect in
describing how the mountains will be set in motion and become like tufts
of wool, and men like moths, the sun and moon cast down, the seas split open and spilled out, on the Day when the earth turns to what is no longer
earth, and the heavens to what is no longer heaven. ~ Lenn Evan Goodman,#NFDB
92:But the Australians, what do the Australians do? How do they structure their landscape? For a start they postulate a primal builder, whose work they presume only to interpret: the mythical animal who was active in the “dreamtime,” that is, a primal era, beyond verification, as the name indicates. A time of sleep. The visible landscape is an effect of causes that are to be found in the dreamtime. For example, the snake that dragged itself over this plain creating these undulations, etc., etc. These.. curious Aborigines make sure their eyes are closed while events take place, which allows them to see places as records of events. But what they see is a kind of dream, and they wake into a reverie, since the real story (the snake, not the hills) happened while they were asleep. ~ C sar Aira, #NFDB
93:Of course, almost ali people, guided by the traditional manner of dealing with ethical precepts, peremptorily repudiate such an explanation of the issue. Social institutions, they assert, must be just. It is base to judge them merely according to their fitness to attain definite ends, however desirable these ends may be from any other point of view. What matters first is justice. The extreme formulation of this idea is to be found in the famous phrase: fiai fustitia, pereat mundus. Let justice be done, even if it destroys the world. Most supporters of the postulate of justice will reject this maxim as extravagant, absurd, and paradoxical. But it is not more absurd, merely more shocking, than any other reference to an arbitrary notion of absolute justice. It clearly shows the fallacies of the methods applied in the discipline of intuitive ethics. ~ Ludwig von Mises, #NFDB
94:A Nazi initiation into the upper reaches of the SS was to gouge out the eye of a pet cat after feeding the cat and cuddling it for a month. This exercise was designed to eliminate all traces of pity-poison and mold a full Übermensch. There is a very sound magical postulate involved: the practitioner achieves superhuman status by performing some atrocious, revolting, subhuman act. In Morocco, magic men gain power by eating their own excrement.
But dig out Ruski’s eyes? Stack bribes to the radioactive sky. What does it profit a man? I could not occupy a body that could dig out Ruski’s eyes. So WHO gained the whole world? I didn’t. Any bargain involving exchange of qualitative values like animal love for quantitative advantage is not only dishonorable, as wrong as a man can get, it is also foolish. Because YOU get nothing. You have sold your YOU. ~ William S Burroughs,#NFDB
95:Every argument for God and every attribute ascribed to Him rests on a false metaphysical premise. None can survive for a moment on a correct metaphysics....
Existence exists, and only existence exists. Existence is a primary: it is uncreated, indestructible, eternal. So if you are to postulate something beyond existence—some supernatural realm—you must do it by openly denying reason, dispensing with definitions, proofs, arguments, and saying flatly, “To Hell with argument, I have faith.” That, of course, is a willful rejection of reason.
Objectivism advocates reason as man’s sole means of knowledge, and therefore, for the reasons I have already given, it is atheist. It denies any supernatural dimension presented as a contradiction of nature, of existence. This applies not only to God, but also to every variant of the supernatural ever advocated or to be advocated. In other words, we accept reality, and that’s all. ~ Leonard Peikoff,#NFDB
96:II. POSTULATE: ANY required Change may be effected by application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object.
(Illustration: I wish to prepare an ounce of Chloride of Gold. I must take the right kind of acid, nitro-hydrochloric and no other, in sufficient quantity and of adequate strength, and place it, in a vessel which will not break, leak or corrode, in such a manner as will not produce undesirable results, with the necessary quantity of Gold, and so forth. Every Change has its own conditions.
In the present state of our knowledge and power some changes are not possible in practice; we cannot cause eclipses, for instance, or transform lead into tin, or create men from mushrooms. But it is theoretically possible to cause in any object any change of which that object is capable by nature; and the conditions are covered by the above postulate.)
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Magick,#NFDB
97:At this point the reader should be warned that the argument here developed would not be accepted by all schools of psychology. The Gestalt school would have none of it. The pioneers of this important movement want to minimize the role of learning and experience in perception. They think that our compulsion to see the tiled floor, or the letters, not as irregular units in the plane but as regular units arranged in depth is far too universal and too compelling to be attributed to learning. Instead they postulate an inborn tendency of our brain. Their theory centers on the electrical forces which come into play in the cortex during the process of vision. It is these forces, they claim, that tend toward simplicity and balance and make our perception always weighted, as it were, in favor of geometrical simplicity and cohesion. A flat, regularly tiled floor is simpler than the complex pattern of rhomboids in the plane, hence it is a flat, regularly tiled floor we actually see. ~ E H Gombrich, #NFDB
98:Supersymmetry was (and is) a beautiful mathematical idea. The problem with applying supersymmetry is that it is too good for this world. We simply do not find particles of the sort it predicts. We do not, for example, see particles with the same charge and mass as electrons, but a different amount of spin.
However, symmetry principles that might help to unify fundamental physics are hard to come by, so theoretical physicists do not give up on them easily. Based on previous experience with other forms of symmetry, we have developed a fallback strategy, called spontaneous symmetry breaking. In this approach, we postulate that the fundamental equations of physics have the symmetry, but the stable solutions of these equations do not. The classic example of this phenomenon occurs in an ordinary magnet. In the basic equations that describe the physics of a lump of iron, any direction is equivalent to any other, but the lump becomes a magnet with some definite north-seeking pole. ~ Frank Wilczek,#NFDB
99:[H.G. Wells said] that his method was "to trick his reader into an unwary concession to some plausible assumption and get on with his story while the illusion holds." Such prestidigitation is a characteristic ploy of science fiction: to make a nonexistent entity or impossible premise acceptable (often by scientific-sounding terms such as telepathy, extraterrestrial, cavorite, FTL speed) and then follow through with a genuinely realistic, logically coherent description of the effects and implications.
Of course the accurate narrative description of the nonexistent is a basic device of all fiction. The extension to the impossible is proper to fantasy, but since we seldom know with certainty what is or is not possible, it is a legitimate element of science fiction too. What if? is a question asked by both science fiction and experimental science, and they share their method of answering it: make a postulate and then carefully observe its consequences.
- Words Are My Matter by Ursula K. Le Guin ~ Ursula K Le Guin,#NFDB
100:The authors’ prior experience in clinical research4 had amply convinced us of the possibility of long-term performance enhancement using psychedelic agents in a safe, supportive setting. Though not deliberately sought, there were numerous spontaneous incidents of what appeared to be temporarily enhanced performance during the drug experience itself. These observations led us to postulate the following: Any human function can be performed more effectively. We do not function at our full capacity. Psychedelics appear to temporarily inhibit censors that ordinarily limit what is available to conscious awareness. Participants may, for example, discover a latent ability to form colorful and complex imagery, to recall forgotten experiences of early childhood, or to generate meaningful symbolic presentations. By leading participants to expect enhancement of other types of performance—creative problem solving, learning manual or verbal skills, manipulating logical or mathematical symbols, acquiring sensory or extrasensory perception, memory, and recall—and by providing favorable preparatory and environmental conditions, it may be possible to improve any desired aspect of mental functioning. ~ James Fadiman, #NFDB
101:Evolution in quantum mechanics is deterministic as in classical mechanics except for the difference that as the system interacts with another system, its state function collapses. This dichotomy exists only for separated systems, in which one of them is being observed by the other. Given that the state of the entire universe is defined at the initial point, its evolution must be completely deterministic. Any seeming randomness now should merely be an amplification of the randomness in the initial state and the entropy at the origin should not change as the universe evolves. In other words, the physical universe governed by quantum laws has no place for the emergence of life. Our currently accepted conceptions of the beginning of the universe postulate much more uniformity than exists now. One way entropy could increase in the universe is by the process of reduction of its state function by some other system. Since the universe, by definition, cannot have any other matter in it, it becomes essential to postulate a mechanism other than that of physical laws, which permits the state function to reduce. This other mechanism may be the working of the “consciousness principle” which can just by the process of “observation” increase entropy ~ Subhash Kak, #NFDB
102:Why should there be conscious experience at all? It is central to a subjective viewpoint, but from an objective viewpoint it is utterly unexpected. Taking the objective view, we can tell a story about how fields, waves, and particles in the spatiotemporal manifold interact in subtle ways, leading to the development of complex systems such as brains. In principle, there is no deep philosophical mystery in the fact that these systems can process information in complex ways, react to stimuli with sophisticated behavior, and even exhibit such complex capacities as learning, memory, and language. All this is impressive, but it is not metaphysically baffling. In contrast, the existence of conscious experience seems to be a new feature from this viewpoint. It is not something that one would have predicted from the other features alone. That is, consciousness is surprising. If all we knew about were the facts of physics, and even the facts about dynamics and information processing in complex systems, there would be no compelling reason to postulate the existence of conscious experience. If it were not for our direct evidence in the first-person case, the hypothesis would seem unwarranted; almost mystical, perhaps. Yet we know, directly, that there is conscious experience. The question is, how do we reconcile it with everything else we know? ~ David J Chalmers, #NFDB
103:If human pleasure did not have both a lid and a time limit, we would not bestir ourselves to do things that were not pleasurable, such as toiling for our subsistence. And then we would not survive. By the same token, should our mass mind ever become discontented with the restricted pleasures doled out by nature, as well as disgruntled over the lack of restrictions on pain, we would omit the mandates of survival from our lives out of a stratospherically acerbic indignation. And then we would not reproduce. As a species, we do not shout into the sky, “The pleasures of this world are not enough for us.” In fact, they are just enough to drive us on like oxen pulling a cart full of our calves, which in their turn will put on the yoke. As inordinately evolved beings, though, we can postulate that it will not always be this way. “A time will come,” we say to ourselves, “when we will unmake this world in which we are battered between long burden and brief delight, and will live in pleasure for all our days.” The belief in the possibility of long-lasting, high-flown pleasures is a deceptive but adaptive flimflam. It seems that nature did not make us to feel too good for too long, which would be no good for the survival of the species, but only to feel good enough for long enough to keep us from complaining that we do not feel good all the time. ~ Thomas Ligotti, #NFDB
104:They basically suggest that specificity allows for a handful of neurons, whose activity is too faint to be measurable, to hypothetically explain lifetimes of complex and coherent experiences. Resuscitation specialist Dr. Sam Parnia’s candid rebuttal of this suggestion seems to frame it best: ‘When you die, there’s no blood flow going into your brain. If it goes below a certain level, you can’t have electric activity. It takes a lot of imagination to think there’s somehow a hidden area of your brain that comes into action when everything else isn’t working.’38 But even if we grant that there is hidden neural activity somewhere, the materialist position immediately raises the question of why we are born with such large brains if only a handful of neurons were sufficient to confabulate unfathomable dreams. After all, as a species, we pay a high price for our large brains in terms of metabolism and in terms of having to be born basically premature, since a more developed head cannot pass through a woman’s birth canal. Moreover, under ordinary conditions, it has been scientifically demonstrated that we generate measurable neocortical activity even when we dream of the mere clenching of a hand!39 It is, thus, incoherent to postulate that undetectable neural firings – the extreme of specificity – are sufficient to explain complex experiences. ~ Bernardo Kastrup, #NFDB
105:I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins. ~ Paul A M Dirac, #NFDB
106:Then there occurred to me the 'glucklichste Gedanke meines Lebens,' the happiest thought of my life, in the following form. The gravitational field has only a relative existence in a way similar to the electric field generated by magnetoelectric induction. Because for an observer falling freely from the roof of a house there exists-at least in his immediate surroundings-no gravitational field [his italics]. Indeed, if the observer drops some bodies then these remain relative to him in a state of rest or of uniform motion, independent of their particular chemical or physical nature (in this consideration the air resistance is, of course, ignored). The observer therefore has the right to interpret his state as 'at rest.' Because of this idea, the uncommonly peculiar experimental law that in the gravitational field all bodies fall with the same acceleration attained at once a deep physical meaning. Namely, if there were to exist just one single object that falls in the gravitational field in a way different from all others, then with its help the observer could realize that he is ina gravitational field and is falling in it. If such an object does not exist, however-as experience has shown with great accuracy-then the observer lacks any objective means of perceiving himself as falling in a gravitational field. Rather he has the right to consider his state as one of rest and his environment as field-free relative to gravitation. The experimentally known matter independence of the acceleration of fall is therefore a powerful argument for the fact that the relativity postulate has to be extended to coordinate systems which, relative to each other, are in non-uniform motion. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
107:The anti-technological hysteria that holds broad sections of the Western world in its grip is a product of metaphysics’ decay: it is betrayed by the fact that it clings to false classifications of beings in order to revolt against processes in which the overcoming of these classifications has already been carried out. It is reactionary in the essential sense of the word, because it expresses the ressentiment of obsolete bivalence against a polyvalence that it does not understand. That holds above all for the habits of the critique of power, which are always still unconsciously motivated by metaphysics. Under the old metaphysical schema the division of beings into subject and object is mirrored in the descending grade between master and slave and between worker and material. Within this disposition the critique of power can only be articulated as the resistance of the oppressed object-slave-material side to the subject-master-worker side. But ever since the statement ‘There is information,’ alias ‘There are systems,’ has been in power this opposition has lost its meaning and develops more and more into a playground for pseudo-conflicts. In fact, the hysteria amounts to searching for a master so as to be able to rise up against him. One cannot rule out the possibility that the effect, i.e., the master, has long been on the verge of dissolving and for the most part remains alive as a postulate of the slave fixated on rebellion—as a historicized Left and as a museum humanism. In contrast, a living leftist principle would have to prove itself anew by a creative dissidence, just as the thinking of homo humanus asserts itself in the poetic resistance to the metaphysical and technocratic reflexes of humanolatry. ~ Peter Sloterdijk, #NFDB
108:Discovery first flew in 1984, the third orbiter to join the fleet. It was named for one of the ships commanded by Captain James Cook. Space shuttle Discovery is the most-flown orbiter; today will be its thirty-ninth and final launch. By the end of this mission, it will have flown a total of 365 days in space, making it the most well traveled spacecraft in history. Discovery was the first orbiter to carry a Russian cosmonaut and the first to visit the Russian space station Mir. On that flight, in 1995, Eileen Collins became the first woman to pilot an American spacecraft. Discovery flew twelve of the thirty-eight missions to assemble the International Space Station, and it was responsible for deploying the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. This was perhaps the most far reaching accomplishment of the shuttle program, as Hubble has been called the most important telescope in history and one of the most significant scientific instruments ever invented. It has allowed astronomers to determine the age of the universe, postulate how galaxies form, and confirm the existence of dark energy, among many other discoveries. Astronomers and astrophysicists, when they are asked about the significance of Hubble, will simply say that it has rewritten the astronomy books. In the retirement process, Discovery will be the “vehicle of record,” being kept as intact as possible for future study.
Discovery was the return-to-flight orbiter after the loss of Challenger and then again after the loss of Columbia. To me, this gives it a certain feeling of bravery and hope. ‘Don’t worry,’ Discovery seemed to tell us by gamely rolling her snow-white self out to the launchpad. 'Don’t worry, we can still dream of space. We can still leave the earth.’ And then she did. ~ Margaret Lazarus Dean,#NFDB
109:It is clear that Bhu Mandala, as described in the Bhagvatam, can be interpreted as a geocentric map of the solar system out ot Saturn. But an obvious and important question is: Did some real knowledge of planetary distances enter into the construction of the Bhu Mandala system, or are the correlations between Bhu Mandala features and planetary orbits simply coincidental?
Being a mathematician interested in probability theory, Thompson is better equipped than most to answer this question and does so through computer modelling of a proposed 'null hypothesis' -- i.e.,
'that the author of the Bhagvatam had no access to correct planetary distances and therefore all apparent correlations between Bhu Mandala features and planetary distances are simply coincidental.'
However, the Bhu Mandala/solar system correlations proved resilient enough to survive the null hypothesis. 'Analysis shows that the observed correlations are in fact highly improbable.' Thompson concludes:
'If the dimensions given in the Bhagvatam do, in fact, represent realistic planetary distances based on human observation, then we must postulate that Bhagvata astronomy preserves material from an earlier and presently unknown period of scientific development ... [and that] some people in the past must have had accurate values for the dimensions of the planetary orbits. In modern history, this information has only become available since the development of high-quality telescopes in the last 200 years. Accurate values of planetary distances were not known by Hellenistic astronomers such as Claudius Ptolemy, nor are they found in the medieval Jyotisa Sutras of India. If this information was known it must have been acquired by some unknown civilization that flourished in the distant past. ~ Graham Hancock,#NFDB
110:The Meaning Of Death
An After-Dinner Speech
I rise, gentlemen, it is the pleasant hour.
Darkness falls. The night falls.
Time, fall no more.
Let that be life time falls no more. The threat
Of time we in our own courage have forsworn.
Let light fall, there shall be eternal light
And all the light shall on our heads be worn
Although at evening clouds infest the sky
Broken at base from which the lemon sun
Pours acid of winter on a useful viewFour water-towers, two churches, and a river:
These are the sights I give in to at night
When the long covers loose the roving eye.
To find the horror of the day a shape
Of life: we would have more than living sight.
Past delusions are seen as if it all
Were yesterday flooded with lemon light,
Vice and virtue, hard sacrifice and crime
In the cold vanity of time.
Tomorrow
The landscape will respond to jocund day,
Bright roofs will scintillate with hues of May
And Phoebus' car, his daily circuit run,
Brings me to the year when, my time begun,
I loitered in the backyard by the alley;
When I was a small boy living at home
The dark came on in summer at eight o'clock
For Little Lord Fauntleroy in a perfect frock
By the alley: mother took him by the ear
To teach of the mixed modes an ancient fear.
Forgive me if I am personal.
Gentlemen, let's
90
Forget the past, its related errors, coarseness
Of parents, laxities, unrealities of principle.
Think of tomorrow. Make a firm postulate
Of simplicity in desire and act
Founded on the best hypotheses;
Desire to eat secretly, alone, lest
Ritual corrupt our charity,
Lest darkness fall and time fall
In a long night when learned arteries
Mounting the ice and sum of barbarous time
Shall yield, without essence, perfect accident.
We are the eyelids of defeated caves.
~ Allen Tate,#NFDB
111:I have decided to write a diary of La Belle et la Bête as the work on the film progresses. After a year of preparations and difficulties, the moment has now come to grapple with a dream. Apart from the numerous obstacles which exist in getting a dream onto celluloid, the problem is to make a film within the limits imposed by a period of austerity. But perhaps these limitations may stimulate imagination, which is often lethargic when all means are placed at its disposal.
Everybody knows the story by madame Leprince de Beaumont, a story often attributed to Perrault, because it is found next to "Peau d'Ane" between those bewitching covers of the Bibliothèque Rose.
The postulate of the story requires faith, the faith of childhood. I mean that one must believe implicitly at the very beginning and not question the possibility that the mere picking of a rose might lead a family into adventure, or that a man can be changed into a beast, and vice versa. Such enigmas offend grown-ups who are readily prejudiced, proud of their doubt, armed with derision. But I have the impudence to believe that the cinema which depicts the impossible is apt to carry conviction, in a way, and may be able to put a "singular" occurrence into the plural.
It is up to us (that is, to me and my unit―in fact, one entity) to avoid those impossibilities which are even more of a jolt in the midst of the improbable than in the midst of reality. For fantasy has its own laws which are like those of perspective. You may not bring what is distant into the foreground, or render fuzzily what is near. The vanishing lines are impeccable and the orchestration so delicate that the slightest false note jars. I am not speaking of what I have achieved, but of what I shall attempt within the means at my disposal.
My method is simply: not to aim at poetry. That must come of its own accord. The mere whispered mention of its name frightens it away. I shall try to build a table. It will be up to you then to eat at it, to examine it or to chop it up for firewood. ~ Jean Cocteau,#NFDB
112:If we are honest — and scientists have to be — we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards — in heaven if not on earth — all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins. ~ Paul Dirac, Remarks made during the Fifth Solvay International Conference (October 1927), as quoted in Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations (1971) by Werner Heisenberg, pp. 85-86; these comments prompted the famous remark later in the day by Wolfgang Pauli: "Well, our friend Dirac, too, has a religion, and its guiding principle is "God does not exist and Dirac is His prophet." Variant translations and paraphrases of that comment are listed in the "Quotes about Dirac" section below., #NFDB
113:The situation is established not only to provoke defensiveness but to sidetrack the reformer into answering the wrong questions.... In this, the pattern of discourse resembles that of dinnertime conversations about feminism in the early 1970s. Questions of definition often predominate. Whereas feminists were parlaying questions which trivialized feminism such as "Are you one of those bra burners?" vegetarians must define themselves against the trivializations of "Are you one of those health nuts?" or "Are you one of those animal lovers?" While feminists encountered the response that "men need liberation too," vegetarians are greeted by the postulate that "plants have life too." Or to make the issue appear more ridiculous, the position is forwarded this way: "But what of the lettuce and tomato you are eating; they have feelings too!"
