text:
Bas C. van Fraassen
Princeton University
My topics today are the relation between science and myth, and the possibility of empiricism as an approach to life as well as to science. But philosophy is a thoroughly historical enterprise, a dialogue that continues in the present but is always almost entirely shaped by our past. So I will devote the first half of this talk to setting the historical stage.
There are two main traditions in philosophy about science and about our knowledge of nature; I'll refer to them as realist metaphysics and empiricism. Both of these can be approached more narrowly as concerning how we should understand science. But we can also think of them more broadly as concerned with making sense of the world and at the same time, of our attempts to make sense of the world.
For the realist, science is a journey of discovery. In fact, realists think of philosophy and science as jointly trying to uncover what is really going on in nature, even "behind the scenes" so to speak. And at the same time, the realist sees science as aiming at real understanding of how nature works, and why it is the way it is. The two aims, of discovering what the world is like, and understanding or making sense of it, are not automatically the same! But for realism there is no tension between them -- they are happy to identify the What and the Why. All of this presupposes of course that there is a Why, that for everything there is a reason. Another way to characterize realist metaphysics, more or less equivalently, is as follows. For realists the question Why? has absolute primacy; and they presuppose that it must have an answer always. Science is then conceived of as taking on the task of answering that question. What sort of answers is it supposed to get? Realist metaphysical systems, which are proposed as extensions of and continuous with science -- or else extant science itself, under some realist interpretation -- give the answers, and do so by postulating "deep" facts about the world. In other words, realists are satisfied with answers-by-postulate.
It is not equally easy to characterize empiricism. Mostly empiricists have distinguished themselves by their negative, critical reactions to various sorts of realism. Happily we possess a dramatization of what it is like to become an empiricist through bone and marrow. I at least have always understood Jean-Paul Sartre's novel Nausea as doing exactly that: the protagonist Antoine Roquentin is in the agonizing process of becoming what I'll call a classic empiricist. Eventually Roquentin says:
Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be -- and behind them ... there is nothing.
This is an extreme form of empiricism: Roquentin denies the realist assumption that there is something to be known or found "behind" the phenomena which appear to us. Later I will quote him some more to point up some of his agony with this way of being in the world. I will also argue that not every way of being an empiricist needs to entail such agony.
Not every empiricist is equally extreme in his or her conclusions. To reject realism it is enough to become agnostic about what the realist says we need to find. But a thoroughgoing agnosticism may not be any more comfortable, for it lacks even the sense of certainty that comes with saying "There is nothing there!"
The philosophical reactions that I identify as empiricist through the course of history have always in the first instance been rebellions against realism. The empiricist comes across as being "against theory", calling us back to experience. He or she is thoroughly sceptical of the philosophical stories about why experience must be this way or that. Realists counter that this will lead us into utter, debilitating scepticism, that it will deprive life and the world of all meaning and intelligibility.
It is a sad fact that when empiricists have tried to do something more constructive, they often just ended up doing metaphysics too. Often they were seduced by the assumption that we can give meaning to life simply by attributing some postulated "deep structure" either to the world we live in, or to our experience. Empiricism cannot simply go at right angles to the realist course; if it is to work at all, it must step out of that plane of motion altogether. The realist sees our epistemic enterprise as achieving a world picture, something that purports to be the One True Story of the World. Outright denial of his world would push us simply into a rival world picture. I want to raise the possibility of life without a worldview -- at least without the sort of worldview that metaphysical realists hold out for us as the aim of science and philosophy.
The story I shall tell in this part is a drama in three acts. Aristotle insisted that science aims not just to describe the phenomena but to explain them. He then immediately went on to identify explanation with description of something "deeper". This led to a view of science as describing necessity in nature (as opposed to the "merely" actual), or laws of nature (as opposed to "mere" regularities). The nominalist/empiricist rebellion of the late Middle Ages challenged any such enterprise which requires empirical science to reach for something far beyond empirical ken. In the third act the realists face the empiricists with a tragic dilemma: either you resign yourselves to living in an utterly meaningless world, or you must believe something not because your experience leads you to it, but purely to escape this meaninglessness.
Of course I admit what will already be obvious to you from this little synopsis: I am giving you a rather biased history of philosophy. But you know my bias: I want to be an empiricist, in some way that makes sense for us today.
1. Aristotle's view of science: the What and the Why
Let us begin with Aristotle's account of the eclipse. We find him focussing on eclipses of the moon. Loking back from the twentieth century, we think immediately that the reason is not far to seek. A lunar eclipse is visible at the same time to a large part of the earth, while the solar eclipse is visible only in a small part. Therefore quite accurate predictions were possible for lunar eclipses, but not for eclipses of the sun. But when we then check Aristotle's discussions, we find to our surprise that they are not at all concerned with this difference in predictability!
What does he discuss then? He discusses what an eclipse is. To him, the aim of science is to reach understanding, to know the reasons why things happen the way they do. Then it turns out that according to him, we understand such a phenomenon as the eclipse when we know what an eclipse is:
the question 'What is eclipse?' and its answer 'The privation of the moon's light by the interposition of the earth' are identical with the question... 'Why does the moon suffer eclipse?' and the reply 'Because of the failure of light through the earth's shutting it out'.
(Posterior Analytics II, 2, 90, 7-18)
Persuasive. But he must have something quite special in mind when he emphasizes the "is" in "what it is." Eclipses are many things -- perhaps, for example, the eclipse is the one lunar phenomenon that has struck terror in the hearts of millions -- but they don't all help to tell us why there are eclipses. So Aristotle envisages a sort of hierarchy or priority of properties: some properties are essential, others merely accidental. The essential ones answer the Why-question as well.
This hierarchy in what the thing is, comes from an asymmetry in explanation. If A explains B, you cannot also say that B explains A. To take a modern example: The light reaching us from distant galaxies exhibits a red shift if those galaxies are receding from us; and vice versa: those galaxies are receding from us if their light has this red shift. Yet it is the receding motion which explains the red shift -- and not vice versa. Aristotle himself gave two examples: the planets do not twinkle (unlike the stars) because they are near; the moon waxes and wanes as it does because it is spherical. In each case, we are disinclined to add "and vice versa".
To account for these asymmetries, then, Aristotle holds that some properties of a thing are 'essential' to it, and others not essential but 'accidental'. The paradigm of explanation for him, is appeal to what is essential in order to acount for the accidental.
But what is essential? We are never told completely. Part of the answer is that only what is necessary is essential. Hence, an explanation of the phenomena through appeal to what is essential, is partly this: to show why the phenomena had to be what in fact they were, they had to happen in the way they did.
This is how the idea of necessity enters the discussion: the asymmetry of Why? engenders an asymmetry in the What? which is traced to an asymmetry between contingency and necessity. But this new distinction is no less mysterious than the preceding one.
2. Medieval realism
Aristotle's account of the world was developed in depth by the medieval philosophers, such as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Because they were also theologians, they had in principle available a quite simple account of those distinctions which Aristotle had introduced into natural philosophy.
Let me first tell you something about how they saw the world. Consider this piece of chalk. It must fall if I release it. It must break if I apply a mere ten pounds of pressure on the middle. You can see that it is white; but you would know that if I kept it hidden and merely told you that it was pure chalk. The reason -- they would say -- is that all those things are necessary to chalk, it is the nature of chalk. To this extent the world is determined.
Besides this deterministic aspect of the world they also recognized chance and free will. In fact, we today can see a rudimentary idea of statistical science in what Aquinas says about this:
The majority of men follow their passions, which are movements of the sensitive appetite, in which movements heavenly bodies can cooperate, but [a] few are wise enough to resist these passions. Consequently, astrologers are able to foretell the truth in the majority of cases, especially in a general way. But not in particular cases.
Summa Theologiae I, Qu. 115, a. 4, ad Obj. 3
The medievals saw much more chance, and much less determination in the world than people do today, even now.
But Aquinas, following Aristotle, would not have classed all that as science. A stone could begin to roll down a hillside "just by itself", or a person could "just decide" to give in to some passion. Such accidental phenomena are classed as not within the realm of scientific knowledge. The aspect of the world covered by scientific explanation was exactly what is determined by the natures of things, that is, what is necessary. Their world is partly indeterministic, but science describes what is necessary, i. e. deterministic about that world (see e.g. Aquinas, Commentary on the Post-Anal. I, lect. 16, 6-7; Summa contra Gentiles II, 23, 2).
I said that as theologians, they had an explanation available: some things God decreed, and some he left open (so to speak). Actually that just pushes the issue one step farther back. Here is the puzzle. Suppose -- to take one of their examples -- that wood always burns when heated. What exactly did God decree: that wood will always burn when heated, or that wood must always burn when heated? That certain things will always happen or always be thus or so, or that they have to be always that way? Are there some things that happen every time, but are not necessary?
