Sunday, May 11, 2003




Philip K. Dick


Thomas Disch suggests that Philip K. Dick may have had temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). It's conceivable TLE played an instrumental role in his psychedelic religious experiences.

But what if certain epileptiform states facilitate heightened consciousness? The cosmic associations typical of TLE are subjective enough, yet "subjective" observation plays an underlying role in quantum physics. So where does that leave Newtonian objectivity? Can there be such a thing?

Before he was kicked off UFO UpDates, author Colin Bennett argued that "facts" were mental constructs, mere "politics of the imagination." Charles Fort was the first to take 20th century rationalism to task by exposing its deeply troubling (and roundly ignored) "irrationality": animals falling from the sky, UFOs, "impossible" archeological finds . . .

"Discovery commences with the awareness of anomaly." --Thomas Kuhn

What Kuhn might not have realized is that reality itself is one immense squirming anomaly. Every moment is filled with discovery in the same way that even the so-called vacuum is filled with vast amounts of "frozen" energy waiting to be unlocked.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Personally, I think the whole of reality cannot be explained by one group of people. It seems that nobody is the 'true dictatum' of reality. Everyone differs.