Predictions usually deal with events--who will win an election, whether or not a country will go to war, the specification of a ne...w invention; they center on decisions. Yet such predictions, while possible, cannot be formalized, i.e. made subject to rules. The prediction of events is inherently difficult. Events are the intersect of social vectors (interests, forces, pressures, and the like). While one can to some extent assess the strength of these vectors individually, one would need a "social physics" to predict the exact crosspoints where decisions and forces combine.... Forecasting is possible where there are regularities and recurrences of phenomena (these are rare), of where there are persisting trends whose direction, if not exact trajectory, can be plotted with statistical time-series or be formulated as historical tendencies. Necessarily, therefore, one deals with probabili ties and an array of possible projections. But the limitations of forecasting are also evident. The further one reaches ahead in time with a set of forecasts, the greater the margin for error, since the fan of the projections widens.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Reincarnation and resurrection have some things in common as ways of thinking. Both are affirmations that death is not decisive. B...oth presuppose a life, a Godward life-energy which, as the Bhagavad Gita puts it, "does not die when the body dies." Both address the mystery of that ongoing, irrepressible life that cannot be done in by death. But there are critical differences as well. Reincarnation is not what I as a Christian mean by resur rection. Reincarnation has to do with a wide understanding of life, one that includes both birth and death. Resurrection has to do with the meaning of life itself, no matter how long its trajectory might be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He who wishes to teach us a truth should not tell it to us, but simply suggest it with a brief gesture, a gesture which starts an ...ideal trajectory in the air along which we glide until we find ourselves at the feet of the new truth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »