Eldon Taylor's Blog, page 13

Paulian Paradox

          In today’s spotlight I wish to discuss the idea of being and nothingness. I just read a wonderful philosophical discussion regarding the question, Why is there something instead of nothing? If you enjoy philosophy, I highly recommend the book by Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story. If you seriously give this idea some thought, you are driven to ask, “Why is this question meaningful?” Why Being and Nothingness Matters All together too often we take the obvious for granted; oh we may look around the world and see beauty and ...

Cruelty Knows Many Forms

This week I wish to discuss cruelty for there are many forms of this nasty vice that currently infect almost everything we encounter. Whenever I turn on a Cable News Network, no matter which one, there is one message always conveyed—it is the message of us verses them. It seems that news as we used to know it a decade or more ago has died. There appears to be an agenda that accompanies the news and colors it accordingly. Question: Is the us against them a form of cruelty? Robbers Cave Obviously I think so. There are many psychological experiments ...

Division and Hatred

In today’s spotlight I want to open up a discussion regarding the division developing in our country. In my book, Gotcha! The Subordination of Free Will, I fleshed out something Dewey Phyllis, former FBI and Chief of Police, shared. It is the story of how Soviet intelligence planned to corrupt American values and divide its people—a plan that dates back to the fifties. A Divided House Now fast forward to the more recent disclosures regarding the investigations into the Russian meddling in American affairs. It’s now publicly known that their agenda, whether messing with our elections, or baiting division with ...

Becoming Rational In Our Discourse

In this week’s spotlight I wish to explore the idea of rational discussion in an environment where emotion tends to rule thinking. If you stop and reflect on the last time you disagreed with someone, you can ask yourself an easy and obvious question: why? Now I don’t mean the obvious here, like I hate Trump and he/she likes him, or the movie was great and they hated it, etc. What I really mean is why does the person you disagreed with think the way they do? Maybe They Are Right! What we seem to lack is our ability to ...

Patience and Perseverence

In this week’s spotlight I wish to discuss patience. Lao Tse is credited with offering this advice, “I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.” We live at a time when folks seem to rush to conclusions, and judgments, and are easily riled over the slightest disagreements. We don’t seem to have time to hear each other out or the patience to consider alternative options. Add to this the constant state of increased arousal driven in large by world events, the news, the pundits, and the daily pressures of life, and many ...

Patience and Perserverence

In this week’s spotlight I wish to discuss patience. Lao Tse is credited with offering this advice, “I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.” We live at a time when folks seem to rush to conclusions, and judgments, and are easily riled over the slightest disagreements. We don’t seem to have time to hear each other out or the patience to consider alternative options. Add to this the constant state of increased arousal driven in large by world events, the news, the pundits, and the daily pressures of life, and many ...

The Gift of Giving

In this week’s spotlight I wish to discuss giving. There are many forms of giving and they all lead to some interesting findings. For example, did you know that you’re hard wired in such a way that the brain’s reward centers light up, to use the words of neuro-scientists, when you do something as simple as write a check to a cause that you believe in? Think of that for a moment, the act of giving actually rewards you with the stress busting feel-good chemical known as endorphins. Did you also know that the act of giving has been shown ...

Possible Human!

In this week’s spotlight I wish to discuss possibilities. I truly think of the mind as the ultimate frontier. There are so many potentials possible that it is staggering to consider. Take for instance savant syndrome. What is it that happened when someone was struck in the head only to awake in the hospital a mathematical genius—seeing the world in fractal geometry? What mechanism makes it possible for an autistic child with a limited vocabulary to correctly read the mind of their therapist and type words unknown to them such as ‘synesthesia?’ How is it possible for a child who ...

Choosing Perception

In this week’s spotlight I wish to discuss perception. We live in a wonderful world, if we choose to see it that way. Let me flesh that out some. I was enjoying myself last evening while contemplating on life and the many experiences it has delivered to me. I reflected on several different occasions where perception defined the experience. For example, one warm summer evening not long ago, my youngest son, wife, and I were cruising in our freshly restored 1969 Impala SS Convertible, when suddenly there was no power! The car just halted in its tracks—shorted out! I smiled, ...

New Paradigms and Open Minds

In this week’s spotlight I would like to discuss the idea of paradigms. The American physicist and philosopher, Thomas Kuhn, proposed the notion of paradigm cycles that can eventually lead to paradigm shifts. A paradigm shift is a construct that describes a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline. Paradigm Shift Cycle The Kuhn Cycle, as it is known, has pre-science leading to science, followed by a model drift that leads to a model crisis and subsequently a model revolution and consequently a paradigm shift. By way of example, physics is a field that ...