"There Is Nothing New Under The Sun"

So says Solomon, yet the facts of reality are wider than Solomons depressing - and probably formulated in a depressive state - assertion.

The simple reason for why this statement is impossible is chance: chance creates new interactions, which means, possibilities for new meaning. The songs that exist today, for instance, are brand new: new creations that derive from chance experiences relevant to the singer.

Or take my hand, where it is right now, on the keyboard - and a second later, I can decide to place here, or there, or anywhere else. Is this new, or would Solomon say its been done before?

The reason why mysticism seems so damn useless to me is that it leads to statements like this which cannot then be backed up by empirical evidence. The person says it, and then retracts with an imagined certainty in having said something substantial, but with no evidence.

The universe is too big, too random, and too unique, to have produced the same faces, the same bodies, and the same minds. History, indeed, repeats itself, but never in exactly the same way - the general forms of things may be "nothing new", but to say the content is the same, is, as all the evidence shows, nothing but depression masquerading as truthfulness. Few statements irritate me more than when someone invokes this idea, believing it, yet without any evidence for its substantiality.

Science, on the other hand, may be one of those eternal things - one of those things which is objectively the same wherever in the universe - so this is perhaps the case where I will agree with Solomon and say: "yes, scientific facts will always be the same wherever they emerge" - and this shouldn't be experienced as bad, given it offers an opportunity to better construct things so that internal freedom can be maximized.

Certainty about some things needn't be depressing, so long as we are honest about what we know and don't know.

The problem with mysticism and religions that profess absolute knowledge is that they don't differentiate life-experience from religious experience, personal, psychodynamic needs from any effort at 'cosmic truth'.

The scientific revolution, so naturally allied with a Buddhist skepticism, offers us an escape from false certainty, and at the same time, an ability or opportunity to come into contact with what is genuinely real i.e. cause and effect processes.

The ancients would have demanded that "God says thus", and in so demanding, would have conflated personal or societal truth with empirical truth. Reality becomes constricted; the certainty of "what is", oppressing. Yet - notice how this phenomenon persists, till this day. The religious are very sure that they know how things work - particularly if they conceive of themselves as involved within a "cosmic allegory", with mankind, inching loser to complete and utter knowledge of existence - for why this rock exists there and not there. Such "truth" is not truth, but an example of how unrestrained emotionality, in creating a "system of reality", necessarily constricts and constrains self-experience to the terms which emerge within a human mind.

No human mind - no finite being, can touch the whole. The most we can say is, with meditation, we may get a sense of transcendence, but to think the details of what comes through are legitimate takes is pure wishfulness. Too much contradiction obtains between takes. Too much contradiction basically says: there's something wrong with the methodology being used, as one person says this, another says that, both takes are incompatible, yet both imagine themselves to be "ascetic holy people".

I've studied enough religion to know that I do not care for it - and many feel the same as I do.

Wishfulness and dissociation are what makes mystical doctrines "seem true", no matter how inconsistent and out of touch one is with the other, the wishful will find the connections and dissociate that which isn't consistent with the desired narrative.

a reply to: Astrocyte
Interesting take but give credit to not only the wisest but the richest man according to the Bible.

"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, But a wise man is he who listens to counsel. " -Proverbs 12:15

There's more where it came from.

a reply to: Astrocyte

You make some decent points but like most modernists thinkers who comment on mysticism miss the essence of true mysticism and that is that they deal primarily with context.

Your conflating exoteric religion (dogmatism) with mysticism is the mistake, because true mystics (which Solomon was) are certainly skeptical about truth.

There’s a fable about a Sufi getting to the pearly gates and is asked by the angel some questions.

The Sufi says, “how do I know you’re not just a figment of my imagination”

From a voice upon high is heard

“Let him in, he is one of us”


As per the truth in legitimate mysticism, it is all about the context of our predicament not all truth or universal anything…

You mention Buddha; he sought resolutions regarding our universal predicament in time and place not any kind of universal or particular scientific truth.

The point is that “truth” will always be here but the reason we suffer is something that can be overcome in time and place by understanding the truth of our own predicament

Geez Astrocyte, your gonna cop some flak

One can also simply observe a person's life. Being born at a certain moment to certain parents in a certain place at a certain time with certain people around you doing certain things with certain emotions and thoughts. With this in mind, logically a life can never be repeated so that it has exactly the same outcomes. Time as it moves us through life, I think anyway, prevents absolute repetition. Time naturally prevents loops. Loops one could say; would be stagnant developmental pools that would eventually be left behind everyone else.

But we do have ascertions by mystics, occultists and religions that above them is the All, the Universe, Infinity, and so on.

We also, have the assertions that there is timelessness and that there is an eternity out there. A united whole that is undifferentiated.

I don't doubt their experiences from those realms.

Now, I am not very articulate with words as I would like to be, and some of these truthes are rather abstract(?) and difficult to translate into plain English. But I will have a go.

The mind is very good at dissection, the mind disects the greater world around us into understandable chunks. The sum of perception and experience of a self is a world. One can say that the sum of 'self' is a world. Thus multiple separate worlds exist, as many as there are selves walking down the street.

