Philosophy Wire: God…

Excavations on the south coast of South Africa have uncovered evidence of human occupations from the end of the last ice age, approximately 35,000 years ago, through the complex transition to the modern time, known as the Holocene and adaptions that were key to our species ability to survive wide climate and environmental fluctuations. [1] Run to the hills. The sea is coming. Run to the hills. The wind is blowing. A fierce storm raging. And in the middle of the sea, a man alone wandering. "I am not afraid!". Whispering, while heading to the bottom of the deep sea. "I am God"...

(Why can’t you believe in me?)

Fossils in the middle of the steep hill.

Who are those looking at me?

Parents crying.

A new storm raging in the midst of the sea…

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Philosophy Wire: Past. Eruptions. Memory.

Stromboli, the 'lighthouse of the Mediterranean', is known for its low-energy but persistent explosive eruptions, behaviour that is known scientifically as Strombolian activity. Occasionally, however, more intense and sudden explosions occur, most recently in July and August last year (2019). These are known as 'Strombolian paroxysms'. During such events several of Stromboli's craters are active simultaneously and much greater volumes of pyroclastic materials are erupted than is usual for the volcano. [1] Old erruptions. New explosions. Predicting the future. Through viewing the past. A past whispering gently in your ear. "There is nothing to predict. But the things you do". Sleeping man. Watching the eruption. Can you smell death? Waking up. Predicting the past. It is the only way to dream of flowers as long as this morning lasts...

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Philosophy Wire: Smell the jasmine…

Based on highly sensitive recordings of neuron activity in the noses of mice, researchers have found that olfactory sensory neurons can exhibit suppression or enhancement of response when odors are mixed, overturning a long-standing view that the response is a simple sum with more complex processing only happening at later stages. [1] Smell the jasmine. No, it is not just a jasmine. It is your old parent's house. It is your hopes as a child. Your dreams and things that never came to be. It is that galaxy you saw during that night and you still cannot recall whether it was a dream or not. Smell the jasmine. Open your eyes. See? It is just a jasmine. (Why do you cry in an empty cosmos?)

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Philosophy Wire: Quantum states. Forever. Now! (Watch for Socrates)

A team of scientists has announced the discovery of a simple modification that allows quantum systems to stay operational - or 'coherent' - 10,000 times longer than before. [1] One second. Ten thousand seconds. A century. A thousand years. Forever. Different words meaning the same thing: Now. For all there ever is, is now. Look at the water drops falling. The bee buzzing. Worlds colliding. Empires falling. Do you feel it? No, they did not crumble in the past. Look at Rome burning! And stop looking at those stupid particles. Socrates dies as we speak! Whispering to us…

(Nothing is coherent… Except the world that is not…)

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Philosophy Wire: Old stories. Long gone.

Photos by Spiros Kakos

Long ago, four giant beings arrived in southeast Australia. Three strode out to other parts of the continent, but one crouched in place. His body transformed into a volcano called Budj Bim, and his teeth became the lava the volcano spat out. Now, scientists say this tale—told by the Aboriginal Gunditjmara people of the area—may have some basis in fact. [1] Arrogant men. Telling stories. Not believing old stories they have heard. Soon the arrogant men will die. Soon other arrogant men will appear. And they will tell stories of their own. And they will deny the stories they’ve heard. Oh, dear men. Why don’t you believe in the raining clouds? Why don’t you see your face in the Earth? Listen to the wind. It is not the cosmos talking. It is you denying to ever speak…

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Philosophy Wire: Yellow. (So?)

