When The Sun Comes Up You Better Be Running
Grab a cup and let's talk. There is an old saying, "When the sun comes up every gazelle knows that to survive the day he must be one step faster than the fastest lion. When the sun comes up every lion knows he must be one step faster than the slowest gazelle if he is to survive. So whether you are a lion or a gazelle, when the sun comes up you better be running."
In the ancient world survival was the primary concern but on the road to the Forum a funny thing happened. Civilization matured as agriculture changed the way people lived, as societies evolved, as cities were formed, and eventually people didn't have to run. Thinking became a parlor sport. Well, actually more than just thinking, contemplation: How did I get here and what am I suppose to be doing?
The chief architects for contemplation in Western thought were three Amigos: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Socrates was so focused on contemplation and dialogue about thinking that he refused to write down his thoughts. Plato was his student and what we know of Socrates comes from the pen of Plato.
Plato regarded mathematics as a spiritual exercise that could lead the "thinker" or philosopher away from his own sense perceptions and toward a place of abstraction from which he could see the world differently--as it really was not as it was perceived. His idea of "Forms" evolved from the way ancients perceived thought. Where as we might say, "I think therefore I am," it seemed more logical to those of Plato's generation that thoughts are what happen to us and not what we create in our minds. Accepted logic was that ideas found us or happened upon us, and therefore our thoughts are an imperfect reflection of that which is real beyond us.
For Plato, Forms were the real, more perfect thing and our existence was not. Through the power of reason the philosopher could reach an awareness of those things that existed on a higher level of being. This may sound somewhat strange to our modern minds but at the same time most religious thinkers today conceive of that which is eternal existing beyond our reach, more perfect than this life, and we all know this existence has an expiration date.
In Plato's philosophy, how we came to be can only be expressed by story or myth since the ultimate deity could never be known in its entirety or even explained if one was to know. "Now we see through a glass darkly," is how the early Christian thinker Paul expressed this idea that the totality of that which is beyond us is unknowable. We know in part but not in whole.
Plato concluded there was a divine craftsman who shaped the world and we could know that deity through thought but this was not the supreme, unknowable God. Plato taught that by the contemplation of the planets, stars, moon, sun, and the whole of the cosmos one could see that creation was a living organism with a rational mind, and soul.
In Quantum Physics what is known is beyond our perception but can be verified in the language of mathematics. Plato was among the first to propose that the language of the cosmos, that which is beyond us and the source of all that exists, is mathematics. Mathematics is at its core perfectly rational and since the universe can be known mathematically, so too must the universe be rational. Thus, philosophical exploration, the predecessor to modern science, is a spiritual discipline.
More coffee?
In the ancient world survival was the primary concern but on the road to the Forum a funny thing happened. Civilization matured as agriculture changed the way people lived, as societies evolved, as cities were formed, and eventually people didn't have to run. Thinking became a parlor sport. Well, actually more than just thinking, contemplation: How did I get here and what am I suppose to be doing?
The chief architects for contemplation in Western thought were three Amigos: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Socrates was so focused on contemplation and dialogue about thinking that he refused to write down his thoughts. Plato was his student and what we know of Socrates comes from the pen of Plato.
Plato regarded mathematics as a spiritual exercise that could lead the "thinker" or philosopher away from his own sense perceptions and toward a place of abstraction from which he could see the world differently--as it really was not as it was perceived. His idea of "Forms" evolved from the way ancients perceived thought. Where as we might say, "I think therefore I am," it seemed more logical to those of Plato's generation that thoughts are what happen to us and not what we create in our minds. Accepted logic was that ideas found us or happened upon us, and therefore our thoughts are an imperfect reflection of that which is real beyond us.
For Plato, Forms were the real, more perfect thing and our existence was not. Through the power of reason the philosopher could reach an awareness of those things that existed on a higher level of being. This may sound somewhat strange to our modern minds but at the same time most religious thinkers today conceive of that which is eternal existing beyond our reach, more perfect than this life, and we all know this existence has an expiration date.
In Plato's philosophy, how we came to be can only be expressed by story or myth since the ultimate deity could never be known in its entirety or even explained if one was to know. "Now we see through a glass darkly," is how the early Christian thinker Paul expressed this idea that the totality of that which is beyond us is unknowable. We know in part but not in whole.
Plato concluded there was a divine craftsman who shaped the world and we could know that deity through thought but this was not the supreme, unknowable God. Plato taught that by the contemplation of the planets, stars, moon, sun, and the whole of the cosmos one could see that creation was a living organism with a rational mind, and soul.
In Quantum Physics what is known is beyond our perception but can be verified in the language of mathematics. Plato was among the first to propose that the language of the cosmos, that which is beyond us and the source of all that exists, is mathematics. Mathematics is at its core perfectly rational and since the universe can be known mathematically, so too must the universe be rational. Thus, philosophical exploration, the predecessor to modern science, is a spiritual discipline.
More coffee?
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