Time, as part of space-time, is one of those basic physical universe realities. Or is it?  

I have just read the latest collection of articles from the Scientific American. The accounts were fascinating and rather diverse. But before I comment, let’s review my first engagement with time in the Taxonomy.

You may recall that I identified four experiences or realms of time in, of all places, the production of goodness. There is linear time: the time of the hero. I mean you and me in our daily struggle. Then there is cyclic time: the time More...

The scientific culture of the 20th century had a phobia of subjectivity and anything to do with the mind. Not unreasonably, because scientists saw how subjective intrusions disrupt thinking and investigating.

For much of the last century, psychology divided into two battling camps. On the one side were psychoanalytic sympathizers who aligned with Freud's discoveries but not his scientific bent. On the other side were scientific behaviourists who ruled that the mind was non-existent or irrelevant and impossible to study with empirical methods. Most natural scientists were sceptical More...

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN 2012 but not posted till 2025.

This life is not just physics and biology. 

It is also experiential and social. Any reduction or contempt for this meta-reality (metaphysics) prevents us studying how we are creative and ethical. When we create or make a moral choice it feels real because it is real. Being real, it has real-world effects apart from neuronal firing. Ignoring these effects is dangerous, really dangerous—just as ignoring a safe falling onto your head is dangerous. On the other hand, you can ignore your neurons entirely: there will not be the tiniest difference to what happens. 

If you have a scientific bent, as I do, then you will believe that anything that is real can and should be studied.  I call this meta-reality: psychosocial reality.

Grasping personal psychosocial reality is tricky because More...

Are the frameworks in the taxonomy, THEE, the product of empirical inquiry?

Yes—if you mean they are based on accumulating replicable observations of actual phenomena.  This is what empirical inquiry is about. 

No—if you mean they are developed via conventional sense perceptions of concrete physical objects.  This is what the prevailing materialistic ideology of science demands.

You are an unusual person if you haven't been thoroughly indoctrinated into More...

Q: What is a “thing”?

A: A “thing” is something that “is”.  From a systems perspective, for a “thing” to “be”, it must have a “content” which has a “context”.  A context constrains and influences the content.  In the world, any Thing + its Context combines to be perceived as a new Thing which then has its bigger, more encompassing Context and so on.  Eventually every Thing is included.

Q: What is the context for Everything?
A: Nothing.

Q: Is Nothing some-thing?  (Because, if it is, then it needs a context.) More...