Books
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Brave New World
Reading Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future (Viking, 2016). Kelly is one of the founding editors of Wired, and this book is about the promise of emerging technologies to, well, shape our future. A paragraph early in the book exhibits its general vibe: So, the truth: Right… Continue reading
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Justin E. H. Smith, The Philosopher
Reflections on Justin E. H. Smith, The Philosopher: A history in six types (Princeton UP, 2016). This is a timely, marvelous book that raises fruitful questions and criticisms especially about the ways philosophy is conceived by its modern-day, academic practitioners. Clearly, throughout human history, there have been all sorts of people who have wondered and… Continue reading
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On knowledge regimes
Yesterday I came across the phrase “early modern knowledge regime,” and it teased my curiosity. What could this term mean? [I already have a short list of books to start reading, but I’ll begin first with what’s in reach and on top of my neck.] It probably comes from Foucault: “Truth is a thing of… Continue reading
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What are libraries?
[Currently reading: The Meaning of the Library, Princeton University Press, 2015.] When I went to college, I had a part-time job reshelving books in the library. I really liked it: I was on my own, rolling a little wooden cart through a quiet place, placing things where they belong. It felt serene and meditative. I… Continue reading
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Does philosophy belong in the humanities?
In the old model of the liberal arts, the trivium was the ground floor of the “core curriculum” for students. It consisted in logic, rhetoric, and grammar, or the basic tools for scholarly reading, understanding, and writing. One then studied the quadrivium, or the four fundamental tools for researching nature’s design: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and… Continue reading
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Witches and inoculations
Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680) may have been the first popularizer of modern science. Educated at Oxford, and one of the earliest fellows of the Royal Society, Glanvill published works that railed against rigid dogmatism and promoted open-minded scientific inquiry. He believed that the patient application of reason and experience, expressed in clear and unambiguous prose, would… Continue reading
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“A Stranger to One’s Own Country”
Descartes was not a bookish man. There’s a well-known anecdote that reveals what he thought of libraries: One of his friends went to visit Descartes at Egmond. This gentleman asked him about physics books: which ones did he most value, and which of them he did most frequently consult. ‘I shall show you’, he replied,… Continue reading
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On Kuhn and the scientific revolution
I had the welcome opportunity recently to read an essay by Dan Garber on why the scientific revolution wasn’t a scientific revolution. It’s bound for a collection of essays on the legacy of Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolution, and reading it gave me a chance to reflect a little on Kuhn. It seems to… Continue reading
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Multitasking and multipurposing
The other day was entirely typical, but I paused to consider the wonder of it all. I was trading moves back and forth with a friend playing Civilization. I was the American civilization under Roosevelt, and because of some luck with natural resources, advantages in constructing Wonders, and some devilishly clever economic planning, I was… Continue reading
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Central Asia’s Golden Age
[S. Frederick Starr, Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age, Princeton, 2013] I can’t even say what my hazy mental picture of medieval central Asia was before I read S. Frederick Starr’s Lost Enlightenment. That’s how poorly represented it was in my mental geography – there was not even a little sign on a stick saying,… Continue reading
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Comenius’s primer for learning Latin
I recently came across a 1685 English translation of Comenius’s “World of Pictures,” which was a primer aimed at helping children to learn Latin. (Comenius’s original was for German children, but this book was translated by Charles Hoole.) The idea was to give this book to kids and just let them enjoy the pictures and… Continue reading
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For the love of words
James Turner, Philology (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014). These days we think of “the Humanities” as a natural kind. There are the natural sciences, the social sciences, the creative arts, and the humanities (and then the grab bag of more vocationally-focused areas of expertise, like business, engineering, agriculture, etc). Indeed, university campuses make these seemingly natural… Continue reading
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Comenius, The Way of Light: “to plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth”
John Amos Comenius, The Way of Light, translated by E. T. Campagnac (The University Press of Liverpool, printed by Hodder & Stoughton (London), 1938). In Via Lucis, vestigata et vestiganda [“The Way of Light,” written in 1641 but not published until 1668], John Amos Comenius proposed to a group of scholars on its way toward becoming the… Continue reading
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Encyclopédie
Philipp Blom, Enlightening the World: Encyclopédie, The Book That Changed the Course of History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). A bookseller named André-François Le Breton hired an Englishman named John Mills to translate Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopedia from English into French in the early 1740s. It turns out that Mills’ fluency in French was rather limited… Continue reading
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Comenius, The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart
Jan Amos Komensky, The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart, trans. Howard Louthan and Andrea Sterk (New York: Paulist Press, 1998). Originally published in 1623, but again published in 1663 with additions. Comenius writes in the person of a pilgrim who has decided to survey all the walks of life before… Continue reading
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How You Play the Game
The Minecraft book is available now (see right column). It was loads of fun to write, and it was even more fun exploring the game with my son. The whole process of working with Kindle Singles was fun, too. The editor I worked with was very helpful, insightful, and thorough. Continue reading
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Sloterdijk, Hume, and a healthy skepticism
As I work through the recent works of Peter Sloterdijk (Spheres I: Bubbles, Spheres II: Globes), I am chiefly amazed and enthused by his ability to find deep symbolic and mythic connections throughout the history of philosophical thought, and to use that understanding to bring our culture into a startlingly fresh relief. His insights make… Continue reading
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Quotes from Bréhier’s Plotinus
Émile Bréhier, The Philosophy of Plotinus, translated by Joseph Thomas (UChicago, 1958) The history of philosophy does not reveal to us ideas existing in themselves, but only the men who think. Its method, like every historical method, is nominalistic. Ideas do not, strictly speaking, exist for it. It is only concrete and active thoughts that… Continue reading
Huenemanniac 