In a recent essay, What is an Explanation?: The Context of Thought and Language, I opened up a line of discussion which might provide a new view of some of my basic ideas, a view which might lead me to more fruitful explorations and perhaps others to better understandings of what I’m trying to do … [Read more…]
Richard Sale has written an intelligent essay upon the diseased state of the public mind of Americans: The Menace of the Crowd. Wikipedia has a stub article about Richard Sale (journalist). Sale’s essay was published on the website, Sic Semper Tyrannis, run by “Colonel W. Patrick Lang [who] is a retired senior officer of U.S. … [Read more…]
Human being is complex, as is true of most interesting entities. Even God’s simplicity, touted rightly by ancient and Medieval theologians and their not-so-worthy successors in modern times, is only a way of speaking against very specific types of errors. Mostly, they were concerned in ages which saw change lead eventually to decay that God … [Read more…]
Kimberly Noble, MD and PhD, pediatrician and neuroscientist, has written the article, Rich Man, Poor Man: Socioeconomic Adversity and Brain Development, which is posted at the website of The Dana Foundation, a foundation run by neuroscientists. There is good stuff in the article which has a properly optimistic tone to the idea that we can … [Read more…]
A short while back Ralph Nader published an article, Who Owns America?, which begins: There was a time in the Depression of the 1930s when conservative thought sprang from the dire concrete reality of that terrible era, not from abstractions. They did not use the word “conservative” very often, preferring to call themselves “decentralists” or … [Read more…]
The Body of Christ is the entirety of human being, the entirety of a community including both individuals and lesser communities which is Christian civilization, I also claim the Catholic Church to be the central organ of the Body of Christ, not the whole ball of wax. To all appearances, the various Christian churches participate … [Read more…]
Larry Cahill, a distinguished brain-scientist, recently published an article in which he discusses the need for recognizing the differences between male and female brains by first discussing some bad medical results due to the assumption that there are no such differences and, thus, medicines will affect both the male and female brain in the same … [Read more…]
Is the invisible hand justly celebrated by Adam Smith really the hand of the pilgrim human community, of the Body of Christ forming—however imperfectly and incompletely—in this mortal realm? Yes, though the language is far from optimal and that language can lead to improper concepts regarding the Body of Christ and its relationships to human … [Read more…]
In a short essay recently published under the byline of the staff of The American Conservative, Higher Culture, Better Politics, an argument is made which is in the right direction but steps into the water as the boat is pulling away from the dock: When a movement neglects culture and philosophy, one can be sure … [Read more…]
In an earlier essay, A Brain Shaped to Geometric Thought?, I responded to evidence that the brain does abstract from physical distance to derive, for example, an idea of emotional distance. This isn’t a matter fully understood, though the scientists seem to believe, as do I, that human beings have learned to unconsciously and consciously … [Read more…]