The Expanse The Investigator Quotes

As you make more and more powerful microscopic instruments, the universe has to get smaller and smaller in order to escape the investigation. Just as when the telescopes become more and more powerful, the galaxies have to recede in order to get away from the telescopes. Because what is happening in all these investigations is this: Through us and through our eyes and senses, the universe is looking at itself. And when you try to turn around to see your own head, what happens? It runs away. You can't get at it. This is the principle. Shankara explains it beautifully in his commentary on the Kenopanishad where he says 'That which is the Knower, the ground of all knowledge, is never itself an object of knowledge.' [In this quote from 1973 Watts, remarkably, essentially anticipates the discovery (in the late 1990's) of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe.]

Those who are unacquainted with the details of scientific investigation have no idea of the amount of labour expended in the determination of those numbers on which important calculations or inferences depend. They have no idea of the patience shown by a Berzelius in determining atomic weights; by a Regnault in determining coefficients of expansion; or by a Joule in determining the mechanical equivalent of heat.

Before the 9/11 attack, the Bush administration cut counterterrorism funds, denied requests for more counterterrorism agents, threatened to veto additional counterterrorism spending, ignored numerous warnings about imminent attacks, and declared focusing on bin Laden a mistake.73 Later investigations would reveal, however, that at least seven months before 9/11, the Bush administration began domestic spying operations.74

Nikolai Ivanovich Ladyzhensky, chief engineer of defense plants in Izhevsk, was first arrested for “limitation theories” and “blind faith in safety factors” (which explained why he considered inadequate the funds allocated by Ordzhonikidze for factory expansion).

It was shocking to realize how much of investigation was just brute-force solutions. Going through endless lists looking for one thing that doesn’t fit. Talking to every single potential witness over and over. Pounding the pavement, as the gumshoes in Alex's neo-noir movies might say.

It builds the investigator, and the investigator looks, but does not know. It kills the investigator. It builds the investigator, and the investigator looks, but does not know. It kills the investigator. It builds the investigator, and the investigator looks but does not know, and it does not kill the investigator. It is not aware of a change, that a pattern has broken. The investigator is aware, and it wonders, and because it wonders it looks, and because it looks, the investigator exceeds its boundary conditions, and it kills the investigator. It builds the investigator.

Shimamoto and I thus grew apart, and I ended up not seeing her anymore. And that was probably (probably is the only word I can think of to use here; I don’t consider it my job to investigate the expanse of memory called the past and judge what is correct and what isn’t) a mistake. I should have stayed as close as I could to her. I needed her, and she needed me. But my self-consciousness was too strong, and I was too afraid of being hurt. I never saw her again. Until many years later, that is.

However, as legal scholar David Cole has observed, “in practice, the drug-courier profile is a scattershot hodgepodge of traits and characteristics so expansive that it potentially justifies stopping anybody and everybody.”29 The profile can include traveling with luggage, traveling without luggage, driving an expensive car, driving a car that needs repairs, driving with out-of-state license plates, driving a rental car, driving with “mismatched occupants,” acting too calm, acting too nervous, dressing casually, wearing expensive clothing or jewelry, being one of the first to deplane, being one of the last to deplane, deplaning in the middle, paying for a ticket in cash, using large-denomination currency, using small-denomination currency, traveling alone, traveling with a companion, and so on. Even striving to obey the law fits the profile! The Florida Highway Patrol Drug Courier Profile cautioned troopers to be suspicious of “scrupulous obedience to traffic laws.”30 As Cole points out, “such profiles do not so much focus an investigation as provide law enforcement officials a ready-made excuse for stopping whomever they please.”31