Photo by Spiros Kakos @ Pexels

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2022-07-03]: Antique artefacts have been studied by chemists, revealing a hitherto unknown use of yellow in Ancient Egypt. [1] Yellow. Orange. Black. What does it matter? For you will always be here. And this artifact will always be back then. Not sitting in your hands. But in the hands of its owners. In ancient Egypt. Under the scorching sun. Waiting to die out of existence. The moment someone notices it. And turn into the black and white of dreams. Fake dreams. Denoting the only thing true that ever existed under that Sun…

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Philosophy Wire: Old people… Modern people…

Some 9,000 years ago, residents of one of the world's first large farming communities were also among the first humans to experience some of the perils of modern urban living. Scientists studying the ancient ruins of Çatalhöyük, in modern Turkey, found that its inhabitants - 3,500 to 8,000 people at its peak - experienced overcrowding, infectious diseases, violence and environmental problems. [1] Meet the new people. Same as the old people. Do you really believe you can change? Do you think that you can't? You are here and you will be here tomorrow. How could you not be here yesterday? You will be different tomorrow. How could you be here now? Accept yourself. And you will not recognize you in the future… Embrace your change. And you will see you everyday in the past… Listen to yourself speaking through the aeons… “Weird cosmos. The only way for it to exist and have meaning, is to accept that we don't”…

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Philosophy Wire: Ocean. Memories. Raging abyss.

Photo by Brady Knoll from Pexels

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2021-02-12]: Cold waters that sank in polar regions hundreds of years ago during the Little Ice Age are still impacting deep Pacific Ocean temperature trends. While the deep Pacific temperature trends are small, they represent a large amount of energy in the Earth system. [1] What is gone is no longer here. And yet, it still is. The cold water in the bottom of the abyss. The heat of a Sun long gone. The laughter of people roaming Earth a long time ago. The footsteps of children on the beach now long gone. A cosmos full of tears. And in the midst of nothingness, a Man. Remembering of nothing. Walking in the hot desert. Looking for an old dark abyss lost in this dreams… He is sleeping now… Crying… Feeling the ocean forming in his feet… Raging strength! “Wake up”…

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Philosophy Wire: From death to life… Timeless…

Fossilised newborns, egg shells, and egg bursters preserved together in amber provide the first direct evidence of how insects broke the barrier separating them from life and took their first steps into an ancient forest 130 million-year-old. [1] We love staring at ‘moments frozen in time’. We believe we know – even though we can never understand why – that the cosmos is made out of such moments. We believe in that magical river of which a wise man talked about so long ago. And yet, we missed the whole point he was trying to make. Looking at the finger instead of looking at the moon. There is not a single experience we can experience inside that flowing river. We can never enter again the river. Not because the river changes. But because we are that river. Look at the raging waves. Behold of the deep unknown abyss. Only a drop inside it can grasp it so clearly…

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Philosophy Wire: Hunger stones. River. The abyss. Sorrow.

In 2018, more than a dozen of the hunger stones could be seen around Děčín, recording the low water levels of years and centuries long ago – "chiselled with the years of hardship and the initials of authors lost to history", as described by the authors of a 2013 study on historic Czech droughts. The oldest and most famous of these landmarks, known simply as "Hunger Rock" according to Děčín's tourist guide, contains an inscription that dates back to 1616, which reads: "Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine" (If you see me, weep). [1]

Soon the river will be dry.
And we will be able to step in it again…
Soon we will weep.
And our tears will fill the abyss…

See the river rising again.
Don’t be afraid.
You are the river!

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Philosophy Wire: Erasing the past. Building the future.

Physicists insist on determinism: your past and present determine your future uniquely, per Einstein's equations of general relativity. They call this strong cosmic censorship. A mathematician found some types of black holes - charged, non-rotating objects in an expanding universe - that allow an observer inside the black hole to travel across a horizon into a place where the past is obliterated and there are an infinite number of possible futures for every initial state. [1] Humans believing in a past and a future, all determining the present. (see this article here and relevant posts in Harmonia Philosophica for how the future affects the present) A present which in essence never existed or can ever exist. Consisting just by fleeting moments in an illusionary river (time), which we can never cross. Try to put your feet into that river and it will go away. We have split the water into zillions of droplets and yet we can feel none of them. Go into the black hole and see for yourself. There was no river in the first place. Only empty space; flowing through nothingness. Start fresh. Be born again. Oh look! What a nice river…

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Philosophy Wire: Ancient Greeks. Seismogenic fault lines.

