How We Know Stuff

The following is a portion of a much longer article called The Philosophy of Success.

How do we come up with ideas?

Robert Persig in his cult classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,says:

"The formation of hypotheses is the most mysterious of all the categories of scientific method. Where they come from, no one knows. A person is sitting somewhere, minding his own business, and suddenly . . . flash! . . . he understands something he didn’t understand before. Until it’s tested the hypothesis isn’t truth. For the tests aren’t its source. Its source is somewhere else. (p. 113)

And our good friend Eckhart Tolle says this in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, naming Einstein, himself:

"The surprising result of a nationwide inquiry among America’s most imminent mathematicians, including Einstein, to find out their working methods, was that thinking “plays only a subordinate part in the brief, decisive phase of the creative act. So I would say that the simple reason why the majority of scientists are not creative is not because they don't know how to think but because they don't know how to stop thinking!" (Chapter 1)

The way these scientists are coming up with their ideas isn't Aristotelean at all! These are mysteries being described! The Philosopher (as Aristotle was known in the Renaissance) would not approve! So maybe the truth is that Aristotelian thinking (or the Aristotelian faith, you might say) has only survived by its reliance on other modes of thought.

Are College Women Coming Around to Catholic View on Contraception?

This article was first published by Technorati on 11 March 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

New research suggests that the vast majority of Americans (82%) believe God helps them make personal decisions. Does that include decisions about sex?

At first blush, one might think that a heightened sense of spirituality in an individual would lead to less frequent sexual activity, but researchers at the University of Kentucky (my alma mater) say that isn't the case.

The study in question distinguished religiousness from spirituality and found that the latter was actually a predictor in the other direction.

How Quantum Physics Relates to the Awakening Process

Below is an email by Dr. Stanley Sobottka, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Virginia, upon the end of his tenure as Leader of a Yahoo! Group called Open Awareness Study Group. Dr. Sobottka's website is A Course in Consciousness.

The email came my way by my blogosphere friend, psychiatrist, Dr. Colleen Loehr (see her blog A Window is Where the Wall is Absent).

Dr. Sobottka explains in the most basic of term the difference between classical physics and quantum physics and what the latter has to say about consciousness and the awakening process. It is reprinted by permission.