Rav Avraham Abulafia wrote that hidden in the first forty chapters of the Guide of the Rambam is contained the secret of the redemption.

Rav Avraham Abulafia wrote that hidden in the first forty chapters of the Guide of the Rambam is contained the secret of the redemption.
This includes the introduction. There the Rambam equates the work of Creation and the Divine Chariot with the Physics and Metaphysics of the Greeks.
And he repeats this theme in the Mishna Torah. That is in the first four chapters he gives a brief review of the chemistry and physics and metaphysics of Aristotle. [He does not say that that is all in those first four chapters. rather he says those chapters relate to that subject matter.] And he calls it "Pardes." Then in laws of learning Torah he says to divide the learning into three parts, written Law, Oral law and Gemara. Then he adds the subjects included in the Pardes (according to how he defined Pardes) are in the category of Gemara.

So to the Rambam, learning Physics is in the category of learning Torah. You have to draw the holiness in by being attached to God as you do the learning.  And you have to get in the habit of it.  As Aristotle says "Virtue is habit". You have to get to the point that if you have not learned Physics an Mathematics one day that you feel empty. You feel you have missed out on a little bit of truth.




[This you can see in Ibn Pakuda and the Maalot Hamidot. My impression is that this was a wide spread belief among the Medieval authorities --but not the Ramban (Nachmanides) or others of that school--like the Rashba.


[Honestly I can not see what the Rambam was thinking about Aristotle's Metaphysics. Maybe he actually meant to include Plato and Plotinus? And furthermore there seems to be some kind of tension in the Metaphysics about if as Marc Cohen wrote a few years ago in his article in the Stanford encyclopedia of Philosophy.

So to learn Physics and Mathematics connects one to the wisdom of God inside the work of Creation. But also it is on a level that avoids the problem of igniting the dark side inside of people when they become religious fanatics.

Revealing Torah straight on to people can often cause them to become worse people. This can be because of religious fanaticism. It lites a fuse inside of them that makes them forget what it means to be a mensch (decent human being). סם מוות למשמאילים בה [Torah is poison for those that learn it for profit or ulterior motives.]

So to learn Physics and Mathematics connects one to the wisdom of God inside the work of Creation. But also it is on a level that avoids the problem of igniting the dark side inside of people when they become religious fanatics. Or they start to use Torah for money and/or other alternative motives.


The idea is mainly this: There are ten statements by which the world was created that correspond to the ten sepherot. [Crown, Wisdom, Understanding, kindness, Judgment, Beauty/Truth, Eternity, Splendor, Foundation and Kingship.]

The first statement of Creation is called the מאמר הסתום the hidden statement which corresponds to the Crown. But it is hidden inside of creation. So its holiness is not visible.


The Baal Hasulam [commentary on the Zohar] makes a point that what is known from the Ari and the Remak is not what the sages call the secrets of Torah. [That is towards the end of his introduction to the Eitz Haim of the Ari.] I would rather not go into his points here right now, but in any case there is plenty of evidence that the Rambam held Physics and metaphysics of Aristotle to be the actual work of creation and the Divine Chariot. Besides he saying so openly, you see it throughout his works. It was not an afterthought. And also in his commentary of the Mishna (which he wrote when he was young) he says that from the beginning he was going to write such a book as the Guide. It was not some afterthought.]

Pride

Supremacy --pride is one of the deadly sins. So why is it so emphasized as a good thing?

You see this a lot in terms of the fallacy "All great people are..." (fill in the blank with your favorite ethnic group.)


They dress this in "self esteem". But in fact in the Bible and Talmud and all the books of Musar of the Rishonim pride is thought to be the root of all evil.
So why is this ignored? Because one of Freud's students [Alfred Adler] made pride to be a good thing. But it is not a good thing.

Mathematics and Physics

The way I see Mathematics and Physics is that they are the hidden Torah inside of the work of Creation. That is they extend from the מאמר הסתום [The Hidden Statement of the work of Creation] so the holiness in them is hidden. And that is for a benefit,- since there are people that if they would learn Torah, they would become worse people (as the Sages said סם מוות למשאילים בה [Torah is a tree of life to those that learn it for its own sake, and a poison of death for those that learn it for alternative motives.])[the hidden statement refers to the first verse of Genesis where God created theworld but it doe not say "He said" as it does by the rest of Creation]

This I would not say on my own but for seeing this in the Guide of the Rambam. There he has a parable about a great king in his capital city. Inside the city is his palace. Those that are outside his country are barbarians. Those in his county are those that have laws. Those that are close to the palace are the "Talmudiim" those that learn and keep Talmud. Those that are inside the palace are the physicists.
Those in the inner parts of the palace are the prophets and philosophers. [He is referring to ancient Greek Philosophers. Not to present day ones.]

