Reductionism (1&2)

[Lycidas at worldnet.att.net]

Thank you!

Interesting stuff. Perhaps we are like Voltaire in Candide,
we do not perceive the beauty and the goodness of things
because our view is not comprehensive enough--either we are
too close to the painting of things or too far away from
them to see what has been painted. Perhaps what the mind, by
virtue of its being a mind, does to all things is
reductionist. Perhaps we fail to see the beauty and goodness
in things because of something that drives us to think or
imagine that things could better than they are or maybe
Leibniz is correct and this is the best of all possible
worlds, but his reasoning, that God has made it so and could
not have done otherwise is flawed by the comprehensiveness
of Leibniz. Or perhaps it is the comprehensive Heraclitus
that has got it right, but men both before they have heard
it and when once they have heard it, prove uncomprehending. 

TF