Theistic Idealism
I am deservedly embarrassed to say that I have just, finally, focused on a significant blind spot of my own. How many others do I have? The founder of the church I attended as a child was the leading light in this defunct movement that I am straining now to see revived. Our sister parish in Pasadena was founded by an ancestor who also founded a well known scientific university that used to bear the family (both sides!) name. The juxtaposition of science and transcendentalism was endemic at that time. Somehow, until I just confirmed it in the Britannica, I was not clear that transcendentalism was just a species of idealism. Another American denomination founded in Boston, Christian Science, was, I used to think, the only ever existing sect of theistic idealism.
The sinister cabal, at least a significant part of it, that conspired to eliminate immaterialism from our collective psyche lies buried in the family plot in Mount Pleasant. Small world! Is not the truth usually hidden in plain sight? It is also to be found in Boston's 'Metaphysical Club', a misnomer if ever there was. What gives? How and why did we drop this ball? Was there too much California Dreamin', or, thinking of Cal Tech and Cambridge, was there not enough? The lion sleeps tonight.
Google: Theistic Idealism (40 (+ 1?) hits). Our work is cut out for us.
Pragmatism (132,000+ ) is the name of the conspiracy. Something funny happened on the way to our manifest destiny. We became the 'gold mountain,' beacon to the aspiring. Are we surprised? Disappointed? Not really. Have faith. It's just another part of the plan. A sometimes tender trap.
Charles S. Peirce (6,040), whose grandson [well, nephew maybe?] was a grade school classmate of mine in Concord, or so I still like to think, was the brains behind the conspiracy, or so we are told. Perhaps we should pick his brain.
But I already know the story behind the story. It was a very short walk across the Charles River Bridge from the college to the 'B' School, that my Dad soon took, awestruck by the Bomb, and the soon to be Best and Brightest, some of whom he would be mentoring there. And while we're into small worlds, you may recall my Dad's 'Manhattan' colleague, Donald. Both he and Charles' Dad specialized in lunar occultations at the nearby Observatory. If that sounds occult, well, you ain't heard nuthin' yet.
On the Web:
7/21/02