Tag: epistemology


  • “The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.” – Paul Valery, French poet and essayist.  French poet & essayist Paul Valery once wrote about how sometimes knowledge isn’t exactly what…

  • Derived from a draft written originally on February 2, 2011 There is so much absurdity in our world today that I simply can’t process. Numerous mindless amusements continue to propagate across all forms of media, and it seems to me that they only exist to distract us from making any meaningful foray into anything important. …

  • “There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.” – Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World Are some questions “dumb”? Maybe in the moment—but even the worst-formed ones come from a mental framework…

  • “Insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth.” — Bertrand Russell We love our insights, collecting them like shiny stones, tweeting them, tattooing them, and even weaponizing them in comment sections. But in our highly polarized digital age, Bertrand Russell’s warning rings louder than ever: insight alone—no matter how poetic, how emotionally satisfying—isn’t…