Cartesian Tabula Rasa: A (Brief) Discourse on Method

René Descartes was an interesting cat. A genius, no doubt, but also someone with a philosophy that most great minds today will tell you couldn’t be more wrong. While his dualism of mind and matter is a false dichotomy, the approach he…

Saint Augustine, on being asked what is time: “I know what it is, but when you ask me I don’t.”

“Where do the flowers come from?”

Even the God of spring does not know.

The Choice Explosion

David Brooks has seemingly turned into the New York Times self-help guru, diving into subjects of self-improvement through the lens of…

Being Obscure

Verse 70, Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching (as translated by Ursula K. Le Guin)

My words are so easy to understand,
so easy to follow,

Q&A: Geist, Art, and Kandinsky

Q: Who’s Wassily Kandinsky?

A: Russian painter and art theorist, Wassily Kandinsky is credited with creating one of the first purely abstract works. After studying at the University of Moscow, Kandinsky gave up a successful career in law and…

Infinite Jest, fragments

“Wraiths by and large exist (putting his arms out slowly and making little quotation-mark finger-wiggles as he said exist) in a totally different Heisenbergian dimension of rate-change and time-passage.”

5. Waiting (Nourishment)

All beings have need of nourishment from above. But the gift of food comes in its own time, and for this one must wait… The rain will come in its own time. We cannot make it come; we have to wait for it… Strength in the face of danger does not plunge ahead but bides its time, whereas…

I Ching, The Great Treatise, Part 1 (fragments)

…in the last analysis the world is a system of homogeneous relationships — that it is a cosmos, not a chaos.

The ultimate frame of reference for all…