In a typically erudite book review, The barbarism of reason: John Gray on the Notebooks of Leopardi , Gray tells us: With astonishing prescience, [the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837)] diagnosed the sickness of our time: a dangerous intoxication with the knowledge and power given by science, mixed with an inability to accept the humanly … [Read more…]
In a short article, What Does Memorization Have To Do with Learning?, Marina Olson addresses what I consider one of the greatest failings of the American educational system and, more generally, of American attitudes toward human culture and, indeed, all of Creation. Ms Olson’s article deals with one educator who seemed to attack memorization (Orlin) … [Read more…]
This is the third and final part of this essay. The first part dealt with an essay by Donald Kagan, Ave atque vale, which provides a highly summarized history of liberal arts education in the West along with a few hints toward a profound understanding of human knowledge and education and, finally, an assessment of … [Read more…]
This is the second part of an essay in three parts. The first part dealt with an essay by Donald Kagan, Ave atque vale, which provides a highly summarized history of liberal arts education in the West along with a few hints toward a profound understanding of human knowledge and education and, finally, an assessment … [Read more…]
I’ll be publishing this essay in three parts. This first part will deal with an essay by Donald Kagan, Ave atque vale, which provides a highly summarized history of liberal arts education in the West along with a few hints toward a profound understanding of human knowledge and education and, finally, an assessment of the … [Read more…]
The anthropologist John Hawks has published a short discussion, Crazy evolution movies, which is really about wrongful understandings of evolutionary processes. He states: To be fair, this scenario [of the evolution of intelligent apes in Planet of the Apes within 2 or 3 millenia] is quite consistent with some people’s models of human evolution, in … [Read more…]
Most scientists, many supporters of science, don’t seem to believe that past works, outmoded works—even some with serious and avoidable errors, are worth the effort of study. This is probably at least partly due to the fact that science has been so important a part of the modern cultural mainstream that scientists have naturally come … [Read more…]
A few weeks ago, Ed Yong posted an analysis of the current state of research in the study of the human brain: Neuroscience Cannae Do It Cap’n, It Doesn’t Have the Power. It is statistical power that is missing. For reasons discussed clearly by Mr. Yong, results in neuroscience are often false or exaggerated. A … [Read more…]
God’s Creation can be described in terms of `mystery’ when we speak in certain modes, poetic or spiritual, but that’s not the truest way for a Christian to speak. It’s not the truest way because Christians, of all human beings, should be faithful to the Creator and open to what He’s telling us through this … [Read more…]
We were told by Jesus of Nazareth that we must become like children to enter Heaven. We must become `child-like’ and not `childish’. As creatures of mind and heart and hands, how can we become child-like? Wouldn’t that mean we would think as a child, feel as a child, and act as a child? That … [Read more…]