Abandoned Viaduct Under Street Light in Black and White

Viaduct at Night in Black and White, originally uploaded by skitbraviking.

Why is it so light if the sun is nowhere in sight?

Recently I've come to realize just how used to being comforted by the "light of reason" that Descarte spoke of in his six Meditations. Some time ago I had foraged through a chunk of Steven Pinker's THE BLANK SLATE and found myself thick in rhetoric that became increasingly less compelling and more foreign the deeper I got into the book. It's a book about the idea of the blank slate and how the mind develops, so you can imagine just how dry and dense in the rhetoric of brain make-up, development and, believe it or not, politics surrounding our understanding of the brain it may be. Eventually I put the book down, unfinished, and later on, it made it's way to the trunk of my car where it would (hopefully) make me a few bucks at the used book store. This did not happen. It sat in my trunk and staid there, but recently I gave a bunch of those books away to my school who was collecting books for various causes. Yet I held onto the Pinker book, even cherished its magical thinking, felt warmed by its efforts to free us from ignorance, even if I NEVER finish reading it.

This warmth I felt made me realize not that we are holding on in vain to some belief in science as if blind to common, everyday truths like many pious religious zealots, but rather, the belief that eventually we human are going to better ourselves through care thought, reason, speculation, and heart-felt compasion. Yes, science may be the Sisyphusian myth of our day, but at least it's trying in earnest to take us into the future with our lights on.