Rationalism... Is A Secularized Form Of The

The World We Inhabit Is Abundant Beyond Our Wildest Imagination. There Are Trees, Dreams, Sunrises; There Are Thunderstorms, Shadows, Rivers; There Are Wars, Flea Bites, Love Affairs; There Are The Lives Of People, Gods, Entire Galaxies. The Simplest Human Action Varies From One Person And Occasion To The Next-how Else Would We Recognize Our Friends Only From Their Gait, Posture, Voice, And Divine Their Changing Moods? Only A Tiny Fraction Of This Abundance Affects Our Minds. This Is A Blessing, Not A Drawback.

Early Chinese Thinkers Had Taken Variety At Face Value. They Had Favored Diversification And Collected Anomalies Instead Of Trying To Explain Them Away.

The Separation Of State And Church Must Be Complemented By The Separation Of State And Science, That Most Recent, Most Aggressive, And Most Dogmatic Religious Institution.

There Is Not A Single Rule, However Plausible, And However Firmly Grounded In Epistemology, That Is Not Violated At Some Time Or Other. It Becomes Evident That Such Violations Are Not Accidental Events, They Are Not Results Of Insufficient Knowledge Or Of Inattention Which Might Have Been Avoided. On The Contrary, We See That They Are Necessary For Progress.

What Is Surprising Is That Almost All The Trends That Developed Within The Sciences, Aristotelianism And An Extreme Platonism Included, Produced Results, Not Only In Special Domains, But Everywhere; There Exist Highly Theoretical Branches Of Biology And Highly Empirical Parts Of Astrophysics. The World Is A Complex An Many-sided Thing.