how we know what we know

One of the pillars of philosophy is the examination of how we know what we know. How can we prove that what we believe is true? In most cases, we can’t.

In reality, even many of the things we think of as hard facts aren’t. They’re half-truths. They’re assumptions. They’re misinterpretations. They’re guesses. They’re based on cognitive biases, faulty information, or conditioning. Use science as an example. What we believed five, ten or twenty years ago has since been disproved. We have made radical leaps in understanding and those leaps are continuing every day. What we know today will one day be looked upon as archaic and outdated. 

Gary John Bishop

Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.106

wildness is a mystique

Wilderness, or wildness, is a mystique. A religion, an intense philosophy, a dream of ideal society – these are also mystiques.... As the fisherman depends upon the rivers, lakes, and seas, and the farmer upon the land for his existence, so does mankind in general depend upon the beauty of the world about him for his spiritual and emotional existence.


Ansel Adams, as quoted in A Century of Sanctuary: The Art of Zion National Park By Robert Redford, Peter H. Hassrick, Lyman Hafen, Deborah Reeder, Leslie Courtright, Roland Lee, Erica Cottam. University of Utah Press, 2008. p.108