[Though I saw this kind of thing in the Obligations of the Heart and other Rishonim. Still I never saw it with the degree of clarity that the Rambam brings to this issue.]

However since they are hard most people do not learn them. For that reason I suggest the סדר הלימוד method of learning saying the words and going on. You can see this method of learning in the Gemara ( in tractate Shabat and other places) and the אורחות צדיקים.

I also see a place for review in Mathematics and Physics besides sessions of just saying the words and going on. But I am not sure of how much to emphasize review and how much to emphasize "Girsa"[saying the words and going on.][the way i think is best is to go through the book you are learning from beginning to end four times,  ]

Religious fanaticism

Religious fanaticism is a result of some kind of parasite taking hold of the brain.
But these are not physical parasites. They are memes. Units of social order.

To see this more clearly it is helpful to look at Howard Bloom's The Lucifer Principle. But at the time of Howard Bloom this was stated without the information that came to light about parasites being able to take over one's mind. as in Toxoplasmosis.

But false and evil memes do get around and do try to get into people's heads.


Howard Bloom  is more or less going with the idea of the super organism which attempts to get people. Once it gets them it imprints its meme into their neural network in a way that can not be taken out afterward. But in the time of Bloom the studies by Sapolsky and others about parasites taking over one's brain were unknown.

But to me it seems clear this is what is going on in the religious world. And this explains the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication. For the Gra realized this and decided to take a drastic measure even though he was ignored afterwards.

It is sad that Rav Shach also was ignored even though he pointed out the same problems.

I ought to add that keeping Torah should have has nothing to do with religious fanaticism.However for some reason it is the insane fanatics that have the reputation of keeping Torah. But a close examination will show that the religious world is basically a fraud. They use Torah for show, rather than keep Torah.

Kollel

Kollel was an invention of Rav Israel Salanter. It was meant to get over the hurdle that people would learn Torah up until the time they got married and then either had to find work or be supported by their father in law or begin to use Torah to make money. None of these options seemed very good.
So he created what was supposed to be temporary fix by extending the independent yeshiva concept into married years.

[I am getting ahead of myself. Yeshiva as an independent institution was recent. It was begun by Rav Haim from Voloshin. Before that there was no such thing. The situation was simply that the unmarried teenagers of the city stayed and leaned in the local synagogue under the supervision of who ever was chosen as the religious leader of the city that got a salary for his efforts.
This was not accepted at first and in fact the Rav of Mir brought a lawsuit against the person that started the Mir Yeshiva that was independent of his leadership and control.]

To me it seems that using Torah to make money is not a very great idea. And Kollel and yeshivas themselves which were meant to get out of the problem of mixing Torah with money seem themselves to have become a sort of business. --[Though they started with good intentions.]

However there are exceptions to this rule. The Litvak yeshivas which more or less follow the original design of Rav Haim of Voloshin and Rav Israel Salanter seem very good to me. But these kind of straight  litvak yeshivas seem to be rare and exceptions to the rule.

[this issue has always been important to me, but i would not knock people that depend on a kollel check to be able to learn. just for me, that did not seem like a good idea.]

My own feeling about kollel is that it depends on the kind of person one is. If a life of learning Torah for its own sake makes sense to you then it is  a great thing. But if it is being used as a "good guys" country club where freinds get to gossip the whole day, then it seems like a waste.

I wanted to go a little into Kelley Ross's Theory of Value.. [Which seems to be original even though he attributes his theory to Kant and Leonard Nelson.]

The thing that I wanted to add is that areas of value which in his theory are formal have little content.

For example formal logic. The sentenses are more or less empty. A can stand for anything. B also. But if A is true and A implies B then B is true.

But as you approach areas with more value you have less form. For example morals. Moral are what would be called universals as Michael Huemer says. But there is no algorithm to figure them out.

But you do not see this in the Rambam. In the Rambam Physics and metaphysics are both a part of learning Gemara. That means they come under the category of learning Torah.

So what I suggest is not that they have the same numinous value as Gemara. Rather that the Avoda [kind of service]  involved in Math and Physics to to draw numinous value into it.
This is more or less how the Rishonim said to learn this kind of thing--to intend by that learning to merit to love and fear of God.



I mentioned a few years ago that besides the areas of positive value of Kelley Ross I think there is are equal and opposite areas of negative value. In science that is pseudo science.

But further I think these areas of negative value are parasites that can not exist without positive value. That is why you always see the Dark Side trying to get inside of straight Litvak Yeshivas. The Dark Side can not exist without sucking the life energy of True Torah.
See examples of parasites that can not exist without mind controlling their hosts