Dear List

There are a good many very excellent commentaries to the Phenomenology of Spirit. However, I need an equally good guide to help me through the logic. Can anybody offer any suggestions? The more detailed the better - something like the equivalent to Harris's guide to the Phenomenology would be great.

many thanks for any suggestions
Best
Phil

--- In hegel@yahoogroups.com, eupraxis@... wrote:

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>
> John,
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> The anthropic principle, as you summarize it, is as uncontroversial as you say, but that, sadly, is NOT how not it has been exploited. I, in fact, had not brought the matter up. Now, why do you suppose it HAD been? If you review the debate, you will see that the inference was that something quite like God 'out-stands' (prior to, in addition to, etc.) the universe such that we can recline in our shorts in comfort and not care about the demise of fermions after the "big stretch".
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> Although this may have missed your attention, the anthropic principle has been misused as a Deus Ex Machina invocation for god. See Weinberg on this.
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> It is quite a kick in the wood that I am being asked to leave God out of it, when my whole purpose was to ask that God be left out of it! You should read the posts before making accusations. -- Unless by "leaving God out of it" you mean 'leaving others' God talk unchallenged'. If the latter is the case, as you say, "well ...".
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> Yours,
> Wil
>

Dea Wil,

I was sort of joking with that "leave God out of it" business.

The problem with physics is that it is all in math. The reason this is a problem is that, while in spite of the difficulties, it is possible to translate ideas from one language to another, it really isn't possible to translate ideas expressed in advanced math in language.

This leads to the so-called "two cultures". Really, physicists aren't able to communicate their ideas to people who aren't fluent in math even if they want to.

But an even worse problem is that physicists end up, basically, having two minds--their language mind or every day mind, on the one hand, and their math mind, on the other.

But a person's "I" is in his everyday mind. The math mind is completely impersonal.

So, although the ideas of physics are very real, and although the physicists are really thinking them, they can't personnally "understand" them any better than anyone else. To "understand" them, they would have to translate them into language.

There's the same sort of thing in music. Obviously musical ideas can't be translated into language.

But, anyway, this is one of the reasons I got out of physics. What's the point in thinking ideas that you can't understand?

And, unlike the ideas of music, we really do feel the need to understand the ideas of physics. And this is, I think, a function that philosophy should fulfill, in so far as it is possible.

I believe Hegel's SL is a good step in the right direction. There you have a large number of rigorously related concepts. Considering the rigorous training over many years that physicists and mathematicians go through, how would it be possible to even begin to understand these ideas without going through an equally rigorous process?

But the philosophy of nature is especially important. I think it is really unfortunate that the philosophy of nature has been pretty much banned from philosophy since the 1950s. If you go to a book-store with a large philosophy section, there are probably only three books you'll be able to find that adress this issue: Bergson, Teilhard and Whitehead. And none of these three can be considered "reactionary", since they all three wrote before the ban went into effect.

But, anyway, for me personally, this is a major problem that philosophy is seriously neglecting.

John