Saturday, December 22, 2007
Alone?
Are we alone? Are we freaks in the universe or is the universe bio-friendly?
This fascinating podcast discusses just those issues.
And speaking of podcasts, here is a section of a discussion about metaphor as a tool for expanding knowledge and thereby consciousness.
One point made by John Horgan about metaphor is something that I feel myself. It is that metaphor is an incredibly powerful tool human beings use to understand the world. Although Horgan's reference point is science, I think that metaphor is far more general in its effect — a unifying force inclusive of many disciplines, tying many of the most powerful functions of the mind, the heart and the spirit — that sense of the connectedness of all things; the coiled associations of Shakespeare that spring out in all directions all at once and hook reality into a shockingly beautiful web of insight, or Vermeer's ineffable vision of time as an illuminated pearl.