words and space, selected and arranged
1. Descartes believed that existence is a perfection, but since this is a matter of opinion, I prefer to reserve judgment until I've heard from a party uninvolved in the question.
2. Descartes: "I think, therefore I am." Kierkegaard: "That's fine for you, but what about the rest of us?"
3. One's existence is invariably due to outside influences, but one's essence is his own.
4. Ghosts typically appear as vague impressions out of the corner of one's eye. If they're to substantially affect the world, on the other hand, they must become manifest as things. It's the converse with the living.
5. Is it possible that whenever our portrait of a thing is well defined and objective, it's merely an idea, but whenever we are thinking of the thing itself, in all its unfathomable splendor, language and symbols can no longer communicate our notion of that thing--our glimpse of Chaos?
6. The analytic tradition holds that statements in support of universal Chaos confess their own lack of intelligibility, so the correct way to assert that there are no true statements is to maintain silence--and obliterate any utterance that has the audacity to sound this void.
But is an assertion of Chaos legitimate as a challenge to produce precisely defined, irrefutable statements regarding the universe? For if we can produce no such statements, shouldn't we also maintain silence? And doesn't the history of science suggest that all substantial verdicts regarding the universe will some day be reversed upon appeal? Is it time to embark on an eternal holiday from philosophical reflection?
7. Is science a wrestling match with the possibility of Chaos, grounded in the faith of order in the universe?
8. If the universe is unintelligible--if its essence cannot be fenced in by language and symbols--then our minds are filled with images of Chaos. And if images that are impervious to language dwell within our minds, any attempt to explain consciousness in a precisely defined theory would be futile, eventually causing us to set aside the notion of consciousness as an aberration. Is consciousness best explored by the irrational mind--the artistic mind?
9. On Jean Paul Sartre: He knows a little about everything, and a lot about Nothing.
10. Night is not a shadow. Rather, Apollo and his warm, pleasant sunlight is the intruder in the universe: sporadic, flickering points of warmth in the vast night of the cosmos. Day merely seems primary because we can only see in the light.
Applying this analogy to life and death, the living, with their essentially limited experience, may despair of ever solving the riddle of the universe. On the positive side, however, we won't be able to see our errors when the lights are turned out.
11. In time, we stay the same while the universe changes. In space, the universe stays the same while we move. Then God shuffles the deck, and ... POOF! ... CREATION!
12. A Theory Of Everything is, in particular, a comprehensive theory of the mind. And since a comprehensive theory of the mind is a comprehensive theory of thought, a Theory Of Everything must incorporate portraits of all past and future thoughts, including degrees of certainty regarding itself. And if we could never be absolutely certain of any theory, a Theory of Everything would profess its own eternal uncertainty.
A Theory Of Everything either professes an essential uncertainty, or the arrogance of omniscience.
13. Wisdom is silent, but I digress.