Category Archives: Books

Tim Urban, What’s our problem?

Posted on April 5, 2023 by Huenemann

[Reading: What’s Our Problem? by Tim Urban] Tim Urban is a smart and funny guy. He explains all kinds of things in clear and entertaining ways on his website, Wait But Why. Now he is out to explain a great … Continue reading →

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A Thousand Brains

Posted on July 12, 2022 by Huenemann

[Reading Jeff Hawkins, A Thousand Brains, Basic Books, 2021] Rene Descartes had an uneasy relationship to academics. He was very well educated, but he never held any academic positions and spent much of his life arguing with professors and theologians. … Continue reading →

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Thinking about being stupid

Posted on August 27, 2021 by Huenemann

“None of this – being imprecise, not quite understanding the import of what one is saying, not being as secure in one’s knowledge as one wishes or thinks – comes close to being anything like the condition of radical intellectual … Continue reading →

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Thomas Huxley: Making the ‘Man of Science’

Posted on June 12, 2020 by Huenemann

Reading: Paul White, Thomas Huxley: Making the ‘Man of Science’ (CUP 2002). In a sense, this book is about the term “scientist”. Thomas Huxley regarded it as a crass Americanism, a term that belittled anyone who devoted their life toward … Continue reading →

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Minds as predictive engines

Posted on January 4, 2019 by Huenemann

(Reading Andy Clark, Surfing Uncertainty (Oxford UP 2015)) I’m no longer sure I know what an “ordinary” theory of mind would look like, but I’m guessing that it would resemble an organized camp of explorers. The explorers, or our senses, venture … Continue reading →

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Chronic dysfunctions of systems

Posted on June 22, 2018 by Huenemann

W. G. Sebald, in Austerlitz: And several times, said Austerlitz, birds which had lost their way in the library forest flew into the mirror images of the trees in the reading room windows, struck the glass with a dull thud, … Continue reading →

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Review of Sloterdijk by Pieter Lemmens

Posted on June 13, 2018 by Huenemann

Thank you to the ever-reading Rick Krause, who forwarded to me this excellent review of Sloterdijk by Pieter Lemmens. An excerpt from his conclusion: …Foams is written in a rich and playful style. His tone is jovial and detached, ironic yet … Continue reading →

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The Challenge of Being Vertical

Posted on June 5, 2018 by Huenemann

Sloterdijk, Peter. You Must Change Your Life, translated by Wieland Hoban (Polity, 2013) We construct for ourselves ideals that taunt us, pull us upwards, and change our lives. This is fixed; but the the nature of those ideals, as well … Continue reading →

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“I read as one who abdicates.”

Posted on May 21, 2018 by Huenemann

Fernando Pessoa, writing (or reading) as Bernardo Soares in The Book of Disquiet: I read and am liberated. I acquire objectivity. I cease being myself and so scattered. And what I read, instead of being like a nearly invisible suit … Continue reading →

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Artefactual language as the enabler of Spirit

Posted on May 14, 2018 by Huenemann

Cultural information rains down on the landscape of our genetically endowed mental capacities, mouldering the paths along which future information must travel, eroding and shaping the patterns of our thoughts and reactions (Distin 2011, 177-8) Chasing down some of Sloterdijk’s … Continue reading →

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The Hope of Concepts (or, some sorely needed arch support)

Posted on May 7, 2018 by Huenemann

(Loosely reflecting while re-reading Peter Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life…) As in Spheres, PS’s aim is to create (or at least open up a space for) a new life-support system for humans, a post-religious quasi-religion grounded in practice and … Continue reading →

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Enlightenment now

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Huenemann

(Reading Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now) I am totally down with this book. Its main thesis is that the core values of the Enlightenment – Reason, Science, and Humanism – have resulted in human life being better in every measurable way. … Continue reading →

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Hadot, Sloterdijk, and the Idol of Eternity

Posted on April 16, 2018 by Huenemann

I have recently read both Pierre Hadot’s Philosophy as a Way of Life and Sloterdijk’s The Art of Philosophy. Both books place at their centers an ideal of the philosopher as one who is able to lift themselves from their … Continue reading →

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Review of The Square and the Tower

Posted on April 2, 2018 by Huenemann

Niall Ferguson’s The Square and the Tower is a caution against seeing our new, networked world as an unalloyed blessings. Human history (and NF’s book) is filled with examples of networks and hierarchies, many worth celebrating and equally many worth … Continue reading →

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Niall Ferguson’s Hegelian aspirations

Posted on March 18, 2018 by Huenemann

I have just started reading Niall Ferguson’s new book, The Square and the Tower. This comes after reading some of his other books, and hearing him in interviews. He’s an extraordinarily well-read, well-spoken, and intelligent fellow – and, I gather, … Continue reading →

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