Contents: Gospel & Universe
Titles: Part 1
Titles Part 1 & Part 2 list main sections, chapters, pages, sub-sections, charts, poems, etc. Annotated Contents Part 1 & Part 2 give descriptions of topics & arguments. Table of Contents.
🪐 — Preface ~ starting points: personal, philosophical, & political ❧ Situating Agnosticism: Poets - Grace - Historical Bearings - A Middle Position ❧ Approach, Overview, & Aim: Approach - Overview - Aim ❧ Rivers of Change: Heraclitus - Rivers in Time ❧ Paradox: A Logical Trap - Mortality’s Condition - Apostasy - Freedom of Thought ❧ P.O.V. 1: Family: Starting Points - The Right Point of View - Audience ❧ P.O.V. 2: Literature ❧ P.O.V. 3: Fault Lines ❧ A Positive-Sum Philosophy: The Problem with Superlatives - Plusses & Zeros - Liberty & Religion - Intolerance of Intolerance ❧ Freedom of Thought: Choice - England - From Chaucer to Mill - Christianity 2.0
🧩 — Introduction ~ definitions, approaches, & illustrations ❧ Layout: Form & Tangent - Two Parts - Other Lines ❧ Q & A (chart) ❧ Core Beliefs (chart) ❧ Two Infinities: Double Mysteries - Infinities - Non-Selective Infinities of the Physical or Practical World - Selective Infinities of the Metaphysical or Theological Realm ❧ The Mysterious Heavens: Andromeda to NGC 224 - The Mystic Astronomer - Giordano Bruno ❧ Huxley’s Definition ❧ To Believe And Not to Believe: Eastern Religion: the Challenge of Hinduism ❧ Types of Agnosticism ❧ Sitting on Fences ❧ A Literary Approach: Literature & Experience ❧ On Nightingales & Unified Sensibility: Keats’ Nightingale - Unified Sensibility ❧ The Unconvinced∙The Courage of Non-conviction - Convinced Scientific Atheists - Theistic Existentialism - The Unconvinced ❧ Agnostic Geometry: Triangles - The Doors - Circles - More Circles - Pascal’s Sphere ❧ Lucia: —1: Parma —2: Florence —3: Rome
Part 1: Philosophy, Science & Literature
🏛 — Skeptics & Stoics ~ Greek & Roman precursors to agnosticism ❧ A Rough Chronology (Introduction) ❧ Agnosticism Among the Isms (chart) ❧ Not Quite Skeptical 1: Suspension of Belief & Disbelief - Pyrrho of Elis - Deep Water ❧ Not Quite Skeptical 2 ❧ Nor Quite Stoic 1: Meditations: Agnosticism & Stoicism - The Emperor's Notebook ❧ Nor Quite Stoic 2: The Bigger Picture: Stoicism & Agnosticism - Wide-Angle & Telescopic - For Anyone, But Not For Everyone - The Dangerous Sea - [In progress] 3 The Uncertainty of It All
🔭 — The Sum of All Space ~ astronomy & our view of the universe ❧ Third Spinning Rock from the Sun: Jet Lag 1 - Copernicus: Location x Location x Location - Moses: The Moving Sky ❧ Of Sand & Salt ❧ Competing Explanations: At 23.5 Degrees - Ptolemy - Gospel & Universe - The New Almagest ❧ Cities of God: Geocentrism ❧ Dogma & the Stars: Dogma - A Convenient Narrative - Jet Lag 2 - Notes and Scales ❧ The Chinese Sky: Li Bai's Milky Way - Tang Astronomy - Maybe ❧ The Outer Reaches 1: All of Space - Universes ❧ The Outer Reaches 2: Hubble Volumes ❧ The Unknown Arcs of a Sphere: The Straight Line - The Circular Park - Andromeda & the Greeks - Línea Recta ❧ Alas, Poor Yorick: Species - Tinnitus - Final Frontiers - Cosmic Writ (+ commentary)
