5.4.09
3.4.09
Nigel slides down the slide!
Nigel loves to slide down the slide. This slide is at Trinity Bellwoods Park, but he also loves the slides at High Park and the little playground around the block from where we live.
11.3.09
6.3.09
12.2.09
14.12.08
24.8.08
19.8.08
14.8.08
Nigel makes some faces.
At long last, a new blog post. It's a widdle video of Nigel making some cute widdle faces.
16.10.07
#1,348
We are #1,348 in line to be assigned a family physician in the Guelph area.
Thank you, socialized medicine.
Thank you, socialized medicine.
7.8.07
August Civil Holiday: A History in Two Parts. Part One.
Yesterday, Monday 6 August 2007 was August Civil Holiday in Ontario. The city of Guelph name the Holiday in honor of its founder, John Galt, a Scottish novelist. He was a contemporary of Sir Walter Scott.
The city organized a celebration. Everyone gathered in front of city hall for the raising of the John Galt flag. Then there was a skit performed by two people, one of whom was dressed as John Galt, the other dressed as an axeman.
After the skit, everyone was to sing "God Save the Queen." We didn't know the lyrics, and I don't think that many other people did, either.
Today, when we were thinking back over our experience, we had the totally awesome idea that we should've sung "My Country 'Tis of Thee" simultaneously at the top of our lungs and then chanted 'U.S.A! U.S.A!...!'
The city organized a celebration. Everyone gathered in front of city hall for the raising of the John Galt flag. Then there was a skit performed by two people, one of whom was dressed as John Galt, the other dressed as an axeman.
After the skit, everyone was to sing "God Save the Queen." We didn't know the lyrics, and I don't think that many other people did, either.
Today, when we were thinking back over our experience, we had the totally awesome idea that we should've sung "My Country 'Tis of Thee" simultaneously at the top of our lungs and then chanted 'U.S.A! U.S.A!...!'
29.7.07
Guelph Arboretum
The weather has been so great lately that we decided we needed to spend a bit of time out of doors. The University has an arboretum that has native Ontario trees as well as a variety of trees imported from Asia. There is even a Japanese-style meditation garden.
We took a little picnic lunch and walked around for a while.
The kittens love treats.
John loves to feed treats to Gray Cat and Black Cat. They come running out whenever they hear John shake the treat bag.
When we first started giving them treats, only Gray Cat would jump up and put his paws around John's hand to secure the treat. After a while, Black Cat learned to jump up and do the same thing with his paws.
He lets the cats lick his fingers after they get the treats.
When we first started giving them treats, only Gray Cat would jump up and put his paws around John's hand to secure the treat. After a while, Black Cat learned to jump up and do the same thing with his paws.
He lets the cats lick his fingers after they get the treats.
26.7.07
Our little Apartment
This is our living room. With our new gray couch. The door beside the bookshelf is the front door, and the window looks out onto the front lawn.
The pink ledge you see in the foreground is one of the kitchen counter tops.
The pink ledge you see in the foreground is one of the kitchen counter tops.
The kitchen. We've come to really like the kitchen.
The refrigerator. It is quite small. Or "wee" as some people say up here.
A wee fridge.
15.6.07
voyage au Canada
Just a couple of pictures from our trip to Canada.
The sky in Iowa.
The line to cross the border into Canada. When we were coming back into the country, the American boarder guard did not even look at our ID's. He just chatted with us for a minute or two and decided we were ok.
The outside of our new apartment. White brick, a small porch off to the side. Some nice trees shading the windows. Fourplex.
John's face after we found the right apartment. Looking for apartments is tiring. We did a good job, though. We didn't get grumpy or fussy. I go into kind of a manic frenzy looking for the right apartment. John helped me stay a little more sane than I would have on my own.
The sky in Iowa.
The line to cross the border into Canada. When we were coming back into the country, the American boarder guard did not even look at our ID's. He just chatted with us for a minute or two and decided we were ok.
The outside of our new apartment. White brick, a small porch off to the side. Some nice trees shading the windows. Fourplex.
John's face after we found the right apartment. Looking for apartments is tiring. We did a good job, though. We didn't get grumpy or fussy. I go into kind of a manic frenzy looking for the right apartment. John helped me stay a little more sane than I would have on my own.
27.5.07
BAT FACE!!
At camp, we learned a lot about bats.
Bats fly with their mouths open. This helps them catch
over 2,000 mosquitoes every night.
John and I spent a lot of time perfecting our bat faces.
Bats fly with their mouths open. This helps them catch
over 2,000 mosquitoes every night.
John and I spent a lot of time perfecting our bat faces.
The fourth graders did not think this was very cool.
Don't worry.
Our faces didn't stick.
19.5.07
Guarding the Mystery: On Science and Religion again
Since the Dennett posting generated so much controversy, I thought I would continue with some of my own homegrown thoughts regarding naturalism and religion. -- JHW
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"The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena." Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.371
"Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose." Chesterton, Orthodoxy
What did Wittgenstein mean in saying that it is an illusion that laws of nature are explanations of natural phenomena? I believe he meant that some are led by scientific laws to the mistaken thought of a deep structure undergirding natural phenomena in accordance with which they are produced. Wittgenstein wanted to persuade us that there is no deep, governing structure, either in thought or in what we perceive. Or at least, it is an enormous and generally incoherent presumption we make if we think there area such structures. Laws of nature allow us to predict future phenomena, but they do not articulate a deep structure that explains why there are such phenomena, which is, according to Wittgenstein a perfectly contingent matter. Why is this important to note? We are especially prone to pose the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" And we are especially prone to the illusion that we have answered this question when we have not. Science and religion both offer temptations to this illusion.
The ancient and medieval conception of the world, in the West, at least, embraced the idea that God explained the existence of something rather than nothing. It was part of the neo-Platonic view that any adequate explanation had to terminate in something that itself did not need explanation. The idea of a 'necessary being' (God) comes in here to plug the gap. Here's the structure of the illusion: everything must have an explanation, so the beings in nature must have an explanation, the only way to have a complete explanation is for there to be a necessary being that is the cause of them all, therefore God must be the cause of all things. Platonic metaphysics wedded with Hebrew mythology to create a very nice picture to dispel our craving for an answer. The first part of that argument, the claim that 'everything must have an explanation' is called 'the principle of sufficient reason.' The claim, more technically, is that every positive fact must have an explanation.
Thomas Aquinas rightly observed that to give an explanation of the present state of affairs by appeal to a prior state of affairs explains very little. But he still insisted on the principle of sufficient reason -- and thought that it proved the existence of God. The so-called cosmological argument for the existence of God turns very centrally on the principle of sufficient reason -- more to the point, it turns on our need for explanation. But why assume that there is an explanation?
It seems to me that in these matters a crucial component of religion is being sacrificed to a undisciplined rationalism, by which I mean the demand to give an intellectual accounting for all matters. Kant and Wittgenstein both wanted to discipline our rationalism. That is not to say they were encouraging us to be less intellectual -- rather, they were encouraging us give up illusory pseudo-explanations, and to remain content before that which we cannot explain (either at present or in principle).
There are two basic types of intellectual error: not taking into account our best available evidence. A Creationist who offers an account of the universe in conflict with our best scientific observations is guilty of this error. The second is using available evidence in ways that go beyond what it shows. There are rather mundane ways of doing this, and deeper ways of doing this.
There is a sense in which some who embrace a literal creationist account of the origins of the universe is in the same boat as someone who thinks that physics will 'explain it all.' The physical explanation is a certain sort of explanation, but it does not, if we are honest, explain away the mystery. I should also note that there is a way of embracing the a theistic creation account without losing the mystery -- it would be to acknowledge: this really explains nothing! That there is a God, that He created this world, that there is ecstasy and suffering in it -- all of that is mysterious! Likewise, physicists can explain the big bang down to a micro-scale of time and acknowledge: this really explains nothing! (or, one can hold: it explains something, but leaves something unexplained, as well, and the latter is even more important).
