i've been checking out a truly eccentric or fabulous figure of the kind you sometimes run into in philosophy: walking stewart. i'm in possession of a copy of a work by stewart from around 1793, apparently titled: The Revolution of Reason, or the Establishment of the Constitution of Things in Nature: Of Man, Of Human Intellect, Of Moral Truth, of the Existence of Universal Good: From the Era of Intellectual Existence or the Publication of the Apocalypse of Nature, An. 4. or 5000. damn i wanted to use that for my next thing.
thus far the writing is pure funk: he has his own whole jargon, like a preincarnation of heidegger. but even with the actual walk around the known world, he's also very much a british philosopher, and he lurches into extreme clarity:
Human reason by controuling the exercise of the passions, will, no doubt, procure longevity to the body; but should imagination, through analogy, suppose the procuration of immortality by the infinite ratio of increasing reason, it would be downright insanity; as well might the man who lifted a calf every day, till it became a cow, expect to lift a house, mountain, globe, universe, and ultimately, carry all nature like a hat under his arm.
so: there are limits to human reason. there are limits to knowledge or science. or: the fact that moore's law has worked out this long doesn't infallibly indicate that it will continue to do so. or you might say: beware the malthusian style of inference: well if it keeps on doubling... i'd like to send that as a note to my bete noire ray kurzweil and anyone else who proposes to carry all nature like a hat under his arm. i am a secular believer in original sin: i think we are irremediably flawed, and that the singularity is going to suck exactly as much as we do, since it will have been perpetrated by and for us.
i'll perhaps be keeping you updated on walking stewart. or if anyone knows anything or has a read on him, let me know.
