Parallel Worlds

I. Stephen Hawking has once again claimed philosophy is dead. On the outset he is still completely wrong. No matter what final determination science can make about the nature of reality, it still can't give us a complete metaphysical picture. It is self limiting. More importantly, it can't tell us what to do. There will always be the need for philosophy as an assessment of the world we live in.

Having said that, philosophy is killing itself from the inside. After one hundred years of positivist influence, the contemporary state of philosophy as analytic is dead, in a sense of a wider historic view rather than a narrow technical method. Analytic philosophy is good at asking questions, but as it has thrown itself at the mathematical and scientific side of knowledge, it doesn't seem to do as well at answering them. In this respect, Continental philosophy fares better, as do other humanities. For instance, these days a lot of interesting works of philosophy can be found by writers like Terry Eagleton, an English professor. The other humanities, such as English, are undergoing the same difficulties, a century of "scienceitization" and intrusion by social science. Richard Rorty has written about this reorientation in both philosophy and English. In "The Inspirational Value of Great Works of Literature", he writes about philosophical dryness, and dissertation work being done on areas like " the proper analysis of subjunctive conditional sentences," and not in the engaging areas of philosophical wisdom.  The problem with a "little" philosophy, is that it is not enough.

II. Last Book Read - Parallel Worlds- Michio Kaku

As for science and philosophy, Michio Kaku's work Parallel Worlds does offer some insight.  This book serves as a great introduction to his work, as it summarizes much of the string theory information found in Beyond Einstein and Hyperspace as well as the future technology found in Physics of the Impossible.  He also presents interesting ideas about the transition of civilization from a Type 0 to Type I and beyond, such as the establishment of the internet as a Type I communication system and the evolution from nations to trading blocks, revealing the significance of our current time in history and the future paradigm shifts. Kaku discusses surviving the death of the solar system and, more importantly, the eventual death of the universe by using technology to escape to other locales in the multiverse. After theorizing about the "theory of everything" needed to reach this technological level, he concludes that even if we can reduce all the known physics down to a one inch equation, we still have to ask "why that equation?"  "Where did this equation come from?"  At this point, it seems that cosmology and physics can't help us.  There is still the problem of meaning.  Kaku shows that in the infinite multiverse , anything that can happen does and every choice is made both ways.  There is no uniqueness to any situation, no weight or consequence of choice, no "moral sense."  Kaku's resolution to this "quantum existential crisis" is that meaning must be created by each individual.  In this way, Kaku acknowledges that philosophy must pick up where science stops.

Random Notes

So Republicans are now proposing that everything is on the table to be cut - including Medicare.  Wasn't part of the outrage directed at Obama's reform incited by the scare tactics of cutting Medicare?  Of course the conservative pawns bought right into that one.  Furthermore, Boehner response to the charge that Republican cuts will cost jobs is "so be it." This comes after two years of nonstop complaining about Obama and his weak responses to job loss.

Bullet the Blue Sky

Since every February 6th this comes up, here's my tribute to Reagan, thanks to Think Progress:

10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan