“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Saturday, September 24, 2011

The Question of Mysticism

Bill Benzon has a characteristically creative take on it. In particular, the way art sits uneasily to the side of science. I think the charge is often leveled against some thinkers who don't immediately fall into the positivist lockstep that they are being mystical. Yet some scientists and many meditators will tell you that they are simply reporting data, data that happens to concern consciousness. Positivism does indeed start to look like a fundamentalism, therefore, despite its threat that if you say that you are a no good relativist or a true believer.

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