
Someone who accepts-as I myself do, taking it on trust-the present-day scientific account of the Universe may find it impossible to believe that a living creature, once dead, can come to life again but, if he did entertain this belief, he would be thinking more 'scientifically' if he thought in the Christian terms of a psychosomatic resurrection than if he thought in the shamanistic terms of a disembodied spirit. No one has ever been, or ever met, a living human soul without a body. The dichotomy of a human being into 'soul' and 'body' is not a datum of experience. Human nature presents human minds with a puzzle which they have not yet solved and may never succeed in solving, for all that we can tell. Toynbee's "The Idea" Īccording to letters written by the tiler, allegedly uncovered by Toynbee tile researchers in Philadelphia in 2006, "Toynbee's idea" stems from a passage in Arnold Toynbee's book Experiences: Toynbee-tile enthusiasts believe that a native Philadelphian created the Toynbee tiles because of the large number that appear in the city, their apparent age, the variety of carving styles, the presence of the "tile creator's screed," and the Philadelphia address on the Santiago tile. In 2006, the occupants of the house stated that they knew nothing about the tiles and were annoyed by people who asked, despite the fact that the house was the former residence of a named recluse and alleged tile-maker, as shown in the 2011 documentary film Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. Ī tile that used to be located in Santiago de Chile mentions a street address: 2624 S. government, the USSR (including tiles seemingly made years after the Soviet Union's dissolution), and "hellion Jews". Several of these allude to a mass conspiracy between the press (including newspaper magnate John S. The majority of tiles contain text similar to that above, although a second set is often found nearby. The former speculation site theorized that 'Toynbee' referred to Ray Bradbury's short story " The Toynbee Convector".

Toynbee, and that "Kubrick's 2001" is a reference to the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film co-written and directed by filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, about a crewed mission to Jupiter. In a documentary film about the tiles, Justin Duerr assumes that "Toynbee" refers to the 20th century British historian Arnold J.

Louis, Missouri Cincinnati Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio and South America, among other locations.Ĭommonly, a city will have a couple of large and colorful tiles along with numerous small and simple tiles like this one, just a block from the White House. Many older tiles considered to be the work of the original tiler have been eroded by traffic, but as of 2011 older tiles remain in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania St. Presumed copycat tiles have been spotted in Noblesville, Indiana Buffalo, New York San Francisco, California Portland, Oregon and Roswell, New Mexico as well as a 1997 sighting in Detroit, Michigan and a 2013 sighting in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Since 2002, very few new tiles considered to be the work of the original artist have appeared outside of the immediate Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area, although one notable sighting appeared in suburban Connecticut in 2006, and one appeared in Edison, New Jersey in 2007. In the United States, tiles have officially been sighted as far west as Kansas City, Missouri, as far north as Boston, Massachusetts, and as far south as Richmond, Virginia. A 1983 letter to The Philadelphia Inquirer referenced a Philadelphia-based campaign with themes similar to those mentioned in the tiles (e.g., resurrecting the dead on Jupiter, Stanley Kubrick, and Arnold J.

The Toynbee tiles were first photographed in the late 1980s, and their first known reference in the media came in 1994 in The Baltimore Sun.
