Q&A: About the book “Dimensions, Prophecy, and Earthiness”
About the book "Dimensions, Prophecy, and Earthiness"
Question
Hello Rabbi.
I wanted to ask whether you are familiar with Rabbi Shem Tov Gafn’s book “Dimensions, Prophecy, Earthiness,” and what your opinion is of it and of its ideas?
Answer
Very familiar.
A fascinating book and a fascinating person (the great-great-grandfather of Aviv and Yonatan Geffen, and of Moshe and Uzi Dayan, among others). His diary is especially interesting.
As for the book’s content, the first essay, on dimensions, is very interesting and has many implications. The second essay, as I recall, uses the word “ha” which I didn’t understand, and it keeps recurring throughout. It seems to be the subject of the essay.
The idea of earthiness is also very interesting, although I don’t agree with it (he argues that the age of the world is like the age of man, following Kant’s view that time is a subjective human category). I dealt with this a bit in the fifth book in the Talmudic Logic series, on the logic of time.
His comments on psychophysics are also interesting (if I remember correctly, he assumes a logarithmic law, although today it is generally accepted that this is a power law). See Daniel Algom’s book, published by the Broadcast University series.