I was just reading a book in which JRR Tolkien’s name cropped up, together with a few lines of his. Although now long estranged, Man is not lost or wholly changed. Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned, And keeps the rags of lordship he once owned. Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light Through whom [...]
Posts Tagged ‘consciousness’
What are we?
Posted in Psychology, Science, tagged consciousness, free will, JRR Tolkien, love, mechanism on January 8, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Enduring truths
Posted in Literature, tagged consciousness, fantasy, knowledge, latent learning, legend, literature, Lord of the Rings, LOTR, myth, Tolkien, truth on October 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Why do some stories endure while others fail? Why do some stories have the power to change a person’s life? Is storytelling only fantasy, or is there more to it? Perhaps a famous tale of our times explains.
The evolution that matters
Posted in History, Psychology, tagged consciousness, Evolution, fantasy, History, human nature, imagination, memory, spiritual, time on September 1, 2011 | 9 Comments »
History and the evolution of human consciousness.
I know that face
Posted in Philosophy, Psychology, Science, tagged consciousness, Evolution, mind, perception, reality, senses on August 5, 2010 | 9 Comments »
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 [...]
Ways of seeing
Posted in Psychology, Science, tagged consciousness, Evolution, Psychology, Science, thinking on August 2, 2010 | 2 Comments »
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 [...]
The other day upon the stair
Posted in Psychology, Science, tagged consciousness, light, matter, sound on July 17, 2010 | 5 Comments »
There are some peculiarities of the world that we are familiar with. For example, we know that if a large boulder crashes to the ground, in a place uninhabited by any living thing, then no sound will be produced as a result. All will be silent because the crashing boulder produces only waves of vibrations [...]
The wonder of the world
Posted in Psychology, Science, tagged cognitive models, consciousness, perception, phenomena, self-consciousness on July 16, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Of all the world’s wonders there is none greater than human consciousness. If we were not conscious, then there would be no world that we could speak of. No doubt there is something outside of our consciousness, but it is not the world ; for the world is a construction made of distinctly human cognitive [...]
A rose to remember
Posted in Psychology, Science, Uncategorized, tagged consciousness, growth, memory, rose, time on May 22, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Just one of the satisfying things about retirement is that one is out of the rat race ; in fact, one is out of all races. And this is satisfying because the rat moves so fast, as fast as the hare ; and, like the hare, it overlooks many things that the tortoise knows well. [...]
The nature of things
Posted in Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Uncategorized, tagged consciousness, empiricism, Freud, materialism, matter, Psychology, Rutherford on May 9, 2010 | 6 Comments »
I have mentioned before that, while I admire Freud, I am not a Freudian. It is quite possible to see the virtues in a person without agreeing in the least with his or her ideas ; just as it is quite possible to see the merits of a theory or of a hypothesis without buying [...]
Adventure
Posted in Belief, Philosophy, Psychology, Science, tagged consciousness, material, non-material, Planck, Russell, Rutherford, spiritual on April 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The spirit of adventure Ancient wisdom impresses our minds with a freshness that is truly staggering. What we name the material world, for example, cannot be said (with any confidence ) to exist anywhere except in a human consciousness. We can only know the world because we are conscious of it. We cannot go outside [...]
Modelling
Posted in Belief, culture, Psychology, Science, tagged chemistry, cognitive models, consciousness, memory, neuronal models, perception on April 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
In the field of cognitive psychology it seems fairly well established that our knowledge is comprised of complex chemical compounds distributed within the networks of nerve cells of the brain. Thus my knowledge of the shape of an apple, say, is actually a chemical construct which would seem to bear no geometrical relation to the [...]
Other worlds revisited
Posted in Philosophy, poetry, Psychology, Science, tagged consciousness, mathematics, music, poetry on March 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I once knew a statistician of international note. Over a period of four years we used to meet regularly to put the world to rights. We talked about science, about research, about the nature of knowledge, about cycling, about the weather, about psychology ; in fact, we discussed just about everything because he, being a [...]
Other worlds
Posted in culture, Literature, Psychology, tagged causes, consciousness, Faerie, law, moral law, reasons on March 11, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Perhaps it is time to lighten the early-year gloom and have a peep at another world. Perhaps it is time for a fairy story ; a proper fairy story, not one of those contrived gloopy things all full of gossamer wings and funny hats. Writing a proper fairy story is not nearly as easy as [...]
Evolving minds
Posted in culture, Philosophy, Psychology, Science, tagged consciousness, Evolution, evolution of consciousness, extinction, specialisation on March 9, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Life can be precarious. One useful realization to emerge from Darwin’s elegant theory of evolution is that creatures may evolve to become either generalists or specialists. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, one creature might become an omnivore. An advantage here is that, if one kind of food becomes scarce, it has [...]
Adventures with the occult
Posted in Belief, Philosophy, Science, tagged consciousness, Science, the occult, the visible, the world on February 20, 2010 | 2 Comments »
I expect there are any number of ways of thinking about ourselves and the universe in which we live. All of them contain surprises. Here’s something to ponder. There are at least two universes ; the first is the one that we know ; and the second is the one we believe in. The one [...]
That brightsome light
Posted in poetry, tagged consciousness, light, poetry on February 19, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Thy brightsome light, that shines tomorrow’s deeds Into the mindscape that I view today, Ne’er fails to fire the hope in all my needs ; It goads me on when else my will would stray. What mystery, that lantern of the mind, That shows to me the things I would have true! They say the [...]
Where was Noah’s rainbow?
Posted in Psychology, Science, tagged clouds, consciousness, mind, perception, rainbow, water on February 15, 2010 | 1 Comment »
It’s Monday morning, and the overcast sky encourages a meditation of sorts. How much kinder the world would be if Nature gave us a rainbow to contemplate on every cloudy day. But she doesn’t ; for she waits until there is a particular disposition of sunshine and of particular kinds of clouds. And sometimes she [...]
Why life is interesting
Posted in Belief, Psychology, Science, tagged consciousness, form, function, immortality, knowledge, Life, soul on February 14, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
How do we know that our observations and concepts are stable enough for science to be enduring?
Awareness of rainbows
Posted in Literature, poetry, tagged consciousness, Earth, Life, participation, poetry, rainbow on February 12, 2010 | 8 Comments »
Where do the colours of the rainbow come from? Where does so much come from?
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