Let me try to convince you that philosophers are not perverse when they draw this distinction. You make that distinction too. Suppose we could equate: X never happens = X is impossible. That would also mean: If something is possible, then it will happen at some time or other. If you believe that, then you never need to use the words "possible" again. Nor its cognates like "impossible" or "necessary." Because, if you believe that, the things that are possible are exactly the things that are actual at some time or other. In that case you could always use the word "sometimes" instead of "possible."
But I'm sure you are not happy with that idea. For example, you believe that the human race will never enter a giant suicide pact and do away with itself -- but you won't say that it couldn't possibly do so. Even what you and I could do today, what is possible for us, is not exhausted by the few things we will actually do at some time or other.
Why is this important? Well, if those medieval realists are right about what science is,then science has to discover not just what always happens, but what is necessary. In other words, the task of science is to divide the things that always happen in a regular way into two classes: the ones that just happen to be that regular ("mere" regularity), and the ones that are that regular because that is how they have to be ("necessities in nature", "laws"). But the problem for us humans is that we can't tell the difference just by looking at what actually happens -- and still, that is all that we ever get to see.
How would it help to bring God into the picture? If the distinction is one He can make, if it comes for example from what He decreed and left open at creation, we still have to ask: how can we make sense of science as a humanly possible enterprise?
Aquinas himself insisted on making room for this enterprise, though with the reason that to think of every necessity as directly connected to God's will (rather than having been instilled in nature, so to speak) was to denigrate Creation.
3. The Nominalist/Empiricist rebellion
Happily I can refer you to another literary dramatization: Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. The character William of Baskerville personifies the intellectual rebellion of such philosophers as William of Ockham. The Nominalists of the late Middle Ages concluded there are no necessities in nature, no necessary connections (in later terminology: no laws of nature). On the theological side they merely said that of course it was necessary that if God willed something then it happened. But within nature by itself, there is no division between necessary and merely actual.[2]
These Nominalists of the fourteenth century turned upside down the whole conception of the world and of science. Their movement marks the true birth of Empiricism. Of course they also have to show us that they can make sense of the world we live in, and of the scientific enterprise. Typically they begin with a simple point from logic. Consider the assertion that wood must burn when heated. Here is a piece of wood, namely a table. Should we conclude that it will necessarily burn if heated? Is it impossible for it to stay whole if I put it in a furnace? I think that you are all nodding yes to yourselves.
But let me give you an parallel example. It is not an accident or coincidence that all bachelors are unmarried. Bachelors are necessarily unmarried. Now let me see if there is one in the audience. You, sir, are a bachelor? All right, then, should I now turn to you all and say: Behold, here we have one, a person who is necessarily unmarried, a person who could not be married? Actually there is nothing wrong with him, as far as I can see!
Similarly for a piece of wood: if it didn't burn when heated, we would say: It looks like wood in almost every respect, but it is not wood. If I say this very thing must burn when heated, that is elliptical -- I expect you, the listener, to supply a tacit clause like "Given that it is made of wood, as we all know." But in that case, the necessity is merely verbal.[3]
As you can imagine, this raised a storm of protest. To the realist it is crucial that some things are really necessary and really possible, not just verbally. You really cannot jump over this building, though you really can jump over a doorstep -- that is not just a matter of words. Just try and you'll see! Don't such examples show that there are real necessities in nature? No, in fact they don't. For perhaps we just say such things -- use the words "really can, really cannot" -- to express a very strong conviction that they won't happen. In that case, the use of those words says a lot more about us than about nature.
The realists answered that there were two things that all science aims at, and that are impossible for the nominalist. The first is reasonable expectation, and the second explanation. If there is no reason "in" this table that makes it burn when heated, then there is no reason to expect that it will. No reason to expect that individual matches will burn, or water quench thirst next time you drink, or that Rosemary's baby will be human. And secondly, if the nominalist is so perverse as to keep expecting that babies born from humans are always human, and so forth, then he has no explanation of that fact, he can't explain why the world should be so regular.
Let me quickly illustrate this with one of their actual disputes, which we look back on today as prefiguring Newton's first law of motion. When the thrown stone leaves the hand, what keeps it going? By Aristotelian principles either this stone continues to act on the air, cleaving it, or the air acts on the stone so as to push it forward. Neither sort of account was very successful; yet it was insisted that there must be some such reason. William of Ockham's reaction was characteristically radical: the question of what keeps the stone moving, he rejects.
If you insist that the moving body does not move unless it acquires something which it did not have before, I answer that indeed it has something new, . . . namely a different location. And if you further inquire as to what is necessary for the body to be in that place, I reply that nothing else is required but a body and a place and the absence of any intermediary.... [4]
We probably shouldn't blame the medieval realists too much for resisting this. Even Newton, though he made it his first principle that things retain the same motion unless interfered with, still kept thinking that perhaps he had to appeal to some special sort of force (vis insitae, or vis inertiae) to make it intelligible. The realist instinct, that there must always be some deeper reason for everything, dies very hard.
4. The recent aftermath of this debate/Today
This debate, as I have said, began in the fourteenth century; these debates happened five hundred years ago -- but don't think that they aren't happening now! Writers who discuss today's physics sometimes have little sense of the history, and so they just repeat it, badly. The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox and violations of Bell's inequalities have furnished many examples of this, both from philosophers and from scientists.
A nominalist or empiricist does have to explain how reasonable expectation is possible. What he must say is really quite simple: I believe, just as you do, that every time a stone is released it will fall. I believe that there is this regularity in the world. Whatever reasons you have for saying that something is necessary, are for me simply reasons to think that it is so.
The realist then says: OK, perhaps you can have expectations and predictions, but you cannot explain them. You have no reasons to show why these things have to happen the way they do. The nominalist admits that. But he does not give such primacy to the Why? question. There is explanation, he says, but only in the mundane sense that sometimes we are puzzled, and we need the missing pieces for our puzzle -- but there very ordinary information will do just fine, and science can serve us by providing this very ordinary sort of information about how things just happen to be.
In every century the battle of empiricism against realism is fought again. I don't expect you to be convinced yet by my side of the story. Perhaps you too feel a great dismay that the empiricist deprives us of so much that might comfort us in a hostile world. And it is true, it does: all it can offer is the agony and the ecstasy of freedom in a world governed by no laws except those we create ourselves:
We are born by accident into a purely random universe. Our lives are determined by entirely fortuitous combinations of genes. Whatever happens happens by chance. The concepts of cause and effect at fallacies. There are only seeming causes leading to apparent effects. Since nothing truly follows from anything else, we swim each day through seas of chaos, and nothing is predictable, not even the events of the very next instance.
Do you believe that?
If you do, I pity you, because yours must be a bleak and terrifying and comfortless life.
I quote this from Robert Silverberg's The Stochastic Man, a science fiction novel.[5] This is the world of empiricism. It is the world of Sartre's hero Antoine Roquentin in Nausea, it is a world in which anything is possible, and whatever happens merely happens, and not because some thing greater is making it happen world picture. Here is the famous passage in which those apparent limits to possibility dissolve to his eyes:
I went to the window and glanced out .... I murmured: Anything can happen, anything.
Frightened, I looked at these unstable beings which, in an hour, in a minute, were perhaps gonig to crumble; yes, I was there, living in the midst of these books full of knowledge describing the immutable forms of the animal species, explaining that the right quantity of energy is kept integral in the universe; I was there, standing in front of a window whose panes had a definite refraction index. But what feeble barriers! I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day. Today it seemed to want to change... then, anything, anything could happen.[6]
Roquentin also describes the security of others, who live in an
illusory sense of ontological security:
They aren't afraid, they feel at home. All they have ever seen is trained water running from taps, light which fills bulbs when you turn on the switch.... They have proof, a hundred times a day, that everything happened mechanically, that the world obeys fixed, unchangeable laws. In a vacuum all bodies fall at the same rate..., the public part is closed at 4 pm in winter, at 6 pm in summer, lead melts at 335oC, the last streetcar leaves the Hotel de Ville at 11:05 pm. They are peaceful, a little morose.... Idiots.[7]
This is frightening; to lose our sense of necessity is to lose our sense of security.
But the danger of losing our emotional and intellectual comforts is not an argument. You will be reminded of those 19th century clergy men in Ibsen settings, losing their faith and arguing that religion was indispensable, because otherwise life would lose all its meaning, and they would not be able to continue to live. Well, as a philosopher I have to counsel suicide before an invalid argument ...
So I conclude: There are no necessary connections in nature, no laws of nature, no real natural bounds on possibility. Those ideas all resulted when philosophers projected familiar models on the natural world. Really, nothing is necessary, and everything is possible.
I mean this. All of the above is true. Yet I did not come here today to tell you that we have a bleak and comfortless life. What I reject is those philosophical ideas about where to turn for comfort. I am referring here to the realists' identification of understanding with knowledge of "deep" facts about a reality behind the scenes of the phenomena. Science is our paradigm enterprise of empirical inquiry, and I value it very highly -- but not as the acquisition of such knowledge. Now I better try to make good on this by showing that there is another way to go.
