“How do we live a life worthy of our breath?” Ocean Vuong (b. 1988) Vietnamese American Writer

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

Rome and Carthage domain changes during the three Punic Wars Animation: Wikimedia

A.Word.A.Daywith Anu Garg

Carthaginian peace

PRONUNCIATION:

(kar-thuh-JIN-ee-uhn pees) 

MEANING:

noun: Peace or settlement in which very harsh terms are imposed on the defeated side.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Carthage, an ancient city-state, in present-day Tunisia. Earliest documented use: 1940.

Oregon Public Apr 8, 2025 Esgyptian-American artist Amirra Malak mixes ancient khayamiya and modern media to create installations of liminal spaces. Khayamiya is a form of applique design hand sewn onto fabric for Egyptian tents. In Cairo, Malak studied with a master khayamiya maker. Today, she incorporates those teachings into her art from her studio in Hood River, Oregon.

(via Michael Kelly, H.W., and Helen Dower)

“If there is to be any peace, it will come through being, not having.” Henry Miller (1891-1980) American Writer

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

By Jack Lee,Weather Science Data Reporter

April 5, 2025 (SFChronicle.com)

Deb Zeyen walks in a hallway to demonstrate her motor skills during her treatment with UCSF neurologist Simon Little, right, at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences in San Francisco on March 24.Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle

At first, Deb Zeyen, 77, had trouble opening and closing her left hand as she spoke with UCSF neurologist Simon Little on March 24. But as a nurse practitioner tapped on a tablet atop a nearby table, Zeyen’s movements sharpened and sped up. Her voice also grew louder.

The tablet was wirelessly connected to a medical device implanted near Zeyen’s collarbone. Wires from the device, a flat oval that fits in the palm of a hand, extended to her brain, both for monitoring signals and sending electrical pulses. 

This high-tech treatment — known as adaptive deep-brain stimulation — was approved for treating Parkinson’s disease in February by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Zeyen and two others treated at Stanford in late March were among the first in the United States to begin adaptive deep-brain stimulation as part of their regular care for Parkinson’s. Until now, the treatment has been used only in clinical trials. Scientists are continuing to improve the technology which, while not a cure for the disease, can provide dramatic improvements.

“It literally gave me a life back,” Zeyen said.

Experts estimate about 1 million Americans have Parkinson’s disease, a disorder characterized by uncontrolled movements as a result of abnormal brain activity. Those with Parkinson’s experience the loss of certain neurons, which results in irregular electrical signals in the brain.

“It’s like you’re in a protest march, but everybody’s shouting the same thing over and over again and you can’t hear yourself,” said Helen Bronte-Stewart, a Stanford neurologist who headed the global adaptive deep-brain stimulation clinical trial that led to FDA approval.

Deep-brain stimulation disrupts this jamming pattern. Earlier versions of treatment provided a continuous signal to the brain, but the newer adaptive method is personalized to a patient’s needs. The ends of the wires implanted in the brain serve two roles, both delivering electrical impulses into brain tissue and also reading in brain activity, so stimulation can be modulated as needed.

Providing too much stimulation can cause fidgeting and involuntary movements, said Leo Almeida, a neurologist at the University of Minnesota and division chief of the movement disorders group. Conversely, not providing enough stimulation can cause symptoms of Parkinson’s to reappear.

“We are just getting to the point where deep-brain stimulation is a brain ‘pacemaker,’” Bronte-Stewart said, referring to the medical device used to regulate irregular heartbeats.

While the adaptive treatment is promising, it carries risks. The surgery required for deep-brain stimulation therapy can cause bleeding within the brain, for example. And there can be side effects before experts make adjustments, like tingling sensations.

Adaptive deep-brain stimulation currently requires specialized staff to set up and fine-tune, added Carina Oehrn, a UC Davis assistant professor of neurological surgery, who was previously at UCSF. 

The adaptive treatment may not be more effective for all people with Parkinson’s disease, but it could optimize symptom management for some, said Almeida, who was an investigator in the global adaptive deep-brain stimulation trial when he was at the University of Florida: “It’s always a good thing to have a new tool to offer patients.” 

