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- Sex and Ideality -

"A woman cannot become a "sage."  I have disdain for that particular word.  A woman can only become believable when she has overcome her femininity.  A woman must become a man before she can become wise or aware.   It is one of the hardest things to do -- to completely forsake one's feminine desires and inclinations." From a post by Marsha Faizi ----21/01/2001.

One cannot stand passively before the great mysteries of existence and hope that one will somehow be blessed by providence with wisdom, and do so probably on no more substantial grounds than that one is sufficiently beauteous as to be worthy of such an endowment.  But this is precisely the manner in which the feminine aspect of mind - in both sexes - stands before all things in Nature.  To have to fight for something, to have to march into conscious battle for some ideal or goal is a thing entirely foreign to the feminine.  It is, indeed, contrary to the whole pathos of the feminine that any thing, any benefit, any object of desire, should not be naturally bestowed upon it merely as a consequence of its existence.  The formula is expressive of the most pristine egoism: feminine = worthiness = fate.

It is not without considerable angst, however, that women, being predominantly feminine, live this kind of passivity.  The average woman lives in constant fear that she is indeed unworthy of all that ought be her natural due.  When life does not proceed in such a way as would befit her station, aside from her often incouncellable indignance, she is consumed with doubt as to her worthiness.  But wait!  That is not quite the truth of it.   One can easily go astray on this point.  It is not her worthiness she doubts, but, more accurately, her femininity, for this is the spring from which her worth issues.  If she is to be granted those things which Nature and Man have conspired to ordain as rightly hers, namely, anything she desires, then she must be, as perfectly as she can, that which is known to her as the beneficiary of the gifts of God and Man - i.e. she must be feminine.

But herein lies the most significant difference between the sexes; that which sets them apart in both poetic effect and in practical reality: man is made worthy by what he achieves; woman, by being most properly what she is - feminine.  It is one of the great ironies of the history of humanity that Man has built so much of his own worth on the back of one of his greatest achievements, one of the greatest expressions of imagination and romantic ideation that one might believe possible of even the greatest of Gods - the social fiction of "Woman".  It is ironic in that Man finds worth for himself in the creation of a thing that finds its own worth in being a thing - created!

An ideal is not something that is within the reach of minds that are simply passively willing; it is something that must be attained by the exercise of will itself.  There is a vast difference between the exercising of will and merely being willing.  It is the difference between passivity and activity.  It is the difference between the feminine and the masculine.  One must forge an understanding with one's own sweat and blood and the ore of one's reason and not be content to buy it as some handsome trinket from a fancy jewellery store.  I tell you the world is full of counterfeit knowledge!

One must take Nature - and one's own mind - by the throat and violently shake the truth out of them.  One cannot settle for half measures.  One must pursue knowledge, wisdom and the character that only comes through aggressive and uncompromising introspection with a will and a purpose that is unmistakably a characteristc of the masculine in Man, and is, contrariwise, unmistakably not of the nature of the feminine. 

- Sense and Sensibility -

"We here at genius-l are quick on the attack, quick on the assumption, and quick on the judgement.  It is, for the most part, a hostile environment, not one where all ideas are welcomed for the purpose of discourse.  It is one thing to discuss something and dismiss it for lack of merit.  It is another to attack it on the assumptions and prejudices we hold." Jim Downey 8/02/01

Genius-L is most assuredly a challenging, uncompromising and intolerant environment. It is not, however, openly hostile. How people respond to the environment of the list is an indicator of the workings of society in general, and how in that society, private sensibilities constantly get in the way of open, no-nonsense discussion. There is always the most extraordinary arrogance at work in anyone who seeks to exercise control over the tenor of a discussion on the basis of their egotistical sensibilities. It happens all the time. It is inconceivable to me that all but a rare few of those reading this editorial could not be occasionally or regularly guilty of this behaviour.

When a person becomes defensive and indignant over the way their views are being addressed one can be sure that behind that defensiveness is insecurity and an unwillingness to scrutinise those views without prejudice. It is one thing to speak of the prejudice others express towards us and our beliefs, but another to recognise the prejudice we hold towards our own position. It is this particular prejudice that ignites our indignation and causes us to feel as though we are being wrongly forced to validate ourselves, when, all the while, we are asking that very thing of others.