Is there a constructive side to empiricism? or does it make the search for meaning and meaningfulness hopeless? Is meaning just a matter of the psychopathology of everyday life?
1. What is our relationship with our world-pictures?
There is more to the role of science in our lives than prediction, expectation, and practical opinion. Science has transformed our world-view. Empiricists have often been tempted by some form of instrumentalism: science is "merely" an instrument. If science were a mere instrument, like an abacus or a calculator, how could it do that? Abacuses do not transform a world-view. Getting the idea of how the abacus works might do that, but not its mere use.
In attempting a positive account, I shall take a cue from Nietzsche, and liken science to myth. Myths, after all, do have the power to transform man's consciousness of the world.
As soon as I say this, I know you begin to suspect the worst about me. After all, we use the word "myth" practically as a synonym for "falsehood", and now maybe I am going to say that science is nothing but a myth. Well, I better correct those impressions right away.
First of all, the word "myth" does not strictly speaking imply falsehood at all. A Christian or Jewish theologian can certainly compare the Judeo-Christian mythology with such rivals as the Pagan myths or the Hindu-Buddhist mythology. He or she does not say that these are all on a par, but only classifies what the Judeo-Christian tradition gave us as significantly similar to those rival mythologies.
Second, about the "nothing but" manoeuvre. This has an absolutely fatal fascination for philosophers. But "nothing but" is logically not simple. Consider the statement
Jesus was nothing but a story-teller.
This presupposes that Jesus was a story-teller; and, then adds that he did not belong to any signficant subclass of story-tellers. To deny it categorically is to say that Jesus was indeed a story-teller, but of a special sort. After this preamble, I think you'll not misunderstand me: I categorically deny that science is nothing but a myth.
2. What exactly is a myth?
Some discussions of myth by philosophers, literary critics, psychologists, anthropologists, and theologians, have aimed at a definition of myth. There is so little agreement, that I shall only try to describe salient features.
A myth is a story. This will have to be qualified; but let it stand for now. Myths must be distinguished from such types of stories as legends, parables, allegories, and popular history.
Legends and popular history are stories that purport to be true. There is no such purport in the case of parables or allegories. These are distinguished by having a point or significance for morality or the meaning of life.
Sometimes myth is just defined as a combination of these two features: a myth is story that both purports to be true and has the kind of significance that parables and allegories have.
This cannot be a good definition, for it would make the even story of George Washington and the cherry tree a myth. (Or the story which everyone in America knows, of the boy who saved Holland by putting his finger in the dike, to keep the sea out .... In America they even know the name of that boy!)
Under the urging of anthropologists such as Malinowski, myths have now come to be discussed largely in terms of their function. In the nineteenth century there was a school that saw myths purely as embryonic science: the function of myth is to explain natural phenomena (paradigm: the Creation myths).
The opposite extreme was espoused by philosophers like Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer. According to them, the function of myth was that it furthered a sense of harmony within society and with nature (paradigm: the Myth of the State). Today's anthropologists blend such extreme conceptions, and assign functions of both sorts to myth:
The myths of the Australian aborigines, which deal with the creation of their Universe and the establishment of their rules of human behavior that all must follow,... are the foundations of their social and secular and ceremonial life.
The myths that support these philosophies provide the aborigines with a reasonable explanation of the world in which they live; the stars above them, the natural forces of wind, rain, and thunder and the plants and creatures that provide them with food.[8]
I think there can be no doubt that science can and does serve functions of both those sorts. In his lecture earlier today Prof. Feyerabend gave us some examples of those social functions of science.
3. The rivalry between myth and science
One conclusion seems inescapable. Science presents itself, in each culture, as a rival to the mythical world picture, and aims to replace it with a new world view. To illustrate this, let me quote not a scientist but a theologian. Rudolf Bultmann emphasized this in the strongest terms in recent theological debates:
The cosmology of the New Testament is essentially mythical in character. The world is viewed as a three-storied structure, with the earth in the centre, the heaven above, and the underworld beneath.
All this is the language of mythology, and the origin of the various themes can be easily traced ... To this extent the kerygma is incredible to modern man, for he is convinced that the mythical view of the world is obsolete.[9]
Bultmann adds, "It is simply the cosmology of a pre-scientific age" and "We no longer believe in the three-storied universe which the creeds take for granted."
But where exactly does the rivalry lie?
There is no obvious rivalry between any little scientific theory and any little myth, such as, say, Archimedes' statics and the Oedipus myth. But the Greek mythology as a whole, like the Judeo-Christian mythology and the Hindu-Buddhist or Islamic mythology, is a different matter.
So let us distinguish between little myths, like the Oedipus myth, and great myths, like the Judeo-Christian, or the Hindu-Buddhist myth. This is the point where I must qualify the idea that a myth is a story. Certainly little myths are stories. Sometimes they are stories of what happened on specific occasions, such as the Fall, or Zeus' advent to hegemony; sometimes accounts of repeating or repeatable events, such as Apollo driving his chariot across the heavens from East to West every day, and the transsubstantiation of bread and wine in communion.
Little myths are stories, and they are stories that change. Sometimes they die altogether, sometimes they reemerge at a later point. A little myth may be born and die, in many versions that differ with time and locale, subject to different interpretations -- and all that under the aegis of a single great myth. Little myths change, but the great myth endures.
The Great Myth too changes and develops. But its developments are not mainly changes in its narrative. The Judeo-Christian myth had short periods of drastic change or rapid development around the times of Moses, St. Paul, and Aquinas, to name but three. These were developments where we can truly speak of conceptual revolutions. At those points, there is not merely a change in little myths. For a long time, for example, God was an agent within history and within time. But at least as of the Middle Ages, God is trans-temporal and trans-phenomenal, trans-historical (in Jewish as well as Christian and Moslem theology).
Little scientific theories, like little myths, come and go: phlogiston emission gives way to oxidation, light particles to light waves to photons. Some little theories persist, but their details and the way they are understood changes from epoch to epoch: this is the way in which Archimedean statics and Huygen's theory of collision persist till this very day. Meanwhile, Science endures: we are engaged in the same enterprise as Archimedes.
But though it has endured, science has gone through several short periods of intense development amounting to genuine conceptual change, such as the Galileo-Newton and Planck-Heisenberg period.
It is exactly here, in what we may call Great Science and Great Myth, where the main rivalry occurs, that we also see the most striking parallelism.
Myth is cosmological, presenting a picture which embraces the whole world and all of history. The drama it presents is an on-going one. Science is cosmological: global in compass, embracing the whole world and total world history.
Myth is narrative, in that it presents a drama unfolding in time, and a description of certain kinds of processes. But there is a point which, as far as I know, each great myth reached, at which the dramatis personae come to be seen as transcendent. This is the point of paradox, where myth breaches the categories derived from common sense, and history is seen as a reflection of something not itself set in time and space. Science too is narrative, writing for us even a brief history of time -- and of the cosmos evolving in time. But with relativity and quantum theory, it also reached the point of paradox. The categories of time and space are subsumed, "aufgehoben", in space-time, particles no longer have definite spatial trajectories, duration and dates even become subject to indeterminacy. The dramatis personae have become extra mundane.
Myth is explanatory; it explains both the natural order and the development of the social order. So does science. Myth has a strong grip on the human imagination; it supplies the classification and the categories, the pigeon-holes and concepts, the categoreal framework within which every subject is placed and understood. So does science.
4. Parallel debates concerning language
I just want to describe very briefly one more parallel. This concerns the irreducibility of the language of science and of myth, the impossibility of translating them into more "hygienic" language.
Let me begin with the debate in recent theology, from which I have already quoted above, about demythologizing the Gospel. Bultmann began by describing the mythical world view that underlies the New Testament and contrasting it with out present world view which is largely determined by science. He maintained that the Gospel has not lost its significance, but that it needs to be represented in terms compatible with our present world view.
After a great deal of demolishing, using both the scientific outlook and the results of historical scholarship, Bultmann also sketches a contemporary presentation of the Gospel; and he does so in existentialist terms.
But as Karl Jaspers pointed out, this is not demythologizing so much as translation into another, modern mythical framework. [10] Perhaps the content of a myth cannot be rendered except in mythical terms. If so, myth is untranslatable, in a certain sense. We must distinguish this immediately from the sense in which poetry is said to be untranslatable. When a myth is translated into another language, even very badly as by a Sunday school teacher, it still immediately felt as myth. This is also true of science, mutatis mutandis; poetry is almost totally lost in such a case. The point is rather that if Jaspers is right, myths are not interpretable into non-myth; "Myths interpret each other."
