Crack open for a hard boiled think
Following on from the global success of his book ‘Sapiens’ (2014, http://sbr.lanark.co.uk/?p=5180 ), Yuval Noah Harari (http://www.ynharari.com/about/) offers us a terrifying vision of the life forms to which, even now, we are giving birth. For 70,000 years Homo sapiens has been the smartest life form on the planet. We love to think so. But one way to depict […]
Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari Read More »
When economists seek to explain Brexit, Donald Trump and the rise of populism/nationalism, the concept they most often reach for is ‘globalisation’. Goods and services, it seems, can be produced almost anywhere on the planet and consumed anywhere else, rapidly. This has had profoundly dislocating effects on patterns of employment, income and population movement over
The Great Convergence by Richard Baldwin Read More »
In each of our individual genomes we carry the history of the whole of our species. Since scientists first read the human genome in 2001 it has been subject to all sorts of claims, counterclaims and mythologising. Drawing together the latest discoveries in this rapidly changing area of science, Adam Rutherford (http://adamrutherford.com/) shows us that in
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford Read More »
Psychology professors Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski offer this look at how the knowledge of mortality drives human culture. The authors’ contention is that fear of death has been a primary driving force of human creativity. They began working together on the elaboration of what they now call ‘Terror Management Theory’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory) in
The Worm at the Core by Sheldon Solomon et al Read More »
People in finance do not create wealth. They preside over it, and suck it away. That is one central point in this excellent new analysis by Rana Foroohar (Time magazine assistant managing editor and economics columnist). Eight years on from the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, the key lessons of the crisis of 2008
Makers and Takers by Rana Foroohar Read More »
Midnight tonight (31 December 2016) will be one moment in the continuing flow of time, no different essentially from any other. Only because human societies are organised by collective effort, and require punctuation marks in their narratives, midnight will be made significant. The calendar will change to a new year. There will be fireworks, sentimentality,
Timekeepers by Simon Garfield Read More »
As we say goodbye to 2016, commentators are suggesting that the past 12 months have been a threshold year. It could be that the twentieth century ended in 2016 in the same way as historians regard the nineteenth century as ending at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. One of the transformations
The Wealth of Humans by Ryan Avent Read More »
Standard histories of philosophy treat the subject in a methodical and scholarly fashion, attempting to encapsulate the whole business in a short number of volumes. Bertrand Russell’s ‘History of Western Philosophy‘, Freddie Copleston’s ‘A History of Philosophy’ (11 vols.), and Anthony Kenny’s ‘A New History of Western Philosophy‘ (originally 3 volumes) have been ready to
The Dream of Enlightenment by Anthony Gottlieb Read More »
It has sometimes been noted that Lanark is a resolutely conservative place. Conservative with a small ‘c’, that is. There are few actual Tories, of course. Instead it is a small town working class conservatism whose rallying cry glories in the phrase ‘it’s aye been!!’. Well, it may have ‘aye been’, but originality is the lifeblood of
Originals by Adam Grant Read More »
