All forms of enquiry across the world take the form: "What is the world like?" Whether we are wondering about Chemistry or God. Mostly we want to know the Truth. But how does this all change when we give some thought to the 'like' of wanting to know what the world is like?
A third kind of truth • November 02, 2020
Having said that truth must either be absolute and unrelated to the world (a tautology) or a verdict based on evidence and fit to existing models, there is a third kind of truth that we can identify. In some ways it is wrong to call it a kind of truth because there is just a single instance of it. The third truth takes a little bit of attention to find, but is available to everyone. It is best…
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Biodanza, Biocentricism and Covid-19 • November 02, 2020
There are many diverse opinions surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic and as Biodanza teachers we find it necessary to navigate these and come to some conclusion as we considering when and how to continue teaching. Our training in Biodanza gives us what I consider to be a unique perspective and one worth exploring. Biodanza is founded on a principle of biocentricism - of putting life at the center of…
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Truth and Phlogiston • October 29, 2020
If truths are for the most part verdicts , and those that are absolute say nothing about the world, then why do we have the sense that there are true things? We feel that certain things about the world are true and certain things are not. And this seems greater than our own opinion. The answer here is that truth's flock like the mumuration of starlings. In biology there is a saying "there is…
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Truth - Verdict or Tautology • July 09, 2020
If we cannot know the world, but can only know what the world is like, what happens to the notion of truth? How can anything be true if it is 'only' a metaphor? The second principle of the Metaphysics of Metaphor states that truth is either a verdict or a tautology. In other words a 'truth' is either a verdict about the world - a judgement. Either that or it is an absolute truth that is…
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MoM and the Scientific World View • July 06, 2020
Korzybski missed it when he wrote in 'Science and Sanity' about the verb 'to be' that on one thing is another. He said that the unspeakable objects of our experience are not the words that we use to describe them. This dichotomy has troubled thinking from Aristotle to the modern day. Whether in religion, politics or science, the endeavor is to describe the world and how it functions. Many…
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An Introduction to Metaphor • April 02, 2019
This could sound like a trivial distinction. The statement has a ring of the well known about it. Our impulse is to say “Well yes, obviously.” as though there could be nothing new there. But despite seeming obvious it is not well understood, and when the implications are properly explored they are world changing. But the first question might be “How true is it?” That would be a good question…
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Truth (a beginning) • April 02, 2019
Indeed, I find within me when I choose to contemplate it, the very idea that truth might not be absolute raises a flurry of indignation. The serious contemplation that truth might not be external feels threatening to our existential security. There does, after all, have to be an 'outside' world and there must be 'facts' about it which are true. Descartes, of course, noticed that he could doubt…
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Models • April 02, 2019
Nell: Mr Meese – what makes the lights work? Me: Like what makes them come on when you switch the switch? Nell: Yes, like that. Me: Well it's to do with electricity. Nell: Like chemistry? Me: Erm... no Chemistry is different. That's to do with how things react. Nell: But the light reacts when you switch it on. That's what I want to know about! Me: Yes, quite so, I didn't explain the difference…
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The Metaphysics of Metaphor • March 13, 2019
As Gregory Bateson said, if you want to understand a hand you can't think of it as composed of five fingers, you must think instead of twenty five relationships. Enlightenment thinkers noted that the world was complex and sought to reduce the complexity by abstracting what they saw to the greatest extent possible. The were searching for the fundamental laws of the universe - the ones that…
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Is 2019 the year we stop of thinking of UFO's as silly? • February 22, 2019
The UFO Phenomenon has polarised almost every person into a position of skeptic or believer. The skeptic mocks the irrational believer, while the believer disparages the blinkered skeptic. Can we take a look at the field with new eyes and learn something not so much about aliens as about how we think. In 1961 astrophysicist Frank Drake proposed the now well known Drake Equation. The…
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