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I take time now to address one other thing. The "th" initiating "thing" suggests Scandinavian origins. Sure enough, etymologists trace the word to Icelandic, the oldest discernible meaning having been a political meeting. Now the word seems to mean anything, anything at all. How can one say anything about the word without involving the word? I can be punning or not: it's nearly unavoidable.
What I wish to emphasize is that the word does duty in English for
extensional, material, objects as well as for intensional non-objects. (See the pkTools blog for both "extension" and "intension.") (Note the spelling!) If the rocks in your garden are "things," then how can abstract non-things also be "things"? Is the "truth" a "thing"? Is the "soul" a "thing"? Is "God" a "thing"?
and
Break your bones;
But cloudy, cloudy
is the stuff of stones.
Richard Wilbur
Shouldn't an alarm go off? shouldn't we have some signal for non-thing "things"? Some inflection, some linguistic color? Wouldn't that be more important than distinguishing "he," "she," or "it"? I propose a pair of prefixes: let i-thing be used if the entity in question is intensional; and x-thing if it's physical or extensional.
Since we generally think of things as being physical (however inappropriately), perhaps the x prefix could be left unused, as understood. We'd do well though to insist on i-thing for non-material things. Such a distinction would soon force open warfare between religious fundamentalists and the more liberally religious. I believe that would be a good thing provided that the war be to the death. If the liberals win, evolution would have advanced a notch. If the fundamentalists win, we'd go extinct all the faster, possibly in time to save the biosphere for something else.
There's no such a thing as a thing
Of course if the fundamentalists were right, then none of their modern weapons would work, radio and TV would be unable to broadcast their propaganda, there should be only one time zone (Jerusalem based?) ... Missionaries in China would have to do matins in the dark and vespers in the morning.
Time
See my note on Prigogine (and certainty, and time, and science ...) among my school stories at InfoAll: 2009 April 10.
I've written a great deal on time since then, but, especially since I've been arrested, jailed, censored, bankrupted, it needs reposting and coordination. That's what I'm in the midst of now.
Translate
Be aware that pk seldom uses the word translate without having in mind the medieval version of the concept. The bulk of the time the Chruch and its religious talked about "translation" – no matter what language was being used at the time – Latin most likely – they had in mind a change-of-state, specifically an elevation of state, not just a difference of grammar or verbiage: one desires to be translated into heaven ... the religious wishes the sinner would be translated into a saint ...
Scan any pk use of the word for meta-change: not just French to English; but water to steam, matter to energy ... bullshit to good sense ...
Truth
Is truth a "thing"? Can the court be serious when it demands that you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Has anyone in the history of the species been competent to do such a thing? Moses? Socrates? Jesus? Newton? Darwin? Freud? Einstein? (Well, maybe Shakespeare: if you can find it.) Considering society's record with even those latter stars, shouldn't a witness be protected from such a question, especially in a court room where the Constitution is supposed to protect citizens from self-incrimination?
Has any good thing ever happened to a would-be truth teller?
Modern societies have a new protection against those who would tell the truth. It is a new superstition with its own new brand of priests. It's called psychology. Its priests have a new label to brand would-be truth tellers with: the Cassandra complex!
Truth:
Whatever the group about to burn you at the stake
Is saying it believes at that moment.
Whatever the group about to burn you at the stake
Is saying it believes at that moment.
See my Truth Modules at pkTools.
Truth
Is truth a "thing"? Can the court be serious when it demands that you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Has anyone in the history of the species been competent to do such a thing? Moses? Socrates? Jesus? Newton? Darwin? Freud? Einstein? (Well, maybe Shakespeare: if you can find it.) Considering society's record with even those latter stars, shouldn't a witness be protected from such a question, especially in a court room where the Constitution is supposed to protect citizens from self-incrimination?
Has any good thing ever happened to a would-be truth teller?
Modern societies have a new protection against those who would tell the truth. It is a new superstition with its own new brand of priests. It's called psychology. Its priests have a new label to brand would-be truth tellers with: the Cassandra complex!
Truth:
Whatever the group about to burn you at the stake
Is saying it believes at that moment.
Whatever the group about to burn you at the stake
Is saying it believes at that moment.
See my Truth Modules at pkTools.
Today I have a far greater respect for the discipline "psychology" than I did when I penned the above: only a few years back. That, you see, is because I have been reading Robert Anton Wilson prose in addition to Robert Anton Wilson fiction. His Quantum Psychology is a master work in my chosen field of Thinking Tools (see pkTools): that is, of epistemology. He calls it psychology. He ALSO calls it epistemology. Wilson's Prometheus Rising, his Ph.D. thesis in psychology, is as provocative as it is stimulating: and leads one against the repressive tide against knowing the work of Dr. Timothy Leary. I highly recommend that you spend some time at DeOxy.org.
Once there, I hope you'll see how closely Leary "psychology" and Wilson "psychology" parallel pk's work in Semiotics and Macroinformation. In a word, we know nothing, see nothing, feel nothing, think nothing ... but through our nervous systems. Reality is a set of mental models: and it's time we learned something responsibly about our minds.
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