Cherryl, (and Harvey, and Ken) et al
I'm no expert on Buddhism, but clearly one aspect of teaching "Wisdom"
is the inability to teach it directly, but to teach "The Way" (or the
Tao, the ancient way of zen) to wisdom. Koans designed to make you
think, but realise there are no actual answers, etc. (Hofstader has
some good analysis of koans in strange loopy "Godel Esher Bach".)
I am sympathetic to this way of thinking - as anyone whose original
introduction to philosophy was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance would be :-)
BTW don't confuse my being opinionated, with actually being knowledgable.
For a very thoughtful attempt at applying Buddhist thought to an
"aontic" view of the world (one with no genuinely concrete "objects"
and no direct causal relations, try Paul Turner at
www.twelvelinks.com)
Whilst I'm sympathetic to Buddhist thinking, I still believe we have a
tractable problem within "science" provided we can establish "the
right kind of rationality" - as Nick is trying to do here.
Others ... I have mixed views about "clutter". I agree we should trim
previous threads from our mails (easy to forget), and I have indicated
my self-consciousness about "me too" mails adding no new points other
than enthusiasm and support. I happen to believe this informality is
essential whilst we are in the formin' stormin' normin' phase of our
"team-building" excercise ... it''ll be different when we're actually
performin' ... :-)
Ian
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