May 7, 2014
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On Neil deGrasse Tyson and philosophical philistinism
A recent post on the internet has outed Neil deGrasse Tyson (or “NdGT,” as he’s been dubbed by the blogosphere) as a philistine in matters of philosophy. True enough: as charismatic as he is, and as beneficial as his public service has been in bringing the wonders of modern science to a big audience, he… Continue reading
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Anthony Pagden, The Enlightenment and why it still matters
Anthony Pagden, The Enlightenment and why it still matters (Random House, 2013) The overall purpose of the book is to describe the Enlightenment as an intellectual phenomenon, a matter of ideas being thought and books being written, published, and read. There is little attention paid to what we might call the material conditions of history… Continue reading