The attempt to create defensiveness through trivialization is the first conversational gambit which greets threatening reforms. This pre-establishes the perimeters of discourse. One must explain that no bras were burned at the Miss America pageant, or the symbolic nature of the action of that time, or that this question fails to regard with seriousness questions such as equal pay for equal work. Similarly, a vegetarian, thinking that answering these questions will provide enlightenment, may patiently explain that if plants have life, then why not be responsible solely for the plants one eats at the table rather than for the larger quantities of plants consumed by the herbivorous animals before they become meat? In each case a more radical answer could be forwarded: "Men need first to acknowledge how they benefit from male dominance," "Can anyone really argue that the suffering of this lettuce equals that of a sentient cow who must be bled out before being butchered?" But if the feminist or vegetarian responds this way they will be put back on the defensive by the accusation that they are being aggressive. What to a vegetarian or a feminist is of political, personal, existential, and ethical importance, becomes for others only an entertainment during dinnertime. ~ Carol J Adams,#NFDB
114:The low-trust, family-oriented societies with weak intermediate organizations we have observed have all been characterized by a similar saddle-shaped distribution of enterprises. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Italy, and France have a host of smaller private firms that constitute the entrepreneurial core of their economies and a small number of very large, state-owned firms at the other end of the scale. In such societies, the state plays an important role in promoting large-scale enterprises that might not be spontaneously created by the private sector, albeit at some cost in efficiency. We might postulate then that as a general rule, any society with weak intermediate institutions and low trust outside the family will tend to have a similar distribution of firms in its economy. The Republic of Korea, however, presents an apparent anomaly that needs to be explained in order to preserve the validity of the larger argument. Korea is similar to Japan, Germany, and the United States insofar as it has very large corporations and a highly concentrated industrial structure. On the other hand, Korea is much closer to China than to Japan in terms of family structure. Families occupy a similarly important place in Korea as in China, and there are no Japanese-style mechanisms in Korean culture for bringing outsiders into family groups. Following the Chinese pattern, this should lead to small family businesses and difficulties in institutionalizing the corporate form of organization. The answer to this apparent paradox is the role of the Korean state, which deliberately promoted gigantic conglomerates as a development strategy in the 1960s and 1970s and overcame what would otherwise have been a cultural proclivity for the small- and medium-size enterprises typical of Taiwan. While the Koreans succeeded in creating large companies and zaibatsu in the manner of Japan, they have nonetheless encountered many Chinese-style difficulties in the nature of corporate governance, from management succession to relations on the shop floor. The Korean case shows, however, how a resolute and competent state can shape industrial structure and ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
115:The textbooks of history prepared for the public schools are marked by a rather naive parochialism and chauvinism. There is no need to dwell on such futilities. But it must be admitted that even for the most conscientious historian abstention from judgments of value may offer certain difficulties.
As a man and as a citizen the historian takes sides in many feuds and controversies of his age. It is not easy to combine scientific aloofness in historical studies with partisanship in mundane interests. But that can and has been achieved by outstanding historians. The historian's world view may color his work. His representation of events may be interlarded with remarks that betray his feelings and wishes and divulge his party affiliation. However, the postulate of scientific history's abstention from value judgments is not infringed by occasional remarks expressing the preferences of the historian if the general purport of the study is not affected. If the writer, speaking of an inept commander of the forces of his own nation or party, says "unfortunately" the general was not equal to his task, he has not failed in his duty as a historian. The historian is free to lament the destruction of the masterpieces of Greek art provided his regret does not influence his report of the events that brought about this destruction.
The problem of Wertfreíheit must also be clearly distinguished from that of the choice of theories resorted to for the interpretation of facts. In dealing with the data available, the historian needs ali the knowledge provided by the other disciplines, by logic, mathematics, praxeology, and the natural sciences. If what these disciplines teach is insufficient or if the historian chooses an erroneous theory out of several conflicting theories held by the specialists, his effort is misled and his performance is abortive. It may be that he chose an untenable theory because he was biased and this theory best suited his party spirit. But the acceptance of a faulty doctrine may often be merely the outcome of ignorance or of the fact that it enjoys greater popularity than more correct doctrines.
The main source of dissent among historians is divergence in regard to the teachings of ali the other branches of knowledge upon which they base their presentation. To a historian of earlier days who believed in witchcraft, magic, and the devil's interference with human affairs, things hàd a different aspect than they have for an agnostic historian. The neomercantilist doctrines of the balance of payments and of the dollar shortage give an image of presentday world conditions very different from that provided by an examination of the situation from the point of view of modern subjectivist economics. ~ Ludwig von Mises,#NFDB
116:Does an arbitrary human convention, a mere custom, decree that man must guide his actions by a set of principles—or is there a fact of reality that demands it? Is ethics the province of whims: of personal emotions, social edicts and mystic revelations—or is it the province of reason? Is ethics a subjective luxury—or an objective necessity? In the sorry record of the history of mankind’s ethics—with a few rare, and unsuccessful, exceptions—moralists have regarded ethics as the province of whims, that is: of the irrational. Some of them did so explicitly, by intention—others implicitly, by default. A “whim” is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause. No philosopher has given a rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values. So long as that question remained unanswered, no rational, scientific, objective code of ethics could be discovered or defined. The greatest of all philosophers, Aristotle, did not regard ethics as an exact science; he based his ethical system on observations of what the noble and wise men of his time chose to do, leaving unanswered the questions of: why they chose to do it and why he evaluated them as noble and wise. Most philosophers took the existence of ethics for granted, as the given, as a historical fact, and were not concerned with discovering its metaphysical cause or objective validation. Many of them attempted to break the traditional monopoly of mysticism in the field of ethics and, allegedly, to define a rational, scientific, nonreligious morality. But their attempts consisted of trying to justify them on social grounds, merely substituting society for God. The avowed mystics held the arbitrary, unaccountable “will of God” as the standard of the good and as the validation of their ethics. The neomystics replaced it with “the good of society,” thus collapsing into the circularity of a definition such as “the standard of the good is that which is good for society.” This meant, in logic—and, today, in worldwide practice—that “society” stands above any principles of ethics, since it is the source, standard and criterion of ethics, since “the good” is whatever it wills, whatever it happens to assert as its own welfare and pleasure. This meant that “society” may do anything it pleases, since “the good” is whatever it chooses to do because it chooses to do it. And—since there is no such entity as “society,” since society is only a number of individual men—this meant that some men (the majority or any gang that claims to be its spokesman) are ethically entitled to pursue any whims (or any atrocities) they desire to pursue, while other men are ethically obliged to spend their lives in the service of that gang’s desires. This could hardly be called rational, yet most philosophers have now decided to declare that reason has failed, that ethics is outside the power of reason, that no rational ethics can ever be defined, and that in the field of ethics—in the choice of his values, of his actions, of his pursuits, of his life’s goals—man must be guided by something other than reason. By what? Faith—instinct—intuition—revelation—feeling—taste—urge—wish—whim Today, as in the past, most philosophers agree that the ultimate standard of ethics is whim (they call it “arbitrary postulate” or “subjective choice” or “emotional commitment”)—and the battle is only over the question or whose whim: one’s own or society’s or the dictator’s or God’s. Whatever else they may disagree about, today’s moralists agree that ethics is a subjective issue and that the three things barred from its field are: reason—mind—reality. If you wonder why the world is now collapsing to a lower and ever lower rung of hell, this is the reason. If you want to save civilization, it is this premise of modern ethics—and of all ethical ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
117:The Angel In The House. Book Ii. Canto Vi.
Preludes.
I Love's Perversity
How strange a thing a lover seems
To animals that do not love!
Lo, where he walks and talks in dreams,
And flouts us with his Lady's glove;
How foreign is the garb he wears;
And how his great devotion mocks
Our poor propriety, and scares
The undevout with paradox!
His soul, through scorn of worldly care,
And great extremes of sweet and gall,
And musing much on all that's fair,
Grows witty and fantastical;
He sobs his joy and sings his grief,
And evermore finds such delight
In simply picturing his relief,
That 'plaining seems to cure his plight;
He makes his sorrow, when there's none;
His fancy blows both cold and hot;
Next to the wish that she'll be won,
His first hope is that she may not;
He sues, yet deprecates consent;
Would she be captured she must fly;
She looks too happy and content,
For whose least pleasure he would die.
Oh, cruelty, she cannot care
For one to whom she's always kind!
He says he's nought, but, oh, despair,
If he's not Jove to her fond mind!
He's jealous if she pets a dove,
She must be his with all her soul;
Yet 'tis a postulate in love
That part is greater than the whole;
And all his apprehension's stress,
When he's with her, regards her hair,
Her hand, a ribbon of her dress,
As if his life were only there;
151
Because she's constant, he will change,
And kindest glances coldly meet,
And, all the time he seems so strange,
His soul is fawning at her feet;
Of smiles and simple heaven grown tired,
He wickedly provokes her tears,
And when she weeps, as he desired,
Falls slain with ecstasies of fears;
He blames her, though she has no fault,
Except the folly to be his;
He worships her, the more to exalt
The profanation of a kiss;
Health's his disease; he's never well
But when his paleness shames her rose;
His faith's a rock-built citadel,
Its sign a flag that each way blows;
His o'erfed fancy frets and fumes;
And Love, in him, is fierce, like Hate,
And ruffles his ambrosial plumes
Against the bars of time and fate.
II The Power of Love
Samson the Mighty, Solomon
The Wise, and Holy David all
Must doff their crowns to Love, for none
But fell as Love would scorn to fall!
And what may fallen spirits win,
When stripes and precepts cannot move?
Only the sadness of all sin,
When look'd at in the light of Love.
The Love-Letters.
‘You ask, Will admiration halt,
‘Should spots appear within my Sun?
‘Oh, how I wish I knew your fault,
‘For Love's tired gaze to rest upon!
‘Your graces, which have made me great,
‘Will I so loftily admire,
152
‘Yourself yourself shall emulate,
‘And be yourself your own desire.
‘I'll nobly mirror you too fair,
‘And, when you're false to me your glass,
‘What's wanting you'll by that repair,
‘So bring yourself through me to pass.
‘O Dearest, tell me how to prove
‘Goodwill which cannot be express'd;
‘The beneficial heart of love
‘Is labour in an idle breast.
‘Name in the world your chosen part,
‘And here I vow, with all the bent
‘And application of my heart
‘To give myself to your content.
‘Would you live on, home-worshipp'd, thus,
‘Not proudly high nor poorly low?
‘Indeed the lines are fall'n to us
‘In pleasant places! Be it so.
‘But would you others heav'nward move,
‘By sight not faith, while you they admire?
‘I'll help with zeal as I approve
‘That just and merciful desire.
‘High as the lonely moon to view
‘I'll lift your light; do you decree
‘Your place, I'll win it; for from you
‘Command inspires capacity.
‘Or, unseen, would you sway the world
‘More surely? Then in gracious rhyme
‘I'll raise your emblem, fair unfurl'd
‘With blessing in the breeze of time.
‘Faith removes mountains, much more love;
‘Let your contempt abolish me
‘If ought of your devisal prove
‘Too hard or high to do or be.’
II
I ended. ‘From your Sweet-Heart, Sir,’
Said Nurse, ‘The Dean's man brings it down.’
I could have kiss'd both him and her!
‘Nurse, give him that, with half-a-crown.’
How beat my heart, how paused my breath.
153
When with perversely fond delay,
I broke the seal, that bore a wreath
Of roses link'd with one of bay.
III
‘I found your note. How very kind
‘To leave it there! I cannot tell
‘How pleased I was, or how you find
‘Words to express your thoughts so well.
‘The Girls are going to the Ball
‘At Wilton. If you can, do come;
‘And any day this week you call
‘Papa and I shall be at home.
‘You said to Mary once—I hope
‘In jest—that women should be vain:
‘On Saturday your friend (her Pope),
‘The Bishop dined with us again.
‘She put the question, if they ought?
‘He turn'd it cleverly away
‘(For giddy Mildred cried, she thought
‘We must), with 'What we must we may.'
‘Dear papa laugh'd, and said 'twas sad
‘To think how vain his girls would be,
‘Above all Mary, now she had
‘Episcopal authority.
‘But I was very dull, dear friend,
‘And went upstairs at last, and cried.
‘Be sure to come to-day, or send
‘A rose-leaf kiss'd on either side.
‘Adieu! I am not well. Last night
‘My dreams were wild: I often woke,
‘The summer-lightning was so bright;
‘And when it flash'd I thought you spoke.’
~ Coventry Patmore,#NFDB
118:Autumn Shade
The autumn shade is thin. Grey leaves lie faint
Where they will lie, and, where the thick green was,
Light stands up, like a presence, to the sky.
The trees seem merely shadows of its age.
From off the hill, I hear the logging crew,
The furious and indifferent saw, the slow
Response of heavy pine; and I recall
That goddesses have died when their trees died.
Often in summer, drinking from the spring,
I sensed in its cool breath and in its voice
A living form, darker than any shade
And without feature, passionate, yet chill
With lust to fix in ice the buoyant rim—
Ancient of days, the mother of us all.
Now, toward his destined passion there, the strong,
Vivid young man, reluctant, may return
From suffering in his own experience
To lie down in the darkness. In this time,
I stay in doors. I do my work. I sleep.
Each morning, when I wake, I assent to wake.
The shadow of my fist moves on this page,
Though, even now, in the wood, beneath a bank,
Coiled in the leaves and cooling rocks, the snake
Does as it must, and sinks into the cold.
Nights grow colder. The Hunter and the Bear
Follow their tranquil course outside my window.
I feel the gentian waiting in the wood,
Blossoms waxy and blue, and blue-green stems
Of the amaryllis waiting in the garden.
I know, as though I waited what they wait,
The cold that fastens ice about the root,
A heavenly form, the same in all its changes,
Inimitable, terrible, and still,
And beautiful as frost. Fire warms my room.
Its light declares my books and pictures. Gently,
A dead soprano sings Mozart and Bach.
I drink bourbon, then go to bed, and sleep
In the Promethean heat of summer’s essence.
Awakened by some fear, I watch the sky.
Compelled as though by purposes they know,
The stars, in their blue distance, still affirm
The bond of heaven and earth, the ancient way.
This old assurance haunts small creatures, dazed
In icy mud, though cold may freeze them there
And leave them as they are all summer long.
I cannot sleep. Passion and consequence,
The brutal given, and all I have desired
Evade me, and the lucid majesty
That warmed the dull barbarian to life.
So I lie here, left with self-consciousness,
Enemy whom I love but whom his change
And his forgetfulness again compel,
Impassioned, toward my lost indifference,
Faithful, but to an absence. Who shares my bed?
Who lies beside me, certain of his waking,
Led sleeping, by his own dream, to the day?
If I ask you, angel, will you come and lead
This ache to speech, or carry me, like a child,
To riot? Ever young, you come of age
Remote, a pledge of distances, this pang
I notice at dusk, watching you subside
From tree-tops and from fields. Mysterious self,
Image of the fabulous alien,
Even in sleep you summon me, even there,
When, under his native tree, Odysseus hears
His own incredible past and future, whispered
By wisdom, but by wisdom in disguise.
Thinking of a bravura deed, a place
Sacred to a divinity, an old
Verse that seems new, I postulate a man
Mastered by his own image of himself.
Who is it says, I am? Sensuous angel,
Vessel of nerve and blood, the impoverished heir
Of an awareness other than his own?
Not these, but one to come? For there he is,
In a steel helmet, raging, fearing his death,
Carrying bread and water to a quiet,
Placing ten sounds together in one sound:
Confirming his election, or merely still,
Sleeping, or in a colloquy with the sun.
Snow and then rain. The roads are wet. A car
Slips and strains in the mire, and I remember
Driving in France: weapons-carriers and jeeps;
Our clothes and bodies stiffened by mud; our minds
Diverted from fear. We labor. Overhead,
A plane, Berlin or Frankfurt, now New York.
The car pulls clear. My neighbor smiles. He is old.
Was this our wisdom, simply, in a chance,
In danger, to be mastered by a task,
Like groping round a chair, through a door, to bed?
A dormant season, and, under the dripping tree,
Not sovereign, ordering nothing, letting the past
Do with me as it will, I savor place
And weather, air and sun. Though Hercules
Confronts his nature in his deed, repeats
His purposes, and is his will, intact,
Magnificent, and memorable, I try
The simplest forms of our old poverty.
I seek no end appointed in my absence
Beyond the silence I already share.
I drive home with the books that I will read.
The streets are harsh with traffic. Where I once
Played as a boy amid old stands of pine,
Row after row of houses. Lined by the new
Debris of wealth and power, the broken road.
Then miles of red clay bank and frugal ground.
At last, in the minor hills, my father’s place,
Where I can find my way as in a thought—
Gardens, the trees we planted, all we share.
A Cherokee trail runs north to summer hunting.
I see it, when I look up from the page.
In nameless warmth, sun light in every corner,
Bending my body over my glowing book,
I share the room. Is it with a voice or touch
Or look, as of an absence, learned by love,
Now, merely mine? Annunciation, specter
Of the worn out, lost, or broken, telling what future.
What vivid loss to come, you change the room
And him who reads here. Restless, he will stir,
Look round, and see the room renewed and line,
Color, and shape as, in desire, they are,
Not shadows but substantial light, explicit,
Bright as glass, inexhaustible, and true.
1O
My shadow moves, until, at noon, I stand
Within its seal, as in the finished past.
But in the place where effect and cause are joined,
In the warmth or cold of my remembering,
Of love, of partial freedom, the time to be
Trembles and glitters again in windy light.
For nothing is disposed. The slow soft wind
Tilting the blood-root keeps its gentle edge.
The intimate cry, both sinister and tender,
Once heard, is heard confined in its reserve.
My image of myself, apart, informed
By many deaths, resists me, and I stay
Almost as I have been, intact, aware,
Alive, though proud and cautious, even afraid.
~ Edgar Bowers,#NFDB
34 Occultism
23 Integral Yoga
19 Christianity
17 Psychology
15 Philosophy
11 Science
2 Integral Theory
1 Thelema
1 Fiction
1 Cybernetics
20 Aleister Crowley
18 Carl Jung
13 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
13 Nolini Kanta Gupta
10 The Mother
9 Sri Aurobindo
6 Plotinus
5 Satprem
4 Paul Richard
4 Friedrich Nietzsche
4 Aldous Huxley
3 Jorge Luis Borges
3 James George Frazer
2 Ken Wilber
15 Magick Without Tears
9 The Future of Man
8 Mysterium Coniunctionis
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
5 The Practice of Psycho therapy
5 The Life Divine
4 Twilight of the Idols
4 The Secret Doctrine
4 The Perennial Philosophy
4 Liber ABA
3 The Golden Bough
3 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
3 Essays Divine And Human
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
2 The Phenomenon of Man
2 Talks
2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
2 Savitri
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
2 Let Me Explain
2 Labyrinths
2 Aion
2 Agenda Vol 06
2 Agenda Vol 02
2 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
one point, however mobile, and postulate it a a point
at rest, calculating the motions of all other points
--
already postulated as beyond IT. The suggestion is, that there may be somethin
falsely described as silence, to represent absence-of-conception beyond that
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
abundance than before. The Saint here postulates a principle of dogmatic theology
that by himself, and with the ordinary aid of grace, man cannot attain to that
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In his inquiry into truth and certitude Pascal takes his stand upon what he calls the geometrical method, the only valid method, according to him, in the sphere of reason. The characteristic of this method is that it takes for granted certain fundamental principles and realitiescalled axioms and postulates or definitionsand proceeds to other truths that are infallibly and inevitably deduced from them, that are inherent and implied in them. There is no use or necessity in trying to demonstrate these fundamentals also; that will only land us into confusion and muddle. They have to be simply accepted, they do not require demonstration, it is they that demonstrate others. Such, for instance, are space, time, number, the reality of which it is foolishness and pedantry to I seek to prove. There is then an order of truths that do not i require to be proved. We are referring only to the order of I physical truths. But there is another order, Pascal says, equally I valid and veritable, the order of the Spirit. Here we have another set of fundamentals that have to be accepted and taken for granted, matrix of other truths and realities. It can also be called the order of the Heart. Reason posits physical fundamentals; it does not know of the fundamentals of the Heart which are beyond its reach; such are God, Soul, Immortality which are evident only to Faith.
But Faith and Reason, according to Pascal, are not contraries nor irreconcilables. Because the things of faith are beyond reason, it is not that they are irrational. Here is what Pascal says about the function and limitation of reason:
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A recentand unifying (!)theory postulated by the American Nobel Laureate, Murray Gell-Mann, would reduce this somewhat startling enumeration to more reasonable proportions through the introduction of a unique sub-particle constituting all matter: the quark. Nevertheless, there would still exist several kinds of quarks (e.g., 'strange,' 'charmed,' 'colored' in red, yellow and blue) for accommodating the various qualities of matter. A proton, for example, would consist of three quarks: red, yellow and blue. However, it should be noted that quarks are basically mathematical intermediaries to facilitate the comprehension or interpretation of certain experiments thus far unexplained. Moreover, the simple question still remains, even if they do exist materially: 'What are quarks made of?'
Nevertheless, a mathematical model resulting from a recent theory that attempts to represent our material universe strangely resembles Mother's perception, for it postulates a milieu consisting entirely of electromagnetic waves of very high frequency. According to this theory, Matter itself is the 'coagulation' of these waves at the moment they exceed a certain frequency threshold; our perception of emptiness, of fullness, of the hard or the transparent, being finally due only to the differences in vibratory frequencies'vibratory modes within the same thing.'
But what is this 'same thing'?
0 1961-07-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All the believers, all the faithful (those from the West in particular) think in terms of something else when they speak of GodHe cannot be weak, ugly, imperfect, He is something immaculate but this is wrong thinking. They are dividing, separating. For subconscious thought (I mean thinking without reflecting, instinctively, out of habit, without observing oneself thinking), what is generally considered perfection is precisely what is seen or felt or postulated as being virtuous, divine, beautiful, admirable but its not that at all! Perfection means something in which nothing is missing. The divine perfection is a totality. The divine perfection is the Divine in his wholeness, with nothing left out. The divine perfection is the whole of the Divine, with nothing subtracted from it. For the moralists it is the exact opposite: divine perfection is nothing but the virtues they stand for!
From the true standpoint, the divine perfection is the whole (Mother makes a global gesture), and the fact that within this whole nothing can be missing is precisely what makes it perfect.1 Consequently, perfection means that each thing is in its place, exactly what it should be, and that relationships among things are also exactly what they should be.
0 1965-03-20, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I told him, thats why people who very much tried to find, but in vain, spoke of Gods Will; but that (Mother shakes her head) that seems to be irreconcilable with, as I said, the knowledge you have when you have passed beyond the Mind. The Mind can say that to itself in order to give itself peace, but its thoroughly, thoroughly unsatisfying, because it postulates an unacceptable arbitrariness, which is felt as contrary to the Truth. But then, how do you explain those kinds of reversals? Naturally, others, like Buddha, spoke about Ignorance; they said, You are ignorant; you think you know, but you are ignorant. But the key he gave isnt satisfying, either. Because when you have taken care to establish down to the cells of the body an apparently unshakable equanimity, how can you accept the ignorance factor?
Which means that the further you go, the nearer you draw to the Goal, the more inexplicable it appears to be.
0 1965-05-19, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats why certain minds have postulated that the creation was the result of an error. But we find all the possible conceptions: the perfect creation, then a fault that introduced the error; the creation itself as a lower movement, which must end since it began; then the conception of the Vedas according to what Sri Aurobindo told us about it, which was a progressive and infinite unfolding or discoveryindefinite and infiniteof the All by Himself. Naturally, all these are human translations. For the moment, as long as we express ourselves humanly, its a human translation; but depending on the initial stand of the human translator (that is, a stand that accepts the primordial error, or the accident in the creation, or the conscious supreme Will since the beginning, in a progressive unfolding), the conclusions or the descents in the yogic attitude are different. There are the nihilists, the Nirvanists and the illusionists, there are all the religions (like Christianity) that accept the devils intervention in one form or another; and then pure Vedism, which is the Supremes eternal unfolding in a progressive objectification. And depending on your taste, you are here or there or here, and there are nuances. But according to what Sri Aurobindo felt to be the most total truth, according to that conception of a progressive universe, you are led to say that, every minute, what takes place is the best possible for the unfolding of the whole. The logic of it is absolute. And I think that all the contradictions can only stem from a more or less pronounced tendency for this or that position, that other position; all the minds that accept the intrusion of a fault or an error and the resulting conflict between forces pulling backward and forces pulling forward, can naturally dispute the possibility. But you are forced to say that for someone who is spiritually attuned to the supreme Will or the supreme Truth, what happens is necessarily, every instant, the best for his personal realizationthis is true in all cases. The unconditioned best can only be accepted by one who sees the universe as an unfolding, the Supreme growing more and more conscious of Himself.
(silence)
0 1966-06-18, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And nothing allows us to postulate that out there in those other systems, billions of light-years away from us, they will have the same form as we do or an analogous form. They may be balls, they may be all kinds of things!
There is only one thing, ONE vibration that seems to be really universal: the Vibration of Love. I am not saying its manifestation, no, nothing of the sort! But the something which is pure Love. That seems to me to be universal.
02.01 - Our Ideal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now to the first question. It is usually contended that the ideal is an impossibility, a chimera, since it involves on the face of it a self-contradiction. For, is not divinity the very opposite of humanity, immortality that of mortality and Matter that of the Spirit? These pairs, all of them, are formed of two mutually exclusive terms. This is what Mayavada posits. But need it be necessarily and inevitably so? What is affirmed is after all a postulate and one can start from other postulates as well. The truth, of course, is that all theories or views of existence are centrally formulations of an experience; and each experience has its own postulate.
To begin with, we refuse to admit or recognise that there is or is bound to be a contradiction or opposition between Matter and Spirit, between body and soul or between the human and the divine. We start with an experience, a realisation which declares the essential unity and identity of the duality. That is the thing that has to be posited first clear and nett. The question next arises how the two are one and identical; this demands some clarification. For, is it meant that they are one and the same in the sense that Zeus and Jupiter are the same or that water and H2O are the same? Apart from any barren theorising, is it not a universal and eternal and invariable experience that to attain to the Divine one must leave behind the human, to become the immortal one must cease to be a mortal and to live in the Spirit one has to deny Matter? The real answer, however, is that it is so and it is not so. The dilemma is not so trenchant as it has been made out to be.
02.10 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A voice clamant of uncertainty's postulates,
An architect of knowledge, not its source.
02.11 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
They formulate enigma's postulates
And join the unknown to the apparent worlds.
02.14 - Panacea of Isms, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Communism cannot save humanity. For if it means the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, well, a healthy normal society will not bear or tolerate it longno Dictatorship, whether of one or of many, is likely to endure or bring in the millennium. In that sense communism is only a fascismo of small people fighting against a fascismo of big people. A society is not normally made up of proletarians only: it does not consist merely of lotus-eaters nor does it consist of hewers of wood and drawers of water (peasants and labourers) alone. Even a proletariate society will slowly and inevitably gravitate towards a stratification of its own. In its very bosom the bureaucracy, the military, the officialdom of a closed body will form a class of its own. A Lenin cannot prevent the advent of a Stalin. Even if the proletarians form the majority, by far a very large majority, even then the tyranny of the majority is as reprehensible as the tyranny of the minority. Communism pins its faith on struggle the class struggle, it says, is historically true and morally justifiable. But this is a postulate all are not bound to accept. Then again, if communism means also materialism (dialectical or any other), that also cannot meet and satisfy all the needs and urges of man, indeed it leaves out of account all the deeper yearnings that lie imbedded in him and that cannot be obliterated by a mere denial. For surely man does not live by bread alone, however indispensable that article may be to him: not even culture the kind admitted by communism, severely intellectual, rational, scientific, pragmaticcan be the be-all and end-all of human civilisation. Communistic Russia attempted to sweep away all traces of religion and church and piety; the attempt does not seem to have been very successful.
As a matter of fact, Communism is best taken as a symptom of the disease society suffers from and not as a remedy. The disease is a twofold bondage from which man has always been trying to free himself. It is fundamentally the same "bondage which the great French Revolution sought most vigorously and violently to shake offan economic and an ideological bondage, that is to say, translated in the terms of those days, the tyranny of the court and the nobility and the tyranny of the Church. The same twofold bondage appears, again today combated by Communism, viz., Capitalism and Bourgeoisie. Originally and essentially, however, Communism meant an economic system in which there is no personal property, all property being held in common. It is an ideal that requires a good deal of ingenuity to be worked out in all details, to say the least. Certain religious sects within restricted membership tried the experiment. Indeed some kind of religious mentality is required, a mentality freed from normal mundane reactions, as a preliminary condition in order that such an attempt might be successful. A perfect or ideal communism may be possible only when man's character and nature has undergone a thorough and radical change. Till then it will be a Utopia passing through various avatars.
04.03 - The Eternal East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This view finds its justification because of a particular outlook on spirituality and non-spirituality. If the Spirit and things spiritual are taken to mean something transcending and rejecting the world and the things of the world, something exclusive of life and its fulfilment here on earth, if on the other hand, the world and its life are given only their face value emptying them of their deeper and transcendent contentsin the manner of the great Laplace who could find no place for God in his map of the world which seemed to be quite complete in itself, if this trenchant division is made in the very definition of the terms, in our primary axioms and postulates, then, of course, we cannot avoid a scission and an eternal struggle. If you consider the Spirit as only pure spirit, an absolute without any relation, as, an ever-fixed and static entity and if we view Matter as purely material and the law of mechanics as supreme and inviolable, then there cannot be a reconciliation or even a meeting between the two. There are some who have a great goodwill, who wish to avoid clash and quarrel and are for concord and harmony. They have tried the reconciliation, but failed. The two positions being fundamentally exclusive of each other can, at best, be juxtaposed, but not unified or fused together.
And yet mankind has always sought for an integral, an all comprehending fulfilment, a truth and a realisation that would go round his entire existence. Man has always aspired, in the midst of the transience and imperfection that the world is, for something stable and perfect, in the heart of disharmony for some core of perfect harmony. He termed it God, Atman, Summum Bonum and he sought it sometimes, as he thought necessary, even at the cost of the world and the life, if it is to be found elsewhere. Man aspired also always to find this habitation of his made somewhat better. Dissatisfied with his present state, he sought to mould it, remake it, put into it something which his aspiration and inspiration called the True, the Beautiful, the Good. There was always this double aspiration in man, one of ascent and the other of descent, one vertical and the other horizontal, one leading up and beyondtotally beyond, in its extreme urge the other probing into the mystery locked up there below, releasing the power to reform or recreate the world, although he was not always sure whether it was a power of mind or of matter.
--
So then we say that the East starts from the summit and surveys reality from above downwards, while the West starts from below and works upward. The two complementary movements can be described in several other graphic terms. Instead of a movement from the summit to the base and of another from the base to the apex, that is to say, a movement of ascent and of descent, we can speak of a movement from within outward and of that from outside inward, that is to say, from the centre to the periphery and from the periphery to the centre; we can speak also of a movement of contraction, withdrawal or concentration and a movement of expansion; and expression and diffusion. Again, we can refer to a vertical movement and a horizontal movement. All however express the same truth. We postulate one reality, take our stand upon that and work our way towards the other; the two together form the total reality and together can they give the integral life fulfilment.
As I have said, the history of mankind, as a matter of fact, the whole history of creation gives a graphic picture of the interaction of this double movement. There are ages and countries in which one or the other of the two takes precedence and special or exclusive emphasis. But the inner story is always a converging movement.
04.05 - The Immortal Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire must have been the original source of the inspiration that moved later on Spengler and Toynbee and others to posit a life-line for nations and races and mark its various stages of growth and evolution. The general theory put in a nutshell would be like this: mankind is composed of groups or aggregates of individuals and each has a life-history of its own even like an individual human being, in other words, an inescapable cycle of birth, growth, maturity, decline and disintegration. All groupspeoples; races, nationshave to pass through these destined stages, although, naturally, at different times and with a varying tempo. The view implies two conclusions or rather postulates:(l) that whatever is born must die, there is no resurrection or rejuvenation, neither in the individual nor in the collective life and (2) that humanity remains on the whole more or less the same, there is no global progress: there is no continued march forward towards a kingdom of heaven upon earth, even as there has not been a decline and deterioration from some Golden Age in the past.
Is this so, in point of fact or is it bound to be so, in point of theory? What are the facts? There are at least two human groups or peoples extant that seem to point to a different conclusion. I speak of China and especially of India. Egypt and Greece and Rome, the Minoans, the early Mesopotamians had their day. They rose, they lived, they died and are no more. But India and China, although almost contemporaneous with any of those earliest civilisations, have not vanished; they continue still today. In respect of India at least it cannot be said that she is not today, is totally different from what she was in her Vedic epoch or even in her Harappa and Mohenjo-daro days, in the sense that modern Egypt is not the Egypt of the Pharaohs, nor the Greece of Venizelos the Greece of Pericles.
05.05 - In Quest of Reality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A hypothesis, however revolutionary or unorthodox it may seem for the moment, has to be tested by its effective application, in its successful working out. All scientific discoveries in the beginning appear as inconveniences that upset the known and accepted order. Copernicus, Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Maxwell or Einstein in our day enunciated principles that were not obvious sense-given axioms. These are at the outset more or less postulates that have to be judged by their applicability.
Creation as a movement or expression of consciousness need not be dubbed a metaphysical jargon; it can be assumed as a scientific working hypothesis and seen how it affects our view, meets our problems and difficulties, whether it can give a satisfactory clue to some of the riddles of physical and psychical phenomena. A scientific supposition (or intuition) is held to be true if it can be applied invariably to facts of life and experience and if it can open up to our vision and perception new facts. The trend of scientific discoveries today is towards the positing of a background reality in Nature of which energy (radiant and electrical) is the first and overt form. We discarded ether, only to replace it by field and disposition. We have arrived at a point where the question is whether we cannot take courage" in both hands and declare, as some have already done, that the substratum in Nature is consciousness-energy and on that hypothesis better explain certain movements of Matter and Life and Mind in a global unity. Orthodox and die-hard views will always protest and cry that it is a misalliance, a misjoinder to couple together Matter and Consciousness or even Life and Consciousness. But since the light has touched the higher mind even among a few of the positivist type, the few may very well be the precursor of the order of the day.
05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Again, the generalised law of relativity (that is to say, laws governing all motions, even accelerated motion and hot merely uniform motion) that sought to replace the laws of gravitation did away also with the concepts of force and causality: it stated that things moved not because they were pulled or pushed but because they followed the natural curve of space (they describe geodesics, i.e., move in the line of least distance). Space is not a plain surface, smooth and uniform, but full of dimples and hollows, these occurring in the vicinity of masses of matter, the sun, for instance, (although one does not see how or why a mass of matter should roll down the inclined plane of a curved surface without some kind of push and pull the problem is not solved but merely shifted and put off). All this means to say that the pattern of the universe is absolutely geometrical and science in the end resolves itself into geometry: the laws of Nature are nothing but theorems or corollaries deduced and deducible from a few initial postulates. Once again, on this line, of enquiry also the universe is dissolved into abstract and psychological factors.
Apart from the standpoint of theoretical physics developed by Einstein, the more practical aspect as brought out in Wave Mechanics leads us into no less an abstract and theoretical domain. The Newtonian particle-picture, it is true, has been maintained in the first phase of modern physics which specialised in what is called Quantum Mechanics. But waves or particlesalthough the question as to their relative validity and verity still remains opendo not make much difference in the fundamental outlook. For in either view, the individual unit is beyond the ken of the scientist. A wave is not a wave but just the probability of a wave: it is not even a probable wave but a probability wave. Thus the pattern that Wave Mechanics weaves to show the texture of the ultimate reality is nothing more than a calculus of probabilities. By whichever way we proceed we seem to arrive always at the same inevitable conclusion.
05.07 - The Observer and the Observed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now we come to the sanctum, the Shekinah, of the problem. For there is a still deeper mystery. And pre-eminently it is an Einsteinian discovery. It is not merely the measuring ray of light, not merely the beam in the eye of the observer that is the cause of interference: the very mind behind the eye is involved in a strange manner. The mind is not a tabula rasa, it comes into the field with certain presuppositionsaxioms and postulates, as it calls themdue to its angle of vision and perhaps to the influence upon it of immediate sense perception. It takes for granted, for example, that light travels in a straight line, that parallels do not meet, indeed all the theorems and deductions of Euclidean geometry. There is a strong inclination in the mind to view things as arranged according to that pattern. Einstein has suggested that the spherical scheme can serve as well or even better our observations. Riemann's non-Euclidean geometry has assumed momentous importance in contemporary scientific enquiry. It is through that scheme that Einstein proposes to find the equation that will subsume the largest number of actual and possible or potential facts and bring about the reconciliation of such irreconcilables as wave and particle, gravitation and electricity.
In any case, at the end of all our peregrinations we seem to circle back to our original Cartesian-cum-Berkeleyean position; we discover that it is not easy to extricate the observed from the observer: the observer is so deep set in the observed, part and parcel of it that there are scientists who consider their whole scientific scheme of the world as only a mental set-up, we may replace it very soon by another scheme equally cogent, subjective all the same. The subject has entered into all objects and any definition of the object must necessarily depend upon the particular poise of the subject. That is the cosmic immanence of the Purusha spoken of in the Upanishads the one Purusha become many and installed in the heart of each and, every object. There is indeed a status of the Subject in which the subject and the object are gathered into or form one reality. The observer and the observed are the two ends, the polarisation of a single entity: and all are reals at that level. But the scientific observer is only the mental purusha and in his observation the absolute objectivisation is not possible. The Einsteinian equations that purport to rule out all local view-points can hardly be said to have transcended the co-ordinates of the subject. That is possible only to the consciousness of the cosmic Purusha.
05.08 - An Age of Revolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There has been a revolutionary change in the scientific outlook in recent times. A very fundamental principle the very postulate on which the whole edifice of physical Science has been built upis now being called in question. We thought that the unity and uniformity of Nature is a cardinal fact and nothing can shake it. Well, it appears that solid basis too has proved to be no more than an eidolon.
The search for a universal principle of Nature is a meta-physical as well as a scientific preoccupation. In ancient days, fo example, we had the Water of Thales or the Fire of Heraclitus as the one original unifying principle of this kind. With the coming of the Renascence and the New Illumination we laughed them out and installed instead the mysterious Ether. For a long time this universalreigned supreme and now that too has gone the way of its predecessors. We thought for a time that we had found in Electric Energy the one sovereign principle in Nature. At a time when we had a few elementsdiscrete, different, fundamental units that in their varying combinations built up the composite structure of Nature, apart from the fact that they reposed finally on the ultimate unifying principle of Ether, it was found also that they all behaved in a uniform and identical and therefore predictable manner. The time and the place (and the mass) being given, everything went according to a pattern and a formula, definite, fixed, mathematically rigid. Even the discovery of one element after another till the number reached the famous figure 92 (itself following a line of mathematically precise and inevitable development) did not materially alter the situation and caused no tribulation. For on further scrutiny a closer unity revealed itself: the supposed disparity in the substance of the various elements was found to be an illusion, for they all appeared now as different organisations or dispositions of the same electric energy (although the identity of electric energy with radiant energy was not always very clear). Thus we could conclude that as the substance was the same, its mode of working also would be' uniform and patterned. In other words, the mechanistic conception still ruled our view' of Nature. That means, the ultimate units, the particles (of energy) that compose Nature are like sea-sands or water-drops, each one is fundamentally similar to any other and all behave similarly, reacting uniformly to the same forces that act upon them.
05.09 - The Changed Scientific Outlook, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is a scientific obscurantism, which is not less obscure because it is scientific, and one must guard against it with double care and watchfulness. It is the mentality of the no-changer whose motto seems to be: plus a change, plus a reste le mme.. Let me explain. The scientist who prefers still to be called a materialist must remember that the (material) ground under his feet has shifted considerably since the time he first propounded his materialistic position: he does not stand in the same place (or plane?) as he did even twenty years ago. The change has been basic and fundamentalfundamental, because the very definitions and postulates with which we once started have been called in question, thrown overboard or into the melting-pot.
Shall we elucidate a little? We were once upon a time materialists, that is to say, we had very definite and fixed notions about Matter: to Matter we gave certain invariable characteristics, inalienable properties. How many of them stand today unscathed on their legs? Take the very first, the crucial property ascribed to Matter: "Matter is that which has extension." Well, an electric charge, a unit energy of it, the ultimate constituent of Matter as discovered by Science today, can it be said to occupy space? In the early days of Science, one Boscovich advanced a theory according to which the ultimate material particle (a molecule, in his time) does not occupy space, it is a mere mathematical point toward or from which certain forces act. The theory, naturally, was laughed out of consideration; but today we have come perilously near it. Again, another postulate describing Matter's dharma was: "two material particles cannot occupy the same place at the same time". Now what do you say of the neutron and proton that coalesce and form the unit of a modern atomic nucleus? Once more, the notion of the indestructibility of Matter has been considerably modified in view of the phenomenon of an electric particle (electron) being wholly transmuted ("dematerialised" as the scientists themselves say) into a light particle (photon). Lastly, the idea of the constancy of massa bed-rock of old-world physicsis considered today to be a superstition, an illusion. If after all these changes in the idea of Matter, a man still maintains that he is a materialist, as of old, well, I can only exclaim in the Shakespearean phrase: "Bottom, thou art translated"! What I want to say is that the changes that modern physics proposes to execute in its body are not mere amendments and emendations, but they mean a radical transfiguration, a subversion and a mutation. And more than the actual changes effected, the possibilities, the tendencies that have opened out, the lines along which further developments are proceeding do point not merely to a reformation, but a revolution.
Does this mean that Science after all isveering to the Idealist position? Because we have modified the meaning and connotation of Matter does it 'follow that we have perforce arrived at spirituality? Not quite so. As Jeans says, the correct scientific position would be to withhold one's judgment about the ultimate nature of matter, whether it is material or mental (spiritual, we would prefer to say): it is an attitude of non possumus. But such neutrality, is it truly possible and is it so very correct? We do see scientists lean .on one side or the other, according to the vision or predisposition that one carries.
07.11 - The Problem of Evil, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As I say, the question is wrongly put. The very form of the question already assumes a certain notion about God and creation. Your postulates or axioms themselves are vitiated.
The universe and its creator are not separate things, they are one and identical in their origin. The universe is God himself projected into Space (and Time). So the universe is the Divine in one aspect or another. You cannot divide the two, making one the creator and the other, his work, the watch-maker and his watch. You put your idea of the Divine upon him and ask, why he has created such a nasty world. If the Divine were to answer, It is not I, it is yourself. Become myself again, you will no longer feel and see as you do now you are not yourself, therefore your question and your problem! Indeed, when you unite your consciousness with the divine consciousness there is no longer any problem. Everything appears then natural and simple, and correct and as it should be. It is when you cut yourself from your origin and stand outside, in front of him and against him that all the trouble begins. Of course you may ask, how is it that the Divine has tolerated a part of himself going out and separating itself and creating all this disorder? I would reply on behalf of the Divine, If you want to know, you had better unite yourself with the Divine, for that is the only way of knowing why he has done so. It is not by questioning him by your mind that you will get the answer. The mind cannot know. And repeat, when you come to this identification, all problems are solved. The feeling, one can explain, that things are not all right, that they should be otherwise comes precisely from the fact that there is a divine will unfolding itself in a continuous progression, that things that were and are have to give place to things that shall be and shall be better and better than they have been. The world that was good yesterday will no longer be so tomorrow. The universe might have appeared quite harmonious in some other age but now appears quite discordant: it is because we see the possibility of a better universe. If we found it as it should be, we would not do what we have to do, we would not try to make it better. Even so, we would conceive the Divine in a very human way; for we remain imprisoned within ourselves, confined to this consciousness of ours which is like a grain of sand in the infinite immensity. You want to understand the immensity? That is not possible. It is possible only under one condition; be one with the immensity. The drop of water cannot very well ask how the ocean is: it has to lose itself into the ocean.
07.43 - Music Its Origin and Nature, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Source or origin means the thing without which an object would not exist. Nothing can manifest upon earth physically unless it has its source in a higher truth. Thus material existence has its source and inspiration in the vital, the vital in its turn has behind it the mental, the mental has the overmental and so on. If the universe were a flat object, having its origin in itself, it would quickly cease to exist. (That is perhaps what Science means when it postulates the impossibility of perpetual motion). It is because there is a higher source which inspires it, a secret energy that drives it towards manifestation that Life continues: otherwise it would exhaust itself very soon.
There is a graded scale in the source of music. A whole category of music is there that comes from the higher vital, for example: it is very catching, perhaps even a little vulgar, something that twines round your nerves, as it were, and twists them. It catches you somewhere about your loinsnavel centre and charms you in its way. As there is a vital music there is also what can be called psychic music coming from quite a different source; there is further a music which has spiritual origin. In its own region this higher music is very magnificent; it seizes you deeply and carries you away somewhere else. But if you were to express it perfectlyexecute ityou would have to pass this music too through the vital. Your music coming from high may nevertheless fall absolutely flat in the execution, if you do not have that intensity of vital vibration which alone can give it its power and splendour. I knew people who had very high inspiration, but their music turned to be quite commonplace, because their vital did not move. Their spiritual practice put their vital almost completely to sleep; yes, it was literally asleep and did not work at all. Their music thus came straight into the physical. If you could get behind and catch the source, you would see that there was really something marvellous even there, although externally it was not forceful or effective. What came out was a poor little melody, very thin, having nothing of the power of harmony which is there when one can bring into play the vital energy. If one could put all this power of vibration that belongs to that vital into the music of higher origin we would have the music of a genius. Indeed, for music and for all artistic creation, in fact, for literature, for poetry, for painting, etc. an intermediary is needed. Whatever one does in these domains depends doubtless for its intrinsic value upon the source of the inspiration, upon the plane or the height where one stands. But the value of the execution depends upon the strength of the vital that expresses the inspiration. For a complete genius both are necessary. The combination is rare, generally it is the one or the other, more often it is the vital that predominates and overshadows.
1.01 - Fundamental Considerations, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
It is not sufficient for us to merely furnish a postulate; rather, it will be necessary to show the latent possibilities in us and in our present, possibilities that are about to become acute, that is, effectual and consequently real. In the following discussion we shall therefore proceed from two basic considerations:
1. A mere interpretation of our times is inadequate. We must furnish concrete evidence of phenomena that are clearly revealed as being new and that transform not only our countenance, but the very countenance of time.
1.01 - Newtonian and Bergsonian Time, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
this was reduced by Newton to a formal set of postulates and a
closed mechanics, the fundamental laws of this mechanics were
1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
I am not competent, nor is this the place to discuss the doctrinal differences between Buddhism and Hinduism. Let it suffice to point out that, when he insisted that human beings are by nature non-Atman, the Buddha was evidently speaking about the personal self and not the universal Self. The Brahman controversialists, who appear in certain of the Pali scriptures, never so much as mention the Vedanta doctrine of the identity of Atman and Godhead and the non-identity of ego and Atman. What they maintain and Gautama denies is the substantial nature and eternal persistence of the individual psyche. As an unintelligent man seeks for the abode of music in the body of the lute, so does he look for a soul within the skandhas (the material and psychic aggregates, of which the individual mind-body is composed). About the existence of the Atman that is Brahman, as about most other metaphysical matters, the Buddha declines to speak, on the ground that such discussions do not tend to edification or spiritual progress among the members of a monastic order, such as he had founded. But though it has its dangers, though it may become the most absorbing, because the most serious and noblest, of distractions, metaphysical thinking is unavoidable and finally necessary. Even the Hinayanists found this, and the later Mahayanists were to develop, in connection with the practice of their religion, a splendid and imposing system of cosmological, ethical and psychological thought. This system was based upon the postulates of a strict idealism and professed to dispense with the idea of God. But moral and spiritual experience was too strong for philosophical theory, and under the inspiration of direct experience, the writers of the Mahayana sutras found themselves using all their ingenuity to explain why the Tathagata and the Bodhisattvas display an infinite charity towards beings that do not really exist. At the same time they stretched the framework of subjective idealism so as to make room for Universal Mind; qualified the idea of soullessness with the doctrine that, if purified, the individual mind can identify itself with the Universal Mind or Buddha-womb; and, while maintaining godlessness, asserted that this realizable Universal Mind is the inner consciousness of the eternal Buddha and that the Buddha-mind is associated with a great compassionate heart which desires the liberation of every sentient being and bestows divine grace on all who make a serious effort to achieve mans final end. In a word, despite their inauspicious vocabulary, the best of the Mahayana sutras contain an au thentic formulation of the Perennial Philosophya formulation which in some respects (as we shall see when we come to the section, God in the World) is more complete than any other.
In India, as in Persia, Mohammedan thought came to be enriched by the doctrine that God is immanent as well as transcendent, while to Mohammedan practice were added the moral disciplines and spiritual exercises, by means of which the soul is prepared for contemplation or the unitive knowledge of the Godhead. It is a significant historical fact that the poet-saint Kabir is claimed as a co-religionist both by Moslems and Hindus. The politics of those whose goal is beyond time are always pacific; it is the idolaters of past and future, of reactionary memory and Utopian dream, who do the persecuting and make the wars.
1.01 - What is Magick?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
First let me go all Euclidean, and rub your nose in the Definition, postulate and Theorems given in my comprehensive (but, alas! too advanced and too technical) Treatise on the subject.[1] Here we are!
I. DEFINITION:
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II. postulate:
ANY required Change may be effected by application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object.
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In the present state of our knowledge and power some changes are not possible in practice; we cannot cause eclipses, for instance, or transform lead into tin, or create men from mushrooms. But it is theoretically possible to cause in any object any change of which that object is capable by nature; and the conditions are covered by the above postulate.)
III. THEOREMS:
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2. Every successful act has conformed to the postulate.
3. Every failure proves that one or more requirements of the postulate have not been fulfilled.
(Illustrations: There may be failure to understand the case; as when a doctor makes a wrong diagnosis, and his treatment injures his patient. There may be failure to apply the right kind of force, as when a rustic tries to blow out an electric light. There may be failure to apply the right degree of force, as when a wrestler has his hold broken. There may be failure to apply the force in the right manner, as when one presents a cheque at the wrong window of the Bank. There may be failure to employ the correct medium, as when Leonardo da Vinci found his masterpiece fade away. The force may be applied to an unsuitable object, as when one tries to crack a stone, thinking it a nut.)
1.02 - In the Beginning, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
If then we give the name of God to the primordial existence which produces the universe, we postulate the whole of universal multiplicity in this essential cause and all the possibilities of the world are totalised in the first Being, creator of the world.
But then this total sum of the possibilities is not a being , it is the universe itself before manifestation; and it is no longer in the unity, in God, that we can place the first origin of things. Things bear in themselves their own origin.
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If then a necessity in the human mind compels it to postulate behind all plurality a simple principle of unicity, that unicity, containing in itself all possibilities, has nothing in common with our mathematical concept of unity; it is an absolute unknowable by our thought.
From the point of view of this Absolute, one can with equally good reason affirm that God is or that He is not, that He is the unique or that He is beyond number, that He is inseparable from the universe or that He is without relation to the universe. He is being if all outside Him is non-being, He is non-being if universe exists. So is He defined in certain sacred books of the East.
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This is why certain systems of theology, in order to escape from the contradictory postulate of unity as a cause, have sought in a less unproductive dualism the explanation of the beginning of things. And although they have by a misdirected mysticism, falsified the term and distorted the idea, it is in them that we recover the tendencies most in harmony with the very data on which the belief in a divine Creator is founded.
Let us take, for example, the Bereshit.
1.02 - SOCIAL HEREDITY AND PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
To postulate the truth of the second alternative that is to say,
to accept that in terms of the divine purpose the two impulses are
1.02 - What is Psycho therapy?, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
leitmotiv or basic postulate of all the more recent forms of psycho therapy.
Psychopathological research during the last fifty years has proved beyond
1.03 - .REASON. IN PHILOSOPHY, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
emptiest thing is postulated as the first thing, as the absolute cause,
as _ens realissimum._ Fancy humanity having to take the brain diseases
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forces us to postulate unity, identity, permanence, substance, cause,
materiality and being, we are in a measure involved in error, driven
1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
unlike that which is postulated by modern science for a precisely
similar purpose, namely, to explain how things can physically affect
1.03 - The Phenomenon of Man, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
three infinites which I have just postulated. Let us act as if
this universe were the true one, and try to see what takes
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Great Mother, Binah, the third ; the seven canals referred to being the seven lower Sephiros, or Inferiors as they are called. The Qabalists postulated ten Sephiros because to
them ten was a perfect number, one which included every digit without repetition, and contained the total essence of all numbers. Isaac Myers writes that 0-1 ends with 1-0, and Rabbi Moses Cordovero, in his Pardis Rimonim,
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manifestation commences with the appearance of a laya or neutral centre which we call Keser. This cyclic or periodic law of cosmic manifestation cannot be anything other than the Will of the Absolute to manifest. In which case, we are necessitated, in all accuracy, to fall back on to the old postulate that the Absolute manifests the laya point or
Keser from which, eventually, all is to evolve.
1.04 - The Aims of Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
You know that in this matter of temperament I postulate two different
basic attitudes in accordance with the typical differences already suspected
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
It is the interaction of each of the five initial postulates which are all that necessarily have to be
remembered, or understood, for geometry to prove useful that gives rise to the internally consistent and
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this structure, can be established by reference to these initial postulates. However, the postulates themselves
must be accepted. Their validity cannot be demonstrated, within the confines of the system. They might be
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still remain dependent, by necessity, on different postulates, down to an indeterminate end. The validity of
a given structure appears necessarily predicated on unconscious presuppositions the presupposition that
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form. The Euclidean postulates, for example, appear based upon observable facts (images of the world
of experience as interpreted). Euclid grounded his explicit abstract (semantic) system in observable
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straight line. These postulates (and the remaining three) cannot be proved from within the confines of
geometry itself, but they appear true, and will be accepted as such, as a consequence of practical example.
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would postulate the former; the mythic mind, concerned with subjective reality, the latter. This form of
regression exists as precondition to creative restructuring. Semi-conscious (semi-declarative) apprehension
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dogma and (2) of the methodological impossibility of disproving, so to speak, alternative mythicallyfounded narrative ideas, once postulated. The Christian church fragmented chaotically (and, perhaps,
creatively) and continues to do so with horrendous consequences, even under conditions where such
1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
generally acceptable. The original hypothesis postulated,
according to Lovelock himself, that life on Earth actively
1.05 - Adam Kadmon, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
add, yet another principle postulated by the Qabalah. The
Neschamah of this classification would correspond with the Hindu conception of Jivatma, the soul or self-con- ditioned. To the conception, in the same philosophy, of
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Some Qabalists postulate a Sephirah named Daath, or
Knowledge, as being the child of Binah and Choltmah, or a sublimation of the Ruach, supposed to appear in the Abyss in the course of man's evolution as an evolved faculty. It is a false Sephirah, however, and the Sepher Yetsirah, in anticipation, most emphatically warns us that " Ten are the ineffable Sephiros. Ten and not nine. Ten and not eleven.
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In another place there are unmistakable postulates of the astral body :
" In the Book of King Solomon is to be found : That at the time of the accomplishment of the union below, the
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The postulate of the Astral body grows out of the con- sideration that in the physical body we find a " some- thing " besides matter ; something changing, it is true, but undoubtedly one and the same thing from birth to death.
The Nephesch is in Yesod, Luna, the foundation whose attri bute is Stability in Change. This "something" referred to is the Nephesch, on which the physical body is
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I have refrained from here discussing the various prob- lems and doctrines of the so-called Doctrinal Qabalah, such as the Evolution of the Universe and of Man, Reincarna- tion, and Causation as applied to Retri bution- because, having originally postulated the incapacity of the Ruach to deal adequately with such problems, it would be useless to engage upon an exposition of these points. Particularly is this so with regard to the Zoharic and post-Zoharic con- ceptions of Gilgolem, Reincarnation. A great deal of loose thinking and unwarranted assumption characterizes the
Qabalistic literature concerning this aspect of esoteric doc- trine, and I feel more strongly than ever that it is only by m eans of a profound and well-assimilated knowledge of
1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
immediately postulate "low" is here twisted into a causal rela-
tionship and reduced to absurdity, since it is sufficiently obvious
1.05 - The Creative Principle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
By their mutual ignorance the various theories of the beginning of things only reveal their fundamental ignorance of the causes of existence. And one may class among these theories even those speculations which under the philosophic name of Agnosticism avow their ignorance and affirm it expressly as their point of departure. For if they do not pose the question of the wherefore of the worlds, it is because in reality they hold it to be solved. Under their Agnosticism their lurks, tacitly and ill-disguised, the postulate of an unknown First Principle. Some, even, perceive clearly that it is impossible to escape from the necessity of this postulate and affirm under the name of the Unknowable such a First Principle. But even those which confine themselves to the assertion of the empirical fact of evolution, those in whose view the universe is nothing but a perpetual motion without cause or finality, will be found always ready to assert that this motion reposes on the existence of an eternal force or an eternal substance. For many physicists nowadays the notion of ether as an absolute substratum of all phenomena takes the place of a creative Deity.
And, on the other hand, is not this formula of a creative God, which is the conclusion of the majority of the other theories, itself the most supremely agnostic of all formulas? Does it not unconsciously disguise in its appeal to the miracle, the mystery of the primal act, the very ignorance that the partisans of the Unknowable avow? Does not the affirmation of an eternal Being, creator of things, amount in fact to the statement of a principle of uncreated force or substance from which things must have arisen?
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Whatever be, indeed, the conceivable reality whose pre-existence is postulated, the very fact that it is connected with the manifested world makes it also enter into order of relativity whose first cause we seek. For the very idea of a creator contains under a form more concrete and familiar to the mind the whole enigma that has to be solved. It personifies the enigma, but it is only in appearance that it renders it less impenetrable.
Whether we consider the creator to be immanent or transcendent, alien to the world or one with it, whether we confound the idea of God with that of the universe, as in Pantheism, or identify the universe with the thought of God, as in Idealism, the question of the creator remains that of the creation itself. And the problem remains the same, whether it be of a first Being or of a first Thing. How could this being, if it is relative, rise out of the Absolute? And how if it is absolute, could it create the relative? Can the Absolute create anything that does not already exist? And if anything in the Absolute can create itself other than it is, how in so creating itself does it become the relative? Or more simply, how, by what mystery of evolution does it become?
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Absolute, relative, these words return with an indefatigable monotony at the term of each view of the problem. For the problem, in whatever aspect we may envisage it, is precisely that of the relations between the Absolute and the relative. It cannot then be resolved by the simple affirmation of the eternal Being or of the eternal substance which are postulated by the various theories. It is not in the Absolute alone, under the form of person or thing, that we must seek for the principle of the relative, but in a sort of relation between the two, between that which is, if we may use the expression, most absolute in the relative and that which is most relative in the Absolute. This relation cannot, indeed, be one of dependence or causality. But nothing prevents us from conceiving it as allowing the pure spontaneities of the relative to find in the absolute realities their own possible conditions or, if you prefer, the pure possibilities of the Absolute to realise themselves as relative. Why should not the Absolute have the power of forgetting itself in the relative?
These two abstract terms, which appear to us so irreducible, are in fact exclusive only from one point of view, that of our own relative conceptions. There can be no exclusion in the Absolute. And here appears as something essentially distinctive and specific that character of exclusive affirmation which is assumed by the very principle of existence.
1.05 - The Universe The 0 = 2 Equation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Moreover, is it really adequate to postulate an origin of the Universe, as they inevitably do? Merely to deny that there ever was a beginning by saying that this "one" is eternal fails to satisfy me.
What is very much worse, I cannot see that to call Evil "illusion" helps us at all. When the Christian Scientist hears that his wife has been savagely mauled by her Peke, he has to smile, and say that "there is a claim of error." Not good enough.
1.06 - The Desire to be, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Whatever be the postulate that we posit at the base of his existence, the first fact we have to recognise is the fact of that existence itself. Whatever concept of the Absolute we may form for ourselves, whether it be pure liberty or eternal determination, whatever state may exist anterior to all that we can call being, in that state the being already is. For if it were not, who could draw it out of its nothingness? And who could create, if it had not the power to create itself?
Now, for the being, to create himself means to appear. And to appear means to define himself, to become distinct, to affirm himself in the relativity. But what name are we to give to the principle of this distinctive affirmation and exclusive delimitation of the ego which is the foundation of all manifestation, of all relative creation?
1.06 - THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
"Religion" and "Morality." Every postulate formulated by religion and
morality contains it Priests and the promulgators of moral laws are the
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passions, the senses, postulated as causes, as guilty. By means of
other calamities distressing physiological conditions are interpreted
1.06 - The Three Schools of Magick 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Religion, on the contrary, seeks to ignore the laws of Nature, or to escape them by appeal to a postulated power which is assumed to have laid them down. The religious man is, as such, incapable of understanding what the laws of Nature really are. (They are generalizations from the order of observed fact.)
The History of Magick has never been seriously attempted. For one reason, only initiates pledged to secrecy know much about it; for another, every historian has been talking about some more or less conventional idea of Magick, not of the thing itself. But Magick has led the world from before the beginning of history, if only for the reason that Magick has always been the mother of Science. It is, therefore, of extreme importance that some effort should be made to understand something of the subject; and there is, therefore, no apology necessary for essaying this brief outline of its historical aspects.
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These Schools represent three perfectly distinct and contrary theories of the Universe, and, therefore, practices of spiritual science. The magical formula of each is as precise as a theorem of trigonometry. Each assumes as fundamental a certain law of Nature, and the subject is complicated by the fact that each School, in a certain sense, admits the formul of the other two. It merely regards them as in some way incomplete, secondary, or illusory. Now, as will be seen later, the Yellow School stand aloof from the other two by the nature of its postulates. But the Black School and the White are always more or less in active conflict; and it is because just at this moment that conflict is approaching a climax that it is necessary to write this essay. The adepts of the White School consider the present danger to mankind so great that they are prepared to abandon their traditional policy of silence, in order to enlist in their ranks the profane of every nation.
We are in possession of a certain mystical document*[AC13] which we may describe briefly, for convenience sake, as an Apocalypse of which we hold the keys, thanks to the intervention of the Master who has appeared at this grave conjuncture of Fate. This document consists of a series of visions, in which we hear the various Intelligences whose nature it would be hard to define, but who are at the very least endowed with knowledge and power far beyond anything that we are accustomed to regard as proper to the human race.
1.07 - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
At level four, or late formop, the person becomes capable of hypothetico-deductive awareness (what if, as if), and reality is conceived in terms of relativity and interrelationships (ecology and relativity, in the broadest sense, as we have seen). The self is viewed as a postulate "lending unity and integrity to personality, experience, and behavior" (this is the "mature ego").
But, and this is very telling, development can take a cynical turn at this stage. Instead of being the principle lending unity and integrity to experience and behavior, the self is simply identified with experience and behavior. In the cynical behavioristic turn of this stage, "the person is a cybernetic system guided to fulfillment of its material wants.
1.07 - THE GREAT EVENT FORESHADOWED - THE PLANETIZATION OF MANKIND, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
And having done this let us postulate in principle that con-
sciousness (like such phenomena as the variation of mass accord-
1.07 - The Three Schools of Magick 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
A fairly pure example of the first stage of this type of thought is to be found in the Vedas, of the second stage, in the Upanishads. But the answer to the question, "How is the illusion of evil to be destroyed?", depends on another point of theory. We may postulate a Parabrahm infinitely good, etc. etc. etc., in which case we consider the destruction of the illusion of evil as the reuniting of the consciousness with Parabrahm. The unfortunate part of this scheme of things is that on seeking to define Parabrahm for the purpose of returning to Its purity, it is discovered sooner or later, that It possesses no qualities at all! In other words, as the farmer said, on being shown the elephant: There ain't no sich animile. It was Gautama Buddha who perceived the inutility of dragging in this imaginary pachyderm. Since our Parabrahm, he said to the Hindu philosophers, is actually nothing, why not stick to or original perception that everything is sorrow, and admit that the only way to escape from sorrow is to arrive at nothingness?
We may complete the whole tradition of the Indian peninsula very simply. To the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, we have only to add the Tantras of what are called the Vamacharya Schools. Paradoxical as it may sound the Tantrics are in reality the most advanced of the Hindus. Their theory is, in its philosophical ultimatum, a primitive stage of the White tradition, for the essence of the Tantric cults is that by the performance of certain rites of Magick, one does not only escape disaster, but obtains positive benediction. The Tantric is not obsessed by the will-to-die. It is a difficult business, no doubt, to get any fun out of existence; but at least it is not impossible. In other words, he implicitly denies the fundamental proposition that existence is sorrow, and he formulates the essential postulate of the White School of Magick, that means exist by which the universal sorrow (apparent indeed to all ordinary observation) may be unmasked, even as at the initiatory rite of Isis in the ancient days of Khem. There, a Neophyte presenting his mouth, under compulsion, to the pouting buttocks of the Goat of Mendez, found himself caressed by the chaste lips of a virginal priestess of that Goddess at the base of whose shrine is written that No man has lifted her veil.
The basis of the Black philosophy is not impossibly mere climate, with its resulting etiolation of the native, its languid, bilious, anaemic, fever-prostrated, emasculation of the soul of man. We accordingly find few true equivalents of this School in Europe. In Greek philosophy there is no trace of any such doctrine. The poison in its foulest and most virulent form only entered with Christianity.*[AC17] But even so, few men of any real eminence were found to take the axioms of pessimism seriously. Huxley, for all of his harping on the minor key, was an eupeptic Tory. The culmination of the Black philosophy is only found in Schopenhauer, and we may regard him as having been obsessed, on the one hand, by the despair born of that false scepticism which he learnt from the bankruptcy of Hume and Kant; on the other, by the direct obsession of the Buddhist documents to which he was one of the earliest Europeans to obtain access. He was, so to speak, driven to suicide by his own vanity, a curious parallel to Kiriloff in The Possessed of Dostoiewsky.
