Seeker After Truth

IS MATHEMATICS DISCOVERED OR INVENTED?

Recently a heated debate between realists and relativists in science has erupted. The conflict is between those who see science as a rational description of the world converging on the truth, and those who argue that it is a socially constructed account of the world, and just one of many possible accounts. Typically scientists and philosophers of science are realists, arguing that science is approaching a true and accurate description of the real world, whereas social and cultural theorists support a relativist view of science, and argue that all knowledge of the world is socially constructed.

What has gone unnoticed in this debate is that there is a parallel and equally fundamental dispute over whether mathematics is discovered or invented. The absolutist view of mathematics sees it as universal, objective and certain, with mathematical truths being discovered through the intuition of the mathematician and then being established by proof. Many modern writers on mathematics share this view, including Roger Penrose in The Emperor’s New Mind, and John Barrow in Pi in the Sky, as indeed do most mathematicians. The absolutists support a ‘discovery’ view and argue that mathematical ‘objects’ and knowledge are necessary, perfect and eternal, and remark on the ‘unreasonable effectiveness’ of mathematics in providing the conceptual framework for science. They claim that mathematics must be woven into the very fabric of the world, for since it is a pure endeavour removed from everyday experience how else could it describe so perfectly the patterns found in nature?  Read more... (2278 words, 1 image, estimated 9:07 mins reading time)

“…a sense sublime
of something far more deeply interfused,
whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
and the round ocean, and the living air…”

- Wordsworth

This is not a teaching. It’s not even a communication from one person to another.

It is a sharing, from nobody to nobody, from Source to Source, of something so intimate, so present, so damn alive that words cannot even begin to touch it.

From the moment I started talking about this, I knew that not a single word I said about it could ever be true.

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The wonder and the grace of this: nobody can own it. It cannot be held, cannot be possessed, cannot be grasped in any way. Although I’ve been writing and talking about this for a few years now, I have never, ever had the sense that it has anything to do with me, with the character called Jeff. Never felt that I was in any way special.

In fact, that’s exactly what fell away: the specialness of Jeff. Yes, that was the shocking realisation: this had nothing to do with anything I’d ever done, or not done. Nothing to do with a separate “me”, a separate self. Nothing to do with effort or attainment or adding anything to the seeker.  Read more... (2426 words, 1 image, estimated 9:42 mins reading time)

 

“In the beginning,
trees were trees,
mountains were mountains,
and rivers were rivers.

Then came a time when trees were no longer trees, mountains were no longer mountains,
and rivers were no longer rivers.

 Read more... (3364 words, 1 image, estimated 13:27 mins reading time)

Now, trees are once again trees,
mountains are once again mountains,
and rivers are once again rivers.”

- Zen saying

People sometimes tell me that they think this message is nihilistic. That it’s life-denying, that it separates the “absolute” from the “relative”, emphasises the absolute and denies the relative. Then again, there are many people who read my books and see that what I’m really talking about is unconditional love and unity and the end of all seeking. Anyway, I’m fascinated by the varying responses.

Sometimes the interpretations of what I write (or more correctly, what gets written!) do not at all match what is being communicated. Somebody recently hit the nail on the head when they suggested that upon hearing and believing the words “there is nothing to get”, someone might just go and commit suicide because life was pointless. It’s possible that the words could be taken that way. And at the same time, that would be to absolutely miss what the words are getting at. Violence – of any sort – is not being condoned here.

The search for a spiritual path is born out of suffering. It does not start with lights and ecstasy, but with the hard tacks of pain, disappointment, and confusion. However, for suffering to give birth to a genuine spiritual search, it must amount to more than something passively received from without. It has to trigger an inner realization, a perception which pierces through the facile complacency of our usual encounter with the world to glimpse the insecurity perpetually gaping underfoot. When this insight dawns, even if only momentarily, it can precipitate a profound personal crisis. It overturns accustomed goals and values, mocks our routine preoccupations, leaves old enjoyments stubbornly unsatisfying.

At first such changes generally are not welcome. We try to deny our vision and to smother our doubts; we struggle to drive away the discontent with new pursuits. But the flame of inquiry, once lit, continues to burn, and if we do not let ourselves be swept away by superficial readjustments or slouch back into a patched up version of our natural optimism, eventually the original glimmering of insight will again flare up, again confront us with our essential plight. It is precisely at that point, with all escape routes blocked, that we are ready to seek a way to bring our disquietude to an end. No longer can we continue to drift complacently through life, driven blindly by our hunger for sense pleasures and by the pressure of prevailing social norms. A deeper reality beckons us; we have heard the call of a more stable, more authentic happiness, and until we arrive at our destination we cannot rest content.  Read more... (3752 words, 1 image, estimated 15:00 mins reading time)