From the monthly archives:

November 2009

Coincidence, Randomness, and Meaning

by Seth on November 30, 2009

Maybe you’ve had this experience:  You are thinking about an acquaintance that you haven’t thought about in a long time and at that moment the phone rings.  ”What are the odds that it’s Jerry?” you think to yourself.  And when it IS Jerry on the other line it seems somehow magical, amazing, beyond mere chance. [...]

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Musings on the rise of the intellect in ancient Greece

by Seth on November 27, 2009

I’ve always been struck by the historical uniqueness of ancient Greece.  The most amazing and radical transitions were experienced by the culture(s) present around the Aegean sea during only a few centuries.  The most striking thing about the transformation was the rise of a thinking that started to take itself as its own object.  We [...]

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Musings on Paleolithic Art and Consciousness

by Seth on November 23, 2009

I’m actually somewhat uncomfortable calling Paleolithic renderings “art” – not because they don’t meet some standard set of criterion, but because of the very nature of the ‘calling’ itself seems to go against the experience of the makers of the art.  See, there again, an assumption: “the makers of the art”, which includes a dichotomy [...]

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Bifurcations, Chaos Theory, and Alchemy — oh, and YOUR LIVER

by Seth on November 12, 2009

Bifurcations are “splits” in the way a system develops from one state to the next.  Think of them as two roads diverging in a yellow wood; one leads to some unknown mystery.  The other leads to MILKSHAKES (stay tuned).

My understanding is that bifurcations are always relative (did that paradox slip by you?); depending upon how [...]

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