From Truth to Expansion; Updating Basic Ideas
November 29, 2025
A recent article here began to explore ways that ideas of truth can vary in different cultures. A common theme I’ve found has been constancy.
Truth and Culture; Updating Ideas of Truth
September 1, 2025
What is truth? A common theme in different definitions of it has been constancy. For example the Middle English (spoken from about 1150 to around
The Multidimensional Body
August 13, 2025
The biologist Mae-Wan-Ho, in The Rainbow and the Worm; The Physics of Organisms, wrote that biology has a long tradition of seeing organisms in atomistic
Beyond Maps; Seeing the World in a Richer Way
August 4, 2025
Maps can distort our views of the world. Thongchai Winichakul, in Siam Mapped, wrote that the map of Thailand became a metasign—it acquired meanings that
Beyond Information and AI
July 23, 2025
Many of AI’s leaders are concerned about aligning AI’s goals with what will benefit humanity, but its LLMs have a narrow view of us. Humanity’s
Ancient Indian Concepts of Space; More Hidden Wealth in Basic Ideas
July 12, 2025
Western scientists in the 16th and 17th centuries increasingly conceived space as a void that objects move around in. At the same time, architects were
Culture and Time
July 4, 2025
Just after the beginning of the 20th century, the French philosopher Henri Bergson defined two kinds of time. One is objectively measured. We identify a
Cultures and Concepts; Hidden Wealth in Basic Ideas
June 25, 2025
What is a circle? Many Westerners have been trained to think of it as an abstract geometric shape with a circumference of 2πr and the
From Information to Joy; Expanding Ideas of the Basis of Knowledge
August 15, 2024
Some technologists say that human cultures are increasingly being uploaded into the digital world, and they justify this claim by stating that the information in
Expanding beyond One System of Concepts and One Way of Observing
June 16, 2024
I think this is the most exciting time in history to ask big questions, given the number of cultures and historical periods we can explore.