"al" <almond@warndon83.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

        One of the best used bookstores within driving radius of my home
has the ignominious name of "The Book Depository," which reminds me now
and then of John F. Kennedy and the Dallas Book Depository.  It's one of
those bookstores that collects everything, not just the usual fiction-
sf-romance-blah stuff that you can find elsewhere.  There are shelves
and shelves of just kid's books, huge sections of philosophy, history,
and non-fiction.

        And they have a huge segment labeled, without comment,
"metaphysics."  Some subheadings in there include "Atlantis," "Mu," and
"Seth," "UFOs" and some of the items on the shelves are antiques.
Theosophy stuff from the 1920s sits side-by-side with Robert Anton
Wilson and Timothy Leary.

        Another section, just as large, is the science section, where
Sagan, Gleik, Dawkins, and so on keep each other company.

        And as I walked through these two sections, I had an epiphany.
In the science section the most common factor the books had was
agreement.  The biology books never contradicted the chemistry texts;
the astronomy texts took pains to point out where general relativity and
quantum mechanics failed to correspond.  Books on contentious issues
made every effort to illustrate the weaknesses of any given controversy
and illuminate the lines of inquiry needed to confirm and given theory.
But there are fundamental aspects to the way the universe works, and
there was no disagreement on them.

        On the other hand, the metaphysics section was a morass.  No
writer agreed with another on the fundamentals.  Metaphysics pretends
to answer questions such as where do we come from, where are we going,
and what are we to do in the meantime, and *none* of these books even
begins to pretend to agree with others in the same section, even on the
fundamentals.  

        It's hard to imagine anyone taking any *one* of the "metaphysic"
books seriously when they're all so, well, ridiculous.  While every book
in the science section promises to show you a tiny fragment of a whole,
you are invited to learn more, being assured that the other books in the
same segment will confirm and support what you've learned before.  No
such assurance, no such promise awaits any delver into the fantasies of
the metaphysics; indeed, the only thing you can be assured of is
violent, vehement, tribal disagreement. 

                Elf