Category Archives: Arts

Arts, Philosophy

Philosophy: Purposes in nature

TELEOLOGY

Intro: According to Aristotle, everything that exists has a final cause, or purpose – what in Greek is called a telos. In other words, everything in nature exists to fulfil a goal.

EXPLAINING things in terms of their purposes was not unusual among classical Greek philosophers, but today it stands at odds with our modern, scientific understanding of the world. To our modern eyes it is quite normal to describe a man-made object, such as a tool, in terms of its function or purpose. A hammer, for example, exists for the purpose of pounding in nails. But this is an extrinsic purpose, one that is imposed upon it from the outside. What Aristotle proposed was that everything, including everything in the natural world, has an intrinsic purpose: that is, each thing exists in order to achieve its own ends – its internal purpose. For example, a seed’s purpose is to germinate and become a plant, and trees exist in order to produce fruit.

For Aristotle, it is not only living things that exist for a purpose. Rain falls in order to moisten the ground and enable plants to grow. It is the rain’s telos to water the earth, and the plants’ telos to grow. Their purpose or goal is the reason they have come into being.

More in line with our modern thinking is the Atomists’ assertion that natural things do not have an intrinsic purpose or “final cause”: instead, their existence is the cause of other things. Rain does not fall in order to water the plants; rather, the plants use the moisture that happens to have been provided by the rainfall.

. The Unfolding World

For Aristotle, the essential property of a seed is its ability to grow. That is also its intrinsic purpose: it exists to become a plant, which, in turn, exists in order to produce seeds. Living things are therefore characterised by their tendency to move or change, and to reproduce. And, since all terrestrial things are imperfect and impermanent, beings not only grow, but also eventually perish and decay.

. Causation

Aristotle’s theory of causation is based on his idea that everything has four causes. What we usually think of as a cause – that which makes a thing happen – is what Aristotle calls an “efficient cause”. For example, a person who pushes a rock downhill is the efficient cause of the rock’s movement. The purpose, or “final cause”, of its movement – why it goes downwards instead of up or sideways – is that it is seeking the centre of the Earth. The final cause of the action of pushing the rock is to see how far it will roll. The rock’s movement is also determined by formal and material causes.

Efficient Cause – in this example, the efficient cause is the person who pushes the rock. The rock moves because of the person’s actions.

Material Cause – This is the rock’s physical composition. The rock is made of earth, and so, because earthy things seek the centre of the Earth, it moves downwards.

Formal Cause – The shape of the rock’s trajectory is determined by the landscape. The rock’s rolling and bouncing are caused by the slopes and bumps of the hill.

Final Cause – The rock comes to rest when it reaches the closest it can get to the centre of the Earth – the bottom of the hill.

THE UNMOVED MOVER

Aristotle’s universe had no beginning, but he believed that something must have set the heavenly bodies in motion, since everything is caused by something else. However, this raises two questions: What caused that cause, and what moved the mover of the Universe? Aristotle proposed the idea of a first cause, an “unmoved mover”, responsible for all the motion in the universe.

Standard
Arts, Books, Government, National Security, Society

Book Review: Pegasus

LITERARY REVIEW

Intro: The reporting of the world’s most powerful spyware program should teach us that no one is safe from such systems. But will it?

EDWARD SNOWDEN’S infamous leaks in 2013 from the US National Security Agency triggered a global debate around state surveillance – but even he couldn’t quite believe the scale of the story described to him in the summer of 2021.

Whistle-blowers had handed French investigative journalists Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud a list of 50,000 mobile phone numbers. These belonged to people flagged for attack by a cybersurveillance software package called Pegasus.

The investigation that followed is the subject of Pegasus: The story of the world’s most dangerous spyware, a non-fiction thriller and a must-read for all, not just those interested in cryptography and communications. As the authors warn: “Regular civilians being targeted with military-grade surveillance weapons – against their will, against their knowledge, and with no recourse – is a dystopian future we really are careening toward if we don’t understand this threat and move to stop it.”

Pegasus offers a fascinating insight into how journalism is coping with a hyper-connected world. Eyewitnesses and whistle-blowers have better access than ever to sympathetic campaigning journalists worldwide. But this advantage is shared with the very governments, corporations and organised crime networks that want to silence them.

To drag Pegasus into the light, Richard’s ‘Forbidden Stories’ consortium choreographed the activities of more than 80 investigative journalists from 17 media organisations working across four continents and in eight languages. The consortium’s mission is to continue and publish the work of other journalists facing threats, prison or murder.

Its Pegasus investigation commenced in March 2021, knowing full well that it had to conclude by June that year. By then, NSO – the Israeli company that created Pegasus in 2016 – was bound to twig that its brainchild was being hacked.

The bigger the names linked by the consortium to that list of phone numbers, the harder it would be to keep the investigation under wraps. Early on, the name of a journalist called Jorge Carrasco cropped up. He led one of the consortium’s cross-border collaborations, which aimed to finish the investigations of murdered Mexican journalist Regina Martinez. Then things got silly: the names of half the French cabinet appeared. Then president Emmanuel Macron.

The narrative of Pegasus is a pulse-accelerating account that is never afraid to delve into well-crafted technical detail. The authors explain how Pegasus gains free rein on a mobile device without ever tipping off the owner to its presence. It turns out to have evolved out of software designed to serve consumers waiting in queues on tech support call lines.

Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie, two of the founders of NSO, cut their teeth developing programs that allowed support technicians to take charge of a caller’s phone.

Before long, a European intelligence service came calling. Eventually, Pegasus was sold to more than 60 clients in over 40 countries. It was the first software to give security services an edge over terrorists, criminal gangs and paedophiles – and over whistle-blowers, campaigners, political opponents, journalists and at least one Emirati princess struggling for custody of her children.

The book is detailed but it isn’t a diatribe against the necessary business of government surveillance and espionage. It is about how, in the contest between ordinary people and the powerful, software is tilting the field wildly in the latter’s favour.

The international journalistic collaboration that was the Pegasus Project sparked the biggest global surveillance scandal since Snowden. It led to a European Parliament inquiry into government spyware, legal action from major tech companies, government sanctions against NSO and countless individual legal complaints.

Yet, the authors spend little time sitting on their laurels. Demand for such systems is only growing. Certain governments are making offers to certain tech firms that add zeroes to the fees NSO once enjoyed. Nor do the authors expect much from the public debate sparked by their investigation: “The issues… might have been raised,” they concede, “but the solutions are not even in the works.”

– Pegasus by Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud is published by Macmillan

Standard
Arts, Christianity, Culture

1 & 2 Timothy: The Pastoral Letters

NEW TESTAMENT

IF you read only Acts, you might think that the early church was one big happy family (once they had sorted out a bit of racial tension, Acts 6:1-8, 15:1-6). Generous sharing, daily praying, hundreds being converted, miracles of healing and deliverance, with only the odd arrest to hinder the flow of the Spirit at revival level.

Well, it wasn’t like that all the time; Acts is like a newspaper, it focuses on “news”: the unusual rather than the normal. And it certainly didn’t last. The sensual excesses of Corinth (Paul’s letters to them spare no blushes) highlighted the fact that the church was made up of human beings who, by biblical definition, are prone to more errors than a crashing computer.

And so by the mid-60s the first generation of Christians was being superseded by the next, and familiar problems were sprouting everywhere like weeds after a rain shower. The three “pastoral letters” (two to Timothy and one to Titus) are effectively manuals for the pair of troubleshooters to use as they sort out problems in Ephesus (Timothy) and Crete (Titus).

In laying down the law, Paul has given us a timeless set of guidelines for church leadership. He expects leaders to have exemplary lives and orthodox beliefs; and he expects his own colleagues to labour tirelessly and sacrificially. Along the way he gives some valuable truths memorably expressed about God and the Scriptures.

They apply especially to anyone in church leadership today. But it isn’t just aimed at the pastorate, there are clear guidelines for everyone in what they should be praying and looking for.

DON’T GET SIDETRACKED

– A narrative on 1 Timothy 1,4,6

THE human mind has a huge capacity for learning and remembering. Most of us only use a fraction of it, yet the world is an infinite source of information. However, what can be known is far greater than anyone can take in.

Theology – the knowledge of God revealed through the Scriptures, interpreted by successive generations of believers and applied to our lives by the Spirit – is no exception to the rule. There is always more to discover, and more than one mind can take in.

Paul encouraged his readers to learn the Scriptures and be mindful of healthy, right-minded doctrine (1 Timothy 4:6, 5:7, 6:3; 2 Timothy 3:14) but warns against fruitless speculation which leads us away from the gospel.

The false teachers in Ephesus had done just that. Some scribes have associated them with later heresies and thus questioned Paul’s authorship. But there are hints of similar problems elsewhere (Colossae, for example). The details are vague which makes them widely applicable. We should avoid excessive interest in legends (1:4), not to be fascinated by genealogies for theological reasons or personal status, not delighting in controversies arguing for the fun of it, and to avoid an interest in the occult (4:1-2).

The net effect is “envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction” (6:4,5). All this destroys fellowship. We are to be wise and to remain so.

Standard