The stimulation device was produced by Medtronic, a global medical device company. The system marks the company’s first foray into brain-computer interfaces. But the approach of reading signals and adapting therapy could have broader uses, like pain management. 

“We’re just getting started,” said Medtronic chief technology and innovation officer Ken Washington.

For Keith Krehbiel, 70, adaptive deep-brain stimulation has meant he’s been able to take less medicine. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1997, when he was 42 years old. What started as pain in his hand ultimately progressed to his entire arm shaking. 

The medicines for managing these symptoms had nasty side effects for Krehbiel, like mental fog and extreme nausea. Krehbiel had to take even more medications to deal with those complications.

After starting treatment with deep-brain stimulation, Krehbiel halved his daily dosage of medications; switching to the adaptive version of the treatment allowed him to halve that dosage again. “I just wake up every morning feeling better,” Krehbiel said.

Deep-brain stimulation also greatly improved the symptoms that John Lipp, 59, faced due to Parkinson’s disease. Lipp’s most pronounced symptom was painful muscle cramping. 

But with the treatment, that discomfort “disappeared almost instantaneously,” he said. “The stiffness kind of melted away.” 

Lipp has been able to resume running and even completed the New York City Marathon last year, something he never would have thought possible before the treatment. He is training for the race this year too.

On March 21, Lipp alternated between sitting patiently and taking laps around a small room as Stanford neurologist Gaurav Chattree tweaked settings on a touchscreen.

“He was getting some involuntary movements since the last time I saw him. And that’s a sign of disease progression,” Chattree explained. “So what I was trying to do was adjust the adaptive settings so that he’s getting enough stimulation.”

It’s similar to what Little, of UCSF, was doing with Zeyen, altering thresholds and inputs to find the right combination to manage her symptoms. Researchers are working to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to find the best settings more quickly, Little said.

Scientists are exploring if adaptive deep-brain stimulation could treat other symptoms of Parkinson’s, beyond those related to movement. Individuals with the disease often experience problems with sleep and mood. 

“Parkinson’s disease is complicated,” said UCSF neurologist Jill Ostrem, who is also medical director of UCSF’s Movement Disorders and Neuromodulation Center. “It’s not one symptom. It’s a combination of many symptoms.” 

Researchers are also working to address a technical challenge of the treatment. While the device both delivers electrical impulses and reads brain activity, trying to accomplish both tasks in the same brain region can create issues.

“The signals that you’re recording are about a million times smaller than the brain stimulation that you’re giving just next door,” Little explained. “You’re trying to listen to a whisper. At the same time, it’s like a cannon is going off.”

For now, the Medtronic device monitors just one brain region that’s known to be connected to Parkinson’s symptoms. Scientists are exploring if other parts of the brain could play a role in Parkinson’s, Ostrem said. Considering additional signals from different areas could make adaptive deep-brain stimulation an even more promising treatment for patients.

“I think it’s the future,” said Oehrn, of UC Davis.

Reach Jack Lee: jack.lee@sfchronicle.com

April 5, 2025

Jack Lee

WEATHER SCIENCE DATA REPORTER

Jack Lee joined The San Francisco Chronicle’s Weather Science team in 2022 as a data reporter.He has written for a variety of science journalism outlets, covering everything from COVID-19 to songbirds to extreme weather events. Most recently, he has been writing about cancer prevention and early detection for the National Cancer Institute.Before coming to science writing and journalism, Lee earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology at Princeton University and then worked as a data engineer for several years in the Bay Area. He obtained a master’s in science communication from UC Santa Cruz in 2020.

By Nanette Asimov,Higher Education Reporter

April 6, 2025 (SFChronicle.com)

Erica London, a licensed marriage and family therapist, does Holotropic Breathwork aimed to simulate the altered consciousness of psychedelics, in a demonstration for other students in a certificate program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in February. The college will offer the nation’s first bachelor’s degree in psychedelic studies this fall.Camille Cohen/For the S.F. Chronicle

The 1960s counterculture is synonymous with San Francisco, a city where hippies roamed the Haight, tripped on acid and fled the law.

And so it is fitting that San Francisco will again run counter to the mainstream this fall when a local university unveils the nation’s first bachelor’s degree in psychedelic studies.

“Wow!” said guitarist Barry “The Fish” Melton, a counterculture icon who played at Woodstock in 1969 with Country Joe and the Fish and still does gigs in the city. “It’s amazing, quite frankly, that you could actually get a degree in psychedelics.”

Unlike those experimental days of yesteryear, when the Tibetan Book of the Dead was the closest thing to an academic textbook for hippies seeking enlightenment through the wonders of mescaline, LSD, peyote and magic mushrooms, a team of Ph.D.s is poised to help undergraduates “explore the foundations and developments in the field of psychedelic medicines, all while holding to the highest possible standards of ethics and safety.”

That’s from the brochure for the online bachelor of science degree that will debut Aug. 28 at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a well-regarded private, nonprofit university at 1453 Mission St. in San Francisco that opened in 1968. 

Then there’s the list of frequently asked questions, with an answer to the most frequent one of all: “Please note that at no time does the program promote or require the use of psychedelic drugs in any manner, in accordance with the CIIS Student Handbook as well as state and federal law.”

That disclaimer mystified Melton, who said: “You’re not allowed to take any? How is anybody gonna get the degree then?”

Thanks for asking, Mr. Melton. Here’s how it works:

Three semesters online

The California Institute of Integral Studies offers no general education classes, such as English 101 or freshman biology. So undergraduates need to complete at least 60 credits elsewhere before transferring into CIIS’ new psychedelic studies program, which takes three semesters and costs $30,000 before financial aid.

“We’ll actively discourage them from doing psychedelics while in the program,” said professor Nick Walker, who will teach “Psychology and Psychedelics” this fall.

The goal is to prepare students for careers or graduate study in psychedelic-assisted therapy, a field that hovers, fittingly, just outside the legal doors of perception. Federal law bans the substances unless they’ve been approved for study in a clinical trial. But mental-health advocates, including some veterans groups, have pushed for decriminalization. 

Currently, psilocybin mushrooms have been legalized only in Oregon and Colorado, where a Buddhist university, Naropa, offers a minor in psychedelics.  In 2023, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, that would have legalized psychedelics.

Of the 15 students admitted so far into CIIS’ online  psychedelics major, 10 responded to questions from the Chronicle. Three live in the Bay Area, and two in Southern California. The others are in Texas, Colorado, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Canada’s Yukon Territory. They range in age from 25 to 48 and include a laid-off tech worker, two firefighters, an electrician, a lineman, a cannabis entrepreneur and a handful of people in health-related fields. One has a bachelor’s degree. Another has an MBA but no bachelor’s.

None is pursuing the degree for recreational purposes. Instead, they represent a new generation of users who understand psychedelics to be less “drug” than “medicine.”

Some of the admitted students report having post-traumatic stress disorder from jobs in the military or as first responders. One is a cancer survivor. Most said they have been helped emotionally by psychedelics and want to study research-based methods of helping others.

An evolving science  

Their responses circle back to the origins of “psychedelic,” coined in 1957 by British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond, who thought hallucinogens could help people with mental illness. He had already treated nearly 2,000 alcoholics in Canada with LSD and found that more than 40% remained sober after a year.

To fathom hell or soar angelic / Just take a pinch of psychedelic.

That’s how Osmond introduced the word 68 years ago to the New York Academy of Sciences, combining the Greek words “psyche,” meaning mind, and “deloun,” meaning show.

But by 1970, the U.S. government had outlawed LSD, with other bans on hallucinogens to follow.

Today, scientific thinking is catching up with Osmond, who died in 2004. In California alone, psychedelic research is happening at Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCSF, UCLA and UC San Diego.

“There are billions of dollars invested in ventures hoping to get in on the ground floor for psychedelics, in medicine and business,” said Bay Area author Don Lattin, who has written two books on the history of psychedelics and believes the time is right for an undergraduate degree in the field.

Not everyone agrees.

“The idea of a bachelor’s degree in psychedelic studies seems premature to me, given that the science and scholarship on the topic are still very much in development,” said David Yaden, a researcher at Johns Hopkins’ Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research.

