For being one of the most influential philosophers of science, it’s hard to believe that there isn’t a single picture of Norwood Russell Hanson on google, much less a book of is under 200 dollars. Most of his work was centered around the then-(and now)-novel concept that the act and language of observation is loaded with theory and is filtered through those theories. He put is a lot better than I could:

“Seeing is an experience. A retinal reaction is only a physical state… People, not their eyes, see. Cameras, and eye-balls, are blind… there is more to seeing than meets the eyeball.”

Theology was another subject that received a lot of writings from N. R.’s pen. Check out this winning collection of essays edited by every college student’s least favorite rhetorician, Stephen Toulmin. On the hiddenness of god:

“God exists” could in principle be established for all factually — it just happens not to be, certainly not for everyone! Suppose, however, that next Tuesday morning, just after breakfast, all of us in this one world are knocked to our knees by a percussive and ear-shattering thunderclap. Snow swirls; leaves drop from the trees; the earth heaves and buckles; buildings topple and towers tumble; the sky is ablaze with an eerie, silvery light. Just then, as all the people of this world look up, the heavens open — the clouds pull apart ‚ revealing an unbelievably immense and radiant-like Zeus figure, towering above us like a hundred Everests. He frowns darkly as lightening plays across the features of his Michelangeloid face. He then points down — at me! — and explains, for every man and child to hear: “I have had quite enough of your too-clever logic-chopping and word-watching in matters of theology. Be assured, N.R. Hanson, that I most certainly do exist.” … ¶ Please do not dismiss this as a playful, irreverent Disneyoid contrivance. The conceptual point here is that if such a remarkable event were to occur, I for one should certainly be convinced that God does exist. That matter of fact would have been settled once and for all time… That God exists would, though this encounter, have been confirmed for me and for everyone else in a manner every bit as direct as that involved in any non-controversial factual claim.

Read the book online

This is from an absolutely great play that I highly recommend. One of the best I’ve read.

[DYSART is a highly regarded and effective psychiatrist]

DYSART: The Normal is the good smile in a child’s eyes — all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills — like a God. It is the Ordinary made beautiful; it is also the Average made lethal. The Normal is the indispensable, murderous God of Health, and I am his Priest. My tools are very delicate. My compassion is honest. I have honestly assisted children in this room. I have talked away terrors and relieved many agonies. But also — beyond question — I have cut from them parts of individuality repugnant to this God, in both his aspects. Parts sacred to rarer and more wonderful Gods. And at what length … Sacrifices to Zeus took at he most, surely, sixty seconds each. Sacrifices to the Normal can take as long as sixty months.

Philosophy is … infected by a broader tendency of contemporary intellectual life; scientism. Scientism is actually a special form of idealism, for it puts one type of human understanding in charge of the universe and what can be said about it. At its most myopic it assumes that everything there is must be understandable by the employment of scientific theories like those we have developed to date—physics and evolutionary biology are the current paradigms—as if the present age were not just one in the series.

—Thomas Nagel (1986)

Thomas Nagel is one of the most well known and widely read in contemporary Philosophy. In short: he’s a real genius and, even better, his papers are great to read. He’s clear, which cant be said for a lot of contemporary philosophers and (heres the kicker) hes a rationalist (as opposed to one who thinks we have to add everything up with a big equation and thus life). Anyway. This is what I’m minoring in and its all really great stuff, so, if you have the time, and want to look into some Ethics for (hahah) fun. Then please go ahead, this is one of his better papers (there is a whole bunch of them, I’m going to post a few of them when I can dig em up).

From the apathetic reaction to atrocities committed in Vietnam by the United States and its allies, one may conclude that moral restrictions on the conduct of war command almost as little sympathy among the general public as they do among those charged with the formation of U.S. military policy. Even when restrictions on the conduct of warfare are defended, it is usually on legal grounds alone: their moral basis is often poorly understood. I wish to argue that certain restrictions are neither arbitrary nor merely conventional, and that their validity does not depend simply on their usefulness. There is, in other words, a moral basis for the rules of war, even though the conventions now officially in force are far from giving it perfect expression.

from War and Massacre

[Full Essay Here]

“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced!”

For those who like a little history, full link to this great speech here.

“We washed the dishes in the gurgling creek. The soaring bonfire kept the mosquitoes away. A new moon peaked down through the pine boughs. We rolled out our sleeping bags and went to bed early, bone weary.”

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.

“I am delighted with pleasure in the body when I live on bread and water, and I spit on luxurious pleasures, not in themselves but because of the disagreeable things which accompany them.” — Epicurus

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

“It is evident that rhetorics and prosodies are not arbitrarily invented tyrannies, but a collection of rules demanded by the very organization of the spiritual being, and never have prosodies and rhetorics kept originality from fully manifesting itself. The contrary, that is to say, that they have aided the flowering of originality, would be infinitely more true.”