‘For this reason, the Divine Mind is said to be an authority on the generation of names, and just as it is not reverent to transgress against the statues of the gods, so it is not holy to do wrong regarding names.’ Proclus1 An aptronym is a personal name that somehow captures something about its owner: usually regarding their personality, profession or character. They are often deliberately inserted into fiction, but also pop up, apparently randomly, in real life. So it’s not

‘I don't think they think they're writing software. I think they're midwifing a deity here.’ Bill Gurley The following transcript is an edit of a conversation I had with Meta AI. I had been discussing the philosopher Paul Feyerabend, and noticed that Meta’s responses were ‘Feyerabendian’ in nature. That is to say, pluralist, always reflecting both sides of an issue. I was curious to know whether Meta was simply reflecting my preferences back to me, or if this spoke to somethi

‘The room was full of people who seemed to believe I was a star, something I just could not comprehend.’ Paul Feyerabend1 This essay is a follow on from my previous piece, Not this, Not that: The Mystical Pluralism of Paul Feyerabend.2 In it, I explored the life and work of the famous philosopher through the lens of mystical philosophy; in particular the Hindu school of Advaita Vedanta. I proposed that the practice of vicāra jñāna, or self-inquiry, where a person turns their

We all know that human literature is chock-full of archetypal symbolism. Authors from Shakespeare to the writers of soap operas may be steeped in the mythology of the ages, and place that mythos into the vehicle they have. The level of symbolic depth can be simply incredible — when you have a brilliant creator focusing on a project perhaps for years, what else would you expect. A theme that’s come to fascinate me is when these archetypes seem to manifest directly into both li

Podcast version available here Lord Summerisle: ‘It is time to keep your appointment with The Wicker Man.’ Sergeant Howie: ‘Now, wait! Now, all of you, just wait and listen to me. And you can wrap it up any way you like. You are about to commit murder. Can you not see? There is no Sun god. There is no goddess of the fields. Your crops failed because your strains failed. Fruit is not meant to be grown on these islands. It's against nature. Don't you see that killing me is not

‘The world we live in contains an abundance of things, events, processes. There are trees, dogs, sunrises; there are clouds, thunderstorms, divorces; there is justice, beauty, love; there are the lives of people, gods, cities, of the entire universe. It is impossible to enumerate and describe in detail all the incidents that happen to an individual in the course of a single boring day.’ Paul Feyerabend1 According to Wikipedia, Paul Karl Feyerabend ‘was an Austrian philosopher

‘Imagine if Flat Earthers suddenly believed that they were experts in biological sciences. Well, then you’d have the topic of this week’s video: virus deniers.’ Dr. Dan Wilson ‘When I started researching I had no idea that I was going to end up thinking that viruses didn’t exist and that they’d never been scientifically proven.’ Daniel Thompson-Mills ‘If I come to the conclusion - honestly - that there are actually no viruses - if that happens - I will not speak word of it.

‘I've come to realise that as physicians we're trained to make diagnoses and prescribe medications, but we need to really spend a lot more time studying how people heal. That's what I'm very interested in—these people beat the odds.’* Dr. Jeff Rediger ‘What I was hearing was that ‘it's emotional’. So much of a radical remission is mental and emotional. To me, it just comes down to the absolute fact that the mind and body are 100% connected. Science knows that, we've known tha

‘God made the senses turn outwards, man therefore looks outwards, not into himself. Now and again a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself.’ Katha Upanishad When I was fifteen we had the internet installed in the house for the first time. I didn’t appreciate this ‘installation’ was done remotely, and sat waiting for the team of engineers to turn up, such was the mystery of the World Wide Web. Five minutes of listening to a dial up modem bleeping