all that we cannot know

That can explain the actions of people like Hiram Edson, who watched the prophecy fail and then decided, actually, the prophecy hadn’t failed at all. The Second Coming had instead been a purely heavenly event—Jesus had moved from the “Holy Place” to the “Most Holy Place” and began a new era of history, indiscernible from all previous eras of histor... See more

The first thing to do is keep silent—to abolish audiences and learn to be your own judge. To keep a balance between an active concern for the body and an attentive awareness of being alive. To give up all feeling that the world owes you a living and devote yourself to achieving two kinds of freedom: freedom from money and freedom from your own vani... See more

There’s a classic book called When Prophecy Fails where a trio of social psychologists join an apocalyptic UFO cult just before the supposed end of the world.

A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious

subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of

consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the

origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds... this is all great stuff. Wond... See more

We often can’t prove or disprove our hypotheses, especially when you’re innovating, so reason fails us to some extent.

I’m sympathetic to Horgan’s claim that there’s something rotten in the state of science, I can get on board with the idea that our scientific luminaries are a bunch of asses and buffoons, and I’m even open to the possibility that large swaths of supposed scientific activity have basically become interpretative dance.