This is the PTP-Express Home Page. Hooray! You have arrived!
So, what is the big deal with PTP?
And, how is a random reader supposed to figure out what I have created here?
I suggest the following reading strategy, to let the pages themselves answer both of those questions:
Start with the drop-down menu “All It Is”: PTP Book #1. The first four chapters of that book will provide the informational background you need to get familiar with my project. The rest of the chapters complete this whole first book in the “Search for Simplicity” series.
The “Purpose of PTP” chapter is just that — it answers a reader’s first obvious question: “Why Bother?”
The “PTP: B.E.C.A.U.S.E” chapter shares how this book relates to a much bigger picture for PTP’s purpose in the world.
The “OP Defs” chapter explains why some parts of PTP are expressed in their rawest, not-as-easy-to-read form. I picked up the “Operational Definitions” concept from my studies in the field of Psychology. And I found that writing practice very useful in crystallizing the nature of this project.
The “20 PTP Terms” chapter is like a Table Of Contents. This chapter is a quick reference to the total number of terms I needed to create the PTP framework.
Then, the other chapters take each one of those Terms, along with Explanations, Examples, and Exercises for each of the PTP terms.
PTP Projects for later in time:
The “S4S Chapters” menu connects to the first four chapters of a much longer book I am working on, currently titled “The Search For Sanctuary.” These initial chapters serve as a fictional example of why this project was created in the first place.
The “Articles About PTP” menu will be a collection of on-going articles, stories, and dialogues about PTP.
The “Categories” and/or “Posts” lists on the right-hand side of the page all related to many future parts of this one overall PTP project.
Thanks for reading this far….
Unusual Note about unusual friends: Because PTP is such a unique endeavor, and totally created by me from scratch, I am prone to avoid using quotes by other people in order to assist me in sharing the PTP message. However, I do have a small circle of unusual friends who, occasionally, just say something more accurately than I do. Rene Descartes is one such friend. As I read this quote from him, taken from his Meditations on First Philosophy, I was tempted, and thus succumbed to that temptation, to borrow a few short paragraphs. Have fun, good luck, and Happy Trails:
“The present treatise contains everything that I have been able to accomplish in this area….. What I have done is to take merely the principal and most important arguments and develop them in such a way that I would now venture to put them forward as very certain and evident demonstrations. I will add that these proofs are of such a kind that I reckon they leave no room for the possibility that the human mind will ever discover better ones.
… But although I regard the proofs as quite certain and evident, I cannot therefore persuade myself that they are suitable to be grasped by everyone.
… In the same way, although the proofs I employ here are in my view as certain and evident as the proofs of geometry, if not more so, it will, I fear, be impossible for many people to achieve an adequate perception of them, both because they are rather long and some depend on others, and also, above all, because they require a mind which is completely free from preconceived opinions and which can easily detach itself from involvement with the senses. Moreover, people who have an aptitude for metaphysical studies are certainly not to be found in the world in any greater numbers than those who have an aptitude for geometry.
… I do not expect any popular approval, or indeed any wide audience. On the contrary I would not urge anyone to read this book except those who are able and willing to meditate seriously with me, and to withdraw their minds from the senses and from all preconceived opinions. Such readers, as I well know, are few and far between. Those who do not bother to grasp the proper order of my arguments and the connection between them, but merely try to carp at individual sentences, as is the fashion, will not get much benefit from reading this book. They may well find an opportunity to quibble in many places, but it will not be easy for them to produce objections which are telling or worth replying to. –
René Descartes”