What do we gain by guarding this sense of what I have called mystery: an empty open-mouthed astonishment? I don't think so. Preserving a sense of mystery also preserves a basic problem: the formation of a fundamental attitude to what there is. Take pleasure and pain: regard these as a fundamental mystery. Granted, science can tell us a great deal about the neurological processes undergirding these phenomena. But the fact we know that pain is a C-fiber firing doesn't really explain pain. We can control pain rather well now, but that doesn't dispel the fundamental problem. Should we want to increase our pleasure and decrease our pain? Or should we want to do so, provided it doesn't produce further bad effects, future pain or disablement (a heroin addiction)? If this is our view, we've already slipped into a certain attitude toward pleasure and pain. I'm not saying we should not attempt to control our pain, but I think I understand why people who renounce controlling pain do so; they want their fundamental attitude not to be a superficial hedonism, but a receptivity to the world (most would regard this position as irrational, but that is because they are taking a different, and not obviously superior fundamental attitude). Our present challenge is to guard our ability to take the fact of our pleasure and pain as a fundamental problem, more fundamental than controlling it. It is even more than a moral problem -- how we relate to such matters in some sense sets the framework within which we will pose moral questions. It is a challenge particularly for us because the framework of medicine is based on control and, perhaps even more than pain palliation, survival. The configuration of our cultural concepts puts pressure on us not to adopt other attitudes.
I've been too obscure here. But my point was mainly to gesture at a problem that is common to many naturalists and theists who see themselves as opposed.
----------------------------------------------
"The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena." Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.371
"Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose." Chesterton, Orthodoxy
What did Wittgenstein mean in saying that it is an illusion that laws of nature are explanations of natural phenomena? I believe he meant that some are led by scientific laws to the mistaken thought of a deep structure undergirding natural phenomena in accordance with which they are produced. Wittgenstein wanted to persuade us that there is no deep, governing structure, either in thought or in what we perceive. Or at least, it is an enormous and generally incoherent presumption we make if we think there area such structures. Laws of nature allow us to predict future phenomena, but they do not articulate a deep structure that explains why there are such phenomena, which is, according to Wittgenstein a perfectly contingent matter. Why is this important to note? We are especially prone to pose the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" And we are especially prone to the illusion that we have answered this question when we have not. Science and religion both offer temptations to this illusion.
The ancient and medieval conception of the world, in the West, at least, embraced the idea that God explained the existence of something rather than nothing. It was part of the neo-Platonic view that any adequate explanation had to terminate in something that itself did not need explanation. The idea of a 'necessary being' (God) comes in here to plug the gap. Here's the structure of the illusion: everything must have an explanation, so the beings in nature must have an explanation, the only way to have a complete explanation is for there to be a necessary being that is the cause of them all, therefore God must be the cause of all things. Platonic metaphysics wedded with Hebrew mythology to create a very nice picture to dispel our craving for an answer. The first part of that argument, the claim that 'everything must have an explanation' is called 'the principle of sufficient reason.' The claim, more technically, is that every positive fact must have an explanation.
Thomas Aquinas rightly observed that to give an explanation of the present state of affairs by appeal to a prior state of affairs explains very little. But he still insisted on the principle of sufficient reason -- and thought that it proved the existence of God. The so-called cosmological argument for the existence of God turns very centrally on the principle of sufficient reason -- more to the point, it turns on our need for explanation. But why assume that there is an explanation?
