Pagan Mythologies vs. Empirical Realities

I’ll start by asking two seemingly strange questions: Should we expect Heaven, the world of the resurrected, to be a magical world as in pagan myths of other worlds? Should we expect to spend time without end gallivanting around with all sorts of strange winged creatures and looking down into the Abyss of Hell — … [Read more…]

Adaptive Minds: A Review of Adaptive Thinking, Part IV

[Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World, Gerd Gigerenzer, Oxford University Press, 2000] Professor Gigerenzer starts off the introduction to Part IV with a strong claim: The study of human thinking is deeply suspicious of introducing anything genuinely social into the world of “pure” rationality. As in much of cognitive science, most researchers have fallen … [Read more…]

Adaptive Minds: A Review of “Adaptive Thinking”, Part III

[“Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World”, Gerd Gigerenzer, Oxford University Press, 2000] In part III (chapters 7-8), Professor Gigerenzer tells us: “To understand the power of human intelligence, one needs to analyze the match between cognitive strategies and the structure of environments. Together they are like a pair of scissors, each blade of little … [Read more…]

First Thoughts on Reading “The Last Temptation of Christ”

I have posted an article on my other blog, Thoughts…, which gives my initial impressions upon reading the first 200 pages, of 500, of Kazantzakis’ controversial novel. I claim that novel misses the mark somewhat but it’s not as much in conflict with Christian orthodoxy as the writings of theologians and philosophers in the Calvinist … [Read more…]

Adaptive Minds: A Review of “Adaptive Thinking”, Part II

[“Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World”, Gerd Gigerenzer, Oxford University Press, 2000] In Part II, chapters 4-6, Professor Girgenzer provides a few arguments towards a view of what he labels ‘ecological rationality’ which he defines as follows: Ecological rationality refers to the study of how cognitive strategies exploit the representation and structure of information … [Read more…]