The Moon Through the Lonely Window: Explorations in Philosophy

By David J Guyton

Questions burn within us all. At times, the answers bring an inferno of their own, laying waste to our comfortable traditions and beliefs. The light of that mighty fire will either destroy us or light the pathway towards truth. We march forward with no shield to protect us; reason our only weapon.

The Moon Through the Lonely Window is a collection of philosophical thoughts by David J. Guyton. These pages will haunt you with a completely different idea of reality that will not be easy to accept. It is a blend of philosophy and science that is sure to make the reader contemplate their own existence and their place in this universe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David J Guyton
• Release date: May 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370248414

David J Guyton

See the Mighty Hammer Down book trailer on youtube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIWyr_h-Baw I am an author and artist living in the eastern United States. My work is fantasy, but it is an allegory for the modern political struggles in the United States.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

I am an accomplished artist. I have countless works of art in homes across the United States, many of the owners being famous, influential people. I even have a piece in a presidential museum. Even my fantasy novels are a type of artwork, depending on how we choose to define art. But I actually hate the process of creating art. It pains me every time I undertake a project; especially one that I don’t feel I have absolute control over. I know I possess a rare ability with art, and I do appreciate the fact that I can create such things; I just hate doing it.

I’m sure it must seem peculiar to begin a book on philosophy by discussing artistic abilities, and I do not offer up this information as an opportunity to gloat or boast. I don’t intend to demonstrate some sort of life-altering truth about reality by discussing oil paints or charcoals, but there is something within me that draws upon these simple things to attempt to explain the world around us. I am not the type of artist to smear paint into odd shapes and call it brilliant. I don’t appreciate abstract art that is strange simply for the purpose of being strange or unique. Just like most people, I sneer at the pretentious, self-indulgent, talentless dreck strewn all over the walls of a modern art museum. The kind of art I create is as real as my talent will allow me to make it. I do not try to accent beauty while diminishing the flaws. I do my best to depict the reality that I see in front of me. This is true in my more traditional artwork, as well as my series of fantasy novels, which is an allegory for modern society.

That reality, with all its beauty and flaws is the purpose of this book. In it I will attempt to describe reality as it makes sense to me. I have collected information on various topics throughout my life, and I have always noticed these gaps, or sometimes vast, yawning canyons missing between the mighty peaks. When this book is complete, I hope to fill some or all of these gaps, at the very least, for myself.

While reading this book, you will likely stumble upon ideas that make you uncomfortable; this was certainly the case for me while writing it. But discomfort is a sign of growth. We do not gain muscle and stamina by sitting still with our feet up, fingers laced behind our smiling heads. Strength comes from hardship, and in order to gain anything we must become willfully uncomfortable. Whatever rises up from the ashes of who we were before it will surely be a better being.

I shall attempt to paint a picture of reality stripped of all of the nonsense we humans tend to pile upon it. My medium for this work is reason alone, and through reason I will attempt to answer the greatest questions I can fathom. You may agree or disagree, but both are equally valid and important in this journey. It is not your duty to embrace every word of this book; your duty is to question all things, no matter how large or small, until you have pieced together your own picture of reality. It is my hope that this book can be a small part in your quest, bringing you closer to the elusive dawn of understanding that seems to always be at our horizon, no matter how many strides we take toward it.

WHAT IS TRUTH?

What exactly is truth? What does it mean to say that something is true and not false? Validated and not fabricated? We are quick to assume that something is true, not because it is actual truth, but because it fits our comfortable bias concerning the question at hand. It is important, in the search for truth, that we do not allow our biases or beliefs to determine our trajectory.

A belief is something that we accept without proof. A common example of a belief is religion. People hold on to these beliefs so dearly that they convince themselves that what they are experiencing is truth and not belief at all. It does not matter what evidence is placed before them, the idea that their personal truth could be flawed is unthinkable. But there is no such thing as a personal truth. And evidence, whether it supports or refutes their claim, is not proof. This is not to say that their ideas about God or religion are wrong. It is possible, although extremely unlikely, that their beliefs align exactly with reality, and that every detail they imagine about God is true.

The issue is a matter of definition, not in the truth we attempt to prove or disprove. There is a difference in evidence and proof. Evidence suggests that something is true, but that evidence may be misleading. Proof is something that cannot be denied by the rational mind, is made up of a series of facts, and is therefore truth. But even if we believe something is true, and it later is proven to be true, we cannot call that belief knowledge until we have validated it as actual truth. This is something extremely difficult to do, even in what seems to be certain circumstances.

A common misuse of the word belief is when people state their beliefs on some matter, person or group. We believe in someone. We believe in a political party. While we can substitute the word believe with have faith in, and still have the same basic meaning, the whole definition is flawed either way. What we are basically saying here is something like I imagine that this person/group is going to do the right thing, in accordance with my own value system. We are only able to base this idea upon what we have seen this person or group do in the past, and so we have a surprising amount of evidence to support whatever we are claiming to believe. This is not what belief truly is. What we are defining here is trust, not belief. And, to complicate the matter further, that trust is only legitimate if the person or group we are evaluating is in alignment with our personal values, which puts many more variables into the equation.

So what is belief then? Belief is acceptance of an idea without proof. God has not visited me and discussed His thoughts with me, so the most I could ever do is believe in His existence or His ideas. Without proof, belief is all there can ever be. For someone to say they know the will or nature of God is completely false every time it is uttered. Their belief may turn out to be truth at some point, but until it is proven, it is belief, not knowledge.

Many people claim, especially in philosophical context, that truth can vary. The way they define truth is far less stable, and in doing so, they disconnect it from reality. If the truth can change, then it cannot provide any useable comparison between what we think is real and what actually is real. It is true that things can become untrue over time, an example would be the statement Einstein is alive. From 1879 to 1955, this statement was true. Saying it now, of course, is not true (at least if we agree on the definition of what alive means). So this statement that was true is no longer true, but the fact that Einstein was alive at some point cannot be contested by any rational mind. Time has passed, the world has moved forward—but nothing can alter the truth that Einstein lived.

So then, we ask again, what is truth? Truth is independent of all belief, and is unalterable. If something we considered to be true can somehow be altered, then it was never true at all. John Adams once said "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." While I do agree with the president here, one of my own wishes is that he did not include the word evidence at the end. Evidence, as I said before, is a suggestion of proof, not a solid confirmation of fact. It is quite common for us to ignore evidence, or see evidence in a different way than it was intended, but it is impossible to see proof, facts, or truth as anything other than exactly what they are. To see it as something other than truth is a failure on our part, based on our own biases, lack of comprehension, or outright denial. It says nothing of the validity of the truth. Truth is truth, permanent and impenetrable, and is in no way marred by our opinion of it.

WHAT IS SCIENCE?

"One thing we are sure of is the reality and substantiality of the luminiferous ether."

-Lord Kelvin

In 1864 physicist John Clerk Maxwell discovered that electricity and magnetism were the same thing, now known as electromagnetism. Maxwell also hypothesized that light was an electromagnetic wave as well, and this was later confirmed by Heinrich Hertz. This took the world of physics by storm, as it unified two fields, inspiring physicists to attempt to unify the remaining fields into one single theory.

But there was a problem with this discovery. Waves, as they are most commonly understood, must travel through a medium such as air or water. It’s clearly established that sound waves cannot travel in a vacuum, as there are no air molecules to disturb and cause interactions that allow the wave to occur. If light really was an electromagnetic wave, it would surely need something to travel through in space in order for it to move throughout the universe. This hypothetical substance was named the luminiferous ether.

The ether was said to fill space between objects like the stars, planets, and moons. Given what physicists of the era knew about the nature of light, they were able to figure out the qualities this ether would need to have in order for reality as they saw it to function and be understood. The qualities they gave the ether became more and more preposterous as the experiments went on. In order for the ether to exist, it had to be very strange. In fact, in order for the hypothesis to work, the luminiferous ether had to be the largest single thing in the universe, completely invisible, millions of times harder than steel, and not act upon any celestial bodies. Instead of abandoning the theory at this point, physicists granted weirder and weirder characteristics to the ether. An example is that the ether behaved differently for slow moving objects than for fast moving light. The point is, scientists bent themselves into pretzels to confirm this theory, when the evidence was shouting at them that the theory was wrong. There is no luminiferous ether, no