It seems to me that in these matters a crucial component of religion is being sacrificed to a undisciplined rationalism, by which I mean the demand to give an intellectual accounting for all matters. Kant and Wittgenstein both wanted to discipline our rationalism. That is not to say they were encouraging us to be less intellectual -- rather, they were encouraging us give up illusory pseudo-explanations, and to remain content before that which we cannot explain (either at present or in principle).
There are two basic types of intellectual error: not taking into account our best available evidence. A Creationist who offers an account of the universe in conflict with our best scientific observations is guilty of this error. The second is using available evidence in ways that go beyond what it shows. There are rather mundane ways of doing this, and deeper ways of doing this.
There is a sense in which some who embrace a literal creationist account of the origins of the universe is in the same boat as someone who thinks that physics will 'explain it all.' The physical explanation is a certain sort of explanation, but it does not, if we are honest, explain away the mystery. I should also note that there is a way of embracing the a theistic creation account without losing the mystery -- it would be to acknowledge: this really explains nothing! That there is a God, that He created this world, that there is ecstasy and suffering in it -- all of that is mysterious! Likewise, physicists can explain the big bang down to a micro-scale of time and acknowledge: this really explains nothing! (or, one can hold: it explains something, but leaves something unexplained, as well, and the latter is even more important).
What do we gain by guarding this sense of what I have called mystery: an empty open-mouthed astonishment? I don't think so. Preserving a sense of mystery also preserves a basic problem: the formation of a fundamental attitude to what there is. Take pleasure and pain: regard these as a fundamental mystery. Granted, science can tell us a great deal about the neurological processes undergirding these phenomena. But the fact we know that pain is a C-fiber firing doesn't really explain pain. We can control pain rather well now, but that doesn't dispel the fundamental problem. Should we want to increase our pleasure and decrease our pain? Or should we want to do so, provided it doesn't produce further bad effects, future pain or disablement (a heroin addiction)? If this is our view, we've already slipped into a certain attitude toward pleasure and pain. I'm not saying we should not attempt to control our pain, but I think I understand why people who renounce controlling pain do so; they want their fundamental attitude not to be a superficial hedonism, but a receptivity to the world (most would regard this position as irrational, but that is because they are taking a different, and not obviously superior fundamental attitude). Our present challenge is to guard our ability to take the fact of our pleasure and pain as a fundamental problem, more fundamental than controlling it. It is even more than a moral problem -- how we relate to such matters in some sense sets the framework within which we will pose moral questions. It is a challenge particularly for us because the framework of medicine is based on control and, perhaps even more than pain palliation, survival. The configuration of our cultural concepts puts pressure on us not to adopt other attitudes.
I've been too obscure here. But my point was mainly to gesture at a problem that is common to many naturalists and theists who see themselves as opposed.
15.5.07
On Seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls
With the semester over, I've come into some time for taking in the world around me. Last week, I went to an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls at a museum here in KC. It has been quite a well-publicized and, by all accounts, highly trafficked event -- there have been billboards, television advertisements; the accompanying lecture series was sold-out within a week or so. Even at $20 per ticket, the exhibit was crowded when I went during the afternoon on a week-day. It led me to wonder: what is the source of this intense interest? The scrolls themselves are tiny, dark pieces of parchment that were dimly lit with barely visible markings of archaic Hebrew letters. In some sense, they are uninteresting. The best parts of the exhibit were about the Essene community at Qumran. They did a great job situating this community historically, but unfortunately, there was little about their understanding of Scripture -- I suspect because the Essene interpretation of the Scriptures would be quite out of keeping with a contemporary evangelical understanding, and there was no desire to ruffle any feathers on the part of the organizers.
Does this event signal an awakening of interest in genuinely scholarly approaches to the Bible? As someone who has just finished teaching at a Christian college, I doubt this. My students mostly resented having their received views of the Bible challenged by an historical approach, though some found it liberating and enlightening. Perhaps readiness to face such challenges grows with age. But I suspect that there is another motive for most people: an excitement at the nearness to something that seems authentic and pure, as it were 'closer to God.' I heard one woman, approaching a facsimile (not even the real thing!) of a scroll of Deuteronomy exclaim to her husband "It's the Ten Commandments!" excitedly pushing ahead to plant herself right in front of it.
