PFRR POSTS

THOUGHT: The World has recently descended into a fragile state.  ‘The World’ here means the human world, the procedures, institutions, methods, customs, civilities etc. which allow seven billion of us to “get along together”, after a fashion, on this planet...


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01/02/2022

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 28

The specialisation obsession in philosophy sits oddly in a world desperately needing generalised vision We are now struggling with two existential crises (The Pandemic and Global Heating) which have probably arisen, in the last analysis, from our neglect of thinking “in the large”. This has arisen from an extraordinary mass […]
04/01/2022

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 27

This is the first Blog for the year 2022 and it comes after an anxious few weeks during which the Omicron version of Covid 19 has spread like wildfire. It reminds us there is no escaping the fact that humanity is now moving through Crisis Passage. (It is not only […]
01/12/2021

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 26

This is the last Blog for the year 2021 and it raises the question <<How can one convey —within the conventions of measured, serious language— the utmost importance of the conclusions which spring from finding a solution to the hitherto unsolved Central Puzzle of Modern Science?>> This Puzzle is: Whatever […]
01/11/2021

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 25

The last blog in this series focused squarely onto the Problem of the Central Puzzle facing modern science, the question which is implicit in the explanatory method of modern science —deconstruction of tiny entities like genes, molecules, atoms, protons… into still tinier entities. The central puzzle is very clear: Whatever […]
01/10/2021

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 24

We turn now to look at the Problem of the Central Puzzle facing modern science, because this Central Puzzle is currently being shamelessly ignored by the scientific elite.  Science begins as the expression of a kind of intense curiosity about the discovery of unexpected pattern in the world.  It is […]
01/09/2021

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 23

The last instalment of this blog (August 2021) aired the concept that the world needs a return to intense caring as the everyday basis for civilised society. Today there is a shortfall of intense caring in every sector of human activity, and as a result things are beginning to fall […]
02/08/2021

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 22

The world is currently going through a bad patch. The Covid-19 pandemic is still raging on, global warming is producing dangerous weather conditions, there are many places where chronic warfare has reduced the built environment —and any semblance of ‘civilisation’— to rubble, the drought of fresh political ideas continues, and […]
02/07/2021

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 21

The last instalment of this blog (June 2021) aired the continuing significance of using mathematical modelling to illuminate the way ahead.  It stated the self-evident case for this reason-based way of pathfinding the future, and hence of adding to the commongood.  But much of the latest news remains dismal, and […]
02/06/2021

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 20

The last instalment of this blog (May 2021) aired two brilliant new insights about the possibilities of modelling which have risen to the surface during the pandemic. To say these developments are “hopeful”, is a considerable understatement. (They are the Peircean Interpretation of Mathematics and Actimatics.) When taken in, and […]
30/04/2021

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 19

The pandemic seems to be receding, thankfully, in the UK and this means that we are now left to confront the challenge of re-thinking arrangements and assumptions across a huge range of contentious issues —the ones which have been mercilessly exposed as inadequate and dangerous by the pandemic. So we […]
06/08/2024

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 59

We saw in blog 58 that the slow disintegration of our society as an organic whole can probably only be halted by introducing a radical change in state education. State education MUST try to inculcate all its learners into a sense of responsibility to, and membership of, the society. The […]
03/07/2024

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 58

The problems of philosophy of politics at the present time are multiple, difficult and diverse. They begin with an historic anomaly: the collapse of all previously credible world-views and universal codes of behaviour. This is a uniquely troubling situation.  Such codes were the glue which used to hold society together. […]
03/06/2024

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 57

The inexplicable poverty of modern political reflection An unexpected consequence of modernity has been the consistently weak level of insight stemming from political philosophy during the last hundred years.  There have been few political philosophers of any stature since Karl Marx: and his reputation, let’s remember, was partly built on […]
01/05/2024

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 56

In the last few blogs I have pointed out the astonishingly simplifying effect of anti-maths when applied to scientific modelling. Suddenly a thousand unsatisfactory, hopeless questions disappear. Jumping up and down is in order… This is not just great news —it is the kind of great news we have been […]