Illuminism

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Introduction

Not how atoms bond – but why. Why is there something rather than nothing? The opening post: where to begin, and what this page is and is not.

The Illusion of the Senses

The blue of the sky is not in the sky. It is in your head.

Two Ways to Truth

If you have seen a hundred white swans, do you know they are all white? On empiricism, rationalism, and two ways to truth.

Mathematics: Discovered, Not Invented

Can you cut a key for a lock whose existence no one yet knows? On mathematics as discovery, not invention.

Where Is the Law of Gravity?

Every atom obeys the law of gravity; no atom contains it. Where do the laws of physics exist?

Sapere aude — Dare to know– Immanuel Kant
A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.– Friedrich Nietzsche
What I understand by a 'philosopher': a terrible explosive in whose presence everything is in danger.– Nietzsche
I find in these thoughts so many things which alarm me, and which almost all men, if I am not mistaken, will find so shocking, that I do not see of what use a writing can be, which apparently all the world will reject.– Antoine Arnauld (responding to Leibniz, 1686)
Mathematics is, astonishingly, the language of nature itself.– Paul Davies
Mathematics is the territory, not the map. Or: mathematics is the territory and the map alike.– Eran Even-Haim
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.– Galileo
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy.– Weinberg's Corollary (Arthur Bloch)
Physical laws should have mathematical beauty.– Paul Dirac
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.– Bertrand Russell
The correspondence between mathematics and the physical world is so precise, so unexpected, and yet so productive that it can feel almost magical.– Prof. Frank Wilczek
It's actually unreasonable how well mathematics works. Why should the world behave according to mathematical laws?– Prof. Anton Zeilinger
It's not only that it becomes easier to describe with mathematics, as you go deeper and deeper into reality; mathematics becomes the only way to describe reality.– Prof. Leonard Susskind
I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome… It is now the great noon, when man stands midway on his path between beast and overman.– Nietzsche
Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the property of the few.– Goethe
To one who looks at the world rationally, the world in turn presents a rational face; the relation is mutual.– Hegel