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
IN RELIGIOUS literature the word truth is used indiscriminately in at least three distinct and very different senses. Thus, it is sometimes treated as a synonym for fact, as when it is affirmed that God is Truthmeaning that He is the primordial Reality. But this is clearly not the meaning of the word in such a phrase as worshipping God in spirit and in truth. Here, it is obvious, truth signifies direct apprehension of spiritual Fact, as opposed to second-hand knowledge about Reality, formulated in sentences and accepted on authority or because an argument from previously granted postulates was logically convincing. And finally there is the more ordinary meaning of the word, as in such a sentence as, This statement is the truth, where we mean to assert that the verbal symbols of which the statement is composed correspond to the facts to which it refers. When Eckhart writes that whatever thou sayest of God is untrue, he is not affirming that all theological statements are false. Insofar as there can be any correspondence between human symbols and divine Fact, some theological statements are as true as it is possible for us to make them. Himself a theologian, Eckhart would certainly have admitted this. But besides being a theologian, Eckhart was a mystic. And being a mystic, he understood very vividly what the modern semanticist is so busily (and, also, so unsuccessfully) trying to drum into contemporary mindsnamely, that words are not the same as things and that a knowledge of words about facts is in no sense equivalent to a direct and immediate apprehension of the facts themselves. What Eckhart actually asserts is this: whatever one may say about God can never in any circumstances be the truth in the first two meanings of that much abused and ambiguous word. By implication St. Thomas Aquinas was saying exactly the same thing when, after his experience of infused contemplation, he refused to go on with his theological work, declaring that everything he had written up to that time was as mere straw compared with the immediate knowledge, which had been vouchsafed to him. Two hundred years earlier, in Bagdad, the great Mohammedan theologian, Al Ghazzali, had similarly turned from the consideration of truths about God to the contemplation and direct apprehension of Truth-the-Fact, from the purely intellectual discipline of the philosophers to the moral and spiritual discipline of the Sufis.
The moral of all this is obvious. Whenever we hear or read about truth, we should always pause long enough to ask ourselves in which of the three senses listed above the word is, at the moment, being used. By taking this simple precaution (and to take it is a genuinely virtuous act of intellectual honesty), we shall save ourselves a great deal of disturbing and quite unnecessary mental confusion.
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What is true of aesthetics is also true of theology. Theological speculation is valuable insofar as it enables those who have had immediate experience of various aspects of God to form intelligible ideas about the nature of the divine Ground, and of their own experience of the Ground in relation to other experiences. And when a coherent system of theology has been worked out, it is useful insofar as it convinces those who study it that there is nothing inherently self-contradictory about the postulate of the divine Ground and that, for those who are ready to fulfill certain conditions, the postulate may become a realized Fact. In no circumstances, however, can the study of theology or the minds assent to theological propositions take the place of what Law calls the birth of God within. For theory is not practice, and words are not the things for which they stand.
Theology as we know it has been formed by the great mystics, especially St Augustine and St Thomas. Plenty of other great theologiansespecially St Gregory and St Bernard, even down to Suarezwould not have had such insight without mystic super-knowledge.
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In connection with the Mahayanist view that words play an important and even creative part in the evolution of unregenerate human nature, we may mention Humes arguments against the reality of causation. These arguments start from the postulate that all events are loose and separate from one another and proceed with faultless logic to a conclusion that makes complete nonsense of all organized thought or purposive action. The fallacy, as Professor Stout has pointed out, lies in the preliminary postulate. And when we ask ourselves what it was that induced Hume to make this odd and quite unrealistic assumption that events are loose and separate, we see that his only reason for flying in the face of immediate experience was the fact that things and happenings are symbolically represented in our thought by nouns, verbs and adjectives, and that these words are, in effect, loose and separate from one another in a way which the events and things they stand for quite obviously are not. Taking words as the measure of things, instead of using things as the measure of words, Hume imposed the discrete and, so to say, pointilliste pattern of language upon the continuum of actual experiencewith the impossibly paradoxical results with which we are all familiar. Most human beings are not philosophers and care not at all for consistency in thought or action. Thus, in some circumstances they take it for granted that events are not loose and separate, but co-exist or follow one another within the organized and organizing field of a cosmic whole. But on other occasions, where the opposite view is more nearly in accord with their passions or interests, they adopt, all unconsciously, the Humian position and treat events as though they were as independent of one another and the rest of the world as the words by which they are symbolized. This is generally true of all occurrences involving I, me, mine. Reifying the loose and separate names, we regard the things as also loose and separatenot subject to law, not involved in the network of relationships, by which in fact they are so obviously bound up with their physical, social and spiritual environment. We regard as absurd the idea that there is no causal process in nature and no organic connection between events and things in the lives of other people; but at the same time we accept as axiomatic the notion that our own sacred ego is loose and separate from the universe, a law unto itself above the moral dharma and even, in many respects, above the natural law of causality. Both in Buddhism and Catholicism, monks and nuns were encouraged to avoid the personal pronoun and to speak of themselves in terms of circumlocutions that clearly indicated their real relationship with the cosmic reality and their fellow creatures. The precaution was a wise one. Our responses to familiar words are conditioned reflexes. By changing the stimulus, we can do something to change the response. No Pavlov bell, no salivation; no harping on words like me and mine, no purely automatic and unreflecting egotism. When a monk speaks of himself, not as I, but as this sinner or this unprofitable servant, he tends to stop taking his loose and separate selfhood for granted, and makes himself aware of his real, organic relationship with God and his neighbours.
In practice words are used for other purposes than for making statements about facts. Very often they are used rhetorically, in order to arouse the passions and direct the will towards some course of action regarded as desirable. And sometimes, too, they are used poetically that is to say, they are used in such a way that, besides making a statement about real or imaginary things and events, and besides appealing rhetorically to the will and the passions, they cause the reader to be aware that they are beautiful. Beauty in art or nature is a matter of relationships between things not in themselves intrinsically beautiful. There is nothing beautiful, for example, about the vocables, time, or syllable. But when they are used in such a phrase as to the last syllable of recorded time, the relationship between the sound of the component words, between our ideas of the things for which they stand, and between the overtones of association with which each word and the phrase as a whole are charged, is apprehended, by a direct and immediate intuition, as being beautiful.
1.08 - The Three Schools of Magick 3, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
This prophet of the White School, chosen by its Masters and his brethren, to save the Theory and Practice, is armed with a sword far mightier than Excalibur. He has been entrusted with a new Magical formula, one which can be accepted by the whole human race. Its adoption will streng then the Yellow School by giving a more positive value to their Theory; while leaving the postulates of the Black School intact, it will transcend them and raise their Theory and Practice almost to the level of the Yellow. As to the White School, it will remove from them all taint of poison of the Black, and restore vigour to their central formula of spiritual alchemy by giving each man an independent ideal. It will put an end to the moral castration involved in the assumption that each man, whatever his nature, should deny himself to follow out a fantastic and impracticable ideal of goodness. Incidentally, this formula will save Physical Science itself by making negligible the despair of futility, the vital scepticism which has emasculated it in the past. It shows that the joy of existence is not in a goal, for that indeed is clearly unattainable, but in the going itself.
This law is called the Law of Thelema. It is summarized in the four words, "Do what thou wilt."
1.09 - Fundamental Questions of Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
hysterical symptom immediately led to the postulate of an unconscious
layer of psychic happenings. This layer proved to be, not somatic, as the
--
have come to postulate a number of types which all depend on the
respective predominance of one or the other orienting function of
1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
a concept. In the beautiful, man postulates himself as the standard of
perfection; in exceptional cases he worships himself as that standard.
1.09 - The Absolute Manifestation, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
For if the principle of the relative, such as it is known to us in the manifested world, is an exclusive affirmation, a desire to be, that is to say, to preserve the fixed form of an ego, are we not led thereby logically to postulate a state anterior to this desire in which all the numberless possible forms of the absolute I affirmed themselves, not exclusively?
The antecedent of the manifested world would be, then, not the state of pure and indiscernable unity, but, on the contrary, a state of perfect solidarity, of constant reciprocity of all the possibles, a state of impersonal manifestation, as it were, foreign to all desire of individual existence.
--
We can postulate, then, in the Unknowable the entire perfection of that of which the manifestation born of the egoistic desire to be for oneself will be only an obscure deformation.
If this desire to be were to cease in the world, nothing else would cease except the fixity of individual manifestation and, consequently, of the forms of Matter; all relative movements would absorb themselves together into that which we have conceived as absolute movement.
--
From the point of view of pure speculation, this effort in its result leads us by a roundabout way to postulate in the Absolute itself the two initial and mutually complementary principles of passivity and activity, the conception of which has seemed to us to be the minds first steps towards the Identical and Unknowable.
But here these two principles must be considered, not as we then considered them, as generating by their progressive union the indefinite series of relative manifestations, but as representing on the contrary in alternative phases the pure contradictories, being and non-being. All and Nothing, which meet and harmonise in the Absolute.
--
If then we wish to conceive the Absolute in its two opposite aspects, we must postulate them, not successively, but simultaneously. It is at one and the same time absolute repose and absolute movement, integral extinction and integral plenitude, being and non-being.
Thus we find ourselves back again at the postulate of two principles, two co-eternal poles of incognoscible activity and incognoscible passivity, whose union generates the world not at the beginning, not at the starting-point of a duration of Time, but at each instant in an indivisible eternity.
One could as well say that the being between these two absolute poles ascends from an impossible Nothingness towards an inaccessible Infinite. Or rather that from either of these poles proceed two opposite currents, one tending from being towards non-being, the other from non-being towards being. At every point where they meet, their conflict generates all the possible forms of the relative in all its states of substance.
1.09 - The Secret Chiefs, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
But for the active side it is necessary to postulate the existence of a form of Energy at their disposal which is able "to cause change to occur in conformity with the Will" one definition of "Magick."
Now this, as you know, is an exceedingly complex subject; its theory is tortuous, and its practice encompassed with every kind of difficulty.
1.10 - Conscious Force, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
11:But if we suppose or find Existence to be conscious Being, the problem arises. We may indeed suppose a conscious Being which is subject to its nature of Force, compelled by it and without option as to whether it shall manifest in the universe or remain unmanifest. Such is the cosmic God of the Tantriks and the Mayavadins who is subject to Shakti or Maya, Purusha involved in Maya or controlled by Shakti. But it is obvious that such a God is not the supreme infinite Existence with which we have started. Admittedly, it is only a formulation of Brahman in the cosmos by the Brahman which is itself logically anterior to Shakti or Maya and takes her back into its transcendental being when she ceases from her works. In a conscious existence which is absolute, independent of its formations, not determined by its works, we must suppose an inherent freedom to manifest or not to manifest the potentiality of movement. A Brahman compelled by Prakriti is not Brahman, but an inert Infinite with an active content in it more powerful than the continent, a conscious holder of Force of whom his Force is master. If we say that it is compelled by itself as Force, by its own nature, we do not get rid of the contradiction, the evasion of our first postulate. We have got back to an Existence which is really nothing but Force, Force at rest or in movement, absolute Force perhaps, but not absolute Being.
12:It is then necessary to examine into the relation between Force and Consciousness. But what do we mean by the latter term? Ordinarily we mean by it our first obvious idea of a mental waking consciousness such as is possessed by the human being during the major part of his bodily existence, when he is not asleep, stunned or otherwise deprived of his physical and superficial methods of sensation. In this sense it is plain enough that consciousness is the exception and not the rule in the order of the material universe. We ourselves do not always possess it. But this vulgar and shallow idea of the nature of consciousness, though it still colours our ordinary thought and associations, must now definitely disappear out of philosophical thinking. For we know that there is something in us which is conscious when we sleep, when we are stunned or drugged or in a swoon, in all apparently unconscious states of our physical being. Not only so, but we may now be sure that the old thinkers were right when they declared that even in our waking state what we call then our consciousness is only a small selection from our entire conscious being. It is a superficies, it is not even the whole of our mentality. Behind it, much vaster than it, there is a subliminal or subconscient mind which is the greater part of ourselves and contains heights and profundities which no man has yet measured or fathomed. This knowledge gives us a starting-point for the true science of Force and its workings; it delivers us definitely from circumscription by the material and from the illusion of the obvious.
1.10 - GRACE AND FREE WILL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
For those who take pleasure in theological speculations based upon scriptural texts and dogmatic postulates, there are the thousands of pages of Catholic and Protestant controversy upon grace, works, faith and justification. And for students of comparative religion there are scholarly commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, on the works of Ramanuja and those later Vaishnavites, whose doctrine of grace bears a striking resemblance to that of Luther; there are histories of Buddhism which duly trace the development of that religion from the Hinayanist doctrine that salvation is the fruit of strenuous self-help to the Mahayanist doctrine that it cannot be achieved without the grace of the Primordial Buddha, whose inner consciousness and great compassionate heart constitute the eternal Suchness of things. For the rest of us, the foregoing quotations from writers within the Christian and early Taoist tradition provide, it seems to me, an adequate account of the observable facts of grace and inspiration and their relation to the observable facts of free will.
next chapter: 1.11 - GOOD AND EVIL
1.10 - THE FORMATION OF THE NOOSPHERE, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
is to be regarded, not as a postulate of science which
would be in the nature of things absurd but as something,
1.12 - The Left-Hand Path - The Black Brothers, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
As far as the achievement or attainment is concerned, the two Paths are in fact identical. In fact, one almost feels obliged to postulate some inmost falsity, completely impossible to detect, inherent at the very earliest stages.
For the decision which determines the catastrophe confronts only the Adeptus Exemptus 7 = 4. Until that grade is reached, and that very fully indeed, with all the buttons properly sewed on, one is not capable of understanding what is meant by the Abyss. Unless "all you have and all you are" is identical with the Universe, its annihilation would leave a surplus.
1.13 - THE HUMAN REBOUND OF EVOLUTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
quantity, like solar radiation or the force of gravity. This postulate
of invariability seems at first sight to be admissible in the "Dar-
--
non conditions, which we are bound to postulate and presume to be
incorporated in the structure of the surrounding world if Evolu-
1.14 - Noise, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The second of these postulates the third; for one can neither think nor stop thinking with all that row going on.
Then again, the Fourth Power of the Sphinx is Silence; on this subject I must refer you to Little Essays Toward Truth (No. 14, p. 75).
1.14 - TURMOIL OR GENESIS?, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
perimental aspect of the critical point of the Parousia postulated
and awaited in the name of Revelation? Clearly for the conjunc-
1.15 - Index, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Basic postulates of Analytical Psychology (1931)
Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung (1928/1931)
1.17 - DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY UPON ITSELF?, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
Having postulated so much, let us return to the significance
and value of human totalization.
1.18 - THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
This having been postulated, do those in high places realize
the revolutionary power of so novel a concept (it would be better
1.19 - ON THE PROBABLE EXISTENCE AHEAD OF US OF AN ULTRA-HUMAN, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
fice, is precisely what we must look for and postulate with all our
strength, in order that nothing may crumble. For according to the
1.20 - HOW MAY WE CONCEIVE AND HOPE THAT HUMAN UNANIMIZATION WILL BE REALIZED ON EARTH?, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
of the principle of attraction which we have postulated and in-
voked above as being necessary to make the rebellious nuclei of
1.21 - My Theory of Astrology, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I see no objection at all to postulating that certain "rays," or other means of transmitting some peculiar form or forms of energy, may reach us from the other parts of the solar system; for we can in fact point to perfectly analogous phenomena in the discoveries of the last hundred years or so. But that is no more than a postulate.
The objections to Astrology as such, indicated by what I have already pointed out, and several others, would suffice to place me among the most arrogant disbelievers in the whole study, were it not for what follows.
The facts with regard to the Ascendant are so patent, so undeni- able, and so inexplicable without the postulate in (1), that I am utterly convinced of the fundamental truth of the basic principles of the science.
I said, "I will conclude"; and I meant it. For now that (or so I hope) you respect sufficiently my conviction that Astrology is a genuine science and not a messy mass of Old Wives' Tales, you will obviously demand instruction as to how to learn it, that you may verify my opinion in the light of your own experiments.
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
D.: Love postulates duality. How can the Self be the object of love?
M.: Love is not different from the Self. Love of an object is of an inferior order and cannot endure. Whereas the Self is Love, in other words, God is Love.
--
D.: Saiva Siddhanta postulates three fundamentals as being eternal.
Is it opposed to Vedanta?
M.: The three entities are jiva, God and bondage. Such trinities are common in all religions. They are true so long as the mind is operative. They are mere creations of the mind. One can postulate
God only after the mind arises. God is not different from the Self.
1.27 - CONTEMPLATION, ACTION AND SOCIAL UTILITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
A question now, quite naturally, presents itself: Who is called to that highest form of prayer which is contemplation? The answer is unequivocally plain. All are called to contemplation, because all are called to achieve deliverance, which is nothing else but the knowledge that unites the knower with what is known, namely the eternal Ground or Godhead. The oriental exponents of the Perennial Philosophy would probably deny that everyone is called here and now; in this particular life, they would say, it may be to all intents and purposes impossible for a given individual to achieve more than a partial deliverance, such as personal survival in some kind of heaven, from which there may be either an advance towards total liberation or else a return to those material conditions which, as all the masters of the spiritual life agree, are so uniquely propitious for taking the cosmic intelligence test that results in enlightenment. In orthodox Christianity it is denied that the individual soul can have more than one incarnation, or that it can make any progress in its posthumous existence. If it goes to hell, it stays there. If it goes to purgatory, it merely expiates past evil doing, so as to become capable of the beatific vision. And when it gets to heaven, it has just so much of the beatific vision as its conduct during its one brief life on earth made it capable of, and everlastingly no more. Granted these postulates, it follows that, if all are called to contemplation, they are called to it from that particular position in the hierarchy of being, to which nature, nurture, free will and grace have conspired to assign them. In the words of an eminent contemporary theologian, Father Garigou-Lagrange, all souls receive a general remote call to the mystical life, and if all were faithful in avoiding, as they should, not only mortal but venial sins, if they were, each according to his condition, generally docile to the Holy Ghost, and if they lived long enough, a day would come when they would receive the proximate and efficacious vocation to a high perfection and to the mystical life properly so called. This view that the life of mystical contemplation is the proper and normal development of the interior life of recollectedness and devotion to Godis then justified by the following considerations. First, the principle of the two lives is the same. Second, it is only in the life of mystical contemplation that the interior life finds its consummation. Third, their end, which is eternal life, is the same; moreover only the life of mystical contemplation prepares imme thately and perfectly for that end.
There are few contemplatives, because few souls are perfectly humble.
1.31 - Is Thelema a New Religion?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Religion, he says, Latin: religio, piety. Collection or paying attention to: religens as opposed to negligens, neglecting; the attitude of Gallio. But it also implies a binding together i.e. of ideas; in fact, a "body of doctrine." Not a bad expression. A religion then, is a more or less coherent and consistent set of beliefs, with precepts and prohibitions therefrom deducible. But then there is the sense in which Frazer (and I) often use the word: as in opposition to "Science" or "Magic." Here the point is that religious people attribute phenomena to the will of some postulated Being or Beings, placable and moveable by virtue of sacrifice, devotion, or appeal. Against such, the scientific or magical mind believes in the Laws of Nature, asserts "If A, then B" if you do so-and-so, the result will be so-and-so, aloof from arbitrary interference. Joshua, it is alleged, made the sun stand still by supplication, and Hezekiah in the same way cause it to "go back upon the dial of Ahaz;" Willett did it by putting the clock back, and getting an Act of Parliament to confirm his lunacy. Petruchio, too "It shall be what o'clock I say it is!" The two last came close to the magical method; at least, to that branch of it which consists of "fooling all the people all the time." But such an operation, if true Magick were employed, would be beyond the power of any magician of my acquaintance; for it would mess up the solar system completely. (You remember how this happened, and what came of it, in a rather clever short story by H.G. Wells.) For true Magick means "to employ one set of natural forces at a mechanical advantage as against another set" I quote, as closely as memory serves, Thomas Henry Huxley, when he explains that when he lifts his water-jug or his elbow he does not "defy the Law of Gravitation." On the contrary, he uses that Law; its equations form part of the system by which he lifts the jug without spilling the water.
To sum up, our system is a religion just so far as a religion means an enthusiastic putting-together of a series of doctrines, no one of which must in any way clash with Science or Magick.
1.35 - The Tao 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The Tao is also "the Way" in the following sense. Nothing exists except as a relation with other similarly postulated ideas. Nothing can be known in itself, but only as one of the participants in a series of events. Reality is therefore in the motion, not in the thing moved. We cannot apprehend anything except as one postulated element of an observed impression of change.
We may express this in other terms as follows. Our knowledge of anything is in reality the sum of our observations of its successive movements, that is to say, of its path from event to event. In this sense the Tao may be translated as "the Way." It is not a thing in itself in the sense of being an object susceptible of apprehension by sense or mind. It is not the cause of any thing; it is rather the category underlying all existence or event, and therefore true and real as they are illusory, being merely landmarks invented for convenience in describing our exper- iences. The Tao possesses no power to cause anything to exist or to take place. Yet our experience when analyzed tells us that the only reality of which we may be sure is this path or Way which resumes the whole of our knowledge.
1.400 - 1.450 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
D.: Love postulates duality. How can the Self be the object of love?
M.: Love is not different from the Self. Love of an object is of an inferior order and cannot endure. Whereas the Self is Love, in other words, God is Love.
--
D.: Saiva Siddhanta postulates three fundamentals as being eternal.
Is it opposed to Vedanta?
M.: The three entities are jiva, God and bondage. Such trinities are common in all religions. They are true so long as the mind is operative. They are mere creations of the mind. One can postulate
God only after the mind arises. God is not different from the Self.
1.49 - Thelemic Morality, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The Law of Thelema helps us to deal with this question very simply and succinctly. First, it obviates the need of defining the proper "End;" for with us this becomes identical with the "True Will;" and we are bound to assume that the man himself is the sole arbiter; we postulate that his "End" is self-justified.
Then as to his "Means:" as he cannot possibly know for certain whether they are suitable or not, he can only rely on his inherited instincts, his learning, his traditions, and his experience. Of these all but the first lie wholly in the intellectual Sphere, the Ruach, and can accordingly be knocked into any desired shape at will, by dint of a little manipulation: and if Thelema has freed him morally, as it should have done, from all the nonsense of Plato, Manu, Draco, Solon, Paul (with his harpy brood), John Stuart Mill and Kant, he can make his decision with purely objective judgment. (Where would mathematics be if certain solutions were a priori inadmissible?) But then, what about that plaguy first weapon in his armoury? It must be these instincts, simply because we have eliminated all the other possibilities.
1.50 - A.C. and the Masters; Why they Chose him, etc., #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I know this sounds mad; but it's true. Well, then, I set myself to repair the omission with Part III; this should be a really complete treatise on the Art and Science of magick, and it should be worked out from the beginning, a logical sequence like Euclid. Hence Axiom, postulate and Theorems. I supposed even then that I could cover the field with another volume comparable in size with the former two.
I did indeed "finish" this, even announced publication; it was just going to Press when War (also announced five years before by Bartzabel, the Spirit of Mars) came along in 1914. I toted the rod around the world with me (excuse my American!) and in a fatal hour of weakness, self-mistrust, took to shewing it to some of my students. Of course I might have known they all with one accord began: "Oh, but you haven't said anything about " all the subjects in the world. So I started to fill in the gaps. As I did so, I found any amount more to do on my own. It went on like that for 14 years! Since it came out the voices of detraction have been dumb. I really do believe that I've covered the ground at last. Of course, time shewed that Part I, although it did really give the essentials of Yoga in the simplest possible language, was hardly more than an outline. More, it did not correlate Yoga with general philosophy. Eight Lectures have, I believe, remedied this.
1.52 - Killing the Divine Animal, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
The unity in multiplicity thus postulated by the Californians is
very noticeable and helps to explain their motive for killing the
1.63 - The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
called the purificatory theory. Obviously the two theories postulate
two very different conceptions of the fire which plays the principal
1.77 - Work Worthwhile - Why?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
So much for the argument; it will be agreed readily enough that to put it into practice we shall need an Alphabet, a Grammar and a Dictionary. Follow the Axioms, the postulates, the Theorems; finally, the Experiments.
And that is what all these letters are about.
1.83 - Epistola Ultima, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
It may seem to you strange as you read this letter to have watched how the pendulum has swung always a little more and more towards the side of Magick. I do not know why this should have been, but that it is so I have no doubt whatever. I see quite clearly now that Yoga from its very first beginnings is liable to lead the mind away into a condition of muddle, and though for each such state Yoga itself provides the necessary cure, may not one ask oneself if it is really wise to begin one's work with axioms and postulates which are inherently dangerous. The whole controversy might be expressed as a differential equation. Their curves become identical only at infinity, and there is no doubt, at least to my mind, that the curve of Magick follows a more pleasant track than that of Yoga.
To take one point alone: it is evidently more satisfactory to have one's malignant demons external to oneself.
1951-03-14 - Plasticity - Conditions for knowing the Divine Will - Illness - microbes - Fear - body-reflexes - The best possible happens - Theories of Creation - True knowledge - a work to do - the Ashram, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That is why some thinkers have postulated that the creation was the result of an error. But one finds all possible concepts: perfect creation, then a fault which introduced error; the creation itself as a lower movement which must have an end since it had a beginning; then the Vedic concept, as Sri Aurobindo has explained it, of an unfolding or a progressive and infinite discoveryindefinite and infiniteof the All by Himself. Naturally, all these, these are human interpretations. For the moment, as long as you express yourself in human terms, it is a human translation. But according to the initial position of the human translator (that is to say, whether it is the position which admits original sin or an accident in the creation or a supreme conscious Will from the beginning in a progressive unfolding), in the yogic attitude, the conclusions or descents are different. There are Nihilists, Nirvanists, Illusionists; there are all the religions which admit the devils intervention under one form or another; then there is the pure Vedism which is the eternal unfolding of the Supreme in a progressive objectification. And according to taste, one places himself here, another there or elsewhere, with all the nuances between. But according to what Sri Aurobindo has felt to be the most total truth, according to this conception of a progressive universe, one is led to say that at every minute what happens is the best possible for the unfolding of the whole. It is absolutely logical. And I believe that all contradictions can arise only from a more or less pronounced tendency towards this or that, for one position or another. All who admit the intrusion of a sin or an error and the conflict resulting from it between forces which pull back and those which pull forward, may naturally contest the possibility. But one has to say that for him who is spiritually linked with the supreme Will or the supreme Truth, for him it is necessarily, at every instant, the best that happens for his personal realisation. In all instances it is like that. An unconditional best can be admitted only by one who sees the universe as an unrolling, as the Supremes self-awareness of Himself.
(Silence)
1955-10-05 - Science and Ignorance - Knowledge, science and the Buddha - Knowing by identification - Discipline in science and in Buddhism - Progress in the mental field and beyond it, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The scientist speaks of two postulates with which he has undertaken the research of the secrets of Nature and which would have dwindled gradually.
For me, he says, ignorance was the primary if not the only evil
--
(Pavitra) The second postulate: That it is possible to know the universe as it really is, to grasp its laws objectively.
The kind of regularity which we observe in the universe and translate into what we call the laws of Naturedoes it have an existence independent of us? Or is it that these so-called laws exist only in our mind?
1957-11-27 - Sri Aurobindos method in The Life Divine - Individual and cosmic evolution, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Is there or is there not an individual evolution? There is a universal evolutionSri Aurobindo has shown this but within this universal evolution, is there or is there not an individual evolution? Now, he has given us one theorywhich holds together perfectly, which is quite logical, you see but in which it is not at all necessary to postulate an individual evolution. The whole universal plan is logical, can be logically proved, without introducing the necessity of an individual evolution.
But if we continue with patience, in a little while he will prove to us why and how this notion of individual evolution must be introduced into the system of explanation that will be chosen. But what I should like to know is whether this problem has any reality for you or notwhe ther it corresponds to something you understand or not. If you have followed that, it is possible to conceive of a progressive, evolving universe, in which the individual is not necessarily evolving individually
1961 05 22?, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Our very way of thinking is wrong. The believers, the faithful, all of themparticularly in the Westwhen they speak of God, think of Him as something else, they think that He cannot be weak, ugly or imperfect they think wrongly, they divide, they separate. It is subconscious, unreflecting thought; they are in the habit of thinking like this instinctively; they do not watch themselves thinking. For example, when they speak of perfection in a general way, they see or feel or postulate precisely the sum-total of everything they consider to be virtuous, divine, beautiful, admirable but it is not that at all! Perfection is something which lacks nothing. The divine perfection is the Divine in His entirety, which lacks nothing. The divine perfection is the Divine as a whole, from whom nothing has been taken awayso it is just the opposite! For the moralists divine perfection means all the virtues that they represent.
From the true point of view, perfection is the whole (Mother makes a global gesture), and it is precisely the fact that there can be nothing outside the whole. It is impossible that anything should be missing, because it is impossible for anything not to form part of the whole. There can be nothing which is not in the whole. Let me explain. A given universe may not contain everything, for a universe is a mode of manifestation; but there is every possible kind of universe. So I always come back to the same thing: there can be nothing which does not form part of the whole.
1f.lovecraft - The Whisperer in Darkness, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
postulated, struck me all at once with a chill sensation that nearly
overbalanced my ardour for strange delvings.
2.01 - Habit 1 Be Proactive, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
Frankl was a determinist raised in the tradition of Freudian psychology, which postulates that whatever happens to you as a child shapes your character and personality and basically governs your whole life. The limits and parameters of your life are set, and, basically, you can't do much about it.
Frankl was also a psychiatrist and a Jew. He was imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany, where he experienced things that were so repugnant to our sense of decency that we shudder to even repeat them.
2.01 - Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is possible indeed to question the need of positing an Infinite which contains our formed universe, although this conception is imperatively demanded by our mind as a necessary basis to its conceptions, - for it is unable to fix or assign a limit whether in Space or Time or essential existence beyond which there is nothing or before or after which there is nothing, - although too the alternative is a Void or Nihil which can be only an abyss of the Infinite into which we refuse to look; an infinite mystic zero of Non-Existence would replace an infinite x as a necessary postulate, a basis for our seeing of all that is to us existence. But even if we refuse to recognise anything as real except the limitless expanding finite of the material universe and its teeming determinations, the enigma remains the same.
Infinite existence, infinite non-being or boundless finite, all are to us original indeterminates or indeterminables; we can assign to them no distinct characters or features, nothing which would predetermine their determinations. To describe the fundamental character of the universe as Space or Time or Space-Time does not help us; for even if these are not abstractions of our intelligence which we impose by our mental view on the cosmos, the mind's necessary perspective of its picture, these too are indeterminates and carry in themselves no clue to the origin of the determinations that take place in them; there is still no explanation of the strange process by which things are determined or of their powers, qualities and properties, no revelation of their true nature, origin and significance.
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Our fundamental cognition of the Absolute, our substantial spiritual experience of it is the intuition or the direct experience of an infinite and eternal Existence, an infinite and eternal Consciousness, an infinite and eternal Delight of Existence. In overmental and mental cognition it is possible to make discrete and even to separate this original unity into three self-existent aspects: for we can experience a pure causeless eternal Bliss so intense that we are that alone; existence, consciousness seem to be swallowed up in it, no longer ostensibly in presence; a similar experience of pure and absolute consciousness and a similar exclusive identity with it is possible, and there can be too a like identifying experience of pure and absolute existence. But to a supermind cognition these three are always an inseparable Trinity, even though one can stand in front of the others and manifest its own spiritual determinates; for each has its primal aspects or its inherent self-formations, but all of these together are original to the triune Absolute. Love, Joy and Beauty are the fundamental determinates of the Divine Delight of Existence, and we can see at once that these are of the very stuff and nature of that Delight: they are not alien impositions on the being of the Absolute or creations supported by it but outside it; they are truths of its being, native to its consciousness, powers of its force of existence. So too is it with the fundamental determinates of the absolute consciousness, - knowledge and will; they are truths and powers of the original Consciousness-Force and are inherent in its very nature. This au thenticity becomes still more evident when we regard the fundamental spiritual determinates of the absolute Existence; they are its triune powers, necessary first postulates for all its self-creation or manifestation, - Self, the Divine, the Conscious Being; Atman, Ishwara, Purusha.
If we pursue the process of self-manifestation farther, we shall see that each of these aspects or powers reposes in its first action on a triad or trinity; for Knowledge inevitably takes its stand in a trinity of the Knower, the Known and Knowledge; Love finds itself in a trinity of the Lover, the Beloved and Love; Will is self-fulfilled in a trinity of the Lord of the Will, the object of the Will and the executive Force; Joy has its original and utter gladness in a trinity of the Enjoyer, the Enjoyed and the Delight that unites them; Self as inevitably appears and founds its manifestation in a trinity of Self as subject, Self as object and self-awareness holding together Self as subject-object.
2.01 - THE ADVENT OF LIFE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
comparative study of natural developments, we must postulate at
this particular moment of terrestrial evolution a coming to matur-
--
lished the existence of the transitional forms postulated by the
theory of evolution. At the same time the latest advances in bio-
2.01 - The Therapeutic value of Abreaction, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
pathological cause of the disturbance, one can accordingly postulate a
therapy whose aim is the complete release of this charge. Such a view is
2.04 - The Divine and the Undivine, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A second affirmation which our mind naturally accepts as the consequence of the first postulate, is that by the supreme consciousness and the supreme power of this omnipresent Divinity in its perfect universal knowledge and divine wisdom all things are ordered and governed in their fundamental relations
414
2.04 - The Living Church and Christ-Omega, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
centre postulated by anthropogenesis: these two focal points
ultimately coincide (or at least overlap) in the historical
2.06 - Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Absolute, the imposition of the stigma of unreal reality on the pragmatic truth of things because it is pragmatic, is difficult to accept; for the pragmatic truth is after all not something quite other, quite separate and unconnected with spiritual truth, it is a result of the energy or a motion of the dynamic activity of the Spirit. A distinction must, no doubt, be made between the two, but the idea of an entire opposition can rest only on the postulate that a silent and quiescent status is the Eternal's true and whole being; but in that case we must conclude that there is nothing dynamic in the Absolute and all dynamism is a contradiction of the supreme nature of the Divine and Eternal.
But if a temporal or cosmic reality of any kind exists, there must be a power, an inherent dynamic force of the Absolute which brought it into being, and there is no reason to suppose that the power of the Absolute can do nothing but create illusions.
2.07 - The Mother Relations with Others, #Words Of The Mother I, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Nobody ever thought of forcing you to do yoga. If you want to do it in order to acquire the power over the circumstances, it is not a very noble or high motive, and you cannot count upon me to help you there. I can help you only if your motive is to discover the Truth (not to postulate a priori that what you think is the truth) and to surrender entirely to the Truth. So the decision is in your hands.
1 December 1961
2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
an aim, who cannot postulate aims from the promptings of his own heart
The "believer" does not belong to himself, he can be only a means,
2.1.01 - God The One Reality, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A greater existence and consciousness than what we are now or are in our surface being, to which yet we can by certain means raise ourself and become or enter into that, - this is the postulate of all Yoga.
What is this greater consciousness and existence? It is something or someone eternal and infinite, absolute or perfect, in which all is, from which all comes, to which all returns and which is the secret self of all things. All is by its existence, all is conscious by its consciousness, continues to be by its Ananda of being, thinks by its Mind, lives by its life, is a form of its Energy in the Cosmos. But still the existence we live, the consciousness we use, the highest joy of being which we experience, our mind, life, body, force are but a fragmentary phenomenon of or in
--
All begins from the Divine, from the Eternal, from the Infinite, all abides in it alone and by it alone, all ends or culminates in the divine Eternal and Infinite. This is the first postulate indispensable for our spiritual seeking - for on no other base can we found the highest knowledge and the highest life.
All time moves in the Eternal; all space is spread in the
2.1.03 - Man and Superman, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Reason is a clarified, ordered and organised Ignorance. It is a half-enlightened Ignorance seeking for truth, but a truth which it insists on founding upon the data and postulates of the Ignorance. Reason is not in possession of the Truth, it is a seeker. It is [unable to] discover the Truth or embody it; it leaves Truth covered but rendered into mental representations, a verbal and ideative scheme, an abstract algebra of concepts, a theory of the
Ignorance. Sense-evidence is its starting point and it never really gets away from that insecure beginning. Its concepts start from
2.10 - On Vedic Interpretation, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: In a new geometry there are different postulates and axioms not the same that we find in ordinary geometry.
Disciple: Nowadays all can be included in geometry. There exist imaginary numbers; e.g., the square root of minus 1. It is an imaginary number which the mind cannot conceive and represent in some substance, but yet it indicates some reality.
2.14 - The Unpacking of God, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
We saw, in chapter 2, that this was just another example of "holons all the way up, all the way down." And we can see now that this also means that mathematics simply issued a transfinite IOU to the Kosmos. Put rather simplistically, the only way for mathematics to avoid profound self-contradiction is to postulate a yet higher level of inclusion, which avoids the paradoxes of one level-but then faces the same paradoxes on its own level. Another yet-higher level is thus postulated, and this continues endlessly ("transfinitely").
Thus, the mathematical paradoxes and IOUs of one level can be superseded at the next higher level (the next more-encompassing set), but that set then faces its own IOU (it is either incomplete or inconsistent), and that continues . . . forever. The sets must be postulated to expand forever, because the moment they stop, mathematics becomes self-contradictory. Nobody ever actually sees all of these transfinite sets: they are just a promissory note that allows mathematics both to keep going and to get going in the first place.
Thus the IOU: it says, I cannot pay you now, but I will gladly pay you tomorrow. It will even gladly pay with lots of interest, because the point is: it can never actually pay. The debt is never settled. Mathematics, like all holons, lurches forward forever in an attempt to get over its inherent limitations, its "self-contradictions." (Recall Hegel: "Only insofar as something has contradiction in itself does it move, have impulse, or activity.")
2.2.02 - Consciousness and the Inconscient, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is not an unborn eternal Matter from which it is born or of which it is the eternal force or in and on which it works, as was once supposed and as some still suppose. For that is now only a construction of the speculative mind, an idea, a hypothesis, an arbitrary postulate for which there is no discoverable correspondent reality. Matter, as we now know it, is something that we
298
2.20 - The Philosophy of Rebirth, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We may maintain - provisionally, at least, - certain things as legitimate presumptions of the philosophic reason and fairly throw the burden of disproving them on their denier. Among these postulates is the principle that that which has no end must necessarily have had no beginning; all that begins or is created has an end by cessation of the process that created and maintains it or the dissolution of the materials of which it is compounded or the end of the function for which it came into being. If there is an exception to this law, it must be by a descent of spirit into matter animating matter with divinity or giving matter its own immortality; but the spirit itself which so descends is immortal, not made or created. If the soul was created to animate the body, if it depended on the body for its coming into existence, it can have no reason or basis for existence after the disappearance of the body. It is naturally to be supposed that the breath or power given for the animation of the body would return at its final dissolution to its Maker. If, on the contrary, it still persists as an immortal embodied being, there must be a subtle or psychic body in which it continues, and it is fairly certain that this psychic body and its inhabitant must be pre-existent to the material vehicle: it is irrational to suppose that they were created originally to inhabit that brief and perishable form; an immortal being cannot be the outcome of so ephemeral an incident in creation. If the soul remains but in a disembodied condition, then it can have had no original dependence on a body for its existence; it must have subsisted as an unembodied spirit before birth even as it persists in its disembodied spiritual entity after death.
Again, we can assume that where we see in Time a certain stage of development, there must have been a past to that development. Therefore, if the soul enters this life with a certain development of personality, it must have prepared it in other precedent lives here or elsewhere. Or, if it only takes up a ready-made life and personality not prepared by it, prepared perhaps by a physical, vital and mental heredity, it must itself be something quite independent of that life and personality, something which is only fortuitously connected with the mind and body and cannot therefore be really affected by what is done or developed in this mental and bodily living. If the soul is real and immortal, not a constructed being or figure of being, it must also be eternal, beginningless in the past even as endless in the future; but, if eternal, it must be either a changeless self unaffected by life and its terms or a timeless Purusha, an eternal and spiritual Person manifesting or causing in time a stream of changing personality. If it is such a Person, it can only manifest this stream of personality in a world of birth and death by the assumption of successive bodies, - in a word, by constant or by repeated rebirth into the forms of Nature.
3.00 - Introduction, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
II. postulate.
Any required Change may be effected by the application of the
--
the above postulate.
III. THEOREMS.
--
2. Every successful act has conformed to the postulate.
3. Every failure proves that one or more requirements of the
3.02 - The Great Secret, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Unlike some of you, I did not set out in life with any intention of improving the condition of my fellow-men. In my case, knowledge rather than action was the main attraction - knowledge in its modern guise: Science. I felt that nothing could be more wonderful than to lift a corner of the veil that screens from us the secrets of Nature, to understand a little more of her hidden springs. I assumed, perhaps unconsciously, the postulate that any increase of knowledge must necessarily result in an increase of power, and that any new mastery over Nature must sooner or later bring about an improvement in man's condition, his moral as well as his material well-being. For me, as for all other thinkers who have their roots in the last century, the century of the foundations of science, ignorance was the primary if not the only evil. It was this that held back mankind in its drive towards perfection. We admitted, without any discussion, the endless perfectibility of the human race. Progress might be rapid or slow, but it was nonetheless sure. Having come so far, we knew that we could go further. For us, to know more was automatically to understand more, to become wiser, more just - in short, to become better.
There is another postulate that we also accepted implicitly: that it is possible for us to know the Universe as it really is, to grasp its laws objectively. This seemed so obvious that it was never questioned. The Universe and I - we both exist, the function of the one being to understand the other. Undoubtedly, I am part of the Universe, but in the process of knowing it, I stand apart from it and view it objectively. I admit that what I call the laws of Nature exist independently of me, of my mind; they exist in themselves and they will be the same for any other mind capable of perceiving them.
I started my work inspired by this ideal of pure knowledge. I chose the science of Physics and more particularly the study of the atom, of radioactivity, the field in which Becquerel and the Curies had mapped out a royal road. It was the period when natural radioactivity was being superseded by artificial radioactivity, when the dreams of the alchemists were coming true. I worked with the great physicists who discovered uranium fission and I saw the birth of the atom bomb: years of hard, dogged and one-pointed labour. It was at this time that I conceived the idea which was to lead me to my first discovery, the one which enables us today to obtain electric power directly from intra-atomic or nuclear energy. As you all know, this discovery resulted in a radical change in the economic condition of the whole world, because it brought energy at a low cost within the reach of all. If this discovery was so sensational, it was because it freed man from the curse of toil, from the need to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.
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Thus the very first postulate with which I set out as a young scientist in quest of Nature's secrets, has fallen to pieces. Even though an increase in knowledge may bring an added power, it does not follow at all that humanity will be automatically bettered. Scientific progress does not necessarily imply moral progress. Scientific and intellectual knowledge is powerless to change human nature, and yet that has become the pressing need. If human greed and passion remain what they are today, almost the same as they were in the Stone Age, then humanity is doomed. We have reached a point where, unless there is a rapid and radical moral change, mankind will destroy itself with the power it has in its own hands.
Now what has happened to the second postulate of my youth? Can I at least have the joy of pure knowledge, can I be certain that I have grasped something of the hidden mechanism of Nature? Can I hope to enjoy the understanding of the true laws that govern Nature? Alas! I fear that here too my ideal has failed me. We men of science have long ago given up the idea that a theory must be either true or false. We now say only that it is convenient, that it fits the facts and gives a working explanation of them. But as for knowing whether it is true, that is to say, whether it conforms to reality - that is quite another thing. And perhaps the question itself is meaningless. Undoubtedly there are, I should say, certainly there are other theories which explain the same facts just as well and are therefore just as valid. After all, what are these theories? They are nothing but symbols. They are certainly useful, since they enable us to predict; they tell us how things happen, but not the why or wherefore. They do not bring us into touch with reality. One always has the impression of circling around the truth, the reality, of approaching it from different angles, from different points of view, without ever being able to discover it or grasp it; nor does it spring forth and reveal itself.
Then again, on the other hand, we ourselves interfere with all the measurements that we take, expecting them to tell us something about the external universe. By the very fact of measuring we disturb, however slightly, the outer phenomena and thus alter the aspect of the world. And so the knowledge that these measurements give us is not at all sure. All that we can deduce from them is a probable state of the world, not a certainty. For phenomena on our own scale, the uncertainty is negligible, but this is not the case with the infinitely small, the world of the atom. Here, it is an essential incapacity, an obstacle that we can never hope to surmount. It is due to the very nature of things and not to the imperfection of our methods of investigation, so that we shall never succeed in casting away the tinted glasses through which we study the universe. All my measurements, all my theories contain me, the human mind, just as much as they contain the universe. They are subjective as well as objective and perhaps, in fact, they exist only in my mind.
