What poetry is to language, philosophy is to thought, a craft that brings new concepts and ways of thinking into the scholarly disciplines.
Political Thought(s)
Two Thoughts for 2019
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash Every old man thinks the world was a better place when they were young. The colors were brighter, the smiles were warmer and every child had a village growing it to perfection. Sometimes the old man is right; the colors were indeed brighter and the smiles were truly warmer,…
Terrestrial Science
We make a mistake in thinking state socialism is the challenger to capitalism as the most important system of terrestrial knowledge. Instead, the real challenge comes from ecology, not from economy. The mania for growth built into capitalism isn't compatible with the steady state nature of ecological systems as a whole.
Settled Unsettling
Leave taking I have always wondered why the Buddha left his wife and child and went into the forest. The usual explanations are pretty patriarchal aren’t they, e.g., - that he was escaping from the bonds that tie us to this earthly life. - Attachment brings suffering. etc. Here’s how that story is told: A…
A Good Death
D One of my college classmates was an excellent hockey player and a true sportsman. The cricket grounds where I spent my evenings abutted the hockey field. D* and I spent many hours chatting on the sidelines and in the evenings after practice. One evening as we were musing about the purpose of life, D…
Presearch
Presearch is the use of design as a tool to create ideas, theories and more generally, to prototype instruments of knowledge.
Smelly Science
Photographer: Tadeusz Lakota | Source: UnsplashPhilosophy has a vision bias. The Sanskrit name for philosophical activity, ‘Darsana’ means ‘vision.’ Intriguingly, across Indo-European cultures, knowledge at a distance is closely related to blindness. Homer was supposedly blind and the great war in the Mahabharata was relayed to a blind king by an assistant given divine vision for…
The Skin of the World
Photographer: David Clode | Source: Unsplash I am taking a step back from writing about contentious topics — authoritarian politics, climate change, approaching extinction and animal rights. Not for ever, but for a few weeks. It feels like every conversation about those topics increases the fear and anxiety of everyone in the room and tilts the scales in…
Navigating Higher Education
Note: this is the first post in a series that looks at how higher education needs to change in response to the wicked problems we face in the 21st century. Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash I think a lot about my daughter’s prospects. Her generation will inherit some of the greatest challenges that humanity has ever…
Many Mes
Photographer: Andrew Seaman | Source: Unsplash MeMe and YouMe The Buddha, peace be unto him, is famous for declaring there’s no self. Strictly speaking, he denied the existence of an abiding, permanent self, especially the metaphysical Atman of Brahmanical Hinduism. We are born, we grow into adulthood and then we pass away. Some think we restart that…