PrintJune 17, 2013
A Warped Prism
There exists a certain real pathos inherent in the NSA's PRISM program -- and not only because of its attempt to undermine American principles.
PRISM, along with its doubtlessly enormous support structure, is based on a worldview that no longer exists among serious intellects, one that hasn't existed for more than a century, for the simple reason that it fails to reflect anything in the actual universe. This is a conceptual error that guarantees the failure of the program no matter what use it is put to. The formal name of that worldview is the Cartesian-Newtonian mechanistic universe.
The mechanistic worldview - also known as "determinism" -- held sway over the educated West for nearly three centuries. Rene Descartes constructed a self-consistent materialist philosophical system based on the single irrefutable premise of self-conscious awareness. Isaac Newton formulated a set of laws that appeared to govern all forms of motion from the molecular to the cosmic. Together,...(Read Full Article)
