INTRODUCTION TO CONCEPTS I

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Our attention remains with Philo himself, wondering what an insincere character he is for giving this primal substance tripled existence.

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He could only stare at the lush landscape from afar and he must wait until he is old enough to go gaming with his father and uncles. All his life, he knew of only a tiny settlement of ten families. He stares into the forests knowing there must exist a world beyond but he dared not ask questions for the elders are quick in scolding- He must not seek to know the affairs of the gods. Here is the age when there was yet no clothing nor farming, when people have not yet discovered that the seeds of corn may spring forth the maize plant. It is several thousand years before the kingdoms of Ashanti arose, or those of Oyo or Benin. The little boy synthesizes many myths in his mind, growing up to tell his own children about the mysterious power that once saved his life after a snake bite. He evolves a religion in his own heart, basing his newfound ethics on a set of speculative principles and truths. He is surely right about one thing- because a couple of villages dotted the land, few miles beyond the forest.

?Northward, across the land of red sands, there is a man of familiar mind, habitually fantasizing about an expedition to the mouth of the river of Nile to have a look at the great sea, the story of which had been passed down through generations. Some say it is the end of the world’s landmass but he knows, somewhere in his heart that the assertion is untrue. He may be wrong about the Nile drying up, but he is apparently right in his instinctual assumption of the world’s extensity as there lies beyond the great sea of Mesopotamia, a land of promise where the wise Aristotle, Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates will be born.

?Here, the nameless peoples of the island of Iona learn of the ways of the brutish peoples of the north. They know about their fearsome story of the flood, heedful of the fact that their world was terminable, for once; a god visited the earth with a great flood and mighty rage. Among the isolated villages of the seaside shall rise the powerful kingdom of the Aegeans and then the glorious cities of the Hellenes where the mystery of the single most infinite and definitive substance of reason shall be spoken of. Ever before the coming of Socrates or Plato, a barely lettered man had roamed the plateau of Ephesus, ruminating on the biggest questions of reality. Like the boy who lived southward beyond the great desert and the man who tilled the soil next to river Nile, he thinks some thoughts, relying both on his life experiences and intuition, the transcendent piece of his mind which emerges sometimes, as we shall find, to be astonishingly valid.

“There is unity in experience,” says Heraclitus1, and this is almost self-evident, as the most thoughtful among people have sensed in the air, a truth so real but also elusive.?Prior to the time when the study of Physics attained the status of formalness, people2 had determined on their own that there must exist an elemental truth- substantial or not, by which everything that exists first came into being. Heraclitus, full of despair and faithlessness in the condition of the human, glared at his contemporaries’ lack of understanding but he himself was only half-right as he called it fire; the primal substance that must have accounted for everything we can see or feel or perceive.

“Hey there,” the critical reader would demur. How do we know what is right or not? Well, we shall at this juncture agree on a set of benchmarks by which we must measure all propositions of this discourse. The propositions of this book, I beseech, should be contrasted with the rules of logic and the facts of science, as it is available to us.?And this is an art faithfully premised on the notion that the human mind, given the right conditions, possesses the innate ability to fathom even the complex things of nature, though with varying degrees of clarity.?The reason behind this rather superstitious conjecture is far from being empty and it is in fact within the confines of empiricism against first appearance. Be it through the exploits of Einstein, the physicist who deemed imagination as more important than knowledge3 or the words of Sigmund Freud, who described the mechanics of the human mind so intensely, we can postulate that we posses the ability to recognize the truth among the several truths that is being consistently displayed in the marketplace of ideas. John Locke’s position on this matter4 suffers our mild disapproval ironically when we use even his own ideology.?We can easily conclude by our own experiences and other’s, also by several real situations that the content of our minds is not limited to what we perceive by our senses nor is it restricted by its verifiability. Need we speak further on this? I once took account of the number of times people make unverifiable claims and found we cannot but accept that our senses or experiences are not the only agents responsible for knowledge.?Even the rudiments of many great things are meshed in this unknown but common agent of knowledge.?Some people determine their own knowledge and pass it on while others absolve what is being passed unto them, not bothering themselves to find their own truth but scavenging on laid down ideas. Immanuel Kant disapproved this efficiently in his 1784 essay5 where he tried to define what enlightenment was but we wonder even as we flow along the currents of his opinions; what becomes of a society where everyone determines their own truths by themselves. A country of Soren Kierkegaarrds6 is likely to become unstable and extremely volatile; this is why we would, in the course of this discussion, temper Soren’s moral individualism or Kant’s individual epistemology with a different brand of ideology which shows considerable sensitivity to the innate need of humans to live together under a common law, a common goal and creed.?

1.??????Heraclitus, sometimes referred to as the weeping philosopher, lived around 540 and 480BC. He is known for his believe that fire was the primordial source of matter and that everything was in a state of change. The adage that change is the only constant thing probably originated from him.

Translation from Richard D. McKirshan, Philosophy before Socrates, Hackett, 1994

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2.??????One of such people are the Stoics most of whom lived in the 3rd Century BC. Stoics hold that the primal substance is the active reason pervading universe and animating it.

Studies in European Philosophy, James Lindslay, 2006, pg. 53

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3.??????Einstein Albert, the 1921 Physics Nobel laureate said: I am enough of an artist to draw freely from my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

The Saturday Evening Post, “What Life means to Einstein.” An Interview , George Sylvester Viereck.

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4.??????John Locke, an English philosopher born in1632 taught that Experience is the only source of reason and knowledge.

An Essay concerning Human understanding, John Locke

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5.??????Immanuel Kant, a renowned German philosopher published an essay titled “What is Enlightenment?” in 1784, where he popularized the slogan, “Dare to know”.

The Philosophy of Kant, Immanuel Kant, Translated, edited by Carl J. Friedrich Copyright 1949 and renewed 1979 by Random House Inc.

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6.??????Soren Kierkegaarrd, the Danish religious philosopher who lived between 1813 and 1855 is known to have written in his journal: “I must find a truth that is true for me, the idea by which I can live or die.”