Sarah Voss, a lifetime member of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, lives in Omaha and tries to practice what she’s preached. In the essays below she preaches a bit, rambles a bit, and occasionally says something truly noteworthy. Many, though not all, of these essays weave math into the commentary. This is copyrighted material, so quote from them only with attribution and only in moderation.
The Mathematics of the Soul
In Plato’s “Myth of Er” the souls, having left their dead bodies behind on earth, line up to choose their new lives according to lot. Those who draw the first numbers receive first choice from the immense pool of possible lives. The departed souls, in other words, rely upon a random process of ordering, i.e., on mathematics, to help determine the nature of their immortality. But mathematics is more than a practical aid to the soul. To Plato and the ancient Greeks… To read the full document, click here.
Up in the Air and Afraid
The day after the attempted Christmas Day air terrorism, I came face-to-face with my “possum” inclinations when three hefty young men bounded through the airplane aisle and plopped down in the seats right behind me and my husband. I was already buried in a book and wouldn’t have noticed except one of them lunged at my aisle seat, hitting my shoulder. I looked up, remembering how narrow the aisles were, how easy to bump someone. No big deal. I wasn’t hurt. Still, I anticipated a polite apology. Instead, I received defiant glares from all three. “Uh oh,” I thought. … To read the full document, click here.
Many Faiths or One Faith?
Today, more than ever, individuals can choose from a wide range of religious options — a fact that challenges theologians even as it leaves virtually everyone else with a discomforting proximity to contradiction. Whose faith is right? The religious exclusivist says “mine is.” The inclusivist says that lots of them appear to be right, but that they are all included in one “real” way to salvation/liberation. The pluralist says “you can have yours and I’ll have mine, and that’s just fine.”
Yet anyone who dabbles in rational thinking has to feel just a little squeamish about the unanswered questions lurking underneath the adoption of any one of these three positions. And anyone who desires a peace-filled new millennium will have to wonder if the fundamentalist religious-righters really are right, or if such an exclusivist view can only lead to all-out religious warfare. Unfortunately, history and human nature suggest the likelihood of the latter path. It’s time for a change! … To read the full document click here.
Telecommunications and Telepathy: A Hidden Isomorphism?
Schizophrenic Science
Traditional scientists tend to whole-heartedly embrace modern advances in telecommunications while rather dogmatically rejecting the validity of telepathic communications. The reason seems to hinge on the lack of evidence for the latter, or at least the lack of repeatable, testable evidence — a flaw tantamount to a fundamental sin in the Scientific Bible. Telecommunications, on the other hand, can ultimately be understood in terms of a binary symbol set consisting of 1’s and 0’s, or some such equivalent — a reductionistic ritual which neatly accommodates the scientific need for consistency, replicability and predictability, with a dash of simplistic beauty thrown in for effect.
Recently, however, I’ve begun to suspect that the two communication modes may be more alike than different, a possibility that leaves the scientist in me feeling slightly schizophrenic, to say the least…. To read the full document, click here.
This I Believe
I’m a Unitarian Universalist minister, but in an earlier career, I was a math teacher. When I felt the call and went to seminary in the late 1980s, I brought math along with me. Sort of like the ancient Pythagoreans, I believe that mathematics can be mined for concepts which inform our spiritual lives and bring greater understanding and even healing into our moral interactions.
For example, at a UNESCO conference recently, I was one of fifteen presenters who spoke briefly on aspects of trustworthiness and justice. On Saturday afternoon, one presenter talked about his experiences growing up in Austria as a survivor of the Holocaust. His comments elicited response from a man whose family had been part of the Austrian resistance movement and who felt that the Jewish presenter’s comments had been somewhat one-sided. The conversation took off from there, becoming intense and somewhat painfully emotional. Even one of the professional facilitators of the session was near tears. Then, all of a sudden, I was “on” with my highly cognitive moral math stuff. Boy, I thought, what am I going to do now? … To read the full document, click here.
Global Sadness, Global Hope: What Can We Do?
During these days of “War on Terrorism,” we are called upon to look inward with a global eye. Many of us adhere, internally and well-meaningly, to variations of pacifism. “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” It’s a time-honored message, but it’s wanting. It’s wanting a cosmic perspective.
A place to begin searching for this broader view is Jonathon Glover’s 1999 book, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. I read this book, and what I write here has been immensely impacted by it. It’s a hard book to read. And hard not to read. Loren Eiseley, the scientific naturalist, once observed that “Man beats man.” Nowhere is Eiseley’s adage better documented than in Glover’s 400+ pages describing the cruelties which humans have inflicted upon other humans during the last hundred years. Glover, an English ethicist, points out that, when averaged over the century, the number of people killed by war during the 1900s was more than one hundred per hour. Much of this killing was done in shocking ways. … To read the full document, click here.
Reflections on Fluxions
Newtonian World
Back in the 1670’s Isaac Newton wrote his Method of Fluxions, a masterful treatise which dealt with changing quantities, or fluents, and their rates of change, or fluxions. Newton’s work has since become known as the differential calculus and has proven to have numerous and remarkable applications in our everyday physical world.
The method of fluxions offers a way of assigning a numerical quantity to something so illusive as change. For example, the “steepness” of a hill can be numerically described by the rate at which it rises or falls, that is, by its rate of change. We experience the practical aspects of such quantification when we are driving on a mountainous road and a yellow road sign with a black truck on a sharp wedge alerts us to an unusually steep grade ahead. “Warning, 16% grade next 24 miles.”
Clearly, such “fluxions” have predictive characteristics. … To read the full document, click here.
Consensus
Tom B-the-first, how glad I was to see you disagree with Tom B-the-second on the important issue of consensus. I, for one, like consensus. I rarely see it, of course, but that, like most items of scarcity, just makes it all the more precious. Your strong rejection of it made me rethink the sermon I had just finished preaching to a small church in transition. … To read the full document, click here.
The Bobbsey Twins Meet Neo
Musty from water-damage, the book drew my attention at the garage-sale, where I bought it for fifty cents. I spent my childhood with eyes glued to the pages of this series. Now, years later, I was curious why.
At home I read again adventures of the Bobbsey twins. They were at the Snow Lodge. I remembered they frequented the Seashore and other places, but that’s all I remembered. It was as though I were reading about them for the first time.
Surprise! … To read the full document, click here.
Creeping Non-Cents
In retrospect, I ponder. Was it the bank’s fault? Mine? Is it indicative of our current economic conditions? Maybe it points to a basic flaw in our culture. One thing alone is indisputable. It was not the children’s fault.
And the little children suffer.
Now, I should acknowledge straight off that this story ends well. … To read the document in full, click here.
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