Stuart

“Parmenides was then quite old, but his mind was still powerful and clear. The question was what is, what can be, how does anything come into being? And Parmenides gave a very strange answer: Nothing can come into being; only unchangeable being is. But all the accounts given by the poets, Homer and Hesiod and the others, tell how the gods were created; and we know from these and other writings that every city has its own gods. Parmenides says that the gods having come into being cannot be. He replaces the gods by the unchangeable being. There cannot be a beginning, a genesis, because coming into being means a movement from nothing to being and nothing is not. What is there if the gods do not exist? – Intelligible principles. One of them is Eros, which Parmenides called the first and oldest of all the gods.” I thought I understood, but I was not sure; and let me confess that I was so much in awe of him that my usual selfconfidence, what some no doubt thought my arrogance, had all but vanished and left me a stammering, tonguetied fool. And he knew it, knew it probably before I did; knew it as easily, as completely, as I knew how to breathe. “If the gods have not come into being,” he said, “how then can anything, even these intelligible principles, come into being? They must, like the world itself, be eternal. But then, you wonder, is it possible for Parmenides, for anyone, to say that one of these principles, Eros, is the first and oldest.”
― D. W. Buffa, Helen

“I don’t believe it too harsh to say that the history of philosophy when boiled down consists mostly of failed models of the brain. A few of the modern neurophilosophers such as Patricia Churchland and Daniel Dennett have made a splendid effort to interpret the findings of neuroscience research as these become available. They have helped others to understand, for example, the ancillary nature of morality and rational thought. Others, especially those of poststructuralist bent, are more retrograde. They doubt that the “reductionist” or “objectivist” program of the brain researchers will ever succeed in explaining the core of consciousness. Even if it has a material basis, subjectivity in this view is beyond the reach of science. To make their argument, the mysterians (as they are sometimes called) point to the qualia, the subtle, almost inexpressible feelings we experience about sensory input. For example, “red” we know from physics, but what are the deeper sensations of “redness”? So what can the scientists ever hope to tell us in larger scale about free will, or about the soul, which for religious thinkers at least is the ultimate of ineffability?”
― Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence

“The music that I was playing and writing in those early years, that I was importing to Europe, was quintessentially New York music in a way that I always hoped it would be. I wanted my concert music to be as distinctive as Zappa at the Fillmore East, and I think I ended up doing that.”
― Philip Glass, Words Without Music: A Memoir

“The Founding Fathers of the United States understood the risk of tribal religious conflict very well. George Washington observed, “Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing and ought most to be deprecated.” James Madison agreed, noting the “torrents of blood” that result from religious competition. John Adams insisted that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” America has slipped a bit since then.”
― Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence