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Reading sometimes feels like excavation: I read because I'm looking for my ideas, better articulated.

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I was reading the book when I stumbled upon this particular aphorism... The similarity in describing science as (mechanistic) struck me.

For a related note, check: The Joyful Science, by Friedrich Nietzsche (aphorism 373: "Science" as prejudice).

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— Chad Engelland's introduction to phenomenology

Try this activity. Stand in the middle of a busy square and stare intently upward at something, a circling bird perhaps. Your gaze will be contagious, as others will spontaneously clue into your attention, which is made available thanks to your bodily behavior: “What is it? What do you see?” People will not have to infer that you are looking up earnestly; they’ll see that. Precisely because experience takes place in the world thanks to our flesh, our experience is not private but is available to those about us.

This appeal to mind-reading, however, does not quite fit the phenomenological facts. A careful attention to experience reveals that meaning does not lurk hidden behind the body but is instead made manifest in and through the movement of the body. That is, infants learn to speak not thanks to skills of inference but thanks to the natural manifestation of flesh. The meaning is not hidden behind the body; the meaning is embodied in movement toward or away from items of interest. Infants learn speech thanks to “body-reading,” not mind-reading.

Psychologists point to something called “mind-reading” to explain the prelinguistic bridge from self to other. Infants read the minds of those about them and thereby come to understand the meaning of overheard words: ball, cat, mom, and so on. Psychologists don’t intend any magical faculty, a kind of sixth sense that gives us a conduit to the hidden thoughts of others. Instead, they mean that outward behavior occasions inferences to hidden mental states. The language user might point to an item while saying “ball” and the infant can thus infer that the bodily bearing indicates the item from the world the word means.

الجَسَد: جِسمُ الإنسانِ ولا يُقالُ لغيرِ الإنسانِ مِن الأجسامِ المغتَذِية كالحَيواناتِ والنّباتات. وقد يُقال للملائكةِ والجنّ جَسَد؛ وكلُّ خَلقٍ لا يأكل ولا يشربُ مِن نحو الملائكة والجنّ ممّا يَعقل، فهو جسد. والروحُ إذا حَلّت في بَدَنِ إنسانٍ فقد تجسّدَت، ولا يقال لها: تجسّمت. الجِسم: جِسمُ الشيءِ حَجمُه، والجِسم هو كلُّ ما لَه طولٌ وعَرضٌ وعُمق. والجِسم في اصطلاحِ الحُكَماء هو الجوهرُ القابلُ للأبعادِ الثلاثة.

As a gift to its language, the German tongue has two words for the body, Leib and Körper. One names a living, experiencing, and expressive body, and the other an inert physical thing. It is a shortcoming of the English language that we don’t have the same distinction, and we accordingly must call both living and nonliving bodies “bodies.” What comes closest to Leib, the living body, is the English word flesh, a word that is deeply evocative, suggesting something visceral or carnal. — Chad Engelland

أَنتِ النَعيمُ لِقَلبي وَالعَذابُ لَهُ فَما أَمَرُّكِ فِي قَلبي وَأَحلاكِ عِندِي رَسائِلُ شَوقٍ لَستُ أَذكُرُها لَولا الرَقيبُ لَقَد بَلَّغتُها فاكِ

اويلي هاي جانت بالأدب مال الخامس لو الرابع... بوكتها جنت داستوعب ليش اسمه "الشريف الرضي" وليش ديوزع "رسائل شوق"

يا ظَبيَةَ البانِ تَرعىٰ فِي خَمائِلِهِ لِيَهنَكِ اليَومَ أَنَّ القَلبَ مَرعاكِ كَأَنَّ طَرفَكِ يَومَ الجِزعِ يُخبِرُنا بِما طَوىٰ عَنكِ مِن أَسماءِ قَتلاكِ أَنتِ النَعيمُ لِقَلبي وَالعَذابُ لَهُ فَما أَمَرُّكِ فِي قَلبي وَأَحلاكِ عِندِي رَسائِلُ شَوقٍ لَستُ أَذكُرُها لَولا الرَقيبُ لَقَد بَلَّغتُها فاكِ هامَت بِكِ العَينُ لَم تَتبَع سِواكِ هَوًىٰ مَن عَلَّمَ البَينَ أَنَّ القَلبَ يَهواكِ

People do not resort to alternative medicine because they are stupid or irrational, but because they are desperate and hopeless. No amount of logic & education can convince a drowning man to stop paddling & flailing his limbs vainly even though he knows he can't swim.

Alternative medicine thrives where modern medicine fails (to meet the patient's expectations). It lives off like a parasite, feasting on the stubborn, false hope of desperate patients.

My main problem with Hume & Kant's idealism (the idea that we are in a profound estrangement from reality) and their modern editions that are based on neuroscience and psychology, is how these philosophies reach the conclusion that "we can never perceive reality." How do you know real objects even exist if you can't perceive them at all? If this was the case then we wouldn't even have had the concept nor the argument of (reality vs. appearance). These systems of thoughts have a major flaw: in order to divide the world into the world of phenomena (which is perceptible by humans), and the real world (which is inaccessible to humans), one has to assume an extra-human perspective; one has to take off his human eyes and replace them with God-like eyes. These philosophies sound as if they were written from the perspective of an alien, or a god. Because, in the end, what lies beyond the perception of humans, would not concern humans. They wouldn't even know that such things exist.

The words above were based on the 'Phenomenology' book from 'MIT Essential Knowledge Series'