Author name: Scott

The Secular Meaning of The Gospel by Paul Van Buren

SPIRIT MATTERS - Reaching for the Divine

In the 1960s within academic theology a movement emerged called ‘The Death of God’ theology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_God_theology). Acknowledging the increasingly secular temper of the age, attempts were made to re-cast religious beliefs and theological notions in terms that could be accepted by secular minded people. The conviction was that religious belief and practice were not worthless […]

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The Hedgehog and the Fox by Isaiah Berlin

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think

The title is a reference to a fragment attributed to the Greek poet Archilocus: πόλλ’ οἶδ’ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ’ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα (“the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”). In Erasmus Rotterdamus’s Adagia from 1500, the expression is recorded as Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum. The fable of The Fox and the Cat embodies the same idea.

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The Anxiety of Influence by Harold Bloom

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think

‘Literature as a way of life’ is the theme of this 1973 work by the self-assured Harold Bloom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Bloom and http://english.yale.edu/faculty-staff/harold-bloom). It is also an on-going conversation across the generations and between authors. Bloom traces out the strands of influence which connect all these authors of poetry. His take on the concept of influence is that

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Chaos by James Gleick

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think, EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE - Science & Technology

James Gleick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gleick and http://around.com/) is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, writer and lecturer. He made his name in 1987 with Chaos. Chaos theory has made huge advances since that time but this is possibly still the best introduction on the subject for the layperson. It describes the Mandelbrot set, Julia sets, and Lorenz attractors without resorting to

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The Storm of War

PAST PRESENT - What's new in History

50 million dead. Western civilization shattered. The Second World War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_world_war) boggles the mind on every level. Of the hundreds of histories on either the whole, parts, or aspects of this recent conflict which should you choose? This is one that I really ‘enjoyed’ if that term is appropriate. Roberts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Roberts_(historian)) sheds great illumination. His style

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