How often do we witness accusations of prejudice, based on nothing more than one's inability to see any reason that such prejudice is justified. It does not follow that because we can see no reason to be generally dismissive of, for example, the religious mentality, that others are likewise limited in their vision. The projection of one's perceived limitations onto others, either in the quality and capacity of reason or in one's level of knowledge, is painfully common.

Clearly, the quest for truth is undermined by the existence of groundless prejudice in us, but whilst we continue to paranoically see it only in those who disagree with us, our own prejudice will do its damage quietly in the background of our conscousness. If we are remotely serious in our quest for understanding, for wisdom, we cannot afford to wear our sensibilities on our sleeve, we cannot afford to heed them or demand that others do so. We cannot afford to allow reason to be dictated to by our egos.

Philosophy is rendered impotent if there is one single thing that is left untouched, unexamined, that is not stripped bare and its true nature exposed to the light of reason. Nothing is or can be sacred in the face of such a goal, including our belief in our right to keep some part of us separate from the process of philosophic discourse; some aspect of our selves that we wish to protect from the harsh scrutiny of intellectual critique and discrimination. Philosophy cannot proceed where there is the slightest will to keep hidden away in the dark caverns of our ego, either our most precious attachments, or even the most fleeting and seemingly insignificant of them.

Philosophy is not simply about ideas and how they relate; it is, at all times and in all ways, about..........you.

My "case manager" is a young woman in her late twenties - the usual officious but superficially caring type. What is most interesting about the way she deals with me is that she ignores who and what I am, more or less completely. I'm supposed to provide her with regular updates of my long and short-term goals. She types them up on a computer file for the eyes of the "powers that be". Interestingly, my most important goals are entirely absent from what she types. She does not note "to become perfectly wise" or "to become a perfect Buddha". She instead types, "finish a chapter in book", or "learn web page tabling" or any other more worldly tit-bits I toss her way. It's as if my identity as a thinker does not exist for her at all. Who I actually am is irrelevant to who I need to be to be employed and an acceptable member of the community.

This is a reality that the thinker must face at every turn in his life. He must face the truth that his path is of the most excruciatingly solitary nature - that even his identity, as he sees it, will be disregarded. If it weren't for the trappings of his outer skin and clothing, he would be wholly transparent and no-one would see him at all. He would be quite invisible. If he is seen, he is nothing more than the mental projection of values and beliefs and deluded judgments of those that "see" him. That the thinker is not seen, that he is invisible to all but the few, is a painful thing for him to deal with, as his ego is still involved in his goals. It is difficult to be this profoundly alone, but this isolation is an inevitable consequence of thought; one should not embark on such a journey without giving consideration to this consequence.

The spiritual man walks a path where he not only questions the true nature of his own identity, but one where he cannot, as most people do, find any portion of that identity in the external realities he faces, for he is as a ghost to the world, a cipher.

Despite this, if he is able to survive this difficulty, there is liberation to be found in the end. 

"Where does this contempt for our animal natures come from? I see it as ego in disguise (one feels contempt for part of oneself because it stands in the way of being better than others - a natural tendency, as you point out). Why do you think excellence must necessarily include a contempt for aspects of our (animal) nature? Why should such a contempt be a pre-requisite to the achievment of an excellence? Why cannot an obsession to know simply ignore what's regarded as the animal in us? Why can't our relationship with a "herd" be irrelevant?    Why not just accept what we are and go from there?" Al Young - 01 Jul 2001

In evolutionary terms, it is clear enough that we are different from other animals; we are different in the sense that we possess self-awareness and the ability to reason in a consciously deductive manner. We nevertheless remain closely linked to our animal heritage by the very fact of that heritage and also by virtue of the limited development of our self-awareness. We are still very much animals. In some individuals the drive to fulfill the destinty that that difference indicates is such that they are compelled to view their animal natures as something to be outgrown and overcome. It does not mean, necessarily, having contempt for it, although whilst one still possesses a great deal of ego, it is to be expected, but it does mean viewing it as a negative property of one's nature.

And what do I mean by fulfilling our destiny? Simply that we strive to become fully human and fully conscious of our self nature, which necessitates becoming conscious of the nature of Reality itself. Self awareness creates an enquiring mind, a mind that needs to complete itself and in some sense, become final. A mind that does not find such completion is one which exists in a constant state of conflict and angst and is driven by desires it does not even understand or that it cannot successfully statiate.

But what of those who constitute the vast majority of human beings, those who do not feel any such drive? What of those who are apparently content with their animal nature, with their lack of consciousness? Why should we adopt a prescriptive attitude towards them? The answer is simple: such ones are simply too unconscious to appreciate their own foolishness. And what makes them foolish? Again, the answer is all too simple: people fail to see that the universal desire humans express to be rid of their suffering, their confusions, their fears, anxieties and insecurities can only be sublimated by way of an understanding of Reality; that is, by the complete and final consummation of our difference from other animals. Such desires demand that fulfillment by way of bringing our consciousness into line with what is ultimately true.

It is therefore essentially idiotic for anyone to deny the necessity of the quest for enlightenment. The only persons who can do this are those that are too ignorant to see the logical connections, and whose lives are rendered incoherent because of it. It is only those whose ignorance blinds them to the glaring fact that their suffering is entirely a consequence of their animal natures, of their lack of drive to fulfill the promise of the one thing that differentiates us from other species - that is, reason and the level of consciousness that reason may afford us.

It seems a little strange, then, for anyone to ask why we would have contempt for our animal natures. Do we not, at least in the beginning, have contempt for that which causes us to suffer? Of course we do, but because of our ignorance we do not know where to direct that contempt. Unfortunately, of out ignorance, we tend to toss our contempt up into the swirling winds of egotistical whimsy and care little for the injustices that ensue. Our contempt, we believe, wherever directed, is legitimate because our suffering is not.

As Al Young suggests, it may be that part of our comtempt for our animal natures is that it is something that unites us and places us all on a kind of level playing field, whence we must construct artificial edifaces of valuations so as to grant us the ability to judge ourselves against others. But it would be altogether cynical and unreasonable to see every expression of disregard for our animality as being of that nature. Some of us are evolved enough to see what is true and what is necessary in terms of the fate Nature has imposed on us. In Buddhist parlance, it is quite aptly known as having been born into the human realm. 

- East, West, Woman, Woe -

"If I could turn back time. If I could find a way," sang Cher, a fews years ago, whilst strutting around an American Battleship, wearing little more than a strategically placed ribbon, a see-through body stocking and a couple of tattoos on her bum.  She wasn't alone, of course - as she seductively straddled the barrel of a gun turret like some kind of huge metallic dildo, she was oggled and cheered by a hundred or more salivating and worshipping sailors who seemed to be indicating that this strange creature strutting around before them with the vacuous grin on her face was just the thing that they had signed up to protect from harm.  This was what they had pronounced themselves willing to die for - the zenith of their culture. 

Is it any wonder, then, that in the aftermath of the tragedy in New York, we hear so much besumement from Americans regarding the apparent fact that some people appear not to like them very much; that some groups and cultures view them with suspicious and dread, even disdain and hatred.  But it ought not be surprising to us that some cultures view the wholly unconscious worshipping of the feminine that is exemplified by most every part of American culture as a kind of social disease, and one that they should be inocculated against, if not one that they should seek to forcefully eradicate.  Nor should the intensity of this negative reaction surprise us in the face of the fact that this insipid decadence has the desire to impose itself on other cultures, by any number of means, both overt and covert.   

Why shouldn't the "East" view the "West" with tremendous suspicion, even trepidation and loathing?  Look at our cultures: our greatest social heros (or those that we most readily acknowledge and take an active interest in) are mindless actors, violent rap artists, female singers whose only real talent is that of flaunting their bodies and sexuality; "supermodels" whose one and only talent is walking up and down wearing someone else's clothing.  In short we worhip brainless sluts (i.e. people who behave in a sluttish fashion toward society) and think ourselves more civilised than those that don't.  Are we serious? 

The difference between western culure and that say, of the Middle East, when it comes to women and the feminine, is not so much in the significance we grant them, because it is clear by the way women are teated in the East that the feminine is granted a great deal of significance, but in the level of awareness and consciousness with which we treat them.  Both dimensions of civilisation basically worship the feminine, but there appears to be a greater appreciation for the nature of the feminine in the East, which is why certain aspects of its cutures seek to control and suppress it.  When these cultures see the overt and unadulterated spewing out of the feminine and female sexuality into the world by the West, they view it as a releasing of wild,  uncontrollable and dangerous animals into the world.  And when you see spectacles like Cher prancing about in next to nothing with hundreds of trained military men worshipping at her feet like Mulims praying to Mecca, you can kind of see their point.

It's a bit like having a pimp drop by your dinner party with a bunch of scantily clad whores who spend all their time rubbing up against your guests and propositioning them.  One can well understand why the host would want to make them leave.  Of course, just for good measure, the whores will probably then proceed to press their naked breasts against the windows from outside the house, forcing the party goers to draw the curtains.  Then, they'll have to suffer the ignominy of being called "backward" or "uncivilised" or "inhibited" or "living in the 7th century" by the fools who understand not one whit of their own behaviour. 

How many of us would truly feel comfortable if the next door neigbours regularly held full-on orgies in their backyard and kept dropping in and inviting us over, or kept wanting to borrow some milk or sugar, or petroleum jelly, or began spilling over the fence in sexual rapture and greeted our protests with comments like: "Get with it, man, this is the 21st century"?  What if they were more wealthy and therefore powerful that we, and could basically ignore our rights and desires?  What if they actively sought to recrute your wife or 16 year old daughter to their lifestyle?

It is the unrestrained decadence that the East fears as much as anything else, and however much we might observe that this fear is somewhat generational, it sill exists.  There is a fear of a breakdown of social values and cohesion.  One does not have to be some puritanical, right-wing Christian type to sympathise with such fears.  One only has to look at American homelessness and crime rates to get an insight into what happens to a nation that allows itself to slide into such unconsciousness.  And, moreover, these perceptions don't have to be entirely valid for them to nevertheless exist and for us to be able to comprehend them.  You don't have to agree with someone to be able to see their point of view, you merely have to want to see it.

Of course, all of this speaks only to certain elements of popular American culture, and is far from the whole story, but that is the dimension of a culture that is most often vigorously presented and proselytized, so, the next time you watch an episode of Jerry Springer or Rikki Lake, ask yourself whether other cultures have good cause to fear the influence of American, and more generally, Western culture.  Ask youself what it is about such behaviour that might make it a worthwhile cultural export commodity. 

- Beware the Pretender -

The world is full of pretenders, wanna-bes, would-be if they could-bes and claim-to-bes. Being able to discern an authentic spirit from a false one is important in that it can save the truth seeker from wasting precious time and effort by not involving himself in any way with such a person. The following is a general guide and warning for those rare seekers who might want to avoid the ignominy of taking seriously one, who is, themsleves, not serious, and who is ultimately cancerous to the spirit:

# Beware him whom speaks often and loudly, for such a one can neither think nor listen and seeks only to bring attention upon himself. Such a one is full of ego and cannot stand to be out of the sun's glare.

# Beware him who speaks of his detachment but whose actions are full of attachment and petty meanings, for his soul is corrupt.

# Beware him who speaks in noble terms when he is weary of the world but who embraces and revels in all things worldly and trivial when his energy is high, for he is but a dilletante.

# Beware him who appears generous but ultimately demands more than he gives, for he is like the incubus.

# Beware him who speaks in embittered tones of Woman, for whilst there may be truth in his words, there is also delusion and ego within his motivation for speaking. If he does not speak of Woman in a matter of fact manner, but instead speaks with the twisted tongue of a moral serpent, he is unworthy of attention.

# Beware him who exaggerates his place in the world and who wishes ill-will to be wrought against himself, for he is plainly an idiot.

# Beware him whose soul has no centre, for he is buffeted by the flux of the world and has no mind for God. Such a one is but a feminine woman.

# Beware him who holds in his heart no room for valid praise but only for false flattery and knavery, for his soul is small and bitter.

# Beware him whose mind dwells in logic in the ninth hour, but dwells in emotion in the tenth, for he has no centre.

# Beware those who merely mirror your values, for they are but pale reflections; mere echos of spirit.

# Beware those whose behaviour sometimes seems insane, for I tell you they are not merely acting!

# Beware those who are tolerant of most things, for they are yet intolerant of one thing - the soul.

# Beware him who reaches up from the mud of the earth to grasp at the noble man who passes above, for he means not to raise himself up but to drag the noble man down.

# Beware those who pay homage to the Eagle, for they will be consumed by the Eagle.

But more important than any of these things, beware of the existence of any of these traits in yourself. Strive to seek them out and eliminate them, for they bring nothing but disease to the spirit. 

