Author: Joe Kaempf

Words – Part 3 With words, who can link the Buddha to Shakespeare to Keats?  Our Nobel Laureate poet Louise Gluck, that’s who. A tenet…

Words – Part 2 Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.  It is not humanly possible to…

Words – Part 1 Etymologists note the word pragmatic has a checkered past, and a multiform present.  The Greek root pragma means ‘a thing to be done, a…

Know – Part 3 Can a process/event/statement be true and not true? I had a college dormitory roommate who resembled the lead singer of the Rolling…

Know – Part 2 I should have known.  The signs were apparent.  It was the Moirai. Coaching one of my children’s basketball teams in…

Know – Part 1 No word surpasses know for instigating predicament.  In general, what we think we know is: a) a matter of fact,…

Doubt – Part 4 And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Shakespeare (Hamlet) The great experimental principle is doubt, philosophic doubt which…

Doubt – Part Three 20 May 1747 – I took twelve scurvey patients aboard the HMS Salisbury at sea, cases similar as I could…

Doubt – Part Two Immersion in water makes the straight seem bent.  Reason confused by false appearances is restored by measurement.  This drives out…

Doubt – Part One A student is someone who thinks otherwise. RL Day You can prove almost anything with the evidence from a small…