Author name: Scott

The Really Hard Problem by Owen Flanagan

Modern science proceeds on the basis that we live in a material world, and its methods of investigation have been spectacularly successful on this basis. It’s somewhat embarrassing, then, that the interior world of consciousness has so far eluded the categories of natural science. This is the so-called ‘hard problem of consciousness, summarised here https://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/. […]

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In Darwin’s Shadow by Michael Shermer

The similarities between between Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace are not hard to point out. Both men had been ardent beetle-hunters in their youth; both subsequently had become travellers, collectors, and observers in some of the most remote parts of the world; both were drawn to asking the big questions (such as why there

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The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David S. Landes

There are a number of measurements of wealth among nations. One standard is ‘Gross Domestic Product’ (GDP) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product). Currently the UK lies 6th in a list of 191 nations (with the United States at the top and Tuvalu at the foot) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)). Scanning tables such as this convinces one what enormous disparities in material wealth

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