Tom Moritz

Human communication is characterized by dichotomous thinking -- in fact, "data" the product of sensory perception -- and the evidentiary basis for science -- is fundamentally defined in terms of diaphoric discrimination. [Floridi says: "a datum is a putative fact regarding some difference or lack of uniformity within some context."] I have always been interested in the tension between uniformity and difference -- it seems very common that convention assumes difference where uniformity is simply (currently) imperceptible?

Consider Kipling's maxim: " 'East' is 'east' and 'west' is 'west' and never the twain shall meet." Traveling in Pakistan in 1994, I became convinced -- particularly by the Greco-Buddhist images of Gandharan art -- that Buddhism had been communicated West to Greece and had most probably influenced the development of Stoicism... (Thomas Huxley speculated about this in his last book, "Evolution & Ethics") ) -- turns out that there is much available evidence to support this notion.

Formulaic prejudice against possibility has often served as a primary impedance to understanding...