It has been understood at least since Wittgenstein (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/) that there are varieties of human thought and discourse, and that they intersect in interesting ways. They have been described as ‘language games’. Each game in a school playground has its own set of rules. These are absorbed and complied with by the participants for the […]
The Rhetoric of Religion by Kenneth Burke Read More »
In 2013 Charlie Smith and Tonya Bundick were convicted of 86 arsons in Accomack County, Virginia. Reporter Monica Hesse (https://www.monicahesse.com/) tells the story of their motivations and communities living through fear, confusion and danger. Hesse spends a chapter comparing Charlie Smith and Tonya Bundick to Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Tonya was a showoff with something
American Fire by Monica Hesse Read More »
The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Humanism presents an edited collection of essays that explore the nature of humanism (https://humanism.org.uk/humanism/) as an approach to life, and a philosophical analysis of the key humanist propositions from naturalism and science to morality and meaning. It looks at humanism not just in terms of its theoretical underpinnings, but also
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Ideas about the gene, genetics and genetic engineering get splashed around in the media routinely now. Often the gene is cast up as a simple determinant of behaviour, such as a ‘criminal gene’, or a ‘homosexual gene’. Not many subjects have occasioned as much confusion and misunderstanding. A clear, accurate, and up-to-date popular science
Flim-Flam! explains that not one shard of evidence exists to prove that the Bermuda Triangle poses any special menace to ships and planes, that earth is being visited by alien spacecraft, that the unassisted power of mind can read closed books, predict our future or induce levitation. It shows that the ‘psychic surgeons’ of the Philippines have relieved their
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Elif Batuman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elif_Batuman) is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. Her 2017 novel The Idiot concerns a college undergraduate, Selin, attending Harvard. The title is a conscious echo of the novel by Dostoyevski. Selin has a conversation with her university friend Svetlana about whether or not one’s life should be thought of
Here is something to unsettle your conviction that there is any real ‘self’ reading these words. V.S. Ramachandran (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_S._Ramachandran) shows how strikingly simple experiments can illuminate the ways the brain establishes the illusion of a self. In avuncular style, he snatches territory from philosophers on the certainty of knowledge. In one experiment, stroking an amputee’s cheek produces sensations
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Transport yourself to a place somewhat hotter and drier than Clydesdale in March 2018. The Sheltering Desert is about two young German geologists, Henno Martin and Hermann Korn, who seek refuge in the Namib Desert and live a bushman existence for two and a half years. Martin and Korn had left Nazi Germany for Namibia to conduct field
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Min Jin Lee (https://www.minjinlee.com/) was born in Seoul, South Korea. Her family came to the United States in 1976, when she was seven years old, and she grew up in New York. In 2017 Lee released this novel , which is an epic historical tale following characters from Korea who eventually migrate to Japan. It is the