🔬 — Science & Mystery ~ science, astronomy, & religion ❧ Overview ❧ Possible Explanations ❧ Dante’s Journey ❧ Don’t Forget the Miller: Chaucer & Dante - The Miller's Tale - Boethius ❧ Summa Post Theologica: The Accumulation of Facts - The Possibility of an Explanation ❧ Primum Mobile: Cherubs & Nitrogen - Walt Whitman - Who Knows? - Our Primum Mobile ❧ Bruno & Saint Francis: Rome: Campo de’ Fiori - Assisi: The Tomb of Saint Francis - The Lower Basilica - The Upper Basilica - Pound: If Only ❧ Secrets & Mysteries: Starting from Touch - Learned Astronomer - Moments - Voltaire - Secrets - from Song of Myself ❧ Two Sides of the Fence: Life on the Fence - Belief - Disbelief ❧ The Crystal Ball of Science: Scientific Philosophers - All Things Large and Small∙Man’s Best Friend
♒️ — A River Journey ~ historical roots of doubt ❧ Mountain Springs: Pope’s Pierian Spring - Ranges ❧ A Chinese Interlude ❧ Montaigne: Que Sais-je? - Farther Than Haut-Médoc ❧ French Currents ❧ Riverboats & Sheep ❧ Fry Day: The Atheist Fish: skipping skool - the unholy haul - the drowning fish - fins & wings - bad friday ❧ Prufrock ❧ Rome 1: Sunset: From Vineyards to a Field of Flowers - The Lights Dims Over the Cities of Light ❧ 2: Odysseus, Prufrock, & the Philosopher’s Cave: Invocations - The Half-Deserted Streets - The Philosopher’s Cave ❧ 3: The Eye of the Gods: Oculi - The Tiber ❧ Heraclitus: Athens & Allahabad ❧ Rushdie’s Sea of Stories: A Tale of Birds & Fishes: Rushdie’s Oceanic Oeuvre - A Flight to Save the Ocean
❤️ — Three Little Words ~ critical thinking in Greece, France, & England ❧ Critical Distance: Je Sais Pas - Colaba (Mumbai) - Non Capisco Più Niente - Doors ❧ Locke’s Double Key: Model of Mind → Model of Society - Getting Critical Distance - A Pivotal Moment in Time ❧ Locked into this World: Texts - Dreams ❧ Que Sais-je? ❧ Teacher: The Apple Cart Before the Horse - More Uncertain than Socrates ❧ Montaigne’s Balance: ❧ Pyrrho’s Equilibrium & Zhuangzi’s Pivot: Pyrrho’s Ataraxia - Open & Closed Agnosticism - Zhuangzi’s Pivot - Zhuangzi’s Butterfly ❧ Hegel’s Dialectic: ❧ Whitman’s Cosmos Free Thinking - In and Out of the Game ❧ Byron: Carrying Sail ❧ Byron: Trickster of Change ❧ Keats’ Negative Capability: The Hiker - The Romantics - Tadpole of the Lakes ❧ The English Garden of Sense: Giardino Inglese - Grey - Questions ❧ Tennyson’s Ulysses: The Arch - Literary Tradition - Homer, Dante, & Shakespeare - Keats & Byron - 19th Century England ❧ On Warnings: Ecclesiastes 11:5 - Meaning Without System ❧ The Problem with Explanations: Locke, Newton, & Bees - The Sum - Huxley
⛱ — Señor Locke ~ a travelogue take on the tyranny of sense impressions ❧ The Gringo Takes Stock: From Howl - Tequila Therapy - Robbery Poem ❧ Under the Umbrellas: John Locke - Umbrellas ❧ Campfires ❧ Beneath the Aonian Mount 1 ❧ Seeing Double ❧ Train of Memory: Blossoms - Point of Departure - Time to Ramble On - Spots, Slips, & Slides - High School Confession - Time to Ramble On, Take 2 ❧ Howling at the Moon: Howling at the Moon - Rant - San Francisco ❧ Aonian Mount 2: Mexican Waitress - John Locke & the