-What the World Needs is More Hypocrisy-

- Spiritual Friends -

Someone once remarked that friends are "thieves of time". I would go a step further and say that friends are thieves of mind. There is a world of difference between a true spiritual friend and a friend in the sense that such a thing is commonly understood. A true spiritual friend is also your greatest enemy. He is a constant reminder of the path to which you have dedicated yourself; he is a constant reminder of your imperfection and of the egotism that remains in your character. He is a gnat that buzzes around your head and gives you no peace. He is the conscience that presents itself when your own fails.

Conventional friendships exist for one purpose only - to boost one's ego. This is the sole reason one has "friends". A friend is someone who validates us, who indicates to us that we are valued - a person of worth and substance. How many people have friends that constantly tell us we are a worthless piece of shit? We may have spouses that do that but that's another story altogether.

How can you have friends! You who is supposedly on the path to enlightenment and who claims to be an individual? How can the true individual have friends? The spiritual man is a solitary being by definition. Friendship is an anathema to him. Worldly friendships make us stronger in ego. They reinforce the false idea of our existence and because of this friends are always at each other's beck and call. Our connection to them is 100% about egotistical need. We choose our friends precisely on the basis of who best satisfies those needs. This point alone proves the wholly egotistical nature of conventional friendship.

The spiritual friend is one whose only concern is wisdom. He is not at all interested in your ego, other than in the sense of wanting to destroy it. Such a friend works to make us weaker in ego and thereby more able to make room in our hearts and minds for God. Most people would not even begin to think of such a one as a "friend". They would regard him as one who seeks to bring you down, to bring to ruination your self esteem - and they'd be right! A spiritual friend is indeed one who seeks to facilitate your down-going. But that is exactly what makes him a true friend in spirit. That downgoing is what makes us ripe for God in our lives. Most people are far too strong for God. They have so many friends to give them support in their hours of need; so many friends to bring concretion to their egotistical delusions; so many friends to validate them - how could there possibly be room for God?! What possible need could there be for such a thing? What need could one have for Truth when there are so many friends willing and able to tell us the most exquisite lies!

Ultimately, the truth seeker need have only one friend - his own reason. However, if others should cross our paths, be certain that those with whom we consort are of good character - good enough character to not be willing to lie to us.

Both historical and contemporary literature, though the latter being of a more confused and imprecise nature, is replete with notions of what it means to be a man in any given society. However, if being a man in any of these schemas means anything remotely less than being an entity deeply infused with the will to express true individuality and to stand naked before Reality with the utmost sense of truth and integrity, then I cannot conceive of such a being as a man at all.

To what end is a man truly a man if he is not fully himself? In what possible sense is a man truly a man if he cannot stand before Reality as an individual and declare "I am what I am."? Is it enough that he is a father, a husband, a lawmaker and jurist, a provider and a protector? Is it enough that he is willing to sacrifice himself, in every possible sense, for a society that is grounded in egotism and falsity? Hardly. For a man to truly stand before reality as an individual he must first aspire to an understanding of that reality, otherwise he stands nowhere but knee-deep in muck.

Wisdom is the true destiny and completion of man. Man is incomplete without it. It is part of the nature of consciousness that it seeks to fulfill itself (i.e. to be certain about those things from which certainty may be gleaned), and to the degree that any given person is conscious, to that degree he will aspire to truth because he suffers for his ignorance - his lack of completion.

Unfortunately, certain intellectual and social forces have conspired to strip modern society and modern man of all its ideality. No longer is any such completion, such certainty, deemed possible, therefore man is left in psychological and spiritual limbo, the social effects of which are all too obvious - the increased feminisation of both society and man, the embracing of mediocrity and the democratic pragamtism associated with it, increased male youth suicide, the dimunition of masculine influence in the lives of young people.

Yet, as socially damaging as all these effects may be, nevertheless the true man has the capacity to stand apart from it all and strive for the completion of his own individual self. His duty to himself, if not any other, is to embrace his reason, take heed of his conscience and realise that the continual existential crisis he finds himself in can never be truly abated without the fulfillment of the natural destiny of that consciousness.

The forces of modern society lure man to find himself outside of himself, outside of mind and contemplation. This is madness, as the only thing that can authentically take a man outside of himself is if he is reborn as a woman. To my horror, more and more men are seemingly thus being reborn.

