I know that face

People are constantly talking of reality.  How often do we hear words such as : “get real” : “the reality is” : “it really is true”.  It is as if we believe that the human senses and the human mind possess a mystical quality that enables them to transcend the material world and take a [...]

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Figuring things out

Language is fun.  Do our words convey what we are really experiencing?  Are words connected to, or related to, reality?  For example, linguists say that there is probably no word we use now that did not begin its life as a metaphor ; as a colourful figure of speech ; not ‘literal’ or ‘concrete’ at [...]

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The better the likeness, the bigger the lie

It has been said that all good art is imitative, if only because it is a rendering some real object in a different medium. Art is a wonderful thing.  And it is a mystery.   It is wonderful because we wonder why we do it ; why on earth should we make an imitation of something [...]

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Ways of seeing

It’s always fun to analyse things.  We do analysis so readily because it is easy ; synthesis (imaginative thinking) is a lot harder.  Science makes such good progress because it involves mostly analysis. But, easy though it is, the results of analysis are still a puzzle.  For example, we might do a hundred experiments in [...]

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Bless my soul

Even a short while ago, people spoke without embarrassment or affectation about their souls.  Some remnants of their speech survive in expressions that are still quite common : Bless my soul : there wasn’t a soul to be seen : soul music : the soul of *****, and so on.  But, to what extent is [...]

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Aspects of freedom

Everybody knows that to be in love is to be bound.  It is love that holds close and it is love that ties the knot.  But everybody knows also that to love is to be able to let go ; it is love that is not cloying and it is love that grants freedom.  This [...]

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