3.02 - The Practice Use of Dream-Analysis, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
of obscure ideas, and nearly two hundred years after Leibniz postulated
an unconscious psychic activity, not to mention the achievements of Janet,
3.07 - The Formula of the Holy Grail, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
premisses postulated by the past.
1. [Matthew XII. 39. The original print edition had It was indeed a reliable contri bution to psychology to remark that; the reading here is from the Blue Brick,
3.14 - Of the Consecrations, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
analogy between Levis postulate and that of ordinary science in re
the luminiferous ether.)
3.18 - Of Clairvoyance and the Body of Light, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
1. We postulate the existence of intelligences, either within or
without the diviner, of which he is not immediately conscious. (It
--
2. We postulate that it is possible to construct a compendium of
hieroglyphs sufficiently elastic in meaning to include every possible
--
3. We postulate that the intelligences whom we wish to consult [157]
are willing, or may be compelled, to answer us truthfully.
3-5 Full Circle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
I predict that the postulated hierarchy of psycho-genetic human structures will be discovered empirically after our Periodic table's announcement in 1969, as were the atoms' nuclei and electron clouds, and their component particles, after the announcement of Mendeleev's table in 1869.
The two chains of interlocked braces on the left-hand side of Figure IV-1 represent the tool hierarchy and food hierarchy. The first Period's brace includes tools ranging from stone hand-axes to wooden boomerangs and spear-throwing sticks. And the foods are wild plants and wild animals, including insects. A few dogs help in hunting and in protection, and often also serve as food.3,4 The society is a small band or horde, and consists of just one social Stratum, represented in the middle column. The work-component or Majority of the band is made up of the younger men and women, and the children; the controller or Minority is the council of old people; that is, people usually in their thirties. (Controller and work component are thus composed of Sub-Strata.) And there is just one vocabulary, in the sense which I will presently define.
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The postulated psycho-genetic process characterizing human evolution is now clear: both of the second Period's Strata produce unmutated descendants, represented by the two solid leftward arrows. Both of them also produce mutated descendants: the first Stratum goes on mutating some descendants with the capability of two human abstraction levels. These join the unmutated descendants of Stratum 2 by what is incorrectly called just social mobility, though it is genetico-social mobility: the capability is inborn or genetic; the opportunity of realizing this capability is social, political, and legal.
Meanwhile, the second Stratum is producing its own mutations, Stratum 3 shown by the dotted arrow. This literally new kind of people displays a third human abstraction capability, generated by way of an additional ontogenetic development stage or Sub-stratum.
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This is an extremely simple and straight-forward theory, as Figure IV-2 shows: Each human level of abstraction is characterized by the capacity to conceptualize, reflect upon and organize all preceding levels of thought and action. Abstraction levels are thus quantized, discontinuous jumps of capability. They are postulated to emerge by genetic mutation and to be transmitted genetically. Being genotypes, and thus potentials or capabilities, their phenotypic actualization occurs only in habitats whose highest vocabulary level and behavior level is equal to, or higher than, the genotype's (potential) abstraction ceiling.
Social Strata.
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This has brought a radical change in the meaning of freedom. Originally it was founded on the postulate that there was a universal order on which all reasonable men were agreed: within that agreement of the fundamentals and on the ultimates, it was safe to permit, and it would be desireable to encourage, dissent and dispute. But with the disappearance of the public philosophy and of a consensus on the first and last things--there was opened up a great vacuum in the public mind, yawning to be filled.19 p. 100.
One thing that can help fill this vacuum is the late twentieth century's Circle of Perfectibility: Unified Science.35 The one-field sciences have now come full circle: their assembly consists of these powerful sciences and technologies; it displays the positive value bias of the most deeply sensed religions; and it corrects the Marxist misinterpretation of history and the fascists' and liberals' opposite misinterpretations of genetics and education.
4.03 - The Special Phenomenology of the Child Archetype, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
of the empirical universe, although the postulate of a world-
31 The material is collected in Psychology and Alchemy, Parts II and III. For
4.04 - THE REGENERATION OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[443] Here Ripley describes the renewal of the king and the birth of the son as the manifestation of a new redeemerwhich sounds very queer indeed in the mouth of a medieval ecclesiastic. The sublimation of Luna (uti Luna) to the imperial place is an unmistakable paraphrase on the one hand of the Assumption of the Virgin and on the other of the marriage of the bride, the Church. The unlocking of paradise means nothing less than the advent of Gods Kingdom on earth. The attri butes of sun and moon make the filius regius into the rearisen Primordial Man, who is the cosmos. It would be wrong to minimize the importance of this jubilee or to declare it is nonsense. One cannot dismiss all the alchemists as insane. It seems to me more advisable to examine the motives that led a cleric, of all people, to postulate a divine revelation outside his credo. If the lapis were nothing but gold the alchemists would have been wealthy folk; if it were the panacea they would have had a remedy for all sickness; if it were the elixir they could have lived a thousand years or more. But all this would not oblige them to make religious statements about it. If nevertheless it is praised as the second coming of the Messiah one must assume that the alchemists really did mean something of the kind. Although they regarded the art as a charisma, a gift of the Holy Ghost or of the Sapientia Dei,243 it was still mans work, and, even though a divine miracle was the decisive factor, the mysterious filius was still concocted artificially in a retort.
[444] In the face of all this one is driven to the conjecture that medieval alchemy, which evolved out of the Arabic tradition sometime in the thirteenth century, and whose most eloquent witness is the Aurora consurgens, was in the last resort a continuation of the doctrine of the Holy Ghost, which never came to very much in the Church.244 The Paraclete descends upon the single individual, who is thereby drawn into the Trinitarian process.245 And if the spirit of procreation and life indwells in man, then God can be born in hima thought that has not perished since the time of Meister Eckhart.246 The verses of Angelus Silesius are in this respect quite unequivocal:
4.07 - THE RELATION OF THE KING-SYMBOL TO CONSCIOUSNESS, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[504] Pitilessly it is seen from another planet that the king is growing old, even before he sees it himself: ruling ideas, the dominants, change, and the change, undetected by consciousness, is mirrored only in dreams. King Sol, as the archetype of consciousness, voyages through the world of the unconscious, one of its multitudinous figures which may one day be capable of consciousness too. These lesser lights are, on the old view, identical with the planetary correspondences in the psyche which were postulated by astrology. When, therefore, an alchemist conjured up the spirit of Saturn as his familiar, this was an attempt to bring to consciousness a standpoint outside the ego, involving a relativization of the ego and its contents. The intervention of the planetary spirit was besought as an aid. When the king grows old and needs renewing, a kind of planetary bath is instituteda bath into which all the planets pour their influences.387 This expresses the idea that the dominant, grown feeble with age, needs the support and influence of those subsidiary lights to fortify and renew it. It is, as it were, dissolved in the substance of the other planetary archetypes and then put together again. Through this process of melting and recasting there is formed a new amalgam of a more comprehensive nature, which has taken into itself the influences of the other planets or metals.388
[505] In this alchemical picture we can easily recognize the projection of the transformation process: the aging of a psychic dominant is apparent from the fact that it expresses the psychic totality in ever-diminishing degree. One can also say that the psyche no longer feels wholly contained in the dominant, whereupon the dominant loses its fascination and no longer grips the psyche so completely as before. On the other hand its content and meaning are no longer properly understood, or what is understood fails to touch the heart. A sentiment dincompltude of this kind produces a compensatory reaction which attracts other regions of the psyche and their contents, so as to fill up the gap. As a rule this is an unconscious process that always sets in when the attitude and orientation of the conscious mind have proved inadequate. I stress this point because the conscious mind is a bad judge of its own situation and often persists in the illusion that its attitude is just the right one and is only prevented from working because of some external annoyance. If the dreams were observed it would soon become clear why the conscious assumptions have become unworkable. And if, finally, neurotic symptoms appear, then the attitude of consciousness, its ruling idea, is contradicted, and in the unconscious there is a stirring up of those archetypes that were the most suppressed by the conscious attitude. The therapist then has no other course than to confront the ego with its adversary and thus initiate the melting and recasting process. The confrontation is expressed, in the alchemical myth of the king, as the collision of the masculine, spiritual father-world ruled over by King Sol with the feminine, chthonic mother-world symbolized by the aqua permanens or by the chaos.
4.08 - THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM OF THE KINGS RENEWAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[520] Consciousness is renewed through its descent into the unconscious, whereby the two are joined. The renewed consciousness does not contain the unconscious but forms with it a totality symbolized by the son. But since father and son are of one being, and in alchemical language King Sol, representing the renewed consciousness, is the son, consciousness would be absolutely identical with the King as dominant. For the alchemists this difficulty did not exist, because the King was projected into a postulated substance and hence behaved merely as an object to the consciousness of the artifex. But if the projection is withdrawn by psychological criticism, we encounter the aforesaid difficulty that the renewed consciousness apparently coincides with the renewed king, or son. I have discussed the psychological aspect of this problem in the second of the Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, in the chapter on the mana personality. The difficulty cannot be resolved by purely logical argument but only by careful observation and analysis of the psychic state itself. Rather than launch out into a detailed discussion of case-histories I would prefer to recall the well-known words of Paul, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me (Gal. 2 : 20), which aptly describe the peculiar nature of this state. From this we can see that that other, earlier state, when the king aged and disappeared, is marked by a consciousness in which a critical ego knowingly took the place of the sick king, looking back to an earlier mythical time when this ego still felt absolutely dependent on a higher and mightier non-ego. The subsequent disappearance of the feeling of dependence and the simultaneous streng thening of criticism are felt as progress, enlightenment, liberation, indeed as redemption, although a one-sided and limited being has usurped the throne of a king. A personal ego seizes the reins of power to its own destruction; for mere egohood, despite possessing an anima rationalis, is not even sufficient for the guidance of personal life, let alone for the guidance of men. For this purpose it always needs a mythical dominant, yet such a thing cannot simply be invented and then believed in. Contemplating our own times we must say that though the need for an effective dominant was realized to a large extent, what was offered was nothing more than an arbitrary invention of the moment. The fact that it was also believed in goes to prove the gullibility and cluelessness of the public and at the same time the profoundly felt need for a spiritual authority transcending egohood. An authority of this kind is never the product of rational reflection or an invention of the moment, which always remains caught in the narrow circle of ego-bound consciousness; it springs from traditions whose roots go far deeper both historically and psychologically. Thus a real and essentially religious renewal can be based, for us, only on Christianity. The extremely radical reformation of Hinduism by the Buddha assimilated the traditional spirituality of India in its entirety and did not thrust a rootless novelty upon the world. It neither denied nor ignored the Hindu pantheon swarming with millions of gods, but boldly introduced Man, who before that had not been represented at all. Nor did Christ, regarded simply as a Jewish reformer, destroy the law, but made it, rather, into a matter of conviction. He likewise, as the regenerator of his age, set against the Greco-Roman pantheon and the speculations of the philosophers the figure of Man, not intending it as a contradiction but as the fulfilment of a mythologem that existed long before him the conception of the Anthropos with its complex Egyptian, Persian, and Hellenistic background.
[521] Any renewal not deeply rooted in the best spiritual tradition is ephemeral; but the dominant that grows from historical roots act like a living being within the ego-bound man. He does not possess it, it possesses him; therefore the alchemists said that the artifex is not the master but rather the minister of the stoneclearly showing that the stone is indeed a king towards whom the artifex behaves as a subject.
5.01 - EPILOGUE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
That is the postulate to which we have been led logically by
the integral application to man of the experimental laws of
--
emending the two preliminary postulates stated above (the one
concerning the primacy of life in the universe, the other the
5.03 - ADAM AS THE FIRST ADEPT, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[576] It is to be presumed that these names were distributed among the eight inner circles. The seven archons correspond to the seven planets and represent so many spheres with doors which the celebrant has to pass through on his ascent. Here, says Origen, is the origin of the Ogdoad, which, clearly, must consist of the seven and their father Yahweh. At this point Origen mentions, as the first and seventh, Ialdabaoth, of whom we have not heard before. This supreme archon, as we know from other sources too, is lion-headed or lion-like.124 He would therefore correspond to Michael in the Ophitic diagram, the first in the list of archons. Ialdabaoth means child of chaos; thus he is the first-born of a new order that supersedes the original state of chaos. As the first son, he is the last of the series,125 a feature he shares with Adam and also with Leviathan, who, as we have seen, is both circumference and centre. These analogies suggest that the diagram showed a series of concentric circles.126 The old world-picture, with the earth as the centre of the universe, consisted of various heavensspherical layers or spheresarranged concentrically round the centre and named after the planets. The outermost planetary sphere or archon was Saturn. Outside this would be the sphere of the fixed stars (corresponding to Leviathan as the tenth circle in the diagram), unless we postulated some place for the demiurge or for the father or mother of the archons. It is evident from the text that an Ogdoad is meant,127 as in the system of Ptolemy reported by Irenaeus.128 There the eighth sphere was called Achamoth (Sophia, Sapientia),129 and was of feminine nature, just as in Damascius the hebdomad was attributed to Kronos and the ogdoad to Rhea.130 In our text the virgin Prunicus is connected with the mandala of seven circles:131 They have further added on top of one another sayings of the prophets, circles included in circles . . . and a power flowing from a certain Prunicus, a virgin, a living soul.132
[577] The circles included in circles point decisively to a concentric arrangement, as we find it, significantly enough, in Herodotuss description133 of the seven circular walls of Ecbatana.134 The ramparts of these walls were all painted in different colours; of the two innermost and highest walls one was silvered and the other gilded. The walls obviously represented the concentric circles of the planets, each characterized by a special colour.
5 - The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
must therefore be dealing here with the (Christian) postulate
of a spirit whose life is so vastly superior to the life of nature
--
of an obstinate antinomy can be no more than a postulate for
us, this is by no means so for the unconscious, whose contents
--
one. Both are mere assertions based on the postulates of belief.
484 The fact is, that this old trichotomous hierarchy of psychic
6.01 - THE ALCHEMICAL VIEW OF THE UNION OF OPPOSITES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[654] Herbert Silberer rightly called the coniunctio the central idea of the alchemical procedure.1 This author correctly recognized that alchemy was, in the main, symbolical, whereas the historian of alchemy, Eduard von Lippmann, a chemist, did not mention the term coniunctio even in his index.2 Anyone who has but a slight acquaintance with the literature knows that the adepts were ultimately concerned with a union of the substancesby whatever names these may have been called. By means of this union they hoped to attain the goal of the work: the production of the gold or a symbolical equivalent of it. Although the coniunctio is unquestionably the primordial image of what we today would call chemical combination, it is hardly possible to prove beyond a doubt that the adept thought as concretely as the modern chemist. Even when he spoke of a union of the natures, or of an amalgam of iron and copper, or of a compound of sulphur and mercury, he meant it at the same time as a symbol: iron was Mars and copper was Venus, and their fusion was at the same time a love-affair. The union of the natures which embrace one another was not physical and concrete, for they were celestial natures which multiplied by the comm and of God.3 When red lead was roasted with gold it produced a spirit, that is, the compound became spiritual,4 and from the red spirit proceeded the principle of the world.5 The combination of sulphur and mercury was followed by the bath and death.6 By the combination of copper and the aqua permanens, which was usually quicksilver, we think only of an amalgam. But for the alchemists it meant a secret, philosophical sea, since for them the aqua permanens was primarily a symbol or a philosophical postulate which they hoped to discoveror believed they had discoveredin the various fluids. The substances they sought to combine in reality always hadon account of their unknown naturea numinous quality which tended towards phantasmal personification. They were substances which, like living organisms, fertilized one another and thereby produced the living being [
] sought by the Philosophers.7 The substances seemed to them hermaphroditic, and the conjunction they strove for was a philosophical operation, namely the union of form and matter.8 This inherent duality explains the duplications that so often occur, e.g., two sulphurs, two quicksilvers,9 Venus alba et rubea,10 aurum nostrum and aurum vulgi.
--
[662] Dorns explanation is illuminating in that it affords us a deep insight into the alchemical mysterium coniunctionis. If this is nothing less than a restoration of the original state of the cosmos and the divine unconsciousness of the world, we can understand the extraordinary fascination emanating from this mystery. It is the Western equivalent of the fundamental principle of classical Chinese philosophy, namely the union of yang and yin in tao, and at the same time a premonition of that tertium quid which, on the basis of psychological experience on the one hand and of Rhines experiments on the other, I have called synchronicity.44 If mandala symbolism is the psychological equivalent of the unus mundus, then synchronicity is its para-psychological equivalent. Though synchronistic phenomena occur in time and space they manifest a remarkable independence of both these indispensable determinants of physical existence and hence do not conform to the law of causality. The causalism that underlies our scientific view of the world breaks everything down into individual processes which it punctiliously tries to isolate from all other parallel processes. This tendency is absolutely necessary if we are to gain reliable knowledge of the world, but philosophically it has the disadvantage of breaking up, or obscuring, the universal interrelationship of events so that a recognition of the greater relationship, i.e., of the unity of the world, becomes more and more difficult. Everything that happens, however, happens in the same one world and is a part of it. For this reason events must possess an a priori aspect of unity, though it is difficult to establish this by the statistical method. So far as we can see at present, Rhine seems to have successfully demonstrated this unity by his extrasensory-perception experiments (ESP).45 Independence of time and space brings about a concurrence or meaningful coincidence of events not causally connected with one anotherphenomena which till now were summed under the purely descriptive concepts of telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. These concepts naturally have no explanatory value as each of them represents an X which cannot be distinguished from the X of the other. The characteristic feature of all these phenomena, including Rhines psychokinetic effect and other synchronistic occurrences, is meaningful coincidence, and as such I have defined the synchronistic principle. This principle suggests that there is an inter-connection or unity of causally unrelated events, and thus postulates a unitary aspect of being which can very well be described as the unus mundus.
[663] Mercurius usually stands for the arcane substance, whose synonyms are the panacea and the spagyric medicine. Dorn identifies the latter with the balsam46 of Paracelsus, which is a close analogy of the
6.05 - THE PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE PROCEDURE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[695] This singular identity, simply postulated and never taken as a problem, is an example of that participation mystique which Lvy-Bruhl very rightly stressed as being characteristic of the primitive mentality.106 The same is true of the unquestionably psychic unio mentalis, which is at the same time a substance-like truth hidden in the body, which in turn coincides with the quintessence sublimed from the phlegm. It never occurred to the mind of the alchemists to cast any doubt whatsoever on this intellectual monstrosity. We naturally think that such a thing could happen only in the dark Middle Ages. As against this I must emphasize that we too have not quite got out of the woods in this respect, for a philosopher once assured me in all seriousness that thought could not err, and a very famous professor, whose assertions I had ventured to criticize, came out with the magisterial dictum: It must be right because I have thought it.
[696] All projections are unconscious identifications with the object. Every projection is simply there as an uncriticized datum of experience, and is recognized for what it is only very much later, if ever. Everything that we today would call mind and insight was, in earlier centuries, projected into things, and even today individual idiosyncrasies are presupposed by many people to be generally valid. The original, half-animal state of unconsciousness was known to the adept as the nigredo, the chaos, the massa confusa, an inextricable interweaving of the soul with the body, which together formed a dark unity (the unio naturalis). From this enchainment he had to free the soul by means of the separatio, and establish a spiritual-psychic counter-positionconscious and rational insightwhich would prove immune to the influences of the body. But such insight, as we have seen, is possible only if the delusory projections that veil the reality of things can be withdrawn. The unconscious identity with the object then ceases and the soul is freed from its fetters in the things of sense. The psychologist is well acquainted with this process, for a very important part of his psycho therapeutic work consists in making conscious and dissolving the projections that falsify the patients view of the world and impede his self-knowledge. He does this in order to bring anomalous psychic states of an affective nature, i.e., neurotic symptoms, under the control of consciousness. The declared aim of the treatment is to set up a rational, spiritual-psychic position over against the turbulence of the emotions.
6.08 - THE CONTENT AND MEANING OF THE FIRST TWO STAGES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[749] What the alchemist sought, then, to help him out of his dilemma was a chemical operation which we today would describe as a symbol. The procedure he followed was obviously an allegory of his postulated substantia coelestis and its chemical equivalent. To that extent the operation was not symbolical for him but purposive and rational. For us, who know that no amount of incineration, sublimation, and centrifuging of the vinous residue can ever produce an air-coloured quintessence, the entire procedure is fantastic if taken literally. We can hardly suppose that Dorn, either, meant a real wine but, after the manner of the alchemists, vinum ardens, acetum, spiritualis sanguis, etc., in other words Mercurius non vulgi, who embodied the anima mundi. Just as the air encompasses the earth, so in the old view the soul is wrapped round the world. As I have shown, we can most easily equate the concept of Mercurius with that of the unconscious. If we add this term to the recipe, it would run: Take the unconscious in one of its handiest forms, say a spontaneous fantasy, a dream, an irrational mood, an affect, or something of the kind, and operate with it. Give it your special attention, concentrate on it, and observe its alterations objectively. Spare no effort to devote yourself to this task, follow the subsequent transformations of the spontaneous fantasy attentively and carefully. Above all, dont let anything from outside, that does not belong, get into it, for the fantasy-image has everything it needs.222 In this way one is certain of not interfering by conscious caprice and of giving the unconscious a free hand. In short, the alchemical operation seems to us the equivalent of the psychological process of active imagination.