Irena Smith, a former college adviser who has worked in Stanford admissions, imagines that majoring in psychedelics “would be extraordinarily unpopular. I can see parents balking — ‘I’m going to put my hard-earned money in this?’ I think people may see this as profoundly impractical.

“That said, I don’t know anything about it.”

UCSF neurology professor Jennifer Mitchell knows a lot about psychedelics and welcomes the new degree, especially because CIIS is behind it.

“They have a very solid track record,” Mitchell said. “Academically, they are quite rigorous.”

With roots in the human-potential movement, the university offers master’s and doctoral programs ranging from “philosophy-cosmology and consciousness” to human sexuality, as well as professional certificates and online undergraduate studies. CIIS is accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission, the same agency that oversees Stanford and the University of California.

‘The field is going to explode’

In August, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration balked at approving MDMA — widely known as ecstasy which would have become the first psychedelic federally approved for medical treatment. The closely watched decision involved a clinical trial led by Mitchell in which 70% of participants with post-traumatic stress disorder kicked the PTSD diagnosis after taking the drug. Of those taking a placebo, 40% had the same outcome.

Yet the FDA did not slam the door. It asked for more data.

“The field is going to explode,” Walker said. “We believe that psychedelic-assisted therapy — done well and ethically — can be extremely beneficial.”

Today’s researchers say there is growing evidence that psychedelics can help people not only with PTSD, but also depression, addiction and anxiety.

“We don’t want people to dive in recklessly — a wild cowboy thing,” Walker said. “We’re definitely on the side of doing it carefully. Understanding the science. The risks. The ethics.”

Brock Blomberg, president of CIIS, said the new degree is intended to educate students “so when the regulations change, they’re prepared to follow things with all the appropriate guidelines.”

A decade ago, CIIS opened its Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research, where graduate students learn to aid psychedelic-assisted therapy using Holotropic Breathwork, a trademarked technique that replicates feelings induced by psilocybin, or hallucinogenic “magic” mushrooms. The school has certified more than 1,000 people. 

The new bachelor’s degree aims to enroll 50 students a year, with 25 in its first cohort.

Next fall’s courses will be “Psychology and Psychedelics,” “Neuroscience of Psychedelics,”  “Language of Psychology” and “Global, Indigenous Knowledges, and Ecopsychedelics.” Spring instruction will focus on research, ethics and legal considerations, as well as  “psychopharmacology,” or how drugs affect the mind and behavior. In their final term, students will complete a senior project — perhaps interviewing people about their psychedelic  experiences — and will study advocacy and “expanding consciousness.”

A student’s perspective

“I’m excited about it!” said Michael Bochey, 31, who plans to enroll in the online program while continuing as a fire inspector in Los Angeles.

Two years ago, Bochey wasn’t excited about anything.

“I had a good relationship. A nice home. Everything was objectively pretty good. But I couldn’t  figure out why I didn’t feel joy and excitement the way I did before,” he said. “Traditional talk therapy didn’t help, though I think it was a good start.”

Bochey credits psychedelics with helping him understand and address the emotional problem he was experiencing. 

As a firefighter and paramedic for most of the last 12 years, terror and trauma were part of his job. Each day, Bochey expected to encounter dead or wounded people. Like the three who burned to death, leaving a teenager who “had to wake up in the hospital to find he didn’t have a family,” Bochey said. Or the eight hit in a deadly shooting at a crowded park, and the nine riddled with bullets at a house party. There was a hostage situation where the SWAT team saved the victim — and another where it didn’t.

The overwhelming pain that ambushed him “has been described as death by 1,000 cuts,” Bochey said. “It’s day after day.”

It was ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic plant, that helped Bochey confront long-suppressed emotions, “re-live” them and learn to feel them in real time, he said. He has taken the substance under the guidance of a group that leads spiritual ceremonies he said were protected by the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

“The way I live my life now, I actually experience it. I’m more present,” said Bochey, who cited research showing that first-responders have higher rates of suicide than the general public. 

While Bochey and many others praise their psychedelic experiences, the substances can sometimes be dangerous and lead to the infamous “bad trip.”

Psychedelics “can really change the way you see the world,” said Lattin, the author. Taking them “can also be a dangerous experience if you’re depressed or bipolar,” he added, noting that mental illness can place people at higher risk for a bad trip.

