Whittling a Worldview

Welcome Mat

Hi! Welcome to my head. 


I hope you find it welcoming. I try to allow as many people in as want in, but even I am almost constantly lost, so if you've ever rung my doorbell and left my stoop impatiently without a response, that was probably why. I heard you, but was lost in the maze of my medulla or fighting dragons in the far-away reaches of my brainstem, and as such was indisposed.


But I'm here now, come on in!


Please wipe your feet first, and take off your shoes if you don't mind.


And pardon the clutter.


This blog is kind of like a Goodwill store: the stuff I put here is useable, but I'm tired of having it in my house, so I'm going to give it to somebody else to love. Maybe you'll see something you like, in which case feel free to take it. Maybe not. 


I figured the first thing I ought to do, however, is describe my overarching picture on life, that is, my wordview. And, of course, my philosophy on worldviews would be a particularly useful thing to know if I am do that, and if you are to integrate any of this "found art" into your particular mind's decor. No sense in trying to combine our pictures of the world if we paint differently. 


Sooo... here's how most of these are going to work. I'm going to ask a big question for you to chew on while I pontificate. Then I'll stop, and hope that the question hasn't gone all Bazooka Joe on you and lost its flavor. If you appreciate skylights, consider this a way to break a new hole in your roof to see the sky through. But now, on to the

Big Question: How ought one to shape a worldview which properly includes all the things in the world, and nothing outside it?

This, as I mentioned before, is of overarching importance when discussing any worldviews: how does one come to have one? How are you sure you're right, and not only by the things you've let in, but that it includes "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth"? 

There's two ways to build a worldview, but before that, I'd like to tell a story about middle school children playing with mud and fire.

The Mermaid and the Rhinocerous

Bruce and Janet both loved art class. Every day, for fifth period, they would rush to the dirtiest classroom in their school and do whatever they wanted, because their teacher was an artist, and this is how true artists teach apparently. For the sake of the story, at least. 

One day, their teacher told them they would be sculpting with clay. The children were very excited, because clay is messy and easy to ball up and throw. She gave them each a lump of red-brown clay, and sat in the back of the room taking cover behind a book which proclaimed the beauty of the similarities between humans and apes, which was in fact why she was taking cover behind it.

Janet began sculpting first. She wanted to make a mermaid, so she made her ball longer and thinner, and flattened one end and pulled some arms out and laid them just right, then took a piece of floss and a toothpick and began to shave away bits and pieces until first a tail was showing, then a body, then hands and arms, then a pretty head with long, flowing hair.

Bruce wanted to make a rhinocerous. Bruce broke off some balls and flattened them for his feet, then he made tubes for his legs, then he made a bigger ball and covered it with sheets he ripped up to make the big, strong armored body of the rhinocerous. Then he made the head, a big ball with littler ones smushed into it for eyes, and ears, and of course a giant horn right in the middle of its big, ugly face.

The time came to put their clay in the kiln, and the mermaid and the rhinocerous were right next to each other. The oven grew hot, and the mermaid was tanning but the rhino was uncomfortable. There were little pains all over, like gas all over his body. Suddenly, a crack was heard, and the rhino's horn popped off. Then the oven turned into a blast zone, with parts of the rhinocerous flying everywhere and bouncing of the other sculptures and the oven. 

You see, Bruce had made his rhino from many little pieces, and smushed them all together very tight, but they didn't fit perfectly. Little bubbles had gotten trapped inside, between the pieces, and when the bubbles got hot, the grew and cracked the poor rhinocerous. Janet, however, had started from a large lump and carved away everything that didn't look like a mermaid, and that mermaid is sitting on her mother's mantlepiece even still. Theoretically.

Sculpting Substance

There are two ways to make a worldview, just like there are two ways to sculpt a rhinocerous: make a bunch of tiny pieces a larger thing, or sculpt a very large thing into a smaller thing. These two things offer very different perspectives on the pursuit of knowledge, and the end in very similar ways to the different sculptures.

Most of the modern world subscribes to the first way, of amalgamating a large number of small facts. They do this because they see this as being what science does, and everybody wants to seem scientific. They see science making great discoveries, and assume that this is a new fact that they should stick onto their worldview. They do it, but often when they are tried by fire, these facts pop off as the interference between them becomes apparent.

