c/alan-watts
The largest collection of talks by Alan Watts — the British-American philosopher who made Eastern wisdom accessible through witty and profound teachings.
…another thing all kinds of determinism again go back to the beginning of 19th century science to the work of newton and to Descartes. They go back to a model of the universe which we won't get called fully automatic but we will call it the goliath…
…west, that is to say it thought of the universe and of nature as a constructed mechanical system, the, but through the ideas of Descartes and of newton and so on. But these all in a way go back to Christianity and Judaism, with their image of the…
…great difficulty of all philosophical debates, we were discussing during the intermission in the last seminar, some of us the question of Descartes saying I think, hence I exist, and how it was the apropos of the question: how do we know we exist? Well…
…another thing. All kinds of determinism again go back to the beginning of 19th century science to the work of newton and to Descartes. They go back to a model of the universe which we won't get called fully atoms. Our original thought of atoms were as…
…about relationships. Let's go back in the philosophy and look at former instances of this difficulty. The thing that really bogged Descartes Down and that puzzled him he never could answer was the relationship of mind and matter, or spirit and matter. He…
…do verbs get started by nouns I ask you, how can a thing start a process? Surely this is really the same problem Descartes was wrestling with when he tried to find out how spirit could influence matter or how mind could influence body, because everybody…
…we going to make it? Three: where are we going to put it? And four who's going to clean up? Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Descartes are all discussing these four questions. Now you see, but if you begin at the beginning who started it? That's a misleading…
…about all living beings as machines was the essential step necessary for the production of our technology. This was newton, this was Descartes this was their idea of the world as a mechanical system, more or less based on the game of billiards, where…
…this word into the English Language go with instead of cause and effect, instead of that mechanical understanding of the world which was Descartes and newton. They thought of the world as billiards: you hit a ball and it goes and it hits that ball like…
…the world. That's the false assumption and we think about this situation by analogy with billiards, because newton thought that way, Descartes thought that way, and newton and Descartes have molded the common sense of the average person living in the 20th…
…think about this situation by analogy with billiards, because newton thought that way, Descartes thought that way, and newton and Descartes have molded the common sense of the average person living in the 20th century, even though our science has abandoned…