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to Hughes-Buridan Book Review
Acronyms and symbols used in Why this Review:
MoQ |
- Metaphysics of Quality |
SOM |
- Subject-Object Metaphysics |
Why this Review?
Concurrently with and using our review of Hughes' and Buridan's
work, we want to show you why SOMthink
cripples our abilities to reason.
- Your reviewer decided to comment on Hughes' review of Buridan
for several following reasons:
- To show you, reader, that Aristotle, a great sophist-hater,
is a crypto-sophist.
- To demonstrate unambiguously Buridan's class of self-referent
sophisms shows SOM's King, dialecticand its progenyabsolute
truth, wear no clothes.
- To investigate uncanny similarities
of sophist thinking and rhetoric to post modern quantum thinking. (We see recognition of this in other authors'
works: Nick Herbert in his
Quantum Reality on quantum logic, of course Pirsig and
his concept of many truths, and recently Irving Stein in his
The Concept of Object as the Foundation of Physics on his Buridan's ass analogy to non-preference
as a quantum leap.)
- To understand further Pirsig's speculation about what Western
culture might have been had SOM not killed its parent. Pirsig's
description in his Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
of a philosophical parenticide which commenced with Homer's Iliad
and culminated with Aristotle's Principia. Pirsig's antagonist,
Aristotelian SOM (Subject-Object Metaphysics) killed its parent
philosophy: Sophism. We ask our
readers to further consider what classical 'christians' have
done to quantum~gnosis over last two millennia. See our review
of Mark Gaffney's Gnostic
Secrets of the Naassenes.
- To understand further popular Western cultural denigration
of sophism since Parmenides.
- To disclose to a more general audience your reviewer's own
reading of Aristotle's words in his Principia, under Logic
- On Sophistical Refutations, where he says, "That
some reasonings are genuine, while others seem to be so, but
are not, is evident." An ancient version of a kind of imposed
political correctness for logical thought. Certainly
this arrogance of a finite intellect's presumed ability to distinguish
true logic from sophism would declare quantum logic, "sophistry."
We find this marvelous in retrospect, especially upon considering
many impacts of 2500 years of this same SOMthink on Western culture
and societies.
- As another stake in the heart of Western philosophy's
parent logic SOMthink. We know now SOMthink was born of an act
of murder and wrath. (The
first word of the first sentence of Homer's original Iliad
in Greek: "mhnin aeide thea Peladew Achilos..." In
English: "Sing, oh, Muse of the Wrath
of Achilles...")
- To disclose a connection we discovered in Irving Stein's,
The Concept of Object
as the Foundation of Physics (reviewed nearby). Stein
compares his own quintessential epiphany required as a bridge
to quantum thinking. Stein sees a paradox which exemplifies his
epiphany: one mis-attributed Buridan sophism, called The
Paradox of Buridan's Ass. (Please, no pun here. Many philosophers
use animals in their formal logic gedanken parables. Among our
philosophical reading adventures we see squirrels, monkeys, alligators,
dogs, donkeys, etc. Someone, unknown to us, used an ass (~donkey)
to re-render a Buridan sophism, and it stuck as Buridan's own.
Sophism, that is... Pin the tail... )
- Your reviewer's own personal need to expound and distinguish
among SOM, cultural relativism, and Pirsig's own MoQ or Metaphysics
of Quality.
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©Quantonics, Inc., 1998-2010 Rev. 27Oct2008 PDR
Created: 17Dec1998 PDR
(6Oct2000 rev - Repair typos.)
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