However, whatever is lost in them is not lost in me. These others, and society in general, represent only one dimension of my purpose and values. The primary one relates to me personally. It is about my personal relationship to God and involves no other. So ought it be. Indeed, so must it be. 

- Beyond Empirical Uncertainty -

It's been said many a time - even by me - that empirical matters are always contingent and uncertain, but is this always the case? As useful an idea as it can be in terms of breaking down attachments to false thinking, it is, itself, not entirely true. There is always uncertainty when we draw inferences as to what a certain thing we're experiencing actually is - for example, I may perceive a haze in the distance which I deem to be water, only to find that it is something else, or the girl I see crossing the street, whom I presume to be flesh and blood, may in fact be a hologram of some kind. That element of uncertainty exists in any given situation when we draw an inference as to what any given thing is. However, we tend to extent this notion of empirical uncertainty to all of our empirical models (models of causal relation) but this is not ultimately valid. These models of causation are, in fact, never uncertain. Why? Because like the definitions we create, they too are something we create. How can there be uncertainty in what we have created?

The reason we ascribe uncertainty to our empirical models of causation is because we can always say there could be factors that we are not taking into account in building our model. Whilst this seems reasonable it actually rests on the unstated assumption, a false assumption, that a complete model can exist. But this just isn't so. No complete model of causation with respect to any thing or state can exist. The only sufficient cause of any given thing is Reality itself and Reality is not something that can be modeled. No model can be complete because any such model has to have causes for itself, which are necessarily factors in why a thing or state is what it is (another way of saying that no finite thing can be its own cause or explanation). When we create an empirical theory we always place arbitrary boundaries around it and pretend that the model is whole in itself. But naturally, it isn't; we're just shutting our minds off to related factors because those related factors may not be necessary to the functionality of the model, to its utility in some practical context. Philosophically, however, we can come to understand that no empirical model whatsoever can or should be thought of as a contingent version of a full and complete model of Reality. To refer to any empirical modeling of the world as uncertain is to imply the possibility of a certain and complete model, which is something we can never have. Therefore, applying the term "uncertain" to such things is to commit an error of thought. What would certainty in relation to an empirical model mean? That we had included all possible factors? But that idea is laughable, for not only can we say that we can never know that we have done so, we can, more significantly, say that we can never do so. The reason for that, again, is that no finite thing can exist of itself - it requires that which demarcates it to give it identity and existence (form), and this is a dynamical fact of Reality that is necessarily infinite in scope (and is the reason we may rightly say that existence is infinite). 

Since certainty is not a notion that can be meaningfully attributed to such empirical perspectives, neither is uncertainty.

Certainty and uncertainty are no more applicable to empirical models than the terms true and false are applicable to the definitions we create. Like definitions, the empirical models we create are either useful or not; they either have utility for some purpose or other or they do not; if not, we can categorise them as bad models, but they are never true or false, certain or uncertain. When we grant these creations of the mind the quality of uncertainty, we imply the existence of an objective reality, one which we are attempting to accurately model or reflect, but no such objective reality exists. We are merely creatively carving up an infinitely carvable Reality according to the whims of the qualities of our consciousness. That's the real problem: the belief that such an objective reality exists and that we are somehow reflecting it more and more accurately with our theories and models of causal relation. We think we are discovering the world, when all we are really doing is creating it; what we are doing is modeling our own consciousness - projecting it out into the cosmos and deluding ourselves that we are unraveling the mysteries of existence.

How much more utility would our scientific endeavours have if we adopted a more creative rather than interpretive approach? If we started to look forward instead of constantly looking back? If we resolved to build a future for ourselves instead of constantly attempting to invent a history for ourselves? Globally, we spend billions of dollars on cosmology, archeology, the various fields of evolution and so forth and yet we spend a veritable pittance on disease research, sustainable forms of power and resource production, not to mention trivial incidentals like the pursuit of wisdom - all because we are obsessed with the false belief that we can model the world accurately, on the basis of the delusion of an objective reality and that if a model "works" it must reflect that reality faithfully. We vainly attempt to "find" ourselves in Nature all the while oblivious to the irony that our "selves" are actually there in everything we find - creating it!

Both our understanding of ourselves and the utility of science would gain a great boost if we could get our minds around the difference between discovery and invention.