A group of minds that are synchronised to an ideology does the same thing.

If an 'infinity' is included, that this ideology is everything and nothing exists outside then a closed space is formed. A world.

Picture a mobius strip within a bubble floating in the landscape.

The mobius is an infinite closed loop. The figure '8'. The '8' on it's side is the symbol of infinity. The synchronised minds create the bubble of awareness using the ideology as a template.

Everything that is not included in the ideology is outside this world in the landscape beyond.

Thus: a mobius (infinity) within a bubble (world of awareness) floating in the landscape (everything else).

If one synchronised one's own mind to an ideology and becomes a believer, then one moves into the bubble of awareness and can get caught in the endless loop. If one does not believe, then one is outside. That is relative positioning. Relative positioning is one method of how one interacts in the inner world.

Therefore, we can have as many infinite worlds sitting side by side as we care to build. And just like a soap bubble, worlds can go 'pop' and disappear forever.

Hope I made some sort of sense


The above works for me so I don't inadvertantly walk into someone's world. Some places you really don't want to go

I use that passage all the time. but it has two applications for me.

from an "emotional" standpoint, I use it as a reminder that you're not the only person who has ever had _____ feelings about life/situations/struggles, etc.

but I also use it as a quasi scientific sense, citing the laws of thermodynamics (i.e. energy cannot be created or destroyed).

I'm sure that Solomon didn't mean it in one or either of those instances, but it's a very useful/comforting passage for me when sorting out seemingly indomitable situations.

a reply to: Astrocyte


Actually ATS was a significant contributor to helping me understand the "There is Nothing New Under The Sun" statement. The other contributor was living for several decades and interacting with thousands of people while working in sales and computer consulting.

For instance, today I turned on FoxNews and saw protests, violence, etc.. and turned the TV off. Reminded me of the G20, and many many other protests before that. It was just the "shiny object" of the day. In a day or two, it will be completely forgotten by MOST (+90%) Americans.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Wow talk about over analyzing Solomon
How about the sun comes up and sets, we love and die, people get happy and then sad, empires rise and then fall
I don't think Solomon was talking computers, football games and the moon landing somehow

a reply to: Astrocyte

So says Solomon, yet the facts of reality are wider than Solomons depressing - and probably formulated in a depressive state - assertion.

But there is nothing new. Only discovery.

a reply to: Astrocyte

this seems like another anti religion rant then something for the philosophy/metaphysics section. of course this is your philosophy so maybe it goes here but the 5th paragraph on is just a anti religion rant.

a reply to: MaxTamesSiva

Again - a reference to what? The fool is a fool precisely because he believes things without good reason.

Provide me a reason that coheres to what we know about reality, and I'll take the "wise mans council".

Otherwise, calling people fools seems to be...what...provocative? Is this not a thing anymore? Does the psychodynamic and relational facts of human experience take precedence to the shnadenfreude of calling people who don't listen to you, "fools"?

Of course, people can be foolish, and call people foolish because this is the evidence justifies. People who ignore the horrific dangers of climate change - primarily to our planets biodiversity - are fools.

On the other hand, someone may so identify with a sanctimonious certainty based in faith, that their calling other people "fools" is itself the foolish act, insomuch as no evidence - no cause/effect reasoned dialectic - underlies their statement.

a reply to: 3daysgone

Any evidence for that claim?

My God. It's like being possessed: you think something, someone says "theres no reason for you to think that", and then you come back in zombie-mode and repeat the assertion again.

Differing conditions create new experiences. Evolution of humans on Earth began 200,000 years ago. The fossil record shows this. Unless you feel-the-need-to-invoke creationism, or some Hindu idea of "world after world after world", again - a mystical idea with no evidence - then you have nothing but a deep emotional conviction.

But deep emotional convictions exist as much in people with OCD, schizophrenia, BPD, as in people with these sorts of ideas. How come your "truths" are more true than theirs? Because an "angel" told you this?

a reply to: carewemust

Do you know the difference between pattern and content?

Sometimes I feel people here simply do not read enough, as their ability to notice differences that matter - such as content (what) and process (how).

The people who post here desperately need a primer in basic philosophical thinking - i.e. Aristotle.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Any evidence for that claim?

Yeah. Common Sense. The matter to make up everything in this reality already exists. It has to exist in order for there to be something. Since it already exists, it is not new.

My God. It's like being possessed: you think something, someone says "theres no reason for you to think that", and then you come back in zombie-mode and repeat the assertion again.

That is what your think happened? I am afraid you may be mistaken. All I said was quote, "But there is nothing new. Only discovery."

Differing conditions create new experiences. Evolution of humans on Earth began 200,000 years ago. The fossil record shows this. Unless you feel-the-need-to-invoke creationism, or some Hindu idea of "world after world after world", again - a mystical idea with no evidence - then you have nothing but a deep emotional conviction.

Yeah, I never said anything that is close to that. Your getting kind of defensive, like your trying to make a point about a sentence that you may be interpreting wrong. Or maybe not.

But deep emotional convictions exist as much in people with OCD, schizophrenia, BPD, as in people with these sorts of ideas. How come your "truths" are more true than theirs? Because an "angel" told you this?

Oh. Nevermind. there it is. Got it. You translated my response to your thread into a pocket reality that is different and separate from this reality. Or at least that is what the "Angel" said.

a reply to: Astrocyte

The people who post here desperately need a primer in basic philosophical thinking - i.e. Aristotle.

Oh you believe that philosophy can only be understood by reading what and how other people think? That is actually an offshoot of philosophy, called psychiatry, but I guess it could also be classified as history of philosophy. But you know Aristotle and stuff.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Sometimes I feel people here simply do not read enough, as their ability to notice differences that matter - such as content (what) and process (how). The people who post here desperately need a primer in basic philosophical thinking - i.e. Aristotle.

Yes, something new from you would be nice. Something other than condescending replies.

Your pretty consistent, yet It seems like your protecting your self from something, what are you protecting yourself from?

Perhaps you really do know what Solomon knows, that everything is meaningless, without God. and that reality scares the ##it out of you. So you make up your own meaning to everything and then apply aggressive boundaries to you ideas so that no one can take the blinders off your eyes.

I'm not a philosophy scholar or expert in anything so feel free to disregard my assessment of your state of mind.

originally posted by: Astrocyte
a reply to: MaxTamesSiva

Again - a reference to what? The fool is a fool precisely because he believes things without good reason.

Provide me a reason that coheres to what we know about reality, and I'll take the "wise mans council".

Otherwise, calling people fools seems to be...what...provocative? Is this not a thing anymore? Does the psychodynamic and relational facts of human experience take precedence to the shnadenfreude of calling people who don't listen to you, "fools"?

Of course, people can be foolish, and call people foolish because this is the evidence justifies. People who ignore the horrific dangers of climate change - primarily to our planets biodiversity - are fools.

On the other hand, someone may so identify with a sanctimonious certainty based in faith, that their calling other people "fools" is itself the foolish act, insomuch as no evidence - no cause/effect reasoned dialectic - underlies their statement.

He said "listen" not swallow the whole hook, line and sinker... and I suppose Solomon meant "listen" with an open mind... Don't you have any experience to reference that to? Haven't you played the role of a fool once in your life?

We have to take every opportunity to learn, we can't pick and choose what we want to learn from. We can learn a thing or two just observing and talking to a homeless person, an old farmer... even from what we considered as fools by avoiding repeating their errors.

I'll leave you now with your preferences and wish you a fruitful journey.

Crikey you lot, settle down!

I thought philosophy was a method of exploration of what's out there.

Now some fella once said;

There are more wonders between heaven and earth, Horatio, then drempt of in your philosophies.

That is a wonderful way to look at things - a philosophy in itself.

In a post above I (hopefully) illustrated how a to create a closed world. Dogma, ideology, thought, and especially mind can be traps that ensnare the unwarry.

The statement "there is nothing new under the sun" can be interpreted in a number of ways. Literally is one way. The new agers do that as do quite a few other "philosophies". Now the effect of that statement is to effectively contain one's thinking, impose a limit.

So let's rephrase "there is nothing new under the sun" to "everything has been done before". That implies a closed loop, a closed world. Perhaps Solomon realised something?

I think interpreting the quote from Solomon in the context of hyper-specificity is fundamentally flawed. The scope of that statement transcends the day-to-day, but speaks to us as human creatures...our habits, our nature. Nothing new under the sun, doesn't mean: "the fastest computer on the planet has already been created", it means that whether or not we have the fastest computer on the planet, our nature is never "new", so how we deal with that computer or any other "creation", is nauseatingly predictable and meaningless.

The example you used about how songs can be "new" is actually a perfect illustration of why Solomon was and is correct. The combined tones within a song can be "new", but the meaning, the underpinning framework that allows us to consume that song, is not new. We consume music in all the same ways we always have: love, hurt, happiness, depression, laughter, longing, excitement, sex... So while I can say "I never heard that song before," I will never be able to say, "No one has felt this before."

Nothing is new, not a thing.

Human beings have already experienced here what they're going to experience. There is nothing new to experience. Once one has experienced the whole gamut of emotion in this life, it's essentially pointless to stay here unless you want to re-live an experience. In the end, all emotions inevitably bleed into numbness, leaving us forever wanting. That is the kind of despair that Solomon understood, a true despair: "All is vanity and vexation of the spirit"

It's depressing, yes, but what Solomon does not talk about, is Love. Love has always been and always will be the deciding factor of whether we stay or go. So while it's easy and very contextual for all of us to see life as an exercise in futility, it can also be a wonder, if one so chooses.

What Solomon meant by saying "There is nothing new under the sun" is that, although its understanding and representation may change from one epoch and culture to another, there remains for all time an invariant, mystical sophia, or wisdom, that is occasionally captured by great minds and mystics. It's called the "perennial philosophy". It is embodied in the sacred geometries of certain religions as their shared, isomorphic, mathematical properties and patterns. These have been discovered in recent advances in theoretical physics. It has now been revealed for the first time here.