[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you oh so very much for the excellent excerpts at 354! I'll be reading this one. Here's a favorite:

Just as the two-dimensional plane-man [O’s immediately preceding demonstration] thinks of all phenomena touching his consciousness as lying on one plane, so the positivistic method strives to interpret upon one plane all phenomena of different orders, i.e., to interpret all visible phenomena as the effects of antecedent visible phenomena, and as the inevitable cause of subsequent visible phenomena. In other words, it sees in causal and functional interdependence merely phenomena proceeding upon the surface, and studies the visible world, or the phenomena of the visible world, not admitting that causes can enter into this world which are not contained in it or that phenomena of this world can possess functions extending beyond it.

[Phaedrus]

I have never been able to get by the fact that what is known about mutations, based upon real-world experience, is that they are destructive, not creative. Maybe I shoulda hadda V-8 ... ;-}

[betty boop]

Hi Alamo-Girl! I'm just seeing your post #389 now -- don't know how I missed it before. Anyhoot, some of Tertium Organum's science is a little dated, given the work was written very early in the last century. But Ouspensky seems very strong on dimensionality issues, which is why I remembered him after all these years (I read this book before I turned 20, and haven't revisited it since -- til very recently). Clearly, he is a Platonist in his approach to fundamental issues.

I think I'll be doing a serious reconsideration of Ouspensky very soon, just as soon as I finish the three or so books I've got going right now (including the Penrose).... Sigh, so much to read, so little time!!! (I've got a date with Attila Grandpierre this weekend -- another Platonist, it seems to me, on the basis of a cursury flip through his pages....)

Thank you so much, A-G, for the link, the information, and for all you do in general. This has been a marvelously informative thread so far.