12 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Variety of Temperaments in Scientists
Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poets–scientists and philosopher–scientists and even a few mystics. ... and most people who are in fact scientists could easily have been something else instead. 1 
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notesCollectors, philosophers, explorers, mystics...
03 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Alchemy VS Chemistry
He tapped the papers; the advice had been coming down since early winter. He remembered when Amdijefri had brought in the first pages, pages of numerical tables, of directions and diagrams, all drawn in neat but childish style. Steel and the Fragment had spent days trying to understand. Some of the references were obvious. The Visitor’s recipes required silver and gold in quantities that would otherwise finance a war. But what was this “liquid silver”? Tyrathect had recognized it; the M... 1 notes
notesAn alien from a mideval society receiving instructions to build advanced technology from aliens finds their directions full of digressions and careful methodologies to verify chemical compositions, where his alchemists' instructions are much more simple and poetic.
29 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
The Personhood Associated with the Word "God"
In his Spiritual Exercises, the Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis writes:
We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence. But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir the heart profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch, body with...
1 While deists and others use it to mean a spiritual force, the word is so infused with the idea of a consciousness similar to human beings that it seems irretrievably corrupted for use by spiritual naturalists.
