A scholar is just a library's way of making another library.
I don't know about you, but I am not initially attracted by the idea of my brain a s a sort of dungheap in which the larvae of other people's ideas renew themselves, before sending out copies of themselves in an informational diaspora. It does seem to rob my mind of its importance as both author and critic. Who's in charge, according to this vision -- we or our memes? — Dennett
It's very short. I remember reading it, and being like :s 'why have I just read this?' — Augstino
The Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges is not typically classified as a philosopher, but in his short stories he has given philosophy some of its most valuable thought experiments, most of them gathered in the stunning collection Labyrinths. Among the best is the fantasy -- actually, it is more a philosophical reflection than a narrative -- that describes the Library of Babel. — Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea
He (Borges) has a superb conceptual grasp of what Wilbur M. Urban called "the natural metaphysic of the human mind" -- the abstracting, god making, fluid, kaleidoscopic world view possessed by primitive men for want of a body of sure and useful knowledge, and the view to which sophisticated men inevitably return when they despair of truth. The philosophy perennis formulates a circular, predestined universe, capricious and chaotic, capable of an infinite number of equally valid configurations; a world in which everything conceivable is true and where "false" can only mean "unthought." Borges looks upon modern men, with their fixed hiearchy of knowledge and an idea of being that differs radically from the loose cosmologies of their ancient forebears, as if they were a choral group that sings only one dogmatized song. — Carter Wheelock
Where do you get that one market shutting down results in an unrelated other market shutting down? — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Learning to be self-reliant / self-sufficient and only entering formal markets when it is one's only choice (you can't fly your own aircraft, so you hire an airline to fly you somewhere; you can't mine your own minerals, so you buy them from a mine operator, etc.) is what would be revolutionary. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Do you mean that I've ruined the thread because my jokes are actually funny? — T Clark
Knock knock! — praxis
Don't ruin my illusion. I was imagining they are deeply meaningful comments on the absurdity of existence. — T Clark
So far, your jokes have left me scratching my head. — T Clark
Also, why gender non-gendered objects anyways? That seems like an odd way to relate to the world. I don't even get why non-scientific societies would think in those terms. Language does not have to have gendered words, but some do, and it became the convention. So odd. — Schopenhauer1