We’re born with certain physical characteristics, some good and some bad, some allowing us to excel and some limiting our possible accomplishments. Modern psychologists have shown that the physician Galen was largely right in his general principles which he taught nearly 2,000 years ago. We are born with relatively well-defined temperaments and with other relatively … [Read more…]
I was fascinated by a claim Jacob Neusner quietly made in Death and Birth of Judaism: The Impact of Christianity, Secularism, and the Holocaust on Jewish Faith. The assumption is found in this quote: [M]y view is that when, in the late eighteenth century with the French and American revolutions, Christianity lost its status as … [Read more…]
The blog at The Independent Institute has been running short essays by John C. Goodman, the author of a recent book, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis. The latest essay is Can Entrepreneurship Be Copied? where we can read Dr. Goodman’s claim: In mathematics, Gödel’s Theorem says that no complex, axiomatic system can be both consistent … [Read more…]
Some write down scales or perhaps compose etudes. Some write simple tunes or even multi-part tunes. Others compose concertos and sonatas and symphonies which can’t be fully understood unless fully held in mind, if only for an instant. A section in the third movement might well play off a section in the first movement. Of … [Read more…]
I’ve been delayed in my reading program, but I’m getting slowly back to work on Hans Reichenbach’s The Direction of Time. I’ve also gotten behind on my writing though I’ve already posted on some preliminary issues after reading Hilary Putnam’s preface for this the reprinting by the University of California Press: Why Does Time Move … [Read more…]
I’ve uploaded a new novel, The Modern Critic. This book was 99% complete ten years ago but I’ve been procrastinating on the publication because I thought I might expand it substantially. That expansion now seems unnecessary and even esthetically unappealing. The book was complete after I added a few comments to fill in as little … [Read more…]
Those who have been following the Obamacare mandate mess will know of the prayers of American-Catholics, led by their bishops, for religious liberty. Apparently, the religious liberty, even the very lives, of Syrian Christians is of little interest, nor were the liberties and lives of the Christians living in other ancient communities which have been … [Read more…]
While making plans for my more serious reading over the next month or two, I happened to read the opening pages of a book I’ll be perusing before long — Sociobiology, The Abridged Edition by Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard professor who learned a lot about social insects and found that he could apply some … [Read more…]