‘Random Thoughts’ is ……

… a written record of my views. I thought writing is good because I have a hard time getting around my emotions while speaking to people. I have found that if I write what I want to expresses, it allows myself to follow through on a thought more completely, than while speaking. It also results a written record about what was said, which allows for follow up questions and credibility.

You could treat this essay as random scribbles of a Sri Lankan during his quest for knowledge of how the world works. Here I am discussing my effort of trying to come to terms with the world with regards to the basics of human existence. We all start our lives with varied initial conditions defined by our family and social background. As we stumble upon knowledge we pick the things which interest us. This is an effort to look back and review the things which I have picked

I don’t consider Random Thoughts itself as a collection of profound subject matter. I like to view it as a collection of pointers to more profound subject matter. Very rarely will you find new ideas/concepts proposed by me. Most of the time I am just discussing ideas/concepts already at our disposal.

The original aim of this essay was just to lay down my thoughts and to discuss them with my immediate circle of intellectual friends. With time the size of the audience has widened.

I honestly do not believe that someone could use what is mentioned here to guide his / her life. The idea is to initiate some thought processes and create some healthy confusion. I, perhaps wrongfully, believe that this will contribute to our efforts of making a better tomorrow.

What you will find in here are mostly fragments of thought. I did not make any effort to make them closed-ended. Some ideas may seem to just float, disjointed and fragmented.

In this essay I discuss how my views changed with time. The question that comes naturally is: do I think that my viewpoint now is essentially static, and won't it change drastically in the future, as it did during the last fifteen years or so? I honestly do not have any idea. This is what I think that I know now.

I tried to sequence the chapters in an order which makes sense. However, the reader may freely jump between chapters. It is very important to read all footnotes. I strongly advise the reader to go through all footnotes faithfully. Also note that comments from reviewers appear as footnotes. From this point onwards this essay will be referred to as RT (Random Thoughts)

Obviously I am not a good writer in English and I am handicapped by my limited vocabulary. You all are invited to help me with language and improve the content.

Prasad Mapatuna

e-mail me

May 06, 2002

Audience

I am a layperson with respect to academic philosophy. My background is in information technology. I assume that someone with similar background will be able to appreciate RT more than someone with academic philosophic background.

I am primarily addressing my fellow Sri Lankans. Nevertheless, I believe anyone from any cultural or socioeconomic background could read and appreciate the contents of this essay. In fact, sometimes I have made a special effort to elaborate on things which are so obvious to someone from my own background. However, I’d like to mention that I am referring heavily to the thoughts and the works of people from Sri Lanka. Some of the people and the books mentioned here would appeal and available only to the Sri Lankan community.

I am hoping that RT is going to trigger the curiosity of the reader to learn how the world works. There are several books often quoted in RT and there are several movies mentioned. I would like to recommend all of these books and movies. Those of you who have access to the web could visit the web resources referred to in RT too. Most of the topics I have briefly touched on in my random thoughts are huge subject areas by themselves. Further reading is definitely needed to get the full grasp of them. Also I don't think RT can be read as an article at one go. Especially if you are not familiar with the subject matter being discussed. The best way would be to stop and read the external references and come back.

In RT, I mostly discuss the topic "How science describes the world around us". The entire 'Appendix A' is focused on delivering this. I am hoping that the reader will gain knowledge of what science can tell us, what it cannot and, most importantly, 'what science is'.

On a lighter note, I believe that reading RT alone would provide you with enough material to make you a fairly good armchair philosopher. In that sense, RT may be viewed as a beginner's guide for becoming an armchair philosopher.

You could download….

The ‘work in progress’ version of RT as a Microsoft Word 9.0 Document. (Apologies to the non-Microsoft community) Once the contents are decent enough to be published, I will be making it a PDF.

WARNING: For the moment RT looks like a brain dump. RT might be broken in to several distinct essays later on and the lengthy appendices will be shortened and summarized. Selected portions of RT will be published in web format once they are stabilized.

If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer you could right click one the download link and choose ‘save target as …’ option from the pop-up menu.