It seems that ancient Greeks were building important structures – like the temple of Delphi – on seismogenic fault lines. [1] They had understood that the wrath and destruction from an earthquake also bore some benefits, like for example hot springs or gas-releasing cracks on the ground offering energy, warmth or even mystical powers to the people on site. Seek Pythia in the ruins. Find wisdom inside catastrophy and chaos.

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Philosophy Wire: Old injuries. New injuries. Timeless Dasein.

Analysis shows that comparing ancient and modern bone breaks yields little insight into hominids’ everyday dangers. Old and modern injuries look alike, thus making it difficult to draw conclusion based on their comparison. For example it seems that water tubing accidents or table run-ins cause Neandertal-like injuries. [1] Do not look at the data too much. Do not rest on your theories. Look at that man next to you. After years, when they examine both of you everything will be the same. Do not sit. Run. That man is after you. Run into the cave. Open the light. He is you!

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Philosophy Wire: Étienne. Spartans. You.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-04-09]: Étienne Fourmont is famous for destroying all ancient Sparta monuments so that no other traveler could see them (!) and he could have all the glory for revealing Sparta to the future generations! [1] Some thing you can you destroy a whole people. That you can  erase it from collective memory. But how can you do that when everything that happened in the past is already an integral part of today? Perhaps all monuments of Sparta are destroyed, but we are all Spartans! And Athenians! And Corinthians! And...

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Philosophy Wire: Memory, time, self-reference...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-03-16]: Our memory does not work like a video camera. Instead, it inserts pieces of the present into the past when it creates memories. [1] The present determines the past, as the past determines the present as well. The future and our aspirations for it determine the present (see what the Chinese think about that), while the latter determines the former as well. Everything mixed together in a endless circle of self-reference. So irrational and yet, so familiar... [consciousness/ self-reference] You must forget about time if you with to understand him.

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Philosophy Wire: Left. Past. Geometry.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-02-07]: People with problem in seeing what is left, have problems in remembering the past. [1] We tend to think of time as another spatial dimension. We tend to think in lines and circles. We have geometry in us. From Euclides to Kepler to modern science, we think in shapes. Shapes shaped by something. Shapes on a unique invisible blackboard where we can travel at will. Draw the chalk. Am I still in Kythera in 2010? [Harmonia Philosophica]

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Philosophy Wire: Radio bursts. Past. Future. Humans.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-01-16]: Fast radio bursts might come from nearby stars. [1] We may not realize it, but we do not know the past. We will never know it. We decide it... We do not know the future. We make it happen... Part of nothing. Full of everything. Drifting away in an abyss of ignorance. The only thing we know is that we don't know. And we will never learn. We are humans!

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Philosophy Wire: Movies, films, oblivion...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-01-06]: According to a study conducted by the Library of Congress, 70 percent of American silent films are lost--and a good portion of the remaining ones aren't exactly in great shape, either. [1] An era trying to define it self. An era where the past is more important than the now. Trying to hang on a bunch of old films... Trying to find our selves in the midst of the storm... I hear the rough sea outside... I feel the ship sinking... Smiling... Forgetting seems the only way to remember...

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Philosophy Wire: E.T. don't throw away!

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-07-01]: Fuel Entertainment organizes a treasure hunt to dig out an old E.T. video game which was thrown away by Atari since it failed to become a hit. [1] Never throw away anything. Someone in the Universe might need it someday...

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Philosophy Wire: City, lost innocence, blackbirds...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-06-15]: According to a new study comparing urban birds to their country cousins, birds from the city "started their activity earlier and had faster but less robust circadian oscillation of locomotor activity than forest conspecifics". [1]

Innocence is gone.

And only a cold thing like science can remind us of that.
If it really knew what that meant, she would never helped us remember...

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