Reading Update

Finished Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell” – mentioned in the previous post. Excellent.

Two promptings led me ….

… to Hume (from Alice’s comments), I really must read in the originals, so I’ve downloaded texts from Gutenberg. (Also contact from Alice reminded me I’d still not finished “Atonement”, still sitting on the bedside cabinet – just time to read before the film hits the streets.)

… to Bergson (from Gav on MoQ Discuss) … also still sitting on the bedside cabinet, only partly read is Henri Bergson’s “Creative Evolution”. I put it down because I found it heavy going – dense text, maybe something lost in translation from the Polish / Irish / French into English ? and in only four enormous chapters with little other structure. Lots of highly speculative assertions, with very little argumentation, and few direct quotes from sources. Intelligent and well-informed on evolution for 1907, and mostly convincing even if you have to suspend disbelief how much is intended metaphorically rather than literally. Will take some serious effort to review and summarise.

To complicate matters, I also have Aldous Huxley’s “Perennial Philosophy” bookmarked at the bedside – highly intellectual and informative on so many different sources, but again having trouble with overall structure and seeing the point, the message – the wood for the trees.

Also in various states of partial reading – Thoreau’s “Walden”, “Coffee With Plato” by Donald Moor with foreward by Pirsig, Whitehead’s “Adventures Of Ideas”, Dewey’s “How We Think”, oh, and McKeon’s collected works of Aristotle.