----- Original Message -----
From: Steven Bissell <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 9:13 AM
Subject: Re: Caffiene and Zombies, or The Death Nature, & Birth of
Scientific Reason


> Let me get this straight. Isaac Newton was a DEWM (Dead European White
Male)
> Zombie who had nothing to do but stay up all night drinking coffee so he
> invented time?

The DEWM is perhaps correct. His appearance as a Zombie would have occurred
in the later part of his life. Apparently Isaac Newton wrote and studied
extensively on alchemy and believed in a form of gnosticism. the "Male
Conception of Time" is the title of a publication by Francis Bacon. All
nature for Bacon was interpreted as being Female in principle, thus needed
to be made to submit to Male reason. Nature was for Bacon uncooperative with
civilization. Some of these conceptions regarding corporeal nature are
derived from a belief that matter was corrupt; matter even in Plotinus is
referred to as being evil in principle because of dissention. Eve tempted
Adam to eat of the forbidden fruit, the tree of knowledge...so there is a
reference in Hebraic thought that something in nature is different than the
'unknown' God. But it was God that created the devil, on the binarius, or on
the first Monday. The devil therefore is a part of the world which is
represented in the male as the "unconscious" or the anima. Men who are anima
possessed project their own female unconscious onto the world about them;
they are often in torment, and have inner conflicts, neurosis.

But what is left out of the male conception of time with it's focus on
'linearity' as opposed to cyclical time, or direct, intuited time, is that a
concept is either a 'working' or a 'hypothetical' concept. It is interesting
to further note that A. N. Whitehead criticizes Newtons' conceptual form of
time as leaving out all types of intuition that are originary and pre-archic
forms of time, and even states that the Timaeus, though scientifically incor
rect, is a much more comprehensive account of the cosmos than is Newton's
Principia Physica. There is no metaphysics in the Principia, simply a linear
concept of time denoted by bodies in motion. So even though the ancient
Greek conception (and Hebraic) are cognizant of linearity, the primary
understanding is that time is larger than simply a physical discription of
bodies that can be measured as they move.

William James for instance in his "Principles of Psychology" writes that
time is also directly intuited, and this time lasts for approximately one
minute, and time is also conceptual. The feminine concept of time is thus
different depending on what is referred to as male time: which is supposed
to be ergonomic, industrial, linear, and practical or goal oriented; an
entirely anthropomorphic concept of time.

The ancient Greeks did not have a word for the term concept. The latin
language was the first European language to use a term to describe concept.
What the Greeks used was other words like <eidos> for instance which is
variously defined as Form, etc. In the Timeaus, the definition of time is
said to be "a moving image of eternity", and thus is not a notion solely,
but an image, or direct form of knowledge. What is said to be eternal in
this sense are archetypes in the Intellectual Sphere, the eternals, and
these are known not 'in-themselves' nor through logic, but through a
different form of perception which is generally referred to as intuition,
<nous>. The Good is known to the soul as what is 'beautiful'. So there is
also a basis for a belief that not only is there a primary illusory quality
to natural phenomenon, but also a secondary illusion for all phenomenon
including works of art, and civilization. The Good is above and beyond being
in one respect because it is what does not yet exist; the good is said to be
ontological and exists as a mode of existence, the possible or potential
leading to notions in most religion such as the 'parousia' versus existences
that actual, that presence, the <ousia>.

Of course this whole tradition is deep and perplexing as well as
fascinating. Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest, beleived that human
origins were paleontological (that is humans are descendants from branches
of hominoids), and combined together with his knowledge of paleontology
asserted that humans originated via 'orthogenesis' which means that they as
a species had a correct origin, a likeness to the divine. Furthermore in one
of Plato's dialogues, Diotima recalls to her interlocutor that to become
virtuous as a stateman, it is necessary for the young to "find the most
divine part of soul in oneself". This is necessary and is practically
achieved by looking into a mirror to find "the most divine part of the
soul". Once this is accomplished, then it is possible to also see the divine
in others too. No stateman can be a stateman of virtue without being able to
see the divine in everyone.

At heart to this simple description is a belief that the eternal exists at
the same time as that which is always changing. The root meaning of nature
for the ancient Greeks was the term phusis, which is also the root for
physica, phu, and phy, refer to motion. Enstasis is the term for evil
according to the dialogues in Plato...and this is death. Things which have
not participation in eternity are not moving, nor in motion, and thus we
have the word for emotion, which also means to 'move' and these passions are
powerful forms of knowing.

chao

john


>
> And, I *think* it is Alice in Wonderland.
>
> Steven
>
>  Dada is not dead
> Watch your overcoat