What, Why & How do we Know ?
“You’re missing something Dawkins” has been a theme of mine for some time – see my 2003″Hyper-rationalism” review of “A Devil’s Chaplain”. Here, via a link from Alan Rayner mentioned in the previous post, a review by Martin Lockley of Alister McGrath’s “Dawkins’ God”. Dawkins’ postures, therefore, only revive rather trivial historical debates and create … Continue reading “Dawkins’ God”
Dawkins’ Hyper-Rationalism – Posted an essay on this subject after recently reading Dawkins’ “A Devil’s Chaplain”. Methinks the Charles Simonyi professor, for the public understanding of science at Oxford University, doth protest too much when he attacks lack of knowledge with scientific rationale alone.
Dawkins on Bush, Saddam and Bin Laden. Dawkins writing in the Grauniad [via Rivets]Compare with this one from Flying Snail. [via Gimbo]
Picked up and started Dawkins’ A Devils Chaplain last night, but more of that in a minute. I also picked-up on impulse, a copy of Ayn Rand’s Philosophy, Who Needs It ? – having seen how many books she’d published, but knowing nothing about her I thought, I’d dip my toe in and find out. … Continue reading “Ayn Rand, Dawkins, Evil and Religion”
Had a traumatic two weeks IT-wise. Recently acquired a new P4/XP machine and loaded Norton Anti-Virus and Internet Security stuff. The combination played havoc with various web-sites I use and has taken until now to recover. Anyway in that time I finished Dawkins’ Blind Watchmaker and moved on to Rorty’s Philosophy as a Mirror on … Continue reading “Dawkins to Rorty”
Basic Meme / Memetics ReferencesThe Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins (originated term meme)The Meme Machine – Susan Blackmore Alternative Chaos ReferenceChaos – James Gleick
This is a 2023 Annotation of a 2005 paper prepared originally for the Liverpool Conference on Robert Pirsig and his Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ). The text is unchanged except for correcting a few obvious typos and formatting errors, and to keep me honest the original “It’s Evolutionary Psychology Stupid” remains here complete with old broken … Continue reading “Zero to Pirsig”
Mentioned in a recent “systems sciences” post being recommended to read Peter Corning’s “Nature’s Magic”. Well I’ve had it a couple of days now and like what I read. As a result of the original “see inside” skim I’d already discovered that Corning’s idea of nature’s magic is SYNERGY, essentially that the whole is more … Continue reading “Synergy – Nature’s Magic?”