Sometimes, ingesting psychedelics can simply make you sick. In January, the U.S. Embassy in Peru issued a warning about taking ayahuasca because it can cause “negative health effects,” from nausea to death.

Moving toward the mainstream

Such risks are why Bochey and others say they want to pursue the new bachelor’s degree. 

“If psychedelics can save lives — and I truly believe they can — then I want to help legitimize and integrate them into the spaces where they are most needed,” said Bochey, who is making a documentary about firefighters using psychedelics to heal from trauma. 

Flat emotions also plagued Cassie Hope of San Francisco. She attributed the problem to the antidepressants she took for postpartum depression six years ago, and she quit them. Her depression returned, and in 2023 she turned to psychedelics. 

Microdosing psilocybin helped somewhat, she said. But it was mebufotenin — “bufo,” a hallucinogen found in certain plants and in the glands of the Sonoran desert toad — that made all the difference. She took it during a retreat in Mexico.

“It was incredibly powerful for me,” said Hope, 43. “It gave me a whole new perspective.”

But no sooner had she emerged from the depression than she was diagnosed with cancer and told she carried mutations placing her at risk for more. Surgery triggered early menopause. Hope returned to her tech job at Salesforce, only to be laid off in November. Her misfortune persisted when she fell, injuring her sternum, then got pneumonia.

“I was just pissed. I didn’t ask for this,” she said.

In January, Hope took ayahuasca in ceremonies where the facilitator sang to each participant and tailored the songs to each person’s needs.

“I felt like he was vacuuming my soul,” she said. Psychedelics “give you so much perspective on life and the finite amount of time we have on this planet. And healing. Emotionally, physically. Healing from life.”

For Hope, the bachelor’s in psychedelic studies is the first step in becoming a facilitator herself. She sees a master’s in counseling and a certificate in psychedelic-assisted therapy in her future. 

“That will enable me to do things 100% above board,” she said. “Completely legally.”

Correction: This story has been updated to note the trademark for Holotropic Breathwork. 

Reach Nanette Asimov: nasimov@sfchronicle.com; Threads: @NanetteAsimov

April 6, 2025

Nanette Asimov

HIGHER EDUCATION REPORTER

Nanette covers California’s public universities – the University of California and California State University – as well as community colleges and private universities. She’s written about sexual misconduct at UC and Stanford, the precarious state of accreditation at City College of San Francisco, and what happens when the UC Berkeley student government discovers a gay rights opponent in its midst. She has exposed a private art college where students rack up massive levels of debt (one student’s topped $400k), and covered audits peering into UC finances, education lawsuits and countless student protests.

But writing about higher education also means getting a look at the brainy creations of students and faculty: Robotic suits that help paralyzed people walk. Online collections of folk songs going back hundreds of years. And innovations touching on everything from virtual reality to baseball.

Nanette is also covering the COVID-19 pandemic and served as health editor during the first six months of the crisis, which quickly ended her brief tenure as interim investigations editor.

Previously, Nanette covered K-12 education. Her stories led to changes in charter school laws, prompted a ban on Scientology in California public schools, and exposed cheating and censorship in testing.

A past president of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter, Nanette has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in sociology from Queens College. She speaks English and Spanish.

Link to original article: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/california-institute-integral-studies-psychedelic-20238857.php

Commander Emma Crowley, played by Barbara Eve Harris. (photo from ChicagoPD.fandom.com)

Commaneder Crowley: “Female victim. Young, black, pretty, not that that matters.”

Sergeant Voight: “Everything matters.”

