What, Why & How do we Know ?
I’ve been reading John Ehrenfeld’s “The Right Way to Flourish: Reconnecting to the Real World” (2020). John is a participant in the Channel McGilchrist forum which I joined alongside my reading Iain McGilchrist’s latest “The Matter With Things” (2021). John’s book was largely written before he had read Iain’s previous “The Master and His Emissary” … Continue reading “A Hopeful Way to Flourish”
Recent reads of Carlo Rovelli and Sean Carroll have been ultimately disappointing, but don’t get me wrong … Helgoland (2021) – by Carlo Rovelli Staggering Implications – Rovelli Without Whitehead (AJOwens Nov 2021) Mach, Bogdanov, Nagarjuna and Rovelli (May 2021) Classifying an Unread Book (May 2021) and, The Big Picture (2015) – by Sean Carroll … Continue reading “Deutsch over Rovelli and Carroll”
So many intellectual inputs and opportunities for dialogue of which barely a tenth can be grasped over a weekend at Hay on Wye, at the How the Light Gets In HTLGI 2018 Festival. [Meta – specific sessions and update on the weekend experience here.] Below is my summary of the messages I heard in the … Continue reading “Are We Nearly There Yet? #htlgi18 #htlgi2018”
I’m repeating myself a lot recently, about “proper dialogue” needed for progress and about the “fundamentals of information” at all levels, physical and emergent. For quite some time now, there seems to be a convergence on key themes that need to be addressed. Also ironically, whilst that suggests time to focus both on actually having … Continue reading ““Experience the thrill of the highest level of discourse available on the planet.””
Picked-up the Guardian long-read on “The Cult of Mary Beard” last night. As a clearly sympathetic biographical piece I found the use of “cult” in the title a little odd. I presumed some irony, but never found that to be resolved, not even in the conclusion that her star having been in the ascendancy as … Continue reading “The Cult of Mary Beard”
Attended a presentation last night by John “Mr Compost” Cossham – entitled in his own slides, as well as the organiser’s pre-publicity as – “What is Fracking?” Less than 1% of it had anything to do with fracking. It’s against my better nature that I have been egged-on to write anything about it at all, … Continue reading “Do Me a Frackin’ Favour!”
Apart form all the other excellent reasons to recommend Anthony Gottlieb’s “Dream of Enlightenment“ it was fair to say, as I predicted, that the content of the chapter on Leibnitz was largely new to me. Apart from the mythologised legacies of Voltaire vs Leibnitz and Newton vs Leibnitz I really was pretty ignorant of his … Continue reading “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life – Leibnitz in the Pythonesque Style of Gottlieb”
Dick (ie Baron) Taverne came along to the CLHG book club discussion of his “March of Unreason” last night. Interesting to meet and spend time talking with him. Since his book is now 10 years old he gave us a 10 minute update on how he saw things different now. I actually thought all his main … Continue reading “Dick Taverne”