What, Why & How do we Know ?
Well, not the whole of it, but a 2021 short story of that title – just 40 pages – “The Renaissance” by Richard Emerson. A personal and poetic story of personal rebirth, a thought journey set in place and in history. Firstly, I have to declare that from the start, up to the arrival in … Continue reading “The Renaissance”
Having been slightly side-tracked by the TERF-wars again after reading Matthew Burgess “Smart SpaceTime”, it’s 12 days since I last posted. Lots of email and forum traffic on discussing and promoting the works of Robert Pirsig and Iain McGilchrist (and Dante, and Spinoza, and …) but no posts or reviews, even though I have been … Continue reading “1920’s Reading and More”
What a difference two decades makes, or does it? I’ve been blogging over 20 years and rather than do a new year post on highlights from last year, I thought I’d look back over the decades. Compare earliest posts in January 2002, 2012 and 2022. Jan 2002 – reading Bart Kosko’s “Fuzzy Logic” (only my … Continue reading “Anything New Under the Sun?”
Mentioned in the previous “Reading List” post I was reading Erich Fromm “The Art of Loving” – though have no recollection of exactly how I picked-up the reference. (Help anyone?) [Recently from McGilchrist … Fromm, Scheler, Schelling axis? But Fromm was on my list before McG’s latest.] My recurring “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love … Continue reading “Erich Fromm – “The Art of Loving””
Trying to catch-up on some day-job priorities with a bit of peace and quiet over the weekend I find some very old tennis > elbow > foot word-association running riot as some dialogue starts-up on the back of those of us reading Iain McGilchrist’s The Matter With Things – in “Channel McGilchrist”. In this very … Continue reading “Senses Working Overtime”
Added Bergson’s Creative Evolution to my reading list after finding so many references in McGilchrist’s latest. And had also noticed lots of cross-links between Bergson and Whitehead / James through an active “fan” of Bergson on my timeline in the last couple of years (Emily Herring). Keep coming across references to him having been the … Continue reading “Henri Bergson – Note to Self”
I have Otto Neurath as the larger-than-life overly positive member of the logically positivist Vienna Circle – a great communicator on its behalf but probably unaware of its limitations. Someone who never understood Wittgenstein’s objections. The “International Encyclopedia of Unified Science” (here Vol 1 Part 1 Entries 1 to 5 of the unfinished project) came … Continue reading “Neurath and Bohr”
Bergson scholar Emily Herring 2017 piece in the Annals of Science is worth a read for the Bergsonian influence on the modern evolutionary synthesis. I was struck early on by the sentence quoted below, a recurring theme for me of the idea that one’s own supersaturated (dense and incoherent) thoughts often crystalize (cohere) around a … Continue reading “Henri Bergson, Julian Huxley’s Seed Crystal?”