–Chicago P.D., Season 4

Detective Hank Voight played by Jason Beghe (photo from nbc.com)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Carus (German: [paʊl ˈkaːʁʊs]; 18 July 1852 – 11 February 1919) was a German-American author, editor, a student of comparative religion^[1] and philosopher.^[2]

Life and education

Carus was born in Ilsenburg, Germany, and educated at the universities of Strassburg (then Germany, now France) and Tübingen, Germany. After obtaining his PhD from Tübingen in 1876^[3] he served in the army and then taught school. He had been raised in a pious and orthodox Protestant home, but gradually moved away from this tradition.^[4]

He left Bismarck‘s Imperial Germany for the United States, “because of his liberal views”.^[5] After he emigrated to the USA (in 1884) he lived in Chicago, and in LaSalle, Illinois. Paul Carus married Edward C. Hegeler‘s daughter, engineer Mary Hegeler (Marie) and the couple later moved into the Hegeler Carus Mansion, built by her father. They had seven children, the firstborn, Robert died at birth, but Edward (b. 1890), Gustave (b. 1892), Paula (b. 1894), Elisabeth or “Libby” (b. 1896), Herman (b. 1899), and Alwin (b. 1901) all lived long lives.^[6] Mary ran the family business, Matthiessen-Hegeler Zinc Company and the Open Court business and later took on the editorial role after Carus’ death, alongside their daughter Elizabeth.^[7]

Career

In the United States, Carus briefly edited a German-language journal and wrote several articles for the Index, the Free Religious Association organ.^[1]

Soon after, he became the first managing editor of the Open Court Publishing Company, founded in 1887 by his father-in-law.^[5] The goals of Open Court were to provide a forum for the discussion of philosophy, science, and religion, and to make philosophical classics widely available by making them affordable.^[6]

He also acted as the editor for two periodicals published by the company, The Open Court and The Monist.^[3][8]

He was introduced to Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of American Pragmatism, by Judge Francis C. Russell of Chicago. Carus stayed abreast of Peirce’s work and would eventually publish a number of his articles.^[9]

During his lifetime, Carus published 75 books and 1500 articles,^[10] mostly through Open Court Publishing Company. He wrote books and articles on history, politics, philosophy, religion, logic, mathematics, anthropology, science, and social issues of his day. In addition, Carus corresponded with many of the greatest minds of the late 19th and early 20th century, sending and receiving letters from Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Booker T. Washington, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ernst Mach, Ernst Haeckel, John Dewey, and many more.

Carus’s world view and philosophy

Carus considered himself a theologian rather than philosopher. He referred to himself as “an atheist who loved God”.^[11][12]

Carus is proposed to be a pioneer in the promotion of interfaith dialogue. He explored the relationship of science and religion, and was instrumental in introducing Eastern traditions and ideas to the West.^[5] He was a key figure in the introduction of Buddhism to the West,^[4] sponsoring Buddhist translation work of D.T. Suzuki, and fostering a lifelong working friendship with Buddhist Master, Soyen Shaku. Carus’ interest in Asian religions seems to have intensified after he attended the World’s Parliament of Religions (in 1893).

For years afterwards, Carus was a strong sympathizer of Buddhist ideas, but stopped short of committing fully to this, or any other, religion. Instead, he ceaselessly promoted his own rational concept which he called the “Religion of Science.” Carus had a selective approach and he believed that religions evolve over time. After a battle for survival, he expected a “cosmic religion of universal truth” to emerge from the ashes of traditional beliefs.^[4]

Carus proposed his own philosophy similar to panpsychism known as ‘panbiotism’, which he defined as “everything is fraught with life; it contains life; it has the ability to live.”^[13]

Religion of Science

Carus was a follower of Benedictus de Spinoza; he was of the opinion that Western thought had fallen into error early in its development in accepting the distinctions between body and mind and the material and the spiritual. (Kant’s phenomenal and noumenal realms of knowledge; Christianity’s views of the soul and the body, and the natural and the supernatural). Carus rejected such dualisms, and wanted science to reestablish the unity of knowledge.^[14] The philosophical result he labeled Monism.^[1]

His version of monism is more closely associated with a kind of pantheism, although it was occasionally identified with positivism.^[12] He regarded every law of nature as a part of God’s being. Carus held that God was the name for a cosmic order comprising “all that which is the bread of our spiritual life.” He held the concept of a personal God as untenable. He acknowledged Jesus Christ as a redeemer, but not as the only one, for he believed that other religious founders were equally endowed with similar qualities.^[12]