Bultmann lost that debate in practice. Those on Bultmann's side freely grant that as pastors, they continue to talk the New Testament language of Resurrection and a Second Coming: the mythical element is not eliminated but reinterpreted. The myth of bondage and conviction of sin becomes the myth of the stranger and nausea; the myth of redemption and second birth becomes the myth of freedom, encounter, and authenticity.
Parallel to this de facto consensus about the language of myth we find a rare philosophical consensus, between today's realists and empiricists, about the language of science. Early in this century there was indeed the idea that science can be "demythologized" in some strict empiricist way. But that idea had to be abandoned already more than 50 years ago. The language of science cannot be reduced through "operational definitions" or translation into a hygienic pure observation language.
Philosophers are often slow to adapt to their own discoveries and advances, however. As a result, the sense of transition to a truly non-reductionist view of science did not become prevalent till the sixties.[11] In the aftermath, the stamp of orthodoxy placed on this realization was somewhat confusingly associated with scientific realism, and equally with Feyerabend and Kuhn, who are also readable as critics of scientific realism. No distinction can be drawn between between the theoretical and the non-theoretical, and there is not even in principle, however attenuated, any way to isolate a non-theoretical foundation for our conceptual framework. Theoretical discourse is irreducible. Theories can at most be interpreted in other, later theories; as Newton's mechanics was re-interpreted (as of restricted, approximate validity) by Einstein. Briefly: demythologizing the language aof science is impossible.
This additional parallel between philosophical and theological debates throws a corollary light on a phenomenon we see both in science and in the varieties of religious experience: that of conceptual immersion. If the language to be used is not translatable without loss into something conceptually poorer, then to speak it we must allow ourselves to be guided by the entire picture presented. There is no disengaged alternative.
1. The demarcation of science and myth
After all this, you may think that at this point you know very well what my conclusion is going to be. You may very well think that now I am going to say:
1) Meaningfulness always came from immersion/ enchantment in a Great Myth -- such as the Christian Myth in the Middle Ages in Europe;
2) Science too is a Great Myth, providing us with a worldview able to replace the lost Myths of the past; 3) Meaning will be regained if we immerse ourselves now in this new Great Myth:
Let the Scientific Middle Ages Begin!
Nothing is further from my mind. I do think that there is a great difference between science and the older myths -- not an essential black-and-white difference, but still a difference in fact and of degree which is of enormous importance. And I think that scientific realists miss or obscure this difference exactly because they focus on content rather than function.
What is so crucially different about science? Let me quote again from Bultmann, who had some stake in this:
The science of today is no longer the same as it was in the nineteenth century.... The main point, however, is not the concrete results of scientific research and the contents of a world view, but the method of thinking from which world views follow.
The contrast between the ancient world view of the Bible and the modern world view is the contrast between two ways of thinking, the mythological and the scientific. The method of scientific thinking [... is] the same in modern scientific research [but the theories] are changing over and over again, since the change itself results from the permanent principles[of this method].[12]
Karl Jaspers already objected that there is a good deal of old and data philosophy of science in Bultmann's writings. The caricature we can read into it is this: (i) in myth, content is what is important, and the commitment is to a world picture; but in science, the method of inquiry is what matters and commitment is to a method; (ii) within myth, questioning beyond a certain point is a sin; within science everything is subjected rigorously to proof and experimental test. This appealingly simple picture is a mess of half-truths and propaganda. But I must emphasize the "almost." Let us count the ways in which all this is false. (A) When we contrast science to myth and superstition, we are contrasting content, not method.
(B) No theory is established by proof, experimental or otherwise. [To accept a theory is ipso facto to go beyond the facts.]
(C) Scientists follow that scientific ethic in practice only to a limited extent (as Paul Feyerabend emphasized today. [Perhaps progress in science would also be impossible if the ethic of systematic doubt were not held in check in practice. How many geniuses can a science afford, in one century?]
(D) The attitude prescribed by the scientific ethic is also possible -- perhaps to the same limited extent as in science -- within myth in general. [Indeed, the major and radical changes to which the great myths too are subject argue that there is an underlying commitment which transcends, and is not indissolubly linked, to belief in particular content.]
However all this may be, I think Bultmann put his finger on the crucial aspect of science, in which in practice and in ethic it sets itself apart from all its actual rivals. We should not exaggerate its extent, but we cannot exaggerate its importance.
For this is the creed and regulative ideal of science: that our first and overriding commitment shall be to the method, uncompromisingly rigorous, which sweeps before it like chaff the inadequate structures of earlier hypotheses. The holy war in which the religious devotee systematically destroys the "old man" (to use St. Paul's term), uprooting one by one the binding desires and illusions in his soul, is transposed by science to its own growth. The primary commitment is to this method with its ideal of constant revaluation and self-critique; all commitment to content is secondary. This is the peculiarity of science among myths.
The hierarchy of responsibility is inverted; in the old myths, to avoid doubt about may be piety, in the new it is treason.
2. Realism's mistaken moral
Scientific attitude as transvaluation of all values? Yes, that is what I mean.
If this conclusion about the primacy of method vis à vis content in science is correct, then realism has throughout mis-focused the debate. For if the realist metaphysician reifies content, then he does for science what the superstitious do for religion: he averts attention from its significance to the vehicle of that significance.
What this means is that acceptance of science, and appreciation of its worth, does not require us to believe that it is true. On the contrary, the important point about scientific activity is not that it provides theories which every generation in turn can take as truth, but rather that it accustoms us to giving up our beliefs, to change and alter them, to value them without being in bondage to them.
Can we feel secure and at home in a world without the certainty that we know what it is really like?
This sounds like a psychological question; and in that form a philosopher has no business or interest in answering it. But actually I think that in a psychological sense the question does not arise at all: we have never had any objective certainty in our interpretation of what is "really going on", and never will. We have seen the content of the scientific world picture change radically, and we fully expect there to be more scientific revolutions in our future. So if a psych came along and told us we cannot cope unless we have full belief in some specific world-picture, he'd just be advising refuge in self-deception.
The scientific attitude, which the empiricist celebrates, does not lead to despair and futility or disorientation. There is a loss when you first lose your certainties, and a temptation to seek refuge in some artificial certainty. When the refuge sought is in some part of science adapted as dogma, we call that scientism. That is a sort of science on a metaphysical pedestal, with the current content of science erected into a final measure of all truth and value. Believe me, that is not science -- it is superstition, no matter how scientific it is made to sound. Tothe extent that scientific realism shades into scientism, it has the same pitfall: to require the sacrifice of the intellect, the desperation of "Credo ut intelligam".
What is the alternative to reifying the content of science? The alternative is to accept the challenge of intellectual maturity: to let your faith be not a dogma but a search, not an answer but a question and a quest, and to immerse yourself in a new world-picture without allowing yourself to be swallowed up.
Science allows perfectly well the sceptical discipline that accepts the appearances alone as real, and all the rest as a unifying myth to light our path.
[1]Presentation in public lecture, Leiden (May 27, 1992); published pp. 114-134 in Jan Hilgevoort (ed.) Physics and Our View of the World. Cambridge University Press, 1994..
[2]See e. g. Ockham Prol. Sent. 904 and Summa Totius Logicae III, II, q. 5; cf. M.H. Carré, Realists and Nominalists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946).
[3]Cf. Ockham, Sent. I, D.1, q. 6, J; S. tot. log. III, II, 5, 64v, discussed by E. A. Moody, The Logic of William of Ockham. See further E.A. Moody, Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Science, and Logic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).
[4]Summulae in Phys. III, 7; cf. Reportatio II, Q. xxvi, N. sqq., pp. 139-141 in P. Boehner, Ockham: Philosophical Writings (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1957). See further E.A. Moody, Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Science, and Logic, and E.J. Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961).
[8]See Ainslie Roberts and Ch. P. Mountford, The Dreamtime Book: Australian Aborigine Myths in Paintings (Adelaide: Rigby, 1973). The quotations are taken from their The First Sunrise, a shorter presentation of their work, pages 9 and 11. The the omitted part between these quotations includes:
"These myths also describe how, before creation times, the uncreated and eternal earth had always existed as a large flat disc floating in space. [...] It was a dead, silent world. Yet, slumbering beneath that monotonous surface, were indeterminate forms of life that would eventually transform the forbidding landscape into the world as the aborigines know it today. As the ages passed, these mythical beings began to emerge from beneath the plain and to wander haphazardly over its surface."
[9]Rudolf Bultmann, "The Testament and Mythology", pp. 1-44 in H.W. Bartsch, Kerygman and Myth (London: SPCK; 2nd edition). Quotes are from pages 1 and 3.
[11]See for example the papers by Rudolf Carnap and Grover Maxwell in the first and third volume of Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Among the earlier papers leading up to this are e. g. Wilfrid Sellars, "Concepts as involving laws and inconceivable without them", Philosophy of Science 50 (1948), 287-315 and Paul Feyerabend, "An attempt at a realistic interpretation of experience", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society n.s. 58 (1958), 143ff.


