Meditations

Life is on the cusp of exploding with spring here. For a few minutes there is nothing except bright, diffuse light, the water flowing by, and long shoots of new…

Twenty years ago, when I replied to the standard question, ‘what do you do?’ with ‘I do philosophy,’ I was met with blank stares. Now everyone but Marco Rubio and…

A vulture soars by, wheels and circles a few times. The sight of it as the mind enters a meditative state opens the gates of perception to beauty again. Strange…

Here’s an interesting thought experiment, inadvertently posed by the paleontologist Scott D. Sampson. It points to the core questions and insights of the evolution of consciousness in the universe.

When do you think war began? With the first tilled fields and walled cities, or well before, in the mists of prehistoric man? Your view of when war started reflects…

In astrophysics, as in life, it comes down to whether one feels there is some kind of intelligence operating from the beginning in the universe (without implying a Creator), or…

The land is bathed in beauty as the sun, giving its last warmth on an ineffably clear and lovely winter’s afternoon, slides toward the horizon.

Even half a century ago as a boy in Michigan during the heyday of the auto industry, Flint was seen as a rather sad sinkhole. But I could not have…