His beliefs attempted to steer a middle course between idealistic metaphysics and materialism. He differed with metaphysicians because they “reified” words and treated them as if they were realities, and he objected to materialism because it ignored or overlooked the importance of form. Carus emphasized form by conceiving of the divinity as a cosmic order. He objected to any monism which sought the unity of the world, not in the unity of truth, but in the oneness of a logical assumption of ideas. He referred to such concepts as henism, not monism.^[12]

Carus held that truth was independent of time, human desire, and human action. Therefore, science was not a human invention, but a human revelation which needed to be apprehended; discovery meant apprehension; it was the result or manifestation of the cosmic order in which all truths were ultimately harmonious.^[12]

Criticisms of Carus’ ideas

It is claimed that Carus was dismissed by Orientalists and philosophers alike because of his failure to comply with the rules of either discipline.^[15]

Legacy

The legacy of Paul Carus is honored through the efforts of the Hegeler Carus Foundation, the Carus Lectures at the American Philosophical Association (APA), and the Paul Carus Award for Interreligious Understanding^[16] by the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (CPWR). Mary Hegeler Carus and their daughter Elizabeth Carus took on the editorial role after Carus’ death.^[7]

(Image from travel-challenges.com)

A.Word.A.Daywith Anu Garg

Everyone likes going places. One might call it a vacation, another a holiday, and some just call it escaping the inbox. But what if your travel plans were dictated by the _literal_ meaning of the word? Here’s what your itinerary would look like, etymologically speaking:

• journey: A day trip (from French jour: day). About 20 miles max in those days
• travel: Torture (Latin trepaliare: to torture). Because travel in those days wasn’t exactly a trip to Disneyland
• holiday: Perhaps a pilgrimage, because holiday is, literally, holy day. Well, you could worship the sun
• pilgrimage: A foreign trip (Latin peregrinus: foreign)
• visit: Go see a place (Latin videre: to see). So if you attend a concert, would that be an audit? (Latin audire: to hear)
• trip: Dancing in the backyard (Old French triper: to hop, skip, leap, dance)
• vacation: Vacate the home? Also, the wallet? (Latin vacare: to be empty)
• tour: Spinning in circles? (Greek tornos: lathe)

Good thing etymology isn’t destiny. A word is not limited to its roots or what it meant originally.

This week we’re taking you on a, well, let’s call it a jaunt (origin unknown). We’ll explore places, far and wide, that have become metaphors in the English language. Such words are also called toponyms, from Greek topo- (place) + -nym (name).

What are your favorite places to visit, whether down the road or across the globe? Do you have a location that you return to again and again? Why? Tell us via our website or email us at words@wordsmith.org. Include your home base (city, state).

And wherever you go, may your journey be less “trepaliare” and more “trip”!

Rainy Day, Sunny Day

There was once an old lady who cried all the time. Her elder daughter was married to an umbrella merchant while the younger daughter was the wife of a noodle vendor.  On sunny days, she worried, “Oh no! The weather is so nice and sunny. No one is going to buy any umbrellas. What will happen if the shop has to be closed?” These worries made her sad. She just could not help but cry.  When it rained, she would cry for her younger daughter. She thought, “Oh no! My younger daughter is married to a noodle vendor. You cannot dry noodles without the sun. Now there will be no noodles to sell. What should we do?”  As a result, the old lady lived in sorrow everyday. Whether sunny or rainy, she grieved for one of her daughters. Her neighbors could not console her and jokingly called her “The Crying Lady.”  One day, she met a monk. He was very curious as to why she was always crying. She explained the problem to him. The monk smiled kindly and said, “Madam! You need not worry. I will show you a way to happiness, and you will need to grieve no more.”  The crying lady was very excited. She immediately asked the monk to show her what to do. The monk replied, “It is very simple. You just need to change your perspective. On sunny days, do not think of your elder daughter not being able to sell umbrellas but the younger daughter being able to dry her noodles. With such good strong sunlight, she must be able to make plenty of noodles and her business must be very good. When it rains, think about the umbrella store of the elder daughter. With the rain, everyone must be buying umbrellas. She will sell a lot of umbrellas and her store will prosper.”  The old lady saw the light. She followed the monk’s instructions. After a while, she did not cry anymore; instead, she was smiling everyday. From that day on she was known as “The Smiling Lady.”  Author Unknown        AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY