Update: October 1st, 2011

Hinduism
This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you
Mahabharata 5:1517

Buddhism
Treat not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful
The Buddha, Udana-Varga 5.8

Confucianism
One word which sums up the basis of all good conduct… loving kindness. Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself
Confucius, Analects 15.23

Taoism
Regard your neighbour`s gain as your own gain, and your neighbour`s loss as your loss
Lao Tzu, T`ai Shang Kan Ying P`ien, 2213-218

Sikhism
I am a stranger to no one; and no one is a stranger to me. Indeed, I am a friend to all
Guru Granth Sahib, p.1299

Christianity
In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets
Jesus, Matthew 7:12

[NOTE: the above quote is from the New Testament, and there is a paraphrase at Luke 6:31, ibid. Versions figure in the Old Testament, a.k.a. the Jewish Bible, e.g. in Leviticus 19:18: “‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor [fellow, in some translations that keep neighbor for the New Testament counterparts] as yourself…”]

Unitarianism
We affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part
Unitarian principle

Native Spirituality
We are as much alive as we keep the earth alive
Chief Dan George

Zoroastrianism
Do not do to others whatever is injurious to yourself
Shayast-na-Shayast 13.29

Jainism
One should treat all creatures in the world as one would like to be treated
Mahavira, Sutrakritanga

Judaism
What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary
Hillel, Talmud, Shabbat 31a

Islam
Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself
The Prophet Muhammad, Hadith

Baha`i Faith
Lay not on any soul a load that you would not wish to be laid upon you, and desire not for anyone the things you would not desire for yourself
Baha`u`llah, Gleanings

Credits: Texts copied from a poster by Scarboro Missions, designed by Kathy Van Loon; All Rights Reserved Paul McKenna 2000; Bookstore @ tel. 416.690.477 has it in letter-size format for smthg like $1.00, regular poster size around $10.00. Verified current month, Aug 2011.

Last updated: December 20, 2010

When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it—don’t back up and don’t give up—then you’re going to mystify a lot of folks.
–Bob Dylan

The universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.
–Sir James Jeans

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future
–Niels Bohr

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
–Lewis Carol, Through the Looking Glass

Hence this life of yours you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is, in a certain sense, the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance.
–Erwin Schrödinger

Jeremy Rifkin (2009) The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis

Truths, then, are explanations of how everything relates together. Truths are not objective or subjective, but rather are understandings that exist in the interstitial realm where the “I” and “thou” come together to create a common experiential ground. This is “reality” making.
(p.155)

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Pragmatist ecosonics: metaphors of sound/vibration and (dis)harmony

From Charles Sanders Peirce’s 1878 essay “Making Our Ideas Clear”:
Thought is a thread of melody running through the succession of our sensations. (p.40)
It [belief] is the demi-cadence which closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life (p.41)
(Peirce develops a discourse metaphor, over a few paragraphs, comparing thought to a musical “air” and our sensations to musical notes.)

William James in his 1892 essay “The Stream of Consciousness” proposes a conception of thinking as a dynamic process—similarly to Peirce’s (1878) view of thought as action, which is triggered by the “irritation of doubt” and stops with the formation of belief. James compares thought to a wave or pulse, speaks of rhythm, etc. Pauses are made at substantive notions that you can dwell on (denoted by nouns and adjectives), and by contrast, what language expresses by the help of prepositions, interjections, is elusive, moving at lightening speed, if you (try to) stop it, it disintegrates. His discourse imagery is much more extensive and creative than Peirce’s.

Eric Bredo in his paper “Contextual Explanation in Education”:
If social life is like a complex waveform, then there are many valid interpretations, just as one may get in tune with different components of a complex rhythm… (2010:2)

*     *     *

More from William James, with credits to a Christian devotional address delivered some 40+ years ago:
Sow a thought, and you reap an act;
Sow an act, and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit, and you reap a character;
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.
[John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, 14th ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1968), p. 1100. — first published 1855http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartlett%27s_Familiar_Quotations]

Update: April 1, 2014 – Napoleon Hill quotes

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” (Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice)

“We refuse to believe that which we don’t understand.” (Think and Grow Rich)

“You may be hurt if you love too much, but you will live in misery if you love too little.”
(Napoleon Hill’s Positive Action Plan: 365 Meditations For Making Each Day a Success)

More NH quotes at GoodReads.com

..

Could and Would Physics Be Philosophy?

In his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn observes that when a scientific discipline is in crisis it turns “philosophical”, largely because it needs to re-evaluate its foundations, as has been the case of fundamental physics for the last one hundred years or so (see Greene, 1999, Smolin, 2006, Capra and Luisi, 2014). However, “being philosophical” as applied to e.g. string theory is also used as a euphemistic disqualification of what lacks experimental support (see Glashaw, Lykken, a.o., in Greene, 2003). Yet it would be philosophical beliefs that have been driving the persistent search for unification of the four known forces — electromagnetism, the weak and strong nuclear forces, and gravity. And it would be philosophical objections, rather than what “meets the eye”, that cast doubt on the idea of (many) more space dimensions, predicted by the otherwise “elegant” mathematics of vibrating “strings”/ ”loops” of energy. The present study proceeds on the understanding that the ongoing shift toward a post-Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm in science and a re-visioned worldview beyond it necessitates re-examination of, a.o.t. what distinguishes/aligns the “scientific” and the “philosophical”, and, moreover, that the implications may crucially influence epistemic as well as larger societal systems.

Thinking of the two pivots of twentieth century physics, quantum mechanics and relativity theory, the subatomic world presents “experimentally confirmed” characteristics like thoroughgoing interconnectivity of (quasi)particles and fluidity of matter/energy, and Einstein’s revision of Newtonian gravity relies on a non-static continuum of space-time. In pursuing the above stated project, consideration is given to “surprising” resonances with Native belief systems on this continent (see Cajete, 2000, Peat, 2002) and other “wisdom” traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism (see Capra, 1984). On the one hand, the juxtaposition suggests that certain aspects of today’s working hypotheses, presumably “rationally” devised, and experimental “proof”, albeit in large part probabilistic, may well have been anticipated hundreds of years ago. This speaks to long-term efforts of Western “paradigmatic rebels”, in Rorty’s (1979) turn of phrase, to reunite equitably human faculties in our interfacing with and integrating into a co-constitutive world, overcoming disciplinary modularity.

On the other hand, the proposal is put forth that crucial epistemological convergences like the above between “the West” and the rest of today’s increasingly globalized world may be disclosing possibilities for dialogic amelioration of the planet’s “climate”, in a socio-political as well as literal geophysical sense. Thus, said overlaps merit serious consideration as pathways of mitigating longstanding dichotomies, many of which embodied by a colonial past and a neocolonial present. The parallels can be viewed as the conduits of a transition toward a consciously, and purposefully, relational lifeworld, e.g., in tune with Code’s (2006) “ecological thinking”, Stefanovic and Scharper, eds. 2011) “natural city”, Tully’s (2014) globalized “public philosophy”, Atleo’s (2004, 2011) tsawalk “one [ontological unity]” as per Nuu-cha-nulth traditional beliefs. The envisioned lifeworld is poised to sustain, just as it is sustained by, a more environmentally astute and thereby ecosystemically fulfilled humanity, becoming better attuned to and within itself and to anyone/anything else on our planet and beyond.

 

 

References

Atleo, Richard E., a.k.a. Umeek (2004) Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview. Vancouver and Toronto: University of British Columbia Press

———-  (2011) Principles of Tsawalk: An Indigenous Approach to World Crisis. Vancouver and Toronto: University of British Columbia Press.

Cajete Gregory (2000) Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence. Foreword by Leroy Little Bear, J.D. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers.

Capra, Fritjof (1976) The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. Boulder, CO: Shambala Publications, Inc.

Capra, Fritjof and Pier Luigi Luisi (2014) The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Code, Lorraine (2006) Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location.

Greene, Brian (1999) The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Greene, Brian (2003) The Elegant Universe. A PBS documentary series.

Kuhn, Thomas (1996) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Third edition. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. First published in 1962 by the University of Chicago Press.

Peat, F. David (2002) Blackfoot Physics: A Journey into the Native American Universe. Boston, MA: Weiser Books.

Rorty, Richard (1979) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Smolin, Lee (2006) The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. Boston, MA, and New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Stefanovic, Ingrid L. and Stephen Bede Scharper (2011) The Natural City: Re-envisioning the Built Environment. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

Tully, James (2014) On Global Citizenship: James Tully in Dialogue. Critical Powers Series. London, UK and New York, NY: Bloomsbury.