The past year has taught me much about healing, not instant and total healing, but getting better. The medical things I deal with are not major, though inflammation of the bladder was of serious concern a year ago. My experiences of healing have given me a new perspective on health with implications for other areas … Read more
On this thanksgiving day, I wish to express my gratitude to all who have participated in this weblog during its first months. Thanksgiving is an act of acknowledging something good for which others are responsible. Values, as we are normally busy with them are material and intellectual/cultural. One way of expressing the goal of this … Read more
Love can pervade our character so fully as to motivate the exercise of all the virtues implied in the previous discussed segments of this philosophy. As we grow we become more like God, who enables us to participate in his goodness. This truth the Sufis celebrate: when someone loves God, “God beautifies his character traits, … Read more
Singing in the rain When beauty touches us, it awakens our aesthetic response, ranging from contentment and satisfaction to delight, rejoicing, and awe: these modes of experience register our recognition of universal beauty. The most common positive emotions are joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride (paired with humility), amusement, inspiration, awe, and love.[1] As long … Read more
Viktor Frankl Just as science has its philosophical component, philosophy has its scientific component. And when a psychiatrist speaks of meaning in life we see meaning as shared territory between science and philosophy. Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl observed during his years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps that meaning in life is a vital human … Read more
Alfred North Whitehead Wisdom combines truths of science, philosophy, and spiritual experience. Excellent thinking flourishes on the basis of intuition. On that basis, reason draws inferences. Then wisdom integrates reason’s diverse array of such lines of reasoning into an ever more comprehensive synthesis. (In practice, each phase of this model depends on the other phases.) … Read more
Charles Darwin (1809-82) and his son William in 1842 As a scientist, Darwin developed and exercised virtues that we can apply in daily life. We do not have to be a gifted, trained, and experienced scientist in order to grow in these essential qualities. In Darwin I find, above all, hunger for truth; this dominant … Read more
Prophets, theologians, and secular idealists have proclaimed a glorious destiny for human history; but their visions and hopes seem discredited while we struggle through our logjam of biological, social, economic, and political problems. In order to break up the logjam, we need a world-wide moral and spiritual awakening. The religious reason is that God … Read more
Today we begin our seven-fold path that leads through the dimensions of truth, beauty, and goodness. Considering the truths of science and asking what their significance might be in a philosophy of living, I have begun to develop a concept of scientific living. This concept involves several phases. Please aid in the ongoing development of … Read more