Jenny writes:
> Your comment seems odd to me because it puts us in a position of always
searching, never finding, for fear we might remove the mystery.
My apology -- I was not clear. We are always searching, though I prefer to think of it as always harmonizing (after W.E.B. Dubois -- a great influence in my life). And I do not think we are in any danger of removing mystery any time soon (if we ever can). Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle applies to more than just physics. But I have no fear of mystery being reduced and made more manageable.
I will admit that everything does hold together -- the universe exists after all. But I see the universe not as a baroque Bach fugue, but as a freestyle jazz improvisation by Coltrane. The universe hangs together, but it hangs loosely, always in the process of change.
> How do we do this?
We will always discover something new, and we need to have some theory, but maybe instead of trying to explain how everything fits together and over-theorize, we can (after Dubois again) find a a way to harmonize different aspects of reality without worrying if they fit into some nice neat theory of everything.
At the risk of starting another contentious Audre Lorde thread (LOL), she once said that differences do not cause problems, but rather the failure to celebrate them does. To me, too much theorizing leads to uniformity -- making all the facts fit into one nice monistic theory of everything.
I am with James -- there is always "and" and "or" -- that which will not fall under the spell of theory.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister