Crack open for a hard boiled think
Strange and upsetting things have been happening in the world recently. A great many people are believing weird things and acting on them. Conspiracy theories such as Q-Anon (QAnon – Wikipedia) abound, whilst the consequences of irrational motivations can be terrible. Theodore Schick has offered one of the best primers I’ve come across for […]
How to Think About Weird Things by Theodore Schick Read More »
Marina Warner’s (http://www.marinawarner.com/home.html) achievement in this excellent book is to trace the different meanings which have been ascribed to the female form throughout the ages. She examines a wide range of material art (Donatello, Vermeer, Judy Chicago), Greek mythology, the Bible, world literature, linguistics and mass media. Warner suggests that some women (the armed maidens of
Monuments and Maidens Read More »
In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/) publicly defended the hypothesis that the Earth is a planet and the sun a body resting near the centre of a finite universe. Copernicus’s reordering of the universe mattered because it was the first in a string of new and daring scientific claims at odds with traditional representations of
The Copernican Question Read More »
The way we see the world is radically different from our medieval forebears. How was this transition made? How did we exchange organised superstition for a science of the world based on evidence, experimentation, prediction and control? Jonathan Israel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Israel) here offers a magisterial study of what became known as ‘The Enlightenment’ (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/). Israel lauds
Radical Enlightenment Read More »
Demographers have long predicted that our society is going to have to cope with an ageing population. In recent years the reality has hit home with The National Health Service and Social Care services under immense pressure. Along with this, dementia has risen to epidemic proportions (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25213162) Helen Small (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Small) takes as her topic here
Much of what’s going on in human life is the exercise of power. Individuals struggle to assert power over one another, and groups of individuals (up to the scale of nations) collaborate to do likewise. Fig leaf labels are pasted over the nasty business as camouflage such as ‘communism’, ‘christianity’, ‘islam’, ‘national socialism’, ‘the british
The Liberal Party in Britain is at a low ebb in its fortunes with a tiny number of MPs in the Commons at the start of 2018. Behind the poor showing, though, stands a tradition which, arguably, has brought in more positive social change to Britain than any other. Should you wish to read up
Liberalism Ancient and Modern Read More »
Humans get used to the benefits of new technology fast. There is an entire generation alive today (born since 1989) which has never known a world without the Internet or the instantly gratifying means of digital communication delivered by portable devices. Life is hardly imaginable without the kit. As with most things in human life,
World Without Mind Read More »
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 »
