Tennyson's In Memoriam

              Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), a Victorian poet, completed his In Memoriam in 1849 where he wrestled with the contradictions between the idea of a providential god and the bleak evolutionary and materialistic science of the day after the death of his best friend. The poem is divided into 133 cantos. He was son to …

Just Published My Short Story “The Exile”

https://www.amazon.com/Exile-Stephen-C-Pedersen/dp/1709217456/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=stephen+pedersen+exile&qid=1577841971&sr=8-2 You can get the paperback on Amazon for $5.99, the Kindle for $.99 This is a short, poignant allegory which begins in the ancient city of Babylon. The protagonist is a man who wrestles with darkness, but who ceaselessly strives towards the light. However, after forty circling centuries have passed, the polymath leaves everything …

An Analysis of Matthew Arnold’s Literature and Science

Percy passed an essay on to Daedalus for him to read, but first he gave the setting in which it was created. Percy told him that it was addressed to the United States in 1883, in reply to Thomas H. Huxley's “Science and Culture," delivered in Birmingham on October 1st, 1880. Huxley was known as …

A Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body By Andrew Marvell

SOUL O who shall, from this dungeon, raise A soul enslav’d so many ways? With bolts of bones, that fetter’d stands In feet, and manacled in hands; Here blinded with an eye, and there Deaf with the drumming of an ear; A soul hung up, as ’twere, in chains Of nerves, and arteries, and veins; …

Mind By Richard Wilbur

Mind in its purest play is like some bat That beats about in caverns all alone, Contriving by a kind of senseless wit Not to conclude against a wall of stone. It has no need to falter or explore; Darkly it knows what obstacles are there, And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar …

Immanuel Kant: The Critique of Pure Reason (Rough Draft)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher who was born and lived in Königsberg, Prussia. He grew up in a Lutheran Protestant household that focused on the literal interpretation of the Bible. This religious upbringing is taught through the lens of humility and devotion. He enrolled into the University of Königsberg at the age of …

Pan Psychism’s Fitness

What kind of fabric is reality woven from? I remember my youth reading a physics book by Brian Greene who popularized string theory with its many and varied dimensions, and the super-cooled higgs field that was the precondition for the big bang. My early mind was shaped by science. However, once I made contact with …

All Too Human

What it means to be human is to have a set of limitations and potentialities and somewhere therein our short life is rooted. As an infant, we can darken the entire world by simply closing our eyes. With this great power we understand our free will, and as we grow older, we impress on the …

Mary, Quite Contrary: Consciousness Unexplained

What is the ultimate nature of reality? In Philosophy of mind, there are many positions regarding what has real being. On a commonsense level, dualism seems to be the reality. Thoughts, beliefs, and qualia really do seem to be different from tables, apples, and automobiles; therefore, according to dualists, there are two types of stuff …

Beauty Beyond a Percipient

When G.E. Moore, in his Principia Ethica, argues for the existence of Beauty he gives us a pragmatic conclusion for its existence. He writes: If it be once admitted that the beautiful world in itself is better than the ugly, then it follows, that however many beings may enjoy it, and however much better their …

William James: The Mind-Stuff Theory

Principles of Psychology: The Mind-Stuff Theory Evolutionary Psychology Demands a Mind-Dust.   In a general theory of evolution the inorganic comes first, then the lowest forms of animal and vegetable life, then forms of life that possess mentality, and finally those like ourselves that possess it in a high degree. As long as we keep …