Putting the -Ing in the Thing

According to the Aphorist, To write honestly for others, one must write fundamentally for oneself.

Here goes.   

Must clear desk in anticipation of tonight's catastrophe.  

Here's a book by Fulton J. Sheen called The Philosophy of Science (see sidebar). It was published in 1934, but somehow is as true today as it was then.  

This goes to one of our pet peeves and pet hobbies, which is to say, the timelessness and universality of truth.  Put conversely, why would someone want to waste his time learning truths that have an expiration date, or that only "appear" true?  I only want to waste my time on things that are true now, have always been true, and will always be true.  Is this too much to ask -- that truth actually be true?

What are some of the things we can reliably bank on, now and forever?  As it so happens, The Philosophy of Science touches on a number of them.  But first, a few aphorisms to light the way (which we mean quite lighterally, of course): 

--The truth is objective but not impersonal. (We can never eliminate the Subject from the cosmos, for to do so is to paint oneself into a coroner with no possibility of inscape.)

--A few lines are enough to demonstrate a truth. Not even a library is enough to refute an error. (Speaking of eternal truths, Brandolini's Law of BS has always been known. It's a big reason why it is impossible to debate a leftist.) 

--All truth goes from flesh to flesh. (That's a biggie, going to our personal, incarnational, and trinitarian cosmos.)

--Truth is in history, but history is not truth. (Another biggie, and for the same threasons.)

--In each moment, each person is capable of possessing the truths that matter. 

That last one really goes to the essence of my peeve and my passion, for I am convinced that there are certain truths to which every man is entitled by virtue of being a man.  Or, conversely, we may say that the ability to know these truths (even if in potential) is precisely what makes one a man (or better, a person).  Anything that is not a man cannot know them; and to know them makes one a man.

Which is not to imply that people with whom we disagree are subhuman. However, they are definitely antihuman, and this can be easily proved -- beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... er, geometric logic... 

Maybe I should just cut to the chase and stop queeging around.  

The Principle of principles.  What is it?  

Trick question!  Loaded too, for first of all it cannot be an it.  Nor can it be singular, for this would bar us from knowing it.  If all is one, this means ONE, and you are not invited or even invented.   Could ultimate and absoltute truth conceivably consist of this monad, this absolute unicity?  It could. But it would mean 1) that we could never know it, and 2) our lives are utterly meaningless.  No lives matter.

If truth is even possible, then it entails certain necessities.  These necessities very much resemble the ontology of language, or logos for short.  For it implies intelligence, intelligibility, and some means of transmission between the two.  There must be knowable objects; a subject who knows them; and a way to get from one shore to the other.  

Here's what I say: I say you already know all this, because you can't not know it.  You cannot know anything without this being true.  You can't even utter a blatant falsehood without this being the case.  Just try.

I would even go so far as to say that you -- you over there, the village atheist -- veritably worship something.  You just don't know what it is, so you are led into confusion.  I know the name of your unKnown God, and it is this God of whom I speak, on pain of not being able to speak at all.

Speech. Now there's a mouthful and a mythful.  I've only just begun reading Walker Percy's The Message in the Bottle (see sidebar), but it looks like he is very much in the same attractor. I will keep us posted as I get further into it.   

We are the bottlefield alright. How does the message get in? And out?  Note that for nearly everyone, these are just assumed, never explained.  And yet, they are without question the most astonishing features of this very cosmos!  Without them this would be a dark and lonely place.  Or not even dark and lonely.  Just... an unconceivable nothing.

But there is something.  And we know it.  Let's call this something Being.  Note the suffix:  -ing.  It's doing something.  What is -ing, anyway? It is

a suffix of nouns formed from verbs, expressing the action of the verb or its result, product, material, etc. 

Be is be-ing.  This -ing is an activity.  This activity -- at least from our perspective -- breaks out into several branches, most obviously knowing.  We can surely know that there is an intimate relationship between being and knowing, or knowledge would be strictly impossible. It would have no ground, no principle, no justification.

You could say that knowledge is a child of being, possibly the eldest.  But it seems more likely that there were (are) triplets:  love, truth, and beauty.  For this reason, we can affirm with total confidence that science is a beautiful and lovely child of its unknown God.  That's a no-brainer, for it explains both the explainer and the explanation. 

Apologies for being so annoying this morning, but this is probably how it's going to be for awhile.

We need to write simultaneously as if no one whatsoever will read us and as if everyone will read us. --Dávila

Done!