Vera Cruz ❧ In the Valley of Darién: 2000 - Alfred J. - Timelines: The Fall of the Epic ❧ Aura 1 ❧ The Tiny Pyramids of Ra: Day of the Oyster Shell - A Day in the Life - Amour at the Little Crazy - Et Qui Reboivent Encore ❧ Señor Locke & the Jaguar ❧ Aura 2: The Devil & the Deep Green Sea - The Stamp of Nature ❧ Cuba: Asylum - Ambos Mundos - Memories ❧ Aura 3: Inside Van Gogh’s Ear: Junctions - La Strada e Pericolosa - Only Disconnected[In progress] John Locke on the Beach of the Dead∙Hotel Cervantes ❧ Aura 4: In the Shadow of Macbeth: Supernatural Emanations - Vibrations & Auras - A More Rational Lodging - Extrasensory Control - More Spooks in London: More Things Than Are Dreamt Of? - Jumping the Life to Come ❧ The Floating World
🦖 — At the Wild & Fog ~ science & mysticism in Bleak House & Passage to India ❧ A Misty Maze, But Not Without a Plan: Chapter Overview - Literary & Historical Context ❧ Pope: A Mighty Maze ❧ What the Dickens ❧ Love Amid the Fog ❧ God Among the Scientists ❧ Hutton’s Hammer ❧ Jardine’s Monkeys ❧ Darwin’s God [In progress] God & the Devil at the Inns of Court∙Angels Fallen & Angelic, etc. ❧ A Passage to Forster: 19 Going on 20 - 1924: A Passage to India ❧ From London to the Marabar Caves: A Passage to India - Only Connect - Back to Holborn Hill
🎲 — Almost Existential ~ existentialism in everyday life ❧ Poor, Bare, Forked: Unaccommodated Man - Lear - Outing the Brief Candle - Uncertainties ❧ Between the Flippers:Thirteen-Year-Old at the Wheel - The Shadow & the Butterfly ❧ Doctors of Revolt: dam and Evil - Sartre: Existence Precedes Essence - Camus' Revolt ❧ In the Shadow of Borges: In the White Room - Ulysses, Son of Laërtes - Ithaca ❧ The Status Quo: Chaos, from Ages to Age - Existential Origins - From Shakespeare to Arnold - Theodicy, 2008 -Rumpelstiltskin ❧ Hitler’s Perfect World: The Best of All Possible Worlds - Pilgrimage to Birkenau - Berlin Underground ❧ Ontology Precedes Epistemology: I Know Not Seems - Jean-Paul Revisited - With Flu, at 100 Degrees - This Quintessence of Dust ❧ The Permeable Self: Karma-Samsara & the Bug - Sartre, Camus, & Gnosticism - Petals - The Civic Architecture of Deities and Men - Romantic Revolt - Relativity ❧ Starbucking: Moksha Latte - At Starbucks ❧ Cloud Illusions ❧ Petals Fallen from a Wet Black Bough: Poetry - Petals - Before the Garden Frost
🧜🏽♀️ — The Mermaid: Existential & Then Some ~ existentialism & mysticism in “A Whiter Shade of Pale” ❧ The Epic Heroine: Introduction - Interpretation - Argument - Textual Variants ❧ The Wine-Dark Sea: Into the Drunken Depths - Gilgamesh & the Ale-Wife ❧ The Miller: The Chorus - The Miller on the High Seas ❧ Neptune: Stanza 2 & 3 - The God of the Sea - Sartre’s Whiter Shade of Pale - Odysseus and Gilgamesh ❧ The Queen of Love: Stanza 4 - The Framework of Logic - Johnny Walker Wisdom ❧ Beyond Alienation: “A Salty Dog” - “Crucifiction Lane” - “Suzanne”❧ Myth & Mysticism: “Cerdes” - “Homburg”
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Next: Titles: Part 2 - 🪐 Preface: Situating Agnosticism
Table of Contents - Annotated Contents - Layout - Core Beliefs