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Since food companies collectively spent over $45 million to stop Prop 37, California's GMO labeling law, it's hard to believe that they - and Walmart in particular - would turn around and push for a federal GMO labeling standard. But a trickle of ...
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Why do guys say they want you, then ignore you for a while, and then flirt again?
he was always taking care of me, taking the initiative, saying he liked me and wanted to see how things went for a relationship when he would have... Show More
Most Helpful Opinion
Well one, you have to understand that he problemly doesn't know what he wants, but he knows his attracted to you. Being close friends and being around each other so much he might not want to take that next step because he is afraid that it may not work out. Some guys are not as confident as others an they won't make an serious move. So you have a choice: if he wants you to come to the party he will find a way to get in touch with you. But if you don't get another invite don't go and don't call just wait. Wait to see what move he will make, because you don't want an guy that is unable to make an serious move. If he really cares he will make a move.
What Guys Said 5
Its what we have to do. Guys that are always nice and helpful get stuck in the "Friends Zone" and become either ignored or resented by the girl who feels like maybe he's just trying to earn getting laid or gets plenty of friendliness from the girl who starts to think of him as another girl or sort of a nonsexual teddy bear, you love your teddy bear you hug your teddy bear but... hopefully that's all. He wants to be a bit mysterious he wants you to think about him at work or school or lying in bed at night at least half as much as he does. He shows his interest and then makes you doubt. he wants you to wonder does he like me, he wants you to wonder am I attractive enough and then turn up the flirting and contact on your part. He wants this to be your idea your hope, what you want. Because most guys have had an experience with a relationship that was what he wanted and the girl either flat out rejected him or sort of went along with it out of pity maybe or maybe because she sorta liked using him to feel sexy/ help her with homework/ help her move fix her car. Men use and abuse women more but plenty of women use men like this and play with their emotions like little toys and enjoy reducing some boy to a little dog on a leash. And some of them are not even conscious of the cruelty of it. They think their "friend" wants to hear about her problems with her boyfriend whos an ass who tries to scare and beat up the "friend" all the time and tries to beat the friendly guy at athletic stuff and the two face off when the girl is watching and that must be a kinda fun show for her. Ok my example is a bit extreme I am thinking of a particularly can't think of a better word bitchy ex girlfriend from high school. But this happens so men learn to play this silly game we don't want to but we also don't want to be lonely so we learn that sometimes less is more. As much as part of us just wants to hang around that beautiful girl who seems to have a halo glowing around her head and sneak peeks of her body while we think of 25 little tasks to help her with, if we do that that's probably all we get
I didn't even need to read all that cr- err, stuff you wrote to tell you what you need to know.
The D.E.N.N.I.S. System.
Demonstrate value
Engage physically
Nurture dependence
Neglect emotionally
Inspire hope
Separate entirely
Right now, this guy you're hanging out with is at "Phase I"; he's about to seperate entirely so you might want to learn more about what he's doing here: link
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'Kitchen Nightmares': A tale of two restaurants
When I first realized that there would be two episodes of Kitchen Nightmares tonight, I was a little worried that the similarities between the two would be overwhelming. In actuality, watching back-to-back episodes served to illustrate how different the show can be. Sure, the restaurants were both disasters and the food was horrific at both places, but one restaurant had owners willing to change and the other not so much.
First up tonight was Trobiano's, a restaurant owned by the chef, Anthony Trobiano, and his girlfriend's parents, Joe and Pat. Joe made no bones about the fact that it was a mistake to open a place with Anthony and Anthony made it clear that it was his restaurant to run as he saw fit. Even Tiffany, the daughter/girlfriend realized that she'd probably made a mistake by helping to get the restaurant up and running.
When he showed up, the first thing Ramsay did was slam Anthony for opening up an Italian restaurant without having worked in one. The cocky chef was quite sure at the time that it was a good idea, and even with Ramsay there didn't admit that maybe he'd gotten in a little over his head.
Apparently the one thing keeping the restaurant afloat (according to Anthony anyway) was the early-bird special. Sure enough when Ramsay showed up at 4:30 to try the food, the place was packed. And, as per usual on Nightmares, despite the fact that the owners thought the food good, Ramsay didn't like it. Anthony was pissed off that Ramsay would dare send his food back, and Joe didn't help matters, mocking the boy as he handed the rejected food to the chef. Later, when Ramsay spoke to Anthony directly about the food, the rest of the family stifled laughter. Always good to see the owners laugh at their chef, really helps the team feel.
Joe's smirk did disappear though when Ramsay showed him the filth in the kitchen. Ramsay asked Anthony about it, and when the cocksure chef didn't answer him, Ramsay told Joe the place had no chance and walked out. I would have loved to have seen it end there, but it didn't. Instead, Anthony followed Ramsay out of the place and admitted that he ought to be more humble and that he needed help.
After a night of cleaning, Ramsay had the family bond by milking some cows the next morning and explained to them that they'd be making fresh mozzarella at the restaurant (he had eaten mozzarella at the place the previous night and found it disgusting). He also altered the menu to reflect the addition of the mozzarella and eliminated the early-bird special. There may have been more work to do in the kitchen because of the changes, but everyone was on board.
Sure, there were issues that night, stuff like Anthony not tasting his food, customers not liking what they were served, and a burnt entrée that set off the smoke detector, but things were still looking up. Anthony was still humble, listened to Gordon about needing to taste his food, and actually improved during the relaunch the next night (when there was a completely new menu instead of just an altered one). He did get a dish sent back to him, but it wasn't one that went to the table with the editor-in-chief of Bon Appétit.
The second restaurant of the night, Black Pearl, was a lobster shack with three bad owners. There was the quitter, Brian; the angry one, Greg; and the egomaniac, David. Apparently they used to talk, but once money got tight they started to fight and they just didn't count on the bills. Or something not written by Billy Joel but of similar tone.
The food, save the watery chowder, looked delicious, but Ramsay was not a fan. He didn't throw up, but he didn't like it. Owner David explained, when asked about a lobster roll being bland, that in Maine they didn't put salt and pepper in a lobster roll (and it was supposed to be a Maine lobster roll). David, it came out, ordered the chef to not season the lobster. David wasn't a chef or anything, it was just how he wanted it done and he, as you read above, was the egomaniac.
That night during the dinner service, David seemed to be trying to expedite stuff at the pass, but did so very poorly. His communication skills only inspired dislike, not confidence. David went so far as to explain to a customer who didn't like their food that the customer was wrong to send it back because it was exactly as it was supposed to be. Technically steamers (the dish sent back) are actually often sandy (which is why they were sent back), but the way David approached the customer wasn't nice. He did manage to get worse though, when after Ramsay and the Pearl's chef said a fish wasn't fresh, David insisted that it was.
After the service David got worse still. It turned out the place was serving Canadian lobsters and calling them Maine lobsters. David knew (probably orchestrated it) and didn't care. Moreover, he said that the two were exactly the same thing and certainly sold by the same vendor. Just FYI, I'm pretty sure that a single vendor can in fact sell more than one thing.
Later, the staff got to write down some questions for the owners, all of which pretty much amounted to the same thing. The staff wanted a general manager, a single person to go to when they had a question, a single setter of policy. It was clearly something that had to happen and Gordon narrowed it down to either David or Greg and sent Brian home for the night.
David was on the pass first during that dinner service and still not very competent. It was clear that all the servers were scared of the man. That can be okay, a tight ship sometimes scares people, but there was no tight ship, just scared swabbies. Things weren't better with Greg at the pass. No one was scared of him, but he wasn't organized enough. Neither he, nor the servers, nor the kitchen folks, had any idea what was going on when Greg was running the place.
After the service, and with Brian back, everyone got together in order to vote on who would be managing the place. Greg won the vote in a landslide and David accepted the decision (sort of). He wasn't happy though, and after the redesign of the Pearl all David could say was that the columns ought to be a different color.
David remained a complete downer leading up to the relaunch, complaining that Ramsay's method of publicizing the place (going to Times Square with a guy in a lobster suit and handing out flyers) wouldn't work. Then, when everyone tasted the new menu, he couldn't find a single nice word to say about any of the dishes. David showed himself to be just a wretched human being.
During the relaunch the place was a disaster. Greg was clearly not able to expedite in the kitchen and David, who was playing the role of guest that night, still hated all the changes (Brian was sitting with him and agreed, but David was ruling the table). The one bright spot was that the staff hustled as much as they possibly could. Things did seem to get better at the end of the night, but that might just have been the magic of editing.
After the service, Ramsay sat down with the three owners and tried to hash out whatever problems still remained -- which was mostly David. Ramsay actually told David that the restaurant could succeed, but not with David as a partner. David then told Ramsay that he, David, did like the changes. It was a lie, not only did we know it, but Ramsay knew it too, suggesting that David was going to change everything back to the way it was -- which David had, to some extent, said, but not in front of Ramsay.
