Crack open for a hard boiled think
In the last few years we’ve become accustomed to lies, distortion, pick n’ mix ‘facts’ and ‘fake news’ splashing around like an angry Falls of Clyde. Lies, falsity, religion and superstition have existed for as long as conscious minds, of course. The new twist is the ubiquity of instant means of digital communication. The trap is […]
Believing Bullshit Read More »
In this book Richard Prum (http://prumlab.yale.edu/) argues that natural selection is not the only evolutionary mechanism at work in animal life. Beauty and desire in nature are also dynamic forces, and those features in males that females prefer in choosing mates evolve rapidly. In a nutshell, each species evolves its own standard of beauty by
The Evolution of Beauty Read More »
Marcus du Sautoy (https://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/) shows us the successes and limitations of maths and science in this book. The reader is taken to seven different ‘edges’ of knowledge and is shown why even Newton, Leibniz, and Galileo didn’t have a comprehensive grip on knowledge in their own day. From chaos theory, which ‘placed huge limits on what
In this book a leading psychologist reveals how the emotion of pride has shaped our minds and our culture, and shows how we can harness its power. Long understood to be a powerful drive in the self-conscious human animal, it has been classed as first in the list of seven deadly sins by religion. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins) Why
Take Pride by Jessica Tracy Read More »
Nicholas Carr’s Utopia is Creepy: and Other Provocations is significant for the questions it raises about our relationship with technology. Such as, how is the Internet affecting our powers of concentration? Can personal technology seduce us away from things we find pleasurable or fulfilling? Can we have the peace and prosperity technological enthusiasts promise without an accompanying
Utopia is Creepy by Nicholas Carr Read More »
Lies, distortion, ignorance and falsity now saturate our culture. A fresh acme was reached during the US Presidential Trump campaign in late 2016 when ‘post-truth’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics) became celebrated. Fact checkers couldn’t keep count of the lies which were being spewed out. Thank goodness the cool voice of reason and a love of truth still exist.
Skeptic by Michael Shermer Read More »
Even something as quotidian and seemingly inconsequential as swearing can be subject to theory. Why do we swear, and what function does it fulfil? Can we infer anything from cultural or historical variations in the practice of swearing? Is it, for example, always intemperate behaviour, and always (in some form) aggressive? Is it always offensive?
What the F by Benjamin K. Bergen Read More »
E.M. Forster stated ‘Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him’. This is exactly the sentiment that inspired the physician and writer Raymond Tallis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Tallis) to pen his latest book, The Black Mirror: Fragments of an Obituary for Life. It contemplates a life looked back on from beyond; a meditation on being
The Black Mirror by Raymond Tallis Read More »
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 »
