classics digests, reflections and reviews
The Meaning of Reality I’ve learned since childhood that reality is what exists independently of human perception and knowledge. We gain knowledge of reality if and only if our ideas correspond to it. Fantasy is that which has no correspondence in reality, and exists only in the mind of an individual. Unless he communicates his fantasy, others have no way of knowing it. George Berkeley shows a different way of […]
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[Posted to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Heisenberg’s death.] Form and Potentiality in Nature Modern physics takes a definite stand against the materialism of Democritus and Epicurus, and for Plato and the Pythagoreans. The elementary particles are certainly not eternal and indestructible units of matter. They can actually be transformed into each other. All particles are of the same substance: energy. The resemblance of the modern views to those of […]
Read moreA life at odds with Fortune resembles a wintry torrent, for it is turbulent, muddy, difficult to pass, violent, noisy and brief; A soul conversant with virtue resembles a perpetual fountain; for it is clear, gentle, agreeable, sweet, serviceable, rich, harmless and innocent. They who have a good constitution of body can bear heat and cold; and so they who have a right constitution of soul can meet anger and […]
Read moreThere is an autobiographical story of how Lu Xun became a writer, which I read many years ago and cannot forget: Lu Xun studied medicine in Japan, and prepared to be a doctor, for he wanted to relieve human suffering. When he saw that patients who nearly died from opium overdose immediately went back to opium after their treatment, he decided to take up writing instead — realizing that healing must […]
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