New beginning

So this chapter in my life is coming to an end, living and working in Kuwait. A new beginning is in front of me as I head off to another continent. My next big adventure is to learn more about humanism.

Arab Humanism

Humanism

Many medieval Muslim thinkers pursued humanistic, rational and scientific discourses in their search for knowledge, meaning and values. A wide range of Islamic writings on love poetry, history and philosophical theology show that medieval Islamic thought was open to the humanistic ideas of individualism, occasional secularism, skepticism and liberalism.

Religious freedom, though limited, helped create cross-cultural networks by attracting Muslim, Christian and Jewish intellectuals and thereby helped spawn the greatest period of philosophical creativity in the Middle Ages from the 8th to 13th centuries.[5]

Humanism

Contemporary humanism can be traced back through the Renaissance back to the Islamic Golden Age to its ancient Greek roots. Humanism can also be traced back to the time of Gautama Buddha (563-483 BCE) and Confucius (551–479 BCE) and the Warring States Period, though the term "humanism" is more widely associated with Western philosophers.

Iraqi Philosopher

Al-Kindi was born and brought up in Kufah, which was a center for Arab culture and learning in the 9th century. This was certainly the right place for al-Kindi to get the best education possible at this time. Although quite a few details of al-Kindi's life are given in various sources, these are not all consistent. We shall try to give below details which are fairly well substantiated.

Al-Kindi defined Philosophy as 'the establishment of what is true and right' and believed that the pursuit of philosophy was compatible with orthodox Islam. He said - "We ought not to be embarrassed of appreciating the truth and of obtaining it wherever it comes from, even if it comes from races distant and nations different from us. Nothing should be dearer to the seeker of truth than the truth itself, and there is no deterioration of the truth, nor belittling either of one who speaks it or conveys it."

Understanding

How can our finite brains understand an infinite universe?

moments

I imagined the past as an epoch that never returned,
and the future as one that could never be reached.
Now I realize that the present moment
contains all time and within it
is all that can be hoped for,
done and realized.

- Kahlil Gibran

Enlightenment

The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment opened a path for independent thought, and the fields of mathematics, astronomy, physics, politics, economics, philosophy, and medicine were drastically updated and expanded. The amount of new knowledge that emerged was staggering. Just as important was the enthusiasm with which people approached the Enlightenment: intellectual salons popped up in France, philosophical discussions were held, and the increasingly literate population read books and passed them around feverishly. The Enlightenment and all of the new knowledge thus permeated nearly every facet of civilized life.

When will we experience the next enlightenment? We need enlightenment 2.0 don't you think? I think so. Think

Faith - (Fear & Trembling)

Faith - That which is required in order to make the leap into the absurd, which is required for the religious. Faith is spoken of dismissively by Hegel, who suggests that it is a lower, irrational form of thought that must be moved beyond. Johannes (Fear & Trembling) asserts that faith is in fact higher, and that it cannot be understood by simple reflection: faith demands passion.

Reference: Fear & Trembling by Soren Kiekegaard

Reason is a better path for man in the long run.

Acculturation

"Acculturation comprehends those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original culture patterns of either or both groups".

Thus another role for the expats, to spread culture to new lands, and to bring some of it back to our lands. I wonder what role the Internet (www, blogs, podcasts, etc) play in acculturation? We are exchanging ideas via our blogs and we have global connectivity from person to person via our cell phones.

Culture

Culture

a particular society at a particular time and place; "early Mesopotamian civilization"

the tastes in art and manners that are favored by a social group

acculturation: all the knowledge and values shared by a society

We are all a member of one or more cultures. Traveling gives us a broader perspective, or it should. But we must all be aware that we each communicate through our cultural filters. This is why I believe that reasoned thought has such an important role in the future of mankind (and womankind). We humans need to be aware of world cultures and how they affect how we see the world and thus the way in which we interact with it and the humans in it.

Philosophy of Cosmology

A paper by George F R Ellis titled "Issues in the Philosophy of Cosmology" discusses the following major themes.

1. The uniqueness of the universe
2. The large scale of the universe in space and time
3. The unbound energies in the early universe
4. Explaining the universe - the question of origins
5. The universe as the background for existence
6. The explicit philosophical basis
7. The Anthroipic question - fine tuning for life
8. The possible existence of multiverses
9. The natures of existence

DIKW

DIKW stands for Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom. Anyone who knows me knows that this has been a major interest of mine for some time. So what is DIKW?
Data - a string of identified but unevaluated symbols
Information - Evaluated, validated, or useful data
Knowledge - Information in the context of understanding
Wisdom - according to the dictionary, is defined as the
1 a: Accumulated philosophic or scientific learning-knowledge;
b: Ability to discern inner qualities and relationships-insight;
c: Good sense-judgment
d: Generally accepted belief.
2: A wise attitude, belief, or course of action.
3: The teachings of the ancient wise men (is 53 ancient?)

I hope that you will all share your wisdom with me. I plan on spending the rest of my life collecting wisdom and sharing it with those I love.

Thought of the Day

Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake... We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Elliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul. We do not believe in heaven or hell, yet no statistic will ever find that without these blandishments and threats we commit more crimes of greed or violence than the faithful. (In fact, if a proper statistical inquiry could ever be made, I am sure the evidence would be the other way.)... We are reconciled to living only once, except through our children, for whom we are perfectly happy to notice that we must make way, and room. We speculate that it is at least possible that, once people accepted the fact of their short struggling lives, they might behave better toward each other and not worse. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact the corollary holds true—that religion has caused innumerable people to not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow... There is no need for us to gather every day, or every seven days, or on any high and auspicious day, to proclaim our rectitude or to grovel and wallow in our unworthiness. We atheists do no require any priests, or any hierarchy above them, to police our doctrine. Sacrifices and ceremonies are abhorrent to us, as are relics and the worship of any images or objects. To us no spot on earth is or could be “holier” than another: to the ostentatious absurdity of the pilgrimage, or the plain horror of killing civilians in the name of some sacred wall or cave or shrine or rock, we can counterpose a leisurely or urgent walk from one side of the library or the gallery to another, or to lunch with an agreeable friend, in pursuit of truth or beauty.

Christopher Hitchens
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Intellectual Freedom

"Those to whom intellectual freedom is personally important may be a minority in the community, but among them are the men of most importance to the future."

Bertrand Russell

Mr. Russell could not be more correct in the above quote. When will we have true intellectual freedom? Many places still supress the advancement of knowledge and understanding. In many cases in the name of some religion.

Deep Space Network

When you are tired of reading about all the people killing each other over religion try reading the below. It may raise your spirets that we are looking to the future and exploring space and thus learning about ourselves in the process. This ia also one of the mega projects that I so admire.

ABOUT THE DEEP SPACE NETWORK

The NASA Deep Space Network - or DSN - is an international network of antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions.

The DSN currently consists of three deep-space communications facilities placed approximately 120 degrees apart around the world: at Goldstone, in California's Mojave Desert; near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra, Australia. This strategic placement permits constant observation of spacecraft as the Earth rotates, and helps to make the DSN the largest and most sensitive scientific telecommunications system in the world.

Reason

Reason is our tool of understanding. It is the method of identifying entities through one's senses. It is the means of integrating those perceptions into concepts, gaining knowledge through this integration, integrating that knowledge into the rest of one's knowledge, and evaluating and manipulating ideas and facts.

Reason is the process of thinking. Its fundamental attribute is clarity. The use of vague notions, fuzzy feelings, or "instincts" is not reason. Reason requires clear, identifiable building blocks. It uses ideas, memories, emotions, and sensory input. The ideas must be clear and definable. The memories must be recognizable, and vivid. The emotions are recognized as emotions only, with no further meaning. The sensory input must be identified in order to be used.

NGC 1672

NGC 1672, visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is seen almost face on and shows regions of intense star formation. The greatest concentrations of star formation are found in the so-called starburst regions near the ends of the galaxy's strong galactic bar. NGC 1672 is a prototypical barred spiral galaxy and differs from normal spiral galaxies in that the spiral arms do not twist all the way into the centre. Instead, they are attached to the two ends of a straight bar of stars enclosing the nucleus.

Look up

Look up at night and wonder at the wonder of our universe.

Pleiades Cluster (M45)

"For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of stars makes me dream." -- Vincent van Gogh

Starry Night

"For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of stars makes me dream." -- Vincent van Gogh