A Kantic Disposition

Studying physics and philosophy

[kanticdisposition]

Tell me straight out, I call on you—answer me: imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, [one child], and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears—would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? ...And can you admit the idea that the people for whom you are building would agree to accept their happiness on the unjustified blood of a tortured child, and having accepted it, to remain forever happy?

Excerpt from a dialogue in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

[kanticdisposition]

Even if there were exceedingly few things in a finite space in an infinite time, they would not have to repeat in the same configurations. Suppose there were three wheels of equal size, rotating on the same axis, one point marked on the circumference of each wheel, and these three points lined up in one straight line. If the second wheel rotated twice as fast as the first, and if the speed of the third wheel was 1/π of the speed of the first, the initial line-up would never recur.

Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist

[kanticdisposition]

alien barnacles

[kanticdisposition]

Rare photograph of the original boy band De Fire Store during their Norway tour

[kanticdisposition]

Why cry for the moon when you could shake your fist at the stars?

[tinyaibou]

a lab coat and a wizard robe are exactly the same thing actually

[venuschild]

At 19, I read a sentence that re-terraformed my head: “The level of matter in the universe has been constant since the Big Bang.” In all the aeons we have lost nothing, we have gained nothing - not a speck, not a grain, not a breath. The universe is simply a sealed, twisting kaleidoscope that has reordered itself a trillion trillion trillion times over. Each baby, then, is a unique collision - a cocktail, a remix - of all that has come before: made from molecules of Napoleon and stardust and comets and whale tooth; colloidal mercury and Cleopatra’s breath: and with the same darkness that is between the stars between, and inside, our own atoms. When you know this, you suddenly see the crowded top deck of the bus, in the rain, as a miracle: this collection of people is by way of a starburst constellation. Families are bright, irregular-shaped nebulae. Finding a person you love is like galaxies colliding. We are all peculiar, unrepeatable, perambulating micro-universes - we have never been before and we will never be again. Oh God, the sheer exuberant, unlikely face of our existences. The honour of being alive. They will never be able to make you again. Don’t you dare waste a second of it thinking something better will happen when it ends. Don’t you dare.

Caitlin Moran (via venuschild)

[kanticdisposition]

If it is a task of philosophy to break the power of the word over the human mind, uncovering illusions which through the use of language often almost unavoidably arise concerning the relations of concepts, freeing thought from that which only the nature of the linguistic means of expression attaches to it, then my ‘conceptual notation’, further developed for these purposes, can become a useful tool for philosophers

Gottlob Frege, Begriffsschrift (1879)

A visionary preface by the inventor of modern logic, whose writings would, with Russell’s help, be hugely influential in the development of analytic philosophy. I had to memorise this for my phil language exam. 

[kanticdisposition]

I carved a pumpkin!

[kanticdisposition]

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.  

[kanticdisposition]

Self-portrait