 |
| Exploring the history of inquiry in the West |
Statistical significance arguments. If on a certain hypothesis a certain result would be unlikely, then the occurrence of that result tells against the hypothesis. Of this kind are arguments ruling out the hypothesis of chance: a sequence of 1,000 heads when tossing a coin is possible but very unlikely if the tossing were random, so if such a result occurs, one rules out the hypothesis of chance and looks for some explanation of the regularity, such as a bias in the coin. Such arguments occurred in Aristotle, Cicero, the Talmud, and occasionally thereafter. There was never any attempt to quantify how unlikely the result was on the hypothesis.
Nyanaponika Thera noted, “cautious and intelligent use … of one’s own introspective observations … though far from infallible, may well lead to important and reliable conclusions.” Whether the Hellenistic philosophers meditated or not, their self-observation was sensitive and accurate, as is showed by the fact that they describe the process virtually identically with the abhidharma [a tradition of Buddhist description of operations of the mind] except for a tendency to see as aspects of a single complex stage what the abhidharma sees more minutely as successive simple stages.
“Early in the journey you wonder how long the journey will take and whether you will make it in this lifetime. Later you will see that where you are going is HERE and you will arrive NOW...so you stop asking.”
When we stop thinking for ourselves we are in a trance. Trance is the default setting of a mind that's not working consciously. Sometimes, when purposeful, this is healthy at other times it's incredibly unhealthy.
"Lots of people," as the poet and artist Austin Kleon puts it, "want to be the noun without doing the verb." To make something great, what's required is need. As in, I need to do this. I have to. I can't not.