I may be misinterpreting what I saw -- perhaps I am uncharitable. But if I am seeing correctly, it seems to me that the interest in the Scrolls actually represents an kind of desperation to get spirituality. If one needs an ancient piece of parchment to put oneself in the proximity of God, then probably the other elements aren't working. The wonder I felt in front of those pieces of parchment was one of having a tiny bit of contact with a group of people who lived fully within a world very foreign to my own, who genuinely felt themselves to be living in an end time, and fully expected God to intervene in history and to turn the tables, continuing and completing his work of creation -- perfecting this world, not taking us to another world.
Someone who looked closely could see traces of an entirely different relation to the Scriptures at the exhibit. There were, found at Qumran, weathered phylacteries to hold scrolls of the Torah and the bands they used to tie them to their arms and head, as is still done by Orthodox Jews. There, it seems to me, is a deep, living way of taking the Scripture as a vehicle of relating to God. It's not the piece of paper, but the promise that it represents; one holds it near to oneself as a way of not forgetting, as a way of focusing, and meditating on one's responsibility. I find this practice to be representative of a genuine religiosity because if practiced sincerely it would engage the whole person -- the mind at contemplating the content and nature of the Torah, the heart longing to fulfill its commands, and the body through being brought into contact with the physical instantiation of the Torah. I wonder how many religious practices really engage people that fully today? My sense from students at an allegedly religious institution was that they were not used to being fully engaged -- perhaps especially unused to engaging their minds in their religion. Alas...
Does this event signal an awakening of interest in genuinely scholarly approaches to the Bible? As someone who has just finished teaching at a Christian college, I doubt this. My students mostly resented having their received views of the Bible challenged by an historical approach, though some found it liberating and enlightening. Perhaps readiness to face such challenges grows with age. But I suspect that there is another motive for most people: an excitement at the nearness to something that seems authentic and pure, as it were 'closer to God.' I heard one woman, approaching a facsimile (not even the real thing!) of a scroll of Deuteronomy exclaim to her husband "It's the Ten Commandments!" excitedly pushing ahead to plant herself right in front of it.
I may be misinterpreting what I saw -- perhaps I am uncharitable. But if I am seeing correctly, it seems to me that the interest in the Scrolls actually represents an kind of desperation to get spirituality. If one needs an ancient piece of parchment to put oneself in the proximity of God, then probably the other elements aren't working. The wonder I felt in front of those pieces of parchment was one of having a tiny bit of contact with a group of people who lived fully within a world very foreign to my own, who genuinely felt themselves to be living in an end time, and fully expected God to intervene in history and to turn the tables, continuing and completing his work of creation -- perfecting this world, not taking us to another world.
Someone who looked closely could see traces of an entirely different relation to the Scriptures at the exhibit. There were, found at Qumran, weathered phylacteries to hold scrolls of the Torah and the bands they used to tie them to their arms and head, as is still done by Orthodox Jews. There, it seems to me, is a deep, living way of taking the Scripture as a vehicle of relating to God. It's not the piece of paper, but the promise that it represents; one holds it near to oneself as a way of not forgetting, as a way of focusing, and meditating on one's responsibility. I find this practice to be representative of a genuine religiosity because if practiced sincerely it would engage the whole person -- the mind at contemplating the content and nature of the Torah, the heart longing to fulfill its commands, and the body through being brought into contact with the physical instantiation of the Torah. I wonder how many religious practices really engage people that fully today? My sense from students at an allegedly religious institution was that they were not used to being fully engaged -- perhaps especially unused to engaging their minds in their religion. Alas...
10.5.07
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all about our milkshakes
- john/laura
- we like to go the park, play, go to crema for treats, and to have fun.