Nearly ten years ago, I wrote the first version of a dark comedy (sample chapters can be downloaded from A Man for Every Purpose) in which the protagonist, a formerly respectable professor of philosophy, seems to be in a rather confused state of mind. I’ll ruin part of the surprise, assuming it’s ever published in … [Read more…]
In a recent post New Forms of Human Mind and New Forms of Human Civilization, I discussed the Thomistic teaching that the human mind shapes itself in active responses to its environments in the context of cultural transitions. Recently, I was reading Political Theory & Modernity by William E. Connolly and his discussion of Nietzsche … [Read more…]
In this summary article, Psychologists Show Experience May Be The Best Teacher For Infants, we read: Researchers have found that infants who had an opportunity to use a plastic cane to get an out-of-reach toy were better able to understand the goal of another person’s use of a similar tool than were infants who had … [Read more…]
I’ve defended the legitimacy of philosophy in this age of empirical thought and will continue to do so but I admit to being less than impressed with the state of philosophical thought about causation. It strikes me as being localized in the way of pre-modern physics and pre-modern geometry. Localized physics (such as special relativity) … [Read more…]
This article, Immaturity Of The Brain May Cause Schizophrenia, talks about one of the possible causes of a disease which may actually be “several biologically distinct heterogeneous populations,” that is, a set of symptoms caused by various diseases. This was the case for ‘consumption’ in the 1800s — TB or lung cancer or some variety … [Read more…]
A while ago I’d read that some wildlife biologists had speculated that there’s a regulatory gene for size in grizzly bears and that the mother could change the setting on that gene, setting it to BIG when there was plenty of food and grizzlies were dominant and to a lesser setting when the conditions were … [Read more…]
In two earlier entries, The Christian in the Universe of Einstein: 2. God as the Creator of Truths and The Christian in the Universe of Einstein: 2. What is Mathematics?, I argued that God creates truths, though not in the sense that He could have created contradictions or the ‘truth’ of “1 + 1 = … [Read more…]
Einstein, Feynman, and perhaps other major scientists have made the claim that “philosophers of science” have contributed nothing that’s useful to scientists. While not sure exactly what the contexts of their comments really were, I’d generally say in response, “Yes, and why would anyone expect anything different?” I would think philosophers of science move in … [Read more…]
In my reviews of Gerd Gigerenzer’s Adaptive Minds, beginning with A Review of “Adaptive Minds: Part I”, I discussed Professor Gigerenzer’s analyses of the ‘discoveries’ in the latter half of the 20th century that human beings don’t think very clearly. Beginning in the 1950s or so, Economists and psychologists and others tested the common folk … [Read more…]
Modern human beings, and especially Christians, might misunderstand the work I’m doing. Some might think I’m some sort of champion of modern empirical knowledge for its own sake, a fan of physics and history perhaps. In fact, what’s at issue is respect for God’s Creation and, hence, for the Creator Himself. You respect Creation by … [Read more…]