The Cross Section - RMB Blog

  The picture is the cover to Axis: Bold As Love by Jimi Hendrix.  I thought it summarized the different ways modern man tries to find meaning without reason.  Among other things he searches in music, drugs, and Eastern religion, which show up in the cover art. In chapter 8 Schaeffer explains the Breakdown of philosophy and science, which was a shift away from reason in philosophy and to strict materialism in science.  The chapter contained multiple dual or parallel ideas ending with a dichotomy between faith and reason.  Dichotomy means to cut in two pieces with the remaining parts standing diametrically opposed. There isn't any duality in chapter 9.  Instead it records the long descent into nothing that started with the Breakdown  and continued through intellectuals spreading their ideas out into the general public.  At the end of the journey, existentialism and nihilism leave people in despair, so modern man tries to escape that despair by gra...

          Whence Come We? What Are We? Whither Do We Go? by Paul Gaugin This is a continuation from part 1, where I introduced chapter 8 and covered the Breakdown in science.  Part 2 will cover the Breakdown  in philosophy and conclude the chapter.  Pictured above is a painting by Gaugin which depicts how the idea of the noble savage was false. The Shift In Philosophy As I wrote in part 1 , non-Christian philosophers in the previous eras were optimistic that from logic alone, they could produce a unified theory of everything.  Schaeffer then describes a process where one philosopher would give his theory of the true universal and how it explains everything in existence (the particulars).  Then, the next philosopher would prove that theory false and give his own new theory.  The third philosopher would do the same in a loop that went on for centuries.  Along the way they retained hope that reason would prevail despite the series...

  Plato & Aristotle According to Schaeffer, the breakdown of philosophy and science is a twofold breakdown.  Many of his chapters carry duality in them.  Chapter 8 is no different.  There are several duos to consider.  The first is the ongoing discussion of universals and particulars.  The other duos I noticed were optimism/pessimism, reason/emotion, Christianity/materialism, and science/philosophy. To review, universals are absolutes existing in reality that give meaning to life and bind particulars into a common purpose.  Particulars are the material things of everyday life.  In common speech, they are things made out of stuff.  In the picture above Plato points up emphasizing his world of forms where universals exist outside of normal life.  Aristotle points down, teaching that these forms or universals exist within particular objects.  Both gave important views on the basis of existence.  Both embraced the interrelation...

I recently read this article about the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic.  It is a good bit of journalism showing how government health organizations like the WHO and pharmaceutical companies are tied together.  Experts work on both sides of the aisle in order to set definitions of what a pandemic is.  They also create plans about how to respond when they occur.  In those plans the types and amounts of medications which will be purchased are written.  That means companies that develop and sell new vaccines and anti-viral therapies have every incentive to be active in getting their products written into the plans. It should also be noted that health organizations are also the ones who communicate when a pandemic is occurring and what needs to be done about it.  In the US that organization is the CDC, but every country has something similar.  What happens when the people who dictate our health situation also are the ones making money on selling medical products to ...

                                                                                                                                                             - St. Paul Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment;  Science Many people today believe that science is the opposite of religion.  They believe that logic and faith oppose one another.  Thinkers within the Enlightenment, which I wrote about ( here ), believed the same thing.  They described their era as enlightened specifically because they were strippi...