[750] Ordinarily, the only thing people know about psycho therapy is that it consists in a certain technique which the analyst applies to his patient. Specialists know how far they can get with it. One can use it to cure the neuroses, and even the milder psychoses, so that nothing more remains of the illness except the general human problem of how much of yourself you want to forget, how much psychic discomfort you have to take on your shoulders, how much you may forbid or allow yourself, how much or how little you may expect of others, how far you should give up the meaning of your life or what sort of meaning you should give it. The analyst has a right to shut his door when a neurosis no longer produces any clinical symptoms and has debouched into the sphere of general human problems. The less he knows about these the greater his chances are of coming across comparatively reasonable patients who can be weaned from the transference that regularly sets in. But if the patient has even the remotest suspicion that the analyst thinks rather more about these problems than he says, then he will not give up the transference all that quickly but will cling to it in defiance of all reasonwhich is not so unreasonable after all, indeed quite understandable. Even adult persons often have no idea how to cope with the problem of living, and on top of that are so unconscious in this regard that they succumb in the most uncritical way to the slightest possibility of finding some kind of answer or certainty. Were this not so, the numerous sects and -isms would long since have died out. But, thanks to unconscious, infantile attachments, boundless uncertainty and lack of self-reliance, they all flourish like weeds.
6.09 - THE THIRD STAGE - THE UNUS MUNDUS, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
(stone that is no stone), by a transcendental entity that could be described only in paradoxes.231 Dorns caelum, which corresponded to the stone, was on the one hand a liquid that could be poured out of a bottle and on the other the Microcosm itself. For the psychologist it is the selfman as he is, and the indescribable and super-empirical totality of that same man. This totality is a mere postulate, but a necessary one, because no one can assert that he has complete knowledge of man as he is. Not only in the psychic man is there something unknown, but also in the physical. We should be able to include this unknown quantity in a total picture of man, but we cannot. Man himself is partly empirical, partly transcendental; he too is a
. Also, we do not know whether what we on the empirical plane regard as physical may not, in the Unknown beyond our experience, be identical with what on this side of the border we distinguish from the physical as psychic. Though we know from experience that psychic processes are related to material ones, we are not in a position to say in what this relationship consists or how it is possible at all. Precisely because the psychic and the physical are mutually dependent it has often been conjectured that they may be identical somewhere beyond our present experience, though this certainly does not justify the arbitrary hypothesis of either materialism or spiritualism.
--
[767] If Dorn, then, saw the consummation of the mysterium coniunctionis in the union of the alchemically produced caelum with the unus mundus, he expressly meant not a fusion of the individual with his environment, or even his adaptation to it, but a unio mystica with the potential world. Such a view indeed seems to us mystical, if we misuse this word in its pejorative modern sense. It is not, however, a question of thoughtlessly used words but of a view which can be translated from medieval language into modern concepts. Undoubtedly the idea of the unus mundus is founded on the assumption that the multiplicity of the empirical world rests on an underlying unity, and that not two or more fundamentally different worlds exist side by side or are mingled with one another. Rather, everything divided and different belongs to one and the same world, which is not the world of sense but a postulate whose probability is vouched for by the fact that until now no one has been able to discover a world in which the known laws of nature are invalid. That even the psychic world, which is so extraordinarily different from the physical world, does not have its roots outside the one cosmos is evident from the undeniable fact that causal connections exist between the psyche and the body which point to their underlying unitary nature.
[768] All that is is not encompassed by our knowledge, so that we are not in a position to make any statements about its total nature. Microphysics is feeling its way into the unknown side of matter, just as complex psychology is pushing forward into the unknown side of the psyche. Both lines of investigation have yielded findings which can be conceived only by means of antinomies, and both have developed concepts which display remarkable analogies. If this trend should become more pronounced in the future, the hypothesis of the unity of their subject-matters would gain in probability. Of course there is little or no hope that the unitary Being can ever be conceived, since our powers of thought and language permit only of antinomian statements. But this much we do know beyond all doubt, that empirical reality has a transcendental backgrounda fact which, as Sir James Jeans has shown, can be expressed by Platos parable of the cave. The common background of microphysics and depth-psychology is as much physical as psychic and therefore neither, but rather a third thing, a neutral nature which can at most be grasped in hints since in essence it is transcendental.
6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
the bases of its symbolical products, I postulate the existence of
primordial images, the archetypes. I need hardly add that the
--
Basic postulates of Analytical Psychology (1931)
Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung (1928/1931)
7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
God and creation. Your postulates or axioms themselves
are vitiated.
--
means when it postulates the impossibility of perpetual
motion). It is because there is a higher source which
Avatars of the Tortoise, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
humanity. In that case, maintains Aristotle, one would have to postulate
another archetype to include them all, and then a fourth. . . Patricio de
--
B. He reasons that if A and B are independent, to postulate an influence of A
on B is to postulate a third element C, an element which in order to affect B
will require a fourth element D, which cannot work its effect without E,
BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
They accept the Darwinian Anthropology (more or less), though they also postulate the individual Ego
as a manifestation of the Unconscious (the Western presentation of the Logos or Primeval Divine
--
under the ordinary "occult" explanation, and involves no postulate of an "animal progenitor" to solve
it.
--
the central point from which these latter radiate. In this postulate we find a true "Evolution" or
"Unfolding" -- a sense which cannot be said to belong to the mechanical theory of natural selection.
--
his 22 stages through which the monera have passed in their ascent to Man. Haeckel does not postulate
a vegetable ancestor. The embryological argument is thus a two-edged sword and here cuts its
--
nothing, therefore, against the geological postulates of the Esoteric Philosophy. Dr. Seemann assures
us in the "Popular Science Review" (Vol. V., p. 18), article "Australia and Europe formerly one
--
by such evidence to postulate the unity of race of the early men of Canary Islands and America (Cf.
Benjamin, the "Atlantic Islands," p. 130.)
BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
admitting the All-Presence of the boundless Circle and making of it the universal postulate upon
which the whole of the manifested universe is based, the Sage keeps a reverential silence concerning
BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
The Three postulates of the Secret Doctrine ... 14
Description of the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan ... 20
--
again, necessarily postulates limitation. The personal God of orthodox Theism perceives, thinks, and
is affected by emotion; he repents and feels "fierce anger." But the notion of such mental states clearly
involves the unthinkable postulate of the externality of the exciting stimuli, to say nothing of the
impossibility of ascribing changelessness to a Being whose emotions fluctuate with events in the
--
it. And if the Vedantin postulates attri butes as belonging simply to its emanation, calling it "Iswara
plus Maya," and Avidya (Agnosticism and Nescience rather than ignorance), it is difficult to find any
--
To render these ideas clearer to the general reader, let him set out with the postulate that there is one
absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned, being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause -dimly formulated in the "Unconscious" and "Unknowable" of current European philosophy -- is the
--
abstractions must of necessity be postulated as the cause of the material Universe which presents itself
to the senses and intellect; and they underlie the secondary and subordinate powers of Nature, which,
--
Doctrine carries this idea into the region of metaphysics and postulates a "One Form of Existence" as
the basis and source of all things. But perhaps the phrase, the "One Form of Existence," is not
--
to obtain clear perception of it, one has first of all to admit the postulate of a universally diffused,
omnipresent, eternal Deity in Nature; secondly, to have fathomed the mystery of electricity in its true
BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
science which postulates that we cannot see and hear otherwise. The Occultists and mystics know
better. The Vedic Aryans were as familiar with the mysteries of sound and colour as our physiologists
--
And, as if to prove the postulate of Occult Science and Hindu philoshttp://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-3-09.htm (12 von 15) [06.05.2003 03:33:33]
The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, Vol 1, bk 3, ch 9
--
the same nebular origin, only in a different mode from that postulated by modern astronomy.
The many objections raised against the homogeneity of original diffuse matter, on the ground of the
--
unrecognisable, moreover -- was an unfortunate one. He postulates in the first place Cosmic matter,
existing in a state of diffuse nebulosity "so fine that its presence could hardly have been suspected."
--
asking the world to accept this as one of the postulates. We have shown the "Mother," fiery and hot,
becoming gradually cool and radiant, and that same Scientist claims as his second postulate, a
scientific necessity, it would seem -- "an internal action akin to cooling, operating slowly in the
--
the question. We would only remark that to the "two very reasonable postulates" required by the
eminent lecturer, "to get a glimpse of some few of the secrets so darkly hidden" behind "the door of the
Unknown" -- a third should be added*** -- lest no battering at it should avail; the postulate that
Leibnitz, in his speculations, stood on a firm groundwork of fact and truth. The admirable and
--
But this third postulate will hardly be accepted by the modern men
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
--
*** Foremost of all, the postulate that there is no such thing in Nature as inorganic substances or
bodies. Stones, minerals, rocks, and even chemical "atoms" are simply organic units in profound
--
As regards the evolution of mankind, the Secret Doctrine postulates three new propositions, which
stand in direct antagonism to modern science as well as to current religious dogmas: it teaches (a) the
ENNEAD 02.01 - Of the Heaven., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03, #Plotinus, #Christianity
PLATO postulateD THE EXISTENCE OF EARTH AS BASIS OF LIFE.
7. Plato's view217 is to be accepted. The universe must contain something solid, impenetrable, so that the earth, when established in the middle of the universe,824 might offer a firm foundation for all the animals that walk on it, and that these animals might possess a certain solidity by the very fact of their terrestriality; so that the earth might, by itself, possess the property of continuousness; that it might be illuminated by fire, might also participate in water, so as not to be desiccated, and so that its parts might unite, and that the air might somewhat lighten its mass.
ENNEAD 04.05 - Psychological Questions III. - About the Process of Vision and Hearing., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
2. If vision166 presupposes the union of the "light of the eye,"167 with the light interposed (between the eye) and the sense-object itself, the interposed medium is the light, and this medium is necessary, on this hypothesis. (On the theory of Aristotle) the colored substance produces a modification in the medium; but nothing here would hinder this modification from reaching the eye itself, even when there is no medium. For, in this case, the medium is necessarily modified before the eye is. (The Platonic philosophers) teach that vision operates by an effusion of the light of the eye. They have no need to postulate a medium, unless indeed they should fear that the ray of the eye should lose its way; but this ray is luminous, and the light travels in a straight line. (The Stoics) explain vision by the resistance experienced by the visual ray. They cannot do without a medium.168 (The Atomists and) the believers in "images" (such as Epicurus), insist that these images move in emptiness, thereby implying the existence of a free space to avoid hindering the images. Consequently as they will be hindered in a direct ratio to the existence of a medium, this opinion does not run counter to our own hypothesis (that there is no medium).
517
ENNEAD 04.07 - Of the Immortality of the Soul: Polemic Against Materialism., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
9. (14). It is absolutely necessary to postulate the existence of a nature different from bodies, by itself fully possessing genuine existence, which can neither be born nor perish. Otherwise, all other things would hopelessly disappear, as a result of the destruction of the existence which preserves both the individuals and the universe, as their beauty and salvation. The soul, indeed, is the principle of movement (as Plato thought, in the Phaedrus); it is the soul that imparts movement to everything else; the soul moves herself. She imparts life to the body she animates; but alone she possesses life, without ever being subject to losing it, because she possesses it by herself. All beings, indeed,79 live only by a borrowed life; otherwise, we would have to proceed from cause to cause unto infinity. There must, therefore, exist a nature that is primarily alive, necessarily incorruptible and immortal because it is the principle of life for everything else. It is thereon that must be founded all that is divine and blessed, that lives and exists by itself, that lives and exists supremely, which is immutable in its essence, and which can neither be born nor perish. How indeed could existence be born or perish? If the name of "existence" really suited it, it must exist forever, just as whiteness is not alternately black and white. If whiteness were existence itself, it would, with its "being" (or nature) (which is, to be whiteness), possess an eternal existence; but, in reality, it is no more than whiteness. Therefore, the principle that possesses existence in itself and in a supreme degree will always exist. Now this primary and eternal existence can not be anything dead like a stone, or a piece of wood. It must live, and live with a pure life, as long as it exists within itself. If something of it mingles with what is inferior, this part meets obstacles in its aspiration to the good; but it does not lose its nature, and resumes its former condition on returning to a suitable condition (as thought Plato, in his Phaedo81).
THE SOUL IS INCORPOREAL BECAUSE OF HER KINSHIP WITH THE DIVINE.
ENNEAD 05.09 - Of Intelligence, Ideas and Essence., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
INTELLIGENCE IS postulateD BY THE GENERAL NECESSITIES OF THE WORLD.
Intelligence, therefore, essentially constitutes all beings; and when Intelligence thinks them, they are not outside of Intelligence, and neither precede nor follow it. Intelligence is the first legislator, or rather, it is the very law of existence. Parmenides126 therefore was right in saying, "Thought is identical with existence." The knowledge of immaterial things is therefore identical with those things themselves. That is why I recognize myself as a being, and why I have reminiscences of intelligible entities. Indeed, none of those beings is outside of Intelligence, nor is contained in any location; all of them subsist in themselves as immutable and indestructible. That is why they really are beings. If they were born, or perished, they would possess existence only in an incidental manner, they would no longer be beings; it would be the existence they possessed which would be essence. It is only by participation that sense-things are what they are said to be; the nature that constitutes their substance derives its shape from elsewhere, as the metal receives its shape from the sculptor, and wood from the carpenter;109 while the image of art penetrates into the matter, the art itself remains in its identity, and within itself possesses the genuine existence of the statue or of the bed. That is how the bodies' general necessity of participating in images shows that they are different from the beings; for they change, while the entities are immutable, possess within themselves their own foundation, and have no need of existing in any location, since they have no extension, and since they subsist in an intellectual and absolute existence. Again,127 the existence of the bodies needs to be guarded128 by some other principle, while intelligence, which furnishes the existence for objects in themselves perishable, has need of nothing to make itself subsist.
ENNEAD 06.01 - Of the Ten Aristotelian and Four Stoic Categories., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03, #Plotinus, #Christianity
26. What is most shocking in the Stoic doctrine, is that they assign the first rank to what is only a potentiality,880 matter, instead of placing actualization before potentiality.285 It is impossible for the potential to pass to actualization if the potential occupy the first rank among beings. Indeed, the potential could never improve itself; and it implies the necessary anteriority of actualization; in which case potentiality is no longer a principle. Or, if it be insisted that actualization and potentiality must be simultaneous, both principles will be found depending on chance. Besides, even if actualization be contemporaneous with potentiality, why should not the first rank be assigned to actualization? Why should this (matter) be an essence, rather than those (forms)? Whoever asserts that form is posterior bears the burden of proof; for matter does not beget form, and quality could not arise from what has no quality; nor actualization from what is potential; otherwise, actualization would have existed anteriorly, even in the system of the Stoics. According to them, even God is no longer simple: He is posterior to matter; for He is a body constituted by form and matter.286 Whence then does He derive His form? If the divinity exist without matter, He is incorporeal, by virtue of His being principle and reason, and the active principle would thus be incorporeal. If, even without having matter, the divinity be composite in essence, by virtue of His body, the Stoics will have to postulate some other kind of matter which may better suit the divinity.
MATTER IS NOT A BODY "WITHOUT QUALITY, BUT WITH MAGNITUDE" (A STOIC DEFINITION).
ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
Earth, postulated by Plato, as being basis of life, ii. 1.7 (40-823).
Earth senses may be different from ours, iv. 4.26 (28-478).
Liber 111 - The Book of Wisdom - LIBER ALEPH VEL CXI, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
other Galaxies of Physics have we been compelled to postulate an Aethyr
wholly hypothetical in order to explain the Phenomena of Light,
Liber 71 - The Voice of the Silence - The Two Paths - The Seven Portals, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
to the inherent incommensurability of a postulated absolute with an
observed relative.
--
postulate an Unseen behind the Seen; and when we have defined the
Unseen as a round square, we quarrel with our fellow-professors who
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
851. No sooner do you talk of Advaita (monism) than you postulate the Dvaita (pluralism). Talking of the
Absolute, you take for granted the 'relative'. For your absolute, until realised in Samadhi, is at best the
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 2, #Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
philosophy? (Laughter) There are some postulates that are taken for granted.
After a time they are given up in favour of some other postulates. For instance, matter was at one time thought to be the source and origin of everything. Now they have upset that theory.
Space is indivisible in the sense that existence is indivisible. If you look
The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
the letter to his friend, Galois postulated a theorem which could not
have been understood by his contemporaries because it was based on
--
before Kepler had postulated, or even suspected, the existence of a
physical force acting between the sun and the planets. Astronomy was
--
account for the eccentricity of the orbits he had to postulate that the
planets were 'huge round magnets' whose poles pointed always in the
--
the Fathers to the Victorians; it postulates an absolute act of creation,
followed by a descent (Plato's cave, the Fall), followed by a static,
--
published an article in a scientific journal in which he postulated that
'every species has come into existence coincident both in space and
--
I. H. Echte (a psychologist, son of the philosopher) postulated the
existence of pre-conscious states:
--
discard the ether, and to postulate that light was electro-magnetic
radiation. Perhaps the most remarkable fact about Faraday is that he
--
one of its basic postulates: according to Niels Bohr's Principle of Com-
plementarity the dtimate constituents of the universeelectrons,
--
The central postulate of the theory was that a moving body will
immediately revert to immobility when it ceases to be pushed or pulled
--
led Jung to postulate a 'collective' that is, individually undifferen-
tiated level of the unconscious. On that level, members of the same
--
Freud (1920), acknowledging his indebtedness to Fechner, postulated
his own Principle of Parsimony, according to which 'the course of
--
goals"/ The great importance Hull attached to this postulate is illus-
trated by his comment: 'Further study of this major automatic device
--
From a strictly logical point of view, the postulate makes no sense
as Hilgard has pointed out in a careful analysis because S Q acts at
--
conclusion of Hull's eighth and last postulate which he regarded as the
crowning achievement of his system. That he himself did not realize
--
today remember its contents or even its basic postulates. In Watson's
second book (1924) there is a chapter entided: ' Talking and Thinking
--
expressly postulated that the differences in the learning processes of
man and rat are of a merely quantitative, not of a qualitative order:
--
which most of the data for his later set of postulates derived. He in-
tended to arrive at the basic laws of behaviour, at least the laws of the
--
To p. 559. The objection to this is not that Hull postulated a continuous
series linking rat to man, but that his 'primary laws' are epitomized by the bar-
--
are common to all mammalian species, Hull's postulate seems to imply that
detailed study of sexual behaviour in the rat would eventually yield the 'primary
--
not require a separate set of postulates to explain them. The break in
actual behaviour, the discrete and unitary character of the solution in
--
next two hundred years, postulated on the one hand action at a dis-
tance, but asserted on the other the existence of an effluvium or ether
The Library of Babel, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
Those who judge it to be limited postulate that in remote places the corridors and
stairways and hexagons can conceivably come to an end -- which is absurd.
The Mirror of Enigmas, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
Lon Bloy postulates this hieroglyphical characterthis character of a
divine writing, of an angelic cryptographyat all moments and in all beings
The Monadology, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
35. In short, there are simple ideas, of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms and postulates, in a word, primary principles, which cannot be proved, and indeed have no need of proof; and these are identical propositions, whose opposite involves an express contradiction. (Theod. 36, 37, 44, 45, 49, 52, 121-122,
337, 340-344.)
--- Overview of noun postulate
The noun postulate has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (1) postulate, posit ::: ((logic) a proposition that is accepted as true in order to provide a basis for logical reasoning)
--- Overview of verb postulate
The verb postulate has 3 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (3) contend, postulate ::: (maintain or assert; "He contended that Communism had no future")
2. (1) postulate, posit ::: (take as a given; assume as a postulate or axiom; "He posited three basic laws of nature")
3. necessitate, ask, postulate, need, require, take, involve, call for, demand ::: (require as useful, just, or proper; "It takes nerve to do what she did"; "success usually requires hard work"; "This job asks a lot of patience and skill"; "This position demands a lot of personal sacrifice"; "This dinner calls for a spectacular dessert"; "This intervention does not postulate a patient's consent")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun postulate
1 sense of postulate
Sense 1
postulate, posit
=> proposition
=> statement
=> message, content, subject matter, substance
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun postulate
1 sense of postulate
Sense 1
postulate, posit
=> Bayes' postulate
=> premise, premiss, assumption
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun postulate
1 sense of postulate
Sense 1
postulate, posit
=> proposition
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun postulate
1 sense of postulate
Sense 1
postulate, posit
-> proposition
=> particular, particular proposition
=> universal, universal proposition
=> negation
=> converse
=> lemma
=> theorem
=> conclusion, ratiocination
=> postulate, posit
=> axiom
--- Grep of noun postulate
bayes' postulate
euclid's postulate
postulate
Wikipedia - Absolute geometry -- Geometry without the parallel postulate
Wikipedia - Bantu expansion -- postulated millennia-long series of migrations of speakers of the original proto-Bantu language group
Wikipedia - Bertrand's postulate
Wikipedia - Dark radiation -- A postulated type of radiation that mediates interactions of dark matter
Wikipedia - Energy (psychological) -- Concept of a postulated unconscious mental functioning on a level between biology and consciousness
Wikipedia - Future history -- Postulated history of the future and is used by authors in the subgenre of speculative fiction
Wikipedia - Hammond's postulate
Wikipedia - Koch's postulates -- Four criteria showing a causal relationship between a causative microbe and a disease
Wikipedia - Luminiferous aether -- Obsolete postulated medium for the propagation of light
Wikipedia - Meaning postulate
Wikipedia - Orrorin -- Postulated early hominin discovered in Kenya
Wikipedia - Parallel postulate -- Geometric axiom
Wikipedia - Pasch's theorem -- Result about 4 points on a line which cannot be derived from Euclid's postulates
Wikipedia - Postulate
Wikipedia - Scalar field dark matter -- Classical, minimally coupled, scalar field postulated to account for the inferred dark matter
Wikipedia - Sexy son hypothesis -- Postulate in biology
Wikipedia - Thorngate's postulate of commensurate complexity
Wikipedia - Unmoved mover -- Postulated primary cause of all activity in the universe
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35438519-the-fifth-postulate
Integral World - The Corona Conspiracy, Part 16: What's Up With These Koch's Postulates?, Frank Visser
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LordBritishPostulate
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SugarWiki/FictionIdentityPostulate
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Wang's_Second_Postulate
AA postulate
Bertrand's postulate
Hammond's postulate
KhazzoomBrookes postulate
Koch's postulates
Mentalist postulate
Parallel postulate
Planck postulate
Pointlineplane postulate
Segment addition postulate
Thorngate's postulate of commensurate complexity
Weyl's postulate
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