And so, there you are -- two restaurants, two hugely different results. Trobiano's seems poised for success after Ramsay's visit and Black Pearl seems doomed to failure (unless Greg and Brian take Ramsay's advice and buy out David). Sure, it all still amounted to "listen to Gordon and succeed," but it was nice to see that not everyone opts to listen.
Other bits and pieces:
- Ramsay handed Anthony a ring at the end of the relaunch of Trobiano's so that he could propose to Tiffany. Anthony did, she accepted, and then Ramsay informed them that they'd be getting married that very evening. There was even a wedding dress and a tux for Anthony. Weird. Very weird. Of course, Joe and Pat were awfully overdressed for the relaunch if there wasn't going to be a wedding that night.
- Best part of the redesign at Black Pearl -- a claw machine that lets people try to get a lobster out of the tank (you know, like those money-sucking things with cheap toys in arcades).
The TV and Film Guy's Reviews - where the lobster is always from Maine.


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A Grad rocket fired from Gaza exploded south of Ashdod on Tuesday after a day of escalation along the border. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
At least seven Palestinians, including four civilians, were killed earlier Tuesday during heavy exchanges of fire between the Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip, in one of the most serious rounds of fighting near the Strip since the end of Operation Cast Lead in January 2009.
At around 4 P.M., four mortars were fired at kibbutzim Alumim and Sa'ad, landing in open areas and causing no injuries. The IDF fired mortars at the launching point, apparently hitting the Palestinians behind the launches but also hitting 12 Palestinian civilians, killing at least four.
Read more at Haaretz.com.
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Lumpy Herron, well named PGA golfer, had this to say about fitness...
"Do I lift weights? Are you kidding? Those things are heavy"
Lumpy Herron, well named PGA golfer, had this to say about fitness...
"Do I lift weights? Are you kidding? Those things are heavy"
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
~ Mark Twain
aerobics every other day. static contraction weight lifting every two weeks. baseball drills 4 days a week.
breakfast consists of one of the following:
shredded wheat cereal
wheat bagel w/cheese, milk, strawberry/blackberry/blueberry
jambilya with fruit juice
two to three hours later:
multi-grain bar, fruit, ham or turkey sandwich on 12 grain bread, boiled potato...glass of milk with all
two to three hours later, lunch:
chinese food w/green tea
turkey or ham sandwich, soup, milk
dirty rice
or some toher extrodinarily high carb/high starch thing
two hours later:
multi-grain bar, fruit, ham or turkey sandwich on 12 grain bread, boiled potato...glass of orange juice with all
three hours later, supper:
corn, peas, carrots, mashed potatos w/skins...meat (usualy chicken), mac & cheese, milk, fruit juice
and then, i just basically try to eat something every 3 hours after that (yeah, i'm usually awake that long every day)...at some point i make sure to have some junk food like m&ms, reese's cups, chips, etc...otherwise i don't get enough fat intake through the day. i also drink a lot of Sobe (power, energy, grape grog, nirvana, black and blue berry), as well as 1 can of pop (yummy caffeine), and usually an energy drink at 430 in the morning (during my last break at work).
i've gone from being 190 LBS to 207 LBS...my BMI has gone from 19.4% fat to 14.6% fat...750 lb. calf press to 1000+ lbs., 120 lb. bench press to 210 lb bench ...4.8 second 40 yard dash, and yet somehow i struggle to do a mile in less than 10 minutes. in a matter of about 14 weeks.
Last edited by Ravenlord; 04-16-2005 at 01:29 PM.
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yes, this really is how we make our living.
I lift weights about 5 times a week.
I miss Adam Dunn.
I lift weights 5-6 days a week and run 4 miles 3-4 times a week.
It is getting harder and harder to do as I get older.
Holy cow....
My girlfriend's got me into Yoga.
I never would have thought that I'd be the type of guy that does it, but boy oh boy do I like it.
About five times a week, I do my Yoga tapes, and then I run my staircase for about twenty minutes.
I've also been using my nautilus machine again since my roomate moved out, along with the myriad boxes that were surrounding it.
I feel like a teenager again.
"Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?" ~ Jim Bouton
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The Taste returns for five days in Grant Park for a massive foodie fair complete with live music and activities for the entire family. Popular features include a three-course fine dining experience prepared by a notable Chicago Chef at Celebrity Chef du Jour, Pop-up Restaurants, food trucks and more.
Take your standard (read: awesome) Chicago summerfest, add some
serious burger business, and subtract, or at least dial down, the
swarming crowds of twenty-somethings that can take over some
of Lakeview's streetfests, and you've got Roscoe Village's summer
crown jewel. It's a bit lower-key and friendlier for small feet and
Festival features food, entertainment, kids' play area, polka parade and pierogi eating contest.
This one is worth the drive. You'll be rewarded by fun facts
(strawberries are the only fruit with its seeds on the outside!),
games and, of course, more strawberries than you'll know what to do
Three day festival featuring live music, carnival, food vendors and kid zone. This year's headliners are The Plain White Tees, Cheap Trick and Big & Rich.
Includes Cosley Run for the Animals 5k/10k, arts and crafts, food vendors, carnival rides, children's games, live entertainment, beer garden and market place business expo.
Fest features a BBQ contest with several rib vendors, food ranging from ribs and hot dogs to salads, snacks, desserts and drinks, two live music stages, special events, and fireworks. Family area features carnival rides, inflatables, circus tricks, magic show, face painting, petting zoo and live performances.
Features 250-plus vendors, food and nearly 35 acts on five music stages. Every music genre is represented: from blues and country to rock and folk. Afternoons feature a stand-alone (free) "kids' carnival" on Altgeld (with art activities, pony rides and more), and the "Lill Street Craft Fair" showcasing handmade and DIY art.
Enjoy cuisine from River North restaurants, merchants, artists, music and a Kids' Zone with family entertainment, a newly renovated playground, dancing, face painters, stilt walkers, balloon artists and various demos from local schools and organizations. This year there will also be a new educational element under a large big top tent with interactive games provided by Lurie and Kohl's.


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SLAPHAPPY! A HOLIDAY CONCERT Plays Whidbey Island Center for the Arts Tonight
Whidbey Island Center for the Arts presents a Slaphappy Concert tonight, December 16 at 7:30 pm, featuring local favorites Mark Arand, Matthew Bell, Cameron Gray, and Gabe Harshman. Slaphappy will sing quartet-style seasonal songs in their first WICA Holiday concert.
Slaphappy likes to have fun on stage while maintaining a level of professional singing. "We try to have some fun while being really entertaining," Bell said. The group is serious about their vocal abilities and this will be the fourth year these singers have carved out some significant rehearsal time for this event.
In 2006, Slaphappy won the novice division of the Barbershop Competition in Anacortes and even made the finals in the national championship of the High School A Cappella competition. They were all cast in the South Whidbey High School production of Grease, among many other performances on south Whidbey.
Bell studied musical composition at Western Washington; fellow singer Harshman studied at Idyllwild Arts Academy in Idyllwild, California and Roosevelt University in Chicago. Arand and Gray graduated from South Whidbey High School in the class of 2008 and have continued their study of the performing arts and music; Arand is graduated from Whitman College and Gray studied at the University of British Columbia.
Ticket prices are $15 and are available by calling the WICA Ticket Office (360) 221-8268 or (800) 638-7631. Learn more about Upcoming Events @ WICA at www.WICAonline.com.
Whidbey Island Center for the Arts is located at 565 Camano Avenue, Langley, Washington.
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press releaseBy Kathryn Mcconnell
Washington — Three times a day, 27-year-old Omari Ali breaks from his job repairing cars in Amani Freshi, a suburb of Zanzibar City, Zanzibar, and heads to the local health center to care for his newborn twin sons.
He opens his shirt, picks up one of the premature boys and straps the infant to his chest to give his son the skin-to-skin contact that will warm and sustain the child. His wife, Salma Issa, gave birth to the twins in her seventh month of pregnancy. The boys each weighed less than 1.5 kilograms.
What Ali does is called kangaroo mother care, named for the way kangaroos carry their young. It's a simple intervention developed in the mid-1980s by South American health providers who recognized how skin-to-skin contact can help premature infants thrive in places where incubators are not always available or reliable.
Seven percent of babies are born with low birth-weight in Zanzibar each year.
Teaching kangaroo care to parents such as Ali and Issa is one of the maternal- and infant-care services funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through its Mothers and Infants, Safe, Healthy and Alive Program.
Health care provider Jhpiego, based in Baltimore, leads the program in collaboration with nonprofit Save the Children and Zanzibar's Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.
Parents learn how to give their babies skin-to-skin warmth and protect them from infection. They learn about the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding and the importance of follow-up care for newborns at a health care facility.
Ali demonstrates that, despite its name, kangaroo mother care is not just for women. "These are not my wife's children alone," said Ali, who spends three to four hours during every hospital visit. "They are ours, and I feel very proud to be assisting my wife.
Although I have to go to work, I make sure I am back at the hospital every few hours to hold one of the twins on my chest. This way the baby feels like it was in [the] womb, and continues to grow." Kangaroo care continues, usually with help from relatives, until the baby reaches a healthy weight.
Kangaroo mother care may be needed for a few days or several weeks. It can improve the well-being of babies born prematurely as well as those who are full term.
"Kangaroo mother care saved our twin boys," said the proud father.


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- 1 quart milk
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup butter
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 yeast cakes
- Flour
- 1 cup raisins
- A little candied citron
Boil and cool the milk. Mix the dough as for bread, mixing in the raisins and citron. Bake in loaves like bread.
Submitted by Oct 14, 2009
15 min 30 min 45 min
15 min 30 min 45 min
- It is difficult to find citron in USA grocery stores but is sometimes sold during the holidays to complement fruitcake recipes
- The Buddha's hand variety of citron is named after it's finger-like shape and is often used in fruit cake
- Candied citron peel is commonly found in marmalade
- Citron rind produces oil that is often used in liquor and fragrances
- The citron rind is the most commonly used part of the fruit
- Asian cultures use the citron to add fragrance to a room and to wash clothing
- Citron grows in a variety of shapes but is usually oblong or oval
- Citron was used to cure people experiencing seasickness
- Bakers often use candied fruit or lemon peel as a citron substitute
- A citron is a fruit similar to the lemon with less acid, a thicker rind, and less pulp
- Professional bakers often use fresh compressed cake yeast which is more predictable and easy to dissolve
- Rapid-rise yeast has a different baking behavior from other types of yeast and will have a flavor that is more bland and texture that is more simple
- Active dry yeast and instant yeast can be used interchangably
- Test your yeast before baking: Add to a small cup of warm water and then add a Tbsp of sugar - If it foams, it's ready
- Yeast and the leavening process create the air pockets and sponge-like texture in bread
- Yeast activates the fermentation process, turning carbohydrates into gas (carbon dioxide) and alcohol
- Yeast is a single tiny cell nearly the same size as a human red blood cell
- Yeast is a type of fungus in the same family as the mushroom
- Raisins are high in antioxidants which are considered by many scientists to slow the aging process and prevent cancer
- Raisins are gluten-free
- A serving of raisins (1.2 ounces) contains 110 calories
- Raisins were dropped by "Raisin Bombers" in Berlin during WWII to feed children
- The first written reference to rasisns was in the Old Testament during the reign of King David, 1000 B.C.
- The American Heart Association recommends the following for daily sugar intake: 9 Tsp (Men), 5 Tsp (Women), 3 Tsp (Children)
- The average american consumes over 20 teaspoons of sugar per day
- Most sweeteners including sugar and fruit extracts, cane juices, honey, syrup, etc. have a fructose/glucose ratio of approximately 50/50
- Fructose is found in sugar and most sweeteners and is unhealthy because it goes straight to the liver causing diabetes and heart disease
- Sugar is sometimes referred to as "evaporated cane juice"
- Many people choose sugar over high fructose corn syrup because sugar is not as highly processed
- Consumption of sugar increases insulin levels, increases energy, but then leads to a drop in both and likely a craving for more food
- Sugar is a carbohydrate with about 9 calories per sugar cube
- About 40% of the world's sugar production comes from Brazil
- The fully mature sugar cane stem can grow as tall as five meters
- Sugar cane and sugar beet are the most common sources of refined sugar
- Sugar is sucrose which can is found naturally in many plants
- Christopher Columbus is credited with bringing sugar to the Americas
- The process of creating sugar through evaporation of the sugar cane juice began in India
- The earliest known production of sugar dates back to 9000 BC in the southwest Pacific island of New Guinea


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1115 m²0.275522499815 ac12001.760114632 sq. ft.
520 m²0.12849479812 ac5597.2334166892 sq. ft.
The Palazzo is situated in Rabat in the central part of the island on slightly more than approx. 500sq.m (5400sq.ft). Malta, located just south of Sicily, is one of the latest EU member states and often gets quoted as the "Mediterranean Mini-Hollywood" due to its popularity as movie set.
Fully restored to its own glory, this Palazzo has all the modern amenities. Boasting enormous approx. 1115sq.m (12'000sq.ft.) of living, the palazzo is aimed at families that work from home with private spaces for guests, domestic offices, servant quarters and ample entertainment areas with the latest technology.
The mansion consists of imposing entrance hall, central courtyard, 2 lateral offices spaces with their own private entry, several entertaining areas, an impressive salon, a well designed kitchen by Antonio Citterio, 5 en-suite bedrooms, gym, Hammam, library, wine cellar and several other bonus rooms.


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August 17, 2012
14 weeks. What a strange time. I feel like I've been pregnant for ages (I know, ask me at week 40), yet I'm not really showing. Never having gone through this before it truly is so strange. I've seen this baby's little body several times, am constantly thinking about the little one's well being yet I have nothing to show for it. I wake up, for the most part with the teensiest bump and go to bed with a slightly larger one- you know, the kind you have after eating an entire burrito. I'm anxious for this belly to grow and somehow trying to savor this precious time when to the world this sweet baby is still somewhat of a secret. Happy Friday, friends.
LABELS: pregnancy
i just want to say- i love the way that your blog is evolving now. motherhood totally suits you :) the early stages of pregnancy are so amazing. i used to love being able to see a glimpse of belly at night! it made everything seem so much more real. wait until you feel your little one moving- it is WILD. can't wait to follow your journey here. God is good!ReplyDelete
I know exactly how you feel. I'm at 13 weeks! I'm excited to see your blog evolves and get to be going through the same thing!ReplyDelete
Thanks, ladies. Kell- I can't wait to feel this babe move! Amanda- congratulations to you! I'm glad to go through all of this with you!ReplyDelete


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Bonus View
Sony BDP-S360 Blu-ray player announced for Europe20 April 2009
Sony has announced the "entry level" BDP-S360 Blu-ray player for the European market - although we're still waiting to hear UK pricing and availability. Offering 1080p picture quality, and 24p "true cinema", the S360 provides full 7.1 surround sound via... >>
Samsung BD-P4600 wall-mountable Blu-ray priced for UK6 April 2009
Samsung has announced the UK pricing for two new Blu-ray players, the top-of-the-range BD-P4600 and the BD-P1600. We brought you news of the BD-P4600 from the CES show in January. It's notable for being the world's slimmest and first wall-mountable Blu-ray... >>
Sony launches three Bravia home theatre systems17 December 2008
Sony has launched three new Bravia home theatre systems in the UK. The HTP-BD3iS combines the BDP-S350 Blu-ray player with a 5.1 channel surround sound system, the BDV-FS350 also bundles the BDP-S350 but offers 2.1 sound while the RHT-G500 is one of Sony's... >>
Sharp BD-HP21H Blu-ray launches27 November 2008
Sharp has announced that its new BD-HP21H Blu-ray disc player is now available in the UK. With a Profile 1.1 - Bonus View functionality - users can enjoy the picture in picture and simultaneous play functions, but it should be noted that the player does... >>
Denon launches DVD-1800BD Blu-ray player in the UK11 November 2008
Denon has announced the UK launch of its DVD-1800BD Blu-ray player, describing the device as "entry level" offering an "extremely attractive price point". The player boasts modest specs including Blu-ray Profile 1.1, or "Bonus View" but not the all-singing... >>
Sony BDP-350 and BDP-550 Blu-ray players launch in UK1 August 2008
Sony has announced the launch of its BDP-S350 and S550 Blu-ray players in the UK. With a 6-second start up time, the BDP-S350 offers 24p True Cinema, Bonus View, Sony's Precision Cinema HD Upscale, Precision Drive HD and BD-Live. The BD-Live functionality... >>
Pioneer launches four Blu-ray players in the UK27 June 2008
Pioneer has announced its new line-up of four new Blu-ray disc players for the UK market, but only one will boast full, future-proof, Blu-ray spec including the interactive BD-Live functionality. In total four Blu-ray disc players will be introduced the... >>
Panasonic PZ81 to form centre of HD home10 June 2008
Today Panasonic outlined its vision of what it is calling the "Digital Hearth", and no, it isn't a fireplace. Panasonic see their new Viera PZ81 as the centrepiece of your HD home cinema setting, backed up by the DMP-BD50, Panasonic's third-gen Blu-ray... >>
Denon launches affordable DVD-1800BD Blu-ray player21 May 2008
Denon has announced a new Blu-ray player in the States, the DVD-1800BD at an "affordable" price point. With the price set at $749, the player boasts modest specs including Blu-ray Profile 1.1, or "Bonus View" but not the all-singing BD-Live features that... >>
Wal-Mart to sell $300 Blu-ray players19 May 2008
American retail giant Wal-Mart is to start selling Blu-ray players for under $300. Marking the cheapest starting price point yet for players in the format, even cheaper than the PS3 which sells for $399 in the States, the hardware on offer will be a Funai... >>


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Tomb Raider Petrified Wood Anubias Garden- evolution pics p.1! video 3/6
NOTE- all pics are in this first post to make it easy to see the evolution! Tank is now 4 1/2 years old! Stock list is current as of 3/12/2015.
