Patterns
or Principles and Other EssaysPatterns
or Principles and Other Essays
The essays collected in Patterns or Principles deal, from
various perspectives, with the central confrontation within modern culture.
The confrontation is between two irreconcilable philosophies of life. One
is centered on mere patters of thinking that obey only the fashions of
the moment. The other is steeped in principles whose truth is not dependent
on momentary preferences.
The different kinds of correctness - political, academic, societal, educational, and scientific - have one thing in common, they aim at establishing the rule of mere patterns. According to that rule any pattern of behavior, which is acted out by people whose number is statistically significant, is entitled to full legal recognition and political support. And the same holds true of any set of ideas, subversive or distasteful as they may be when measured up against the traditional principles of Western Civilization. While these principles have always been held to be synonymous with absolute, unchangeable truths, patterns are always subject to perpetual reshaping and therefore strictly relative.
The expression "statistically significant" should readily evoke the scientific veneer which this crusade against Western Civilization uses in order to appear intellectually respectable. A major aim of these essays is to throw light on this abuse of science for purposes wholly alien to it.
Contents:
1. Patterns or principles: The pseudoscientfic roots of law's
debacle
2. Ecology or ecologism?
3. Socrates, or the baby and the bathwater
4. Medieval christianity: its creativity in science and technology
5. Telltale remarks and a tale untold
6. Determinism and reality
7. The history of science and the science of history
8. Science: western or what?
9. Gilson and science
10. The nonsense and sense of science
11. The mind: its physics or physiognomy?
12. The last word in physics