Do We Live In The Best Of All Possible Worlds? I imagine not.
part of a conversation on fbook.
There once was a philosopher named Liebniz who maintained that we live in the "Best of all Possible Worlds." His logic ran like this: God would not create and then perpetuate through eons of time anything less than a perfect world. This seems a plausible rationale in the diorama of a thinking man's mind where religion, guided by a single diety, informs his thinking and his behavior.
I think I would agree w/this position if the prerequisite of a single God creating the universe was a known given. Not having this luxury though,one simple yet sublime facet of the human character-imagination- renders us incapable of accepting that the world we inhabit is the best of all possible ones. The genius of the imagination constitutes my refutation of this proposition- a position that prevailed in many philosophical schools of the Enlightenment trying to reconcile God and Science during the 17'th and 18'th centuries. A position even the great Enlightenment thinker, Voltaire, considered plausible until he witnessed the great Lisbon earthquake in 1755.
It is pretty simple argument I make here w/ only one principle in my camp. As follows: We do not live in the best of all possible worlds precisely because we are vested w/ the burden of trying to imagine ways to make it better. Lichens, fungi, mosses and molds live in the best of all possible worlds simply because they cannot imagine a better one. We are the tool making specie Homo habilis. But I would like to coin a more precise way to describe us..... ta daaa Homo- Imaginus! Descartes said, in effect,"I think, therefore I exist"
Me says; We imagine, therefore we [still exist]... we still survive..
Recap: To imagine is to aspire to a "conscious" bliss but never attain it.... Therefore, w/ the sweet burden of imagination, we can never attain the "Best of all Possible Worlds."
part of a conversation on fbook.
There once was a philosopher named Liebniz who maintained that we live in the "Best of all Possible Worlds." His logic ran like this: God would not create and then perpetuate through eons of time anything less than a perfect world. This seems a plausible rationale in the diorama of a thinking man's mind where religion, guided by a single diety, informs his thinking and his behavior.
I think I would agree w/this position if the prerequisite of a single God creating the universe was a known given. Not having this luxury though,one simple yet sublime facet of the human character-imagination- renders us incapable of accepting that the world we inhabit is the best of all possible ones. The genius of the imagination constitutes my refutation of this proposition- a position that prevailed in many philosophical schools of the Enlightenment trying to reconcile God and Science during the 17'th and 18'th centuries. A position even the great Enlightenment thinker, Voltaire, considered plausible until he witnessed the great Lisbon earthquake in 1755.
It is pretty simple argument I make here w/ only one principle in my camp. As follows: We do not live in the best of all possible worlds precisely because we are vested w/ the burden of trying to imagine ways to make it better. Lichens, fungi, mosses and molds live in the best of all possible worlds simply because they cannot imagine a better one. We are the tool making specie Homo habilis. But I would like to coin a more precise way to describe us..... ta daaa Homo- Imaginus! Descartes said, in effect,"I think, therefore I exist"
Me says; We imagine, therefore we [still exist]... we still survive..
Recap: To imagine is to aspire to a "conscious" bliss but never attain it.... Therefore, w/ the sweet burden of imagination, we can never attain the "Best of all Possible Worlds."
posted by dave warren at 9:17 AM
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