Wanted to share my tank as Ive purchased the Anubias Petite and others here. Plus its a little different than most...
I should clarify all of this with-
I have always been consumed with creating a freshwater reef. Ive done salt water reefs for over 20 years but I no longer want that level of maintenance. I only have 2 tanks now- this a and a 60 gallon which is just a trash tank/hospital tank for this one. This tank is still my favorite of all time, reefs included!
Its inspiration was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom... then the large slab of petrified wood I bought made it feel more OG side scrolling platform games. Then once it started to develop it leaned towards Tomb raider and as the Anubias roots grow out- its really lookin legit!
Ive planned this tank for 15 years but never found a statue/bust that didn't look cheesy... Then my friend in Africa sent me the one you see here that I grew the Java Fern head dress on. That triggered the entire change (as this tank was a reef tank up until June. I had needed to change to freshwater for a while... the bust made it come together)
Then a few weeks of eBAY rock shopping and 800 dollars later... (though 1/3 of that was shipping!) Voila! I sold my reef tank for good money (just the contents) so I had more than enough to cover start up!
Heres the sequence from start to finish ending with the placement of the Anubias Petite.
The UPDATED (07/01/2015) current stock list-
10 Khuli loaches
1 candy stripe pleco
17 Rummy nose tetras
1 Farlowella
10 panda corys
1 Chinese Hill Stream Loach
3 Red Gobies (Sicyopus Exallisquamulus) and YES they eat shrimp LOL!
3-4 HUGE amano shrimp
4 Bumblebee gobies- freshwater, NEVER fed, living off cherry shrimp and LOVING IT! Best color Ive ever seen... STILL killing it a year later- all 4!
a bunch of ottos
a boatload of cherry shrimp
a few other species of shrimp I forget (tiger, the brown ones LOL, others I can't remember!)
a boatload of Malaysian trumpet snails
a few freshwater clams
Crappy iPhone video- current as of 4/17/12
New crappy iphone video- 3/6/13
Day after reef switch
sand, anubs and Harlequin Rasboras (I later decided against them)
first batch of rocks, more plants
tier added, gully dug
more plants
the full 200lb lot of petrified rounds added (on top of the prior pics- yep 200 more lbs...) and end of rock additions, hill built
addition of Snow Bengal kitten and ADA 60F for him (hes sleeping on top cause I covered and hes annoyed!)...
Petite added to virgin sacrifice rock and statue base centerpiece
wow that's awesome looking set-up there. You really put some dedication to your tank. The slope for the tank is another thing l liked. One thing that worries me is that the rocks might collapse unless you covered that already and didn't say it on the post. other than that good job! One question, how big is the tank and what kind of lightning system are you using?
I have no clue how you'll hold the slopes in place but congrats on the detailed layout.:proud:
125 gallon with built in wet dry, full CO2 rig, and for lighting its changed-
It was 1/2 10000K, 1/2 actinic (left over from the reef rig) T5s. Thats ALSO why the pics look BETTER earlier on- its the reef lighting- way cooooler (yeah thats a pun)...
Now Ive switched to 1/2 10,000k and 1/2 6700k T5s.
Total watts 156 watts T5.
I also run my lights 14 hours a day... and... LEDs 16 hours a day... add in indirect light (skylight) and my tank gets only 4 hours of true darkness a day...
I run actinics (but the LED version). You can see the LEDs on the back wall- they are really blue. BUT if you turn them off the tank goes soooooooo yellow. And the LEDS stay on for 2 hours after lights off so imagine the effect from midnight to 2AM-
The camera cant handle the light properly but the pic gives the idea. Just imagine it WAY more subtle and you can see the fish... barely...
When I bailed the Rasboras that was the only bad thing- they glowed at night cause of the contrary color orange and their translucent bodies refract the light- none of my other fish do that. I bet many tetras would look great too.
DOWN SIDE- the filament algae. But my SAEs are eating some of it and it ONLY grows directly under the LEDs. Not too bad but definitely worth mentioning.
My planted tanks purpose is different than most... All I care about is 2 things-
1. Do I like how it looks (ie why the lights are on 14 hours a day- I hate it when the tanks off!)
2. Is it BEYOND easy to maintain! (reaction to reefing for the past 10 years)
Ive been doing tanks for well over 20 years. Ive consulted LFS, Ive designed and sold tanks and Ive generally been heavy fishy for a very long time. (Though Ive never gotten the chance to do a 6 figure tank or high end custom install- thats the dream!)
Im not that old, but this is my retirement tank! Low maintenance and high rewards! And every tank I build is for sale but... NOT this one! Petrified rounds are easy, but Ill never find a slab like that again...
The sand I use is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fine it holds the slope. The powerhead will sometimes droop and blow some top sand off but honestly, your 100% wrong about the slope! All you need to do is make a rock barrier. Then the final trick is to grow anubias between the rock crevaces you want to hold sand... Once the roots take, you can build as high as you want (think of tiers in mountain farming cultures).
But you also may not realize Ive done this MANY MANY times! Slopes and gullies are my trademark! Its all about 3D!:icon_excl
OH and under the slope... its all really petrified wood rounds... Like 150+ pounds.... So the slope LOOKS all sand but its really rocks COVERED in sand!
If your gonna rune your lights 14 hrs a day, you will get an algae farm. Nice start!
That's a very unique tank you have built there. I really enjoy it. I do hope that you post pics 6 months down the line, when it has grown in a bit.
That looks really neat. You could always use a little two part epoxy if you're worried about the rocks moving.
Tomb Raider it is. Very unique scape! .
Thats just not true! I am actually UPSET that the slab which was COVERED GREEN- no white- has been polished almost clean again!
Ive been running the lights for 14 hours a day since JUNE... So nope- not an algae farm. Unless you think it takes 3 months for algae to grow...
Between the ottos (which I forgot to list), the shrimp, the rubber lip and MOST OF ALL the candy stripe- algae woes never existed. The SAEs are doing great on the filament algae but I still remove some from the back wall once a week.
But the week I got the Candy Stripe is the week my algae really started disappearing!
Ive been TRYING to over grow algae for the theme... My cleaning crew is already ahead of the game and the cherrie shrimps are breeding like they are on crack.
Balance. I could run my lights 24 hours a day and have NO algae issues... But that wouldn't be right for the fish.
Ive set up 5 large tanks EXACTLY like this (professionally)... The only thing thats changed for me over 20 years is adding cherry shrimp to the amanos (and some others but its the breeders that change the game entirely!) and being able to afford all petrified wood...
Great concept built into a great tank. Have you thought about fish stocking yet?
But thats just me being snotty- epoxy works GREAT!!!! And ill use it on others tanks if need be.
The tank is actually locked together far more than it looks- only the top tiers are in jeopardy. And once the anubias grows in, I doubt more than a couple rocks could even move!
Plus I love seeing everyone elses tanks!
Im a long term plan guy with tanks so chances are Ill post as I go! And most of my friends are tired of hearing about it!
The nicest thing that happened was a friend from Finland came to visit last week and we grew up together (in the US). He saw this new tank, and hes seen most of my others, and he said, "You really do make amazing tanks. Everytime I see one Im inspired to start my own!"
Thats success to me! And having so many friends international (from Dubai to Finland to Africa to Mexico) a good thread here will be easy for them to see where ever thay are!
Funny- my biggest inspiration overall was Takashi Amano and my personal show tank is the ANTITHESIS of what he would approve of! Unnatural, man made objects and all anubias- the "stiff" plant that should never be the sole plant...:proud:
I had 15+ CDPs but in a week most died out of NOWHERE (After almost 2 months of no problems at all). No other fish deaths, parameters fine... weird. It was really strange, BUT with all that petrified wood, I could run into some serious leeching issues... I knew that going in. Its not like lace rock where you know the majority of its contents!
I may replenish the CPDs but Im not 100% sure. You cant see how beautiful they are from where I sit and watch the tank so I may go with something else.
BUT Ill probably just add a pair of peacock gudgeons and call it a day. Ill need something to pray on the shrimp population anyway!
In my personal tanks, I stock like it should be- not like it could be! Honestly, 99% of the tanks Ive seen over 20 years are severly overstocked...
If you leave more room, the fish act MUCH more naturally and live wayyyyy longer. Not to mention all the extra filtration and water changes...
Me I dont EVER do scheduled water changes... And I dont want to start now! Once the plants take Ill mostly just top off evaporation and call it a day!
Very awesome! I like it! I like the man's hat!
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