Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Quantum scapegoat entanglement in the Talmud?

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: What Happens When the Talmud Asks, ‘What If?’ Probing hypothetical, metaphysical problems was the rabbis’ way of defining what matters most in Judaism. Excerpt:
I’ve found it useful, in the course of reading Daf Yomi, to think of these kinds of questions as the rabbis’ indirect way of asking about definitions and essences. In laying down the Shabbat laws, for instance, one rabbi asks whether transporting saliva in one’s mouth is considered “carrying,” in which case one would have to spit it out every few paces. The point of the question, it seems to me, is not whether a Jew should go around spitting all the time, but exactly how to define a substance: Is matter within the body a separate entity, or part of the body itself? This kind of speculation about substances and their qualities was central to classical and medieval thought, including Jewish thought. Because Jewish law deals with everyday matters, it produces a kind of everyday metaphysics.
For the title of this post, follow the link and read the whole essay.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.