Science is, in fact, just the opposite. How? I think the statement that "Science can never prove anything" will suffice. Science can certainly disprove things: some Greek guy proved that the earth was not flat using two wells and the way shadows fell in them. (Granted, some people still disagree, but most accept this.) Michelson and Morely proved that the concept of an ether in which light was simply a disturbance was false as it stood.

How does science disprove things? Easy: if the world is a certain way, it must have certain properties which act a certain way in certain situations. If the earth is flat, the shadows should fall in certain directions at certain times of day. If light travels like waves in water, then it should travel slower relative to us in the direction in which we are moving relative to it. 

Science takes these statements, and tests them. If they do not match up to reality, that means that the world is not that certain way. It may be close, but any revised reality cannot have the property which the world was proven not to have in this experiment. 

But how can science prove things? Easy: it can't. If the world doesn't work that certain way, the view is false. But if the world does work that certain way, that means that any number of things could be true, so long as they predict this. Notice that the Greek guy (honestly don't remember his name) didn't prove the world was a sphere. It could have been cylindrical, or hyperbolic, or any other number of shapes. It just for sure wasn't flat. Michelson and Morely didn't prove what light was, in fact we still don't know what it is. All we know is it doesn't act like a wave in water, so it's not something like that.

The Way We Whittle

But what does this all have to do with clay? The two worldviews are exactly like clay: either you assemble your view of truth from small bits of fact, or you carve your view of truth out of all possible things that there are. 

To restate that, you either believe everything is false until it's shown to be true, or you believe everything true until it's shown to be false.

I prefer the latter, and I believe it is a much more solid, reliable way to find out what's true.

The assembled worldview is small. It contains only the things that the sculptor can lift and put his hands on. It cannot contain things too heavy for the sculptor, or things which extend beyond the range of his vision. More concretely, it only includes things science can prove. That is to say, it really includes nothing.

The whittled worldview, however, is vast and expansive. It includes everything, except the tiny nick that science has disproved in the tiny corner science can even touch. In fact, it is so large that other tools are required to sculpt it, weak tools like philosophy or powerful tools like the Holy Bible, which deal with things science is powerless to prune. 

The whittled worldview is not of manageable size, but a worldview of manageable size will be managed by everybody there is. A massive worldview dwarfs planets and galaxies, and stands very firm when someone tries to push it, because there is nothing else to push against. Not even Archimedes with his long stick and his place to stand could move it, because by definition there is no other place to stand: it includes all things except the things which aren't things, that have been disproven.

Carving a Colossal Catechism

I want you to embrace and enjoy this worldview, the one so large that its limits cannot be seen. The benefits are vast, including the benefit of the doubt. The assembled worldview cannot give this, because it only includes things beyond the shadow of doubt, which is such an overwhelming shadow with so small a torch as ours that it renders this a tiny plane indeed.  The assembled worldview doubts everything, and so is intellectually bound by the strength of its own mind to sit amidst the things it knows until it goes insane.

The carved worldview doubts nothing but what is disproved, and gives credence to all statements until they are in opposition to truth. And this means that this worldview not only can be more accepting of people and their ideas, but also is free to pursue any region of thought without fear of pain. It's very hard to fall off an edgeless world. 

That said, one must remove the parts of the worldview which are demonstrably false. No view which is shown to be false need be even considered. It is not tolerant of falsehood, of fallacious ideas, but of the people who hold them, people who can be neither true nor false. As GK Chesterton (whom I will quote almost every post, I'm sure) said, 

"Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid"

A worldview including the whole world is necessarily solid, the most solid thing there is, because there is nothing else but vapors.

And so it is of overwhelming importance that you embrace this type of worldview. We can't get anywhere doubting everything. Skepticism, insofar as it is the judging of everything we hear, is quite valid, but the Skeptic, who doubts everything he hears, can never really learn anything. 


Don't be a rhinocerous. His horn will pop off, and he'll explode under his own internal pressures. Be a mermaid, beautiful and humble and carved piece by patient piece from a much larger lump. You'll know what you don't have, and won't miss it.