God of the Black-holes not Just the Gaps

With a 30 minute walk too and from my lab each day I now have a good amount of time to listen to audiobooks (Something I rather like because I am a slow reader usually). In any case, I am currently reading the rather long but interesting, History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell (another good link and his listing on google books). He details the history surrounding many significant philosophical developments, discussing their relevance and their value. So far, apart from hearing a lot about greek philosophers I have also been introduced to 2 points which I find particularly interesting. 

1. Religion of the gaps can be more clearly though of as religion of the black holes in our perception of the world. Many people like to think of the so called 'God of the gaps,' or the idea that religion exists as a way of describing things we don't understand and as history has developed and various findings have occurred in psychology, mathematics, physics and other sciences, more and more aspects of our religions are defined and though of in non religious ways. Bertrand Russell suggests that God, in this way, may be more of a representation of the things we will never understand, not just things we don't understand for now. An example of a contender of this kind could be the meaning of life, which for all intensive purposes, we have no hope of learning without a distinct change to our current secular understanding of the universe. 
2. Learning about others' philosophies through the context of their logic. Bertrand Russell talks about many interpretations of the notion of philosophy as well as several ways of understanding the writings and opinions introduced by others, in particular, philosophers. The significant advice he offeres is to not concentrate on showing that a statement is true of false but instead to understand why the philosopher though it to be true or false at the time that they did. This of course gives us more than simply and understanding of the concept as a group of words but lets us understand the concept as a reaction to a context which we chan then determine to be reasonable or unreasonable and which we can potentially transmute in a useful way to a modern scenario. 

I find both of these to be rather useful ways of thinking, and I would be interested to learn of any extensions of either. 

I rather enjoy consuming audiobooks however I wish there were better services for getting them and I rather wish that more publishers made them of all their content, in particular academic works. 

Posted via email from Mark Whiting's posterous