This experiment succeeds as hoped and promises to metaphysics, in its first part, which deals with those *a priori* concepts to which the corresponding objects may be given in experience, the secure course of a science. For by thus changing our point of view, the possibility of *a priori* knowledge can well be explained, and, what is still more, the laws which *a priori* lie at the foundation of nature, as the sum total of the objects of experience, may be supplied with satisfactory proofs, neither of which was possible within the procedure hitherto adopted. But there arises from this deduction of our faculty of knowing *a priori*, as given in the first part of metaphysics, a somewhat startling result, apparently most detrimental to that purpose of metaphysics which has to be treated in its second part, namely the impossibly of using this faculty to transcend the limits of possible experience, which is precisely the most essential concern of the science of metaphysics. But here we have exactly the experiment which, by disproving the opposite, establishes the truth of the first estimate of our *a priori* rational knowledge, namely, that it is directed only at appearances and must leave the thing in itself as real for itself but unknown to us. For that which necessarily impels us to to go beyond the limits of experience and of all appearances is the *unconditioned*, which reason rightfully and necessarily demands, aside from everything conditioned, in all things in themselves, so that the series of conditions be completed. If, then, we find that, under the supposition that our empirical knowledge conforms to objects as things in themselves, the unconditioned *cannot be thought without contradiction*, while under the supposition that our representation of things as they are given to us does not conform to them as things in themselves, but, on the contrary, that these objects as appearance conform to our mode of representation, then *the contradiction vanishes*; and if we find, therefore, that the unconditioned cannot be encountered in things insofar as we are acquainted with them (insofar as they are given to us), but only in things insofar as we are not acquainted with them, that is, insofar as they are things in themselves; then it becomes apparent that what we at first assumed only for the sake of experiment is well founded. However, with speculative reason unable to make progress in the field of the supersensible, it is still open to us to investigate whether in reason's practical knowledge data may not be found which would enable us to determine that transcendent rational concept of the unconditioned, so as to allow us, in accordance with the wish of metaphysics, to get beyond the limits of all possible experience with our *a priori* knowledge, which is possible in practical matters only. Within such a procedure, speculative reason has always at least created a space for such an expansion, even if it has to leave it empty; none the less we are at liberty, indeed we are summoned, to fill it, if we are able to do so, with practical *data* of reason." ―from_Critique of Pure Reason_. Preface to the Second Edition. Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marcus Weigelt, based on the translation by Max Müller, pp. 19-21

It will be seen how there can be the idea of a special science, the *critique of pure reason* as it may be called. For reason is the faculty which supplies the *principles* of *a priori* knowledge. Pure reason therefore is that which contains the principles of knowing something entirely *a priori*. An *organon* of pure reason would be the sum total of the principles by which all pure *a priori* knowledge can be acquired and actually established. Exhaustive application of such an organon would give us a system of pure reason. But as this would be a difficult task, and as at present it is still doubtful whether indeed an expansion of our knowledge is possible here at all, we may regard a science that merely judges pure reason, its sources and limits, as the *propaedeutic* to the system of pure reason. In general, it would have to be called only a *critique*, not a *doctrine* of pure reason. Its utility, in regard to speculation, would only be negative, for it would serve only to purge rather than to expand our reason, and, which after all is a considerable gain, would guard reason against errors. I call all knowledge *transcendental* which deals not so much with objects as with our manner of knowing objects insofar as this manner is to be possible *a priori*. A system of such concepts would be called *transcendental philosophy*. But this is still, as a beginning, too great an undertaking. For since such a science must contain completely both analytic and synthetic *a priori* knowledge, it is, as far as our present purpose is concerned, much too comprehensive. We will be satisfied to carry the analysis only so far as is indispensably necessary in order to understand in their whole range the principles of *a priori* synthesis, with which alone we are concerned. This investigation, which properly speaking should be called only a transcendental critique but not a doctrine, is all we are dealing with at present. It is not meant to expand our knowledge but only to correct it, and to become the touchstone of the value, or lack of value, of all *a priori* knowledge. Such a critique is therefore the preparation, as far as possible, for a new organon, or, if this should turn out not to be possible, for a canon at least, according to which, thereafter, the complete system of a philosophy of pure reason, whether it serve as an expansion or merely as a limitation of its knowledge, may be carried out both analytically and synthetically. That such a system is possible, indeed that it need not be so comprehensive as to cut us off from the hope of completing it, may already be gathered from the fact that it would have to deal not with the nature of things, which is inexhaustible, but with the understanding which makes judgments about the nature of things, and with this understanding again only as far as its *a priori* knowledge is concerned. The supply of this *a priori* knowledge cannot be hidden from us, as we need not look for it outside the understanding, and we may suppose this supply to prove sufficiently small for us to record completely, judge as to its value or lack of value and appraise correctly. Still less ought we to expect here a critique of books and systems of pure reason, but only the critique of the faculty of pure reason itself. Only once we are in possession of this critique do we have a reliable touchstone for estimating the philosophical value of old and new works on this subject. Otherwise, an unqualified historian and judge does nothing but pass judgments upon the groundless assertions of others by means of his own, which are equally groundless.

Take the expansion rate of the universe, which is fine-tuned to one part in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. That is, if it were changed by one part in either direction--a little faster, a little slower--we could not have a universe that would be capable of supporting life. ~Stephen C. Meyer, PHD~

I am very fortunate to know T. Colin Campbell, PhD, professor emeritus of Cornell University and coauthor of the ground-breaking The China Study. I strongly recommend this book; it’s an expansive and hugely informative work on the effects of food on health. Campbell’s work is regarded by many as the definitive epidemiological examination of the relationship between diet and disease. He has received more than seventy grant years of peer-reviewed research funding (the gold standard of research), much of it from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and he has authored more than 300 research papers. Dr. Campbell grew up on a dairy farm and believed wholeheartedly in the health value of eating animal protein. Indeed, he set out in his career to investigate how to produce more and better animal protein. Troublesome to his preconceived opinion about the goodness of dairy, Campbell kept running up against results that pointed to a different truth: that animal protein is disastrous to human health. Through a variety of experimental study designs, epidemiological evidence (studies of what affects the illness and health of populations), and observation of real-life conditions that had rational, biological explanations, Dr. Campbell has made a direct and powerful correlation between cancer and animal protein. For this book I asked Dr. Campbell to explain a little about how and why nutrition (both good and bad) affects cancer in our bodies.

It was shocking to realize how much of investigation was just brute-force solutions.

There is a prevalent narrative tradition that marks Scottish colonial activities between 1603 and 1707 as failures. The main aim of this chapter is to address the ambiguous message inherent in this narrative, which is poised between discharging Scotland from an active colonising role prior to the Union of Parliaments and simultaneously naturalising the history of European expansion as an overall success story. A growing body of literature has investigated and questioned these links between normative conceptions of failure and colonialism. My aim is to use this body of literature to address why and how narratives of Scotland's alleged failure continue to frame both popular and academic accounts of seventeenth-century Scottish colonialism. Scottish Colonial Literature seeks to open up a debate about normative conceptions of colonialism in Scottish studies and to address how these interact with contemporary debates about Western modernity, conceptions of Scottishness, and Scotland's position in colonial and postcolonial studies.

After the initial shock, I'm left with a bodily fear, a sense of vulnerability more acute than at any other point in investigating Jane's story. The single bogeyman is replaced by a pervasive, expansive evil--one capable of killing without reason or motive.

To seek self-preservation merely, is the expression of a state of distress, or of limitation of the true, fundamental instinct of life, which aims at the extension of power, and with this in view often enough calls in question self-preservation and sacrifices it. It should be taken as symptomatic when individual philosophers, as for example, the consumptive Spinoza, have seen and have been obliged to see the principal feature of life precisely in the so-called self-preservative instinct: - they have just been men in states of distress. That our modern natural sciences have entangled themselves so much with Spinoza’s dogma (finally and most grossly in Darwinism, with its inconceivably one-sided doctrine of the "struggle for existence"), is probably owing to the origin of most of the inquirers into nature: they belong in this respect to the people, their forefathers have been poor and humble persons, who knew too well by immediate experience the difficulty of making a living. Over the whole of English Darwinism there hovers something of the suffocating air of over-crowded England, something of the odour of humble people in need and in straits. But as an investigator of nature, a person ought to emerge from his paltry human nook: and in nature the state of distress does not prevail, but superfluity, even prodigality to the extent of folly. The struggle for existence is only an exception, a temporary restriction of the will to live; the struggle, be it great or small, turns everywhere on predominance, on increase and expansion, on power, in conformity to the will to power, which is just the will to live.

The Ad Herennium was to be the first of several ancient texts he pressed upon me. Before I sampled Tony Buzan’s expansive oeuvre (he’s authored or coauthored over 120 books) or any of the self-help books put out by the top mental athletes, Ed wanted me to start my investigation with the classics. In addition to the Ad Herennium, there would be translated excerpts of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria and Cicero’s De Oratore for me to read, followed by a collection of medieval writings on memory by Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Hugh of St. Victor, and Peter of Ravenna.

We all sat there, silently looking out over an expanse of floating clothes, body parts, and an occasional length of twisted metal trapped in between some weeds, as jet fuel trailed gently across our nostrils. It was so starkly unfamiliar that it was disorienting. Silently, we surveyed it all and then, as if someone had flipped a switch, we went to work.

Star Helix could be a Mars corporation. As long as Earth stays neutral, we don’t have to actually be the Gestapo.” “And how long you figure that’ll last?” “What time is it?” she asked. “Tell you what, though. When it does come down, I need to make a stop up toward the core. There was this one guy back when I was rape squad we could never quite nail.” “Why wait?” Miller asked. “We could go up, put a bullet in him, be back by lunch.” “Yeah, but you know how it is,” she said. “Trying to stay professional. Anyway, if we did that, we’d have to investigate it, and there’s no room on the board.

My mother’s father, Grandfather Thieme, the son of a railroad engineer, looked quite dapper as a young man. Prior to 1933 the Hamburg Police Department consisted of 21 units, with 2,100 men. My grandfather was a Polizist with the Sicherheitspolizei or uniformed policeman with the department. Later, with an expansion of the Hamburg Police Department to 5,500 men and the formation of an investigative branch, he was promoted to the esteemed position of a Kriminalbeamte inspector. He rose to the rank of Chief of Detectives, and had a reputation of being tough, and not someone you could mess with. Having a baldhead and the general appearance of Telly Savalas, the late Hollywood movie actor, I don’t think anyone did. An action story and part of my grandfather’s legacy was when he chased a felon across the rooftops of prewar Hamburg, firing his Dienstpistole, service revolver, as he made his way from one steep inclined slate roof to the next. Of course, Grandpa got his man! Even with this factual tidbit, there isn’t all that much I know about him, other than that, at the then ripe old age of sixty-four, he peacefully died in his chair while reading the evening newspaper.

The investigator thinks. Yeah, where I come from, we’d call that a clue.

Occasionally, in deep introspection, in meditation, or in a moment of quiet, we open beyond our clinging and the mind becomes so unclouded that nothing blocks its inherent joy. Its expanse is so great that waves of energy wash through the body making any satisfaction we’ve ever had, even our profoundest sexual gratification, pale by comparison. The natural energy of the mind is released. Grasping has stilled long enough so that we experience the immensity and intensity of our deepest nature. We experience the joy of what in Zen is called the One Mind, shining through.

Confident that one’s outer reality is a consequence of one’s inner thought constructs, such a process could then lead the dreamer to healing the source of the transference of limiting thought constructs from one’s Psychological Reality Framework Two to Psychological Reality Framework One. Utilizing the above process, it should become evident that dreams were never an end, but instead a means by which the dreamer can open new avenues of expression that had formerly been repressed; thereby resolving any hidden blockages to success. Any overemphasis of a single identity can manifest in dreams as cartoon-like characters or situations. These kinds of dreams can be regarded as consciousness’s gentle nudge encouraging the dreamer to open themselves to a more expansive application of their Original Grace—that they are free to explore the joyful possibilities life has to offer. Investigating other talents and avenues for expression, one should realize that because of the infinite possibilities of the moment, parallel realities can simultaneously be created from new identities and passions.

In the artifacts that are conscious, memories of vanished lives still flicker. Tissues that were changed without dying hold the moment that a boy heard his sister was leaving home. They hold multiplication tables. They hold images of sexuality and violence and beauty. They hold the memories of flesh that no longer exists. They hold metaphors: mitochondria, starfish, Hitler’s-brain-in-a-jar, hell realm. They dream. Structures that were neurons twitch and loop and burn and dream. Images and words and pain and fear, endless.

Now it could be argued that if all phenomena are unreal and illusory, like mirages, why should one train on the path, practicing generosity and so on—like tiring oneself trying to buy an illusory horse? The answer is that it is for the end result or rather out of necessity that one simply enters the path without subjecting it to analysis and investigation. But what is this necessity? The fact is that the appearances of samsara and nirvana, illusion-like as they are, are inescapable owing to the power of interdependent origination. And until dualistic, subject–object fixation is dissipated in the expanse of suchness, these same appearances will continue to affect living beings without interruption, helping or harming them as the case may be. It is as a means to remove the suffering of ourselves and others, and in order to find benefit and happiness, that we persevere—not because we believe in the real existence of the path and its result. It is like emanating a phantom army in order to deliver people from their [phantom] enemies, or like trying to wake someone who is suffering in a nightmare.

Globalization is more than a process of corporate expansion, free trade, and instant communications; it is also about a radical ideology, a humanist religion, an effort to replace national sovereignty with global governance and deliver great wealth to the few elite. It is empowered by progressivism and other nefarious societal engines like Marxism, communism that promises utopia but results in massive vulnerabilities for most people and robs those citizens of their basic freedoms. Do you want to understand this sort of chaos that is now threatening every corner of our world? Then you better investigate globalization and all its prickly tentacles.

How does it feel? Is it tight or loose, contracted or expansive? Does it have a temperature, a color, a special quality? If you investigate the unpleasant feeling of jealousy with mindfulness and gentleness, you will learn much about it. You will see your history with it. You will start to notice patterns. You will see that this feeling often arises in your life, and that you tend to make a mess when it does. This could be the beginning of your taking care of the propensity.