Poe's Tomb

I walk by the tomb of Edgar Allan Poe every weekday. Sometimes I see tourists snapping photos. It is astonishing to me how large the gulf is between what the common conception of what Poe represented was. How many of these stopping by have read Eureka? And of those how many understand the underlying issue of art and science that Poe addresses therein?

Speaking of which I just finished a survey entitled Aesthetics and Astronomy. This is what I wrote there:

The reason I took this is that the APOD dated 1/22/2017 had a very profound statement that cannot be over emphasized. "No species other than human can even comprehend what is going on, nor could any human just a millennium ago." This is the touchstone for comprehending evolution. It is what Vladimir Vernadsky about a century ago named the Noosphere. It represents a true or good infinity or transfinite. Additionally the launching of humanity into space is a singularity in evolution that Bernhard Riemann modeled as a branchpoint from one qualitatively distinct manifold functional phase space through to another higher one. It also points to the absolute necessity of space colonization. It is not an option. The current crisis humanity is in the throes of can only be resolved by advancing that mission onward.

Culture Wars: Donald Trump and Sancho Panza

Have you ever, dear reader, stopped mid sentence and pondered why certain everyday terms came about? Everyday I walk my dog. It's good for me, her and the carpet. But why am I calling what we walk upon a sidewalk when in fact it's really more of a frontwalk? Which latter word my artificial "intelligence" word processor just underscored in a red wavy line. Something marvelous was afoot with our history at the time of Shakespeare. Then language was everywhere inchoate. The grammarian pedants were roundly ridiculed.

Cervantes and Shakespeare's "royal houses" were at war. But the two of them as well as their sponsors were at a different sort of war. In your mindseye let Sancho Panza stand for campesinos and bucolic churls that cling to their bible, guns and heroin today, if you will.Now imagine on stage a daily mirror of one's follies. Instead of a pimping up of one's stupidities. Recall that honest Abe was more of a Shakespearean in reality than all of the belle lettered dandified dolts soliloquizing ever and anon.

Yet are you aware dear reader that the august narrator on Don Quixote was none other than the venerable Cide Hamete Benengeli? Today this would be like yours truly advocating that the wonderful metaphor of the Necessary Existent of Ibn Sina be taught in all our schools. Radical...

Remember that Sancho was given an island to govern by his would be tormentors. And how simple Sancho outflanked them on Buridan's bridge paradox. But

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.

On the elements of life

The Renaissance Christian humanist idea of Nicholas of Cusa and his co-thinkers was that the developing microcosm of the individual human life is indissolubly and harmonically connected with the ordering of the development of the macrocosm. This principle should adumbrate the true scientific standard for the concept of evolution.


The problem is that most of our scientific research suffers from philosophical illiteracy and lacks the necessary mission oriented direction that should guide it toward maximizing its benefits for the future of society.