Starters (XI)

[Atlantic-spanning note, for our American friends:
That’s British for “appetizers”.]

Tasty tidbits -- click on one, for the real meal.

I capitalize the word Realism, not to exalt it, but to distinguish it from the everyday use of the word, which can shade over into almost an opposite meaning, as in Realpolitik (the capitalization there is an artefact of German).   I don’t capitalize "nominalists" because, well,they suck.

Doubt the existence of your own head, if you must; but go do it behind the barn.

None of these summations of views can exhaust all there is to know and say about that rock, precisely because it is so real -- discovered, not invented.  (You might almost say:  Begotten, not made…)

A “Memento” Joke: a tachyon walks into a bar...

Just as a rock is already in the Universe, whether or not someone is handling it,  an idea is already in the Mindscape, whether or not someone is thinking it.

The motions of our understanding, confronted with the magnificence of ye spaces of ye honorable Banach, and  ye incomparable Hilbert, are like unto those of an humble woodchuck -- nay, a  turtle – nay, as the turds of a turtle – when, laboring groaning upwards through the clammy slime ….