The Baby Blue Eyes of the Universe: Philosophical Calculations of Governance and Infinity

Philosophical Calculations 

1.   The great Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle identified the problem of (1) how to distinguish between a benevolent dictator and a tyrant, and (2) how to determine the continuous from the discrete, respectively.  Plato's insight into the problem of governance comes in books VIII to IX of the Republic, and Aristotle's conundrums of the infinity of points in space and time come from his recollection of the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea in the first books of the Metaphysics.  

2.  Both problems cut through what might be called epistemology, or the limits of our knowledge.  For example, how can we possibly distinguish between two persons who say, "believe me for I know the good."  Answer: we can't unless we ourselves (read here, each and every one of us) have educated ourselves enough to make this discrimination.  No one can give us this knowledge.  We have to come upon it ourselves.  We have to be ruthlessly Descartian.  In terms of the pure metaphysical problem of infinity of points, this becomes a matter of discriminating between the continuous and the discrete, between the one and the many.  Modernly, we can resolve this tension to an awfully abstract sense of proportions if we move diligently from nominal, interval, ordinal and rational scales, and have some notation to help us with the precise bookkeeping (a type of Thesesusian string in the minotaur's cave) so we can accurately account for how apparently different forms are essentially together in a weakened form of equivalence.  A few algebraic expressions define the local key to the global code of a geometry, and the geometry gives us an insight to the totality of global meanings of finite algebraic expressions.  The Buddha says this by carrying a flower, the mathematicus writes a few squiggles, a few angels sing, and the infant's eyes reflect the absolute depth of the pure blue sky.  

3.  Belief in a stranger tells us something about us. We can never know the other except through abstractions. But these abstractions are obviously not the other.  Don't be greedy. Let the composition come.  What comes naturally is already embedded and as some say, the one.  To wait for the one is to let the universe do the calculation.  To ride the winds, to move in every direction, is the way nature calculates answers directly through us.