A couple of comments on another thread got me wondering about this. In my own case, I’m re-reading Middlemarch (for a discussion at the Boston Athenaeum in September) and continuing my reading on the Russian Revolution. I’ve finished the The Great Russian Revolution, by V. Chernov, and am now into Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism, by O. Radkey. Also finishing up D. Hausman’s Rationality, Self-Interest, and Welfare.
How about you?
Current bed-time reading (again) Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything hoping to find a simple yet convincing explanation of evolutionary drift!
And when I need to go to sleep, I crack open Ed Feser’s Scholastic Metaphysics. Works like a charm!
I used to have some interest in that topic. But I can’t now remember much of what I’ve read that’s even obliquely related besides some stuff by McKeon (who was, incidentally, the evil philosophy professor discussed in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) and George Moore’s Heloise and Abelard (which is a novel by a fiction writer, essayist, and playwright who, to my knowledge, never read much philosophy). I bet the Moore is a lot more fun to read than the Feser, even if Moore doesn’t always get all the arguments quite right. I think it’s a beautiful novel, anyways.
I’m sure you’re right. Except there are no arguments in Feser’s book, only assertions.
I’m reading Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise on my vacation.
Just finished The Eagles of Mitsubishi written by Jiro Horikoshi, the lead designer of the Japanese Zero fighter, about the design of same.
It’s really interesting how quickly the Japanese converted their war machine into sewing machines and cameras and automobiles, and how quickly these products became the best in the world.
Back in England, sewing machine factories spent WWII as hand grenade factories, and never fully recovered their previous function. While Japan was concentrating on quality, the rest of the world spiraled to the bottom, competing on price.
The Unpersuadables. Brings together two common topics here, creationists and brains. I know some would say they are brought together for the first time, but that would be rude.
It’s about how we form beliefs and why we don’t change them. For those of you who comment all the time it’s probably beginners level stuff. In addition to creationists the author looks into homeopathy, Indian alternative medicine, hard core Buddhist meditation, Sheldrake, David Irving, and also Randi.
The author is a British journalist (Storr?). I think the chapters may have been published separately.
Serious reading: philosophy and cognitive science stuff like Hohwy’s The Predictive Mind.
Fun reading:
Daughters of the Samurai: As Japan opens to the world in the 1860s, it sends 4 teenage women to the US for ten years. This tells their story, starting with their lives during the wars that ending the Shogunate, then their experiences in the US, and finally what happens when they return to a Japan that is no longer so sure about the West being best.
Ingenious Mr Pyke: Creative genius during 1920s – 40s, thought up the Special Forces, underwater oil pipelines, new ideas in child education, aircraft carriers made of treated ice (which would have worked, if needed, it seems).
The Toaster Project: Design student wants to build a toaster from scratch; just getting iron, copper, plastic, mica from scratch (ie old mines) is his limit. Sounded better than it was.
The Just City: Plato-lovers from throughout history are given the chance by Athena to build the city Plato envisioned in the Republic. But Athena makes one mistake: she has Socrates brought to the city. It turns out he thinks Plato was way off, and he leads a subversive group.
All Days are Night: Beautiful woman has to deal with disfiguring car accident which killed her husband and her role in bringing the accident about.
Last Flight of Poxl West: WW2 bomber pilot’s memoirs turn out to be literally false, disappointing his hero-worshiping nephew. But as he matures, the nephew comes to believe there is more to truth that literal correspondence to reality.
BruceS,
What’s on your philosophy list?
Let’s start with fiction:
Seveneves (Neal Stephenson)
And Sometimes I Wonder About You (Walter Mosley)
And currently: Dark Intelligence (Neal Asher)
Philosophy:
Intuition (Elijah Chudnoff)
Consciousness and Mental Life (Daniel N. Robinson)
Skepticism and the Veil of Perception (Michael Huemer)
Mung,
I’m in the middle of that right now. Not as good as the Baroque Cycle by any means.
Baroque Cycle was awesome. I think Neal is just one of those guys who goes where he wants to go and you go along for the ride or not.
Speaking of Sci-Fi, I also recently finished Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds.
I read some of that Huemer book. It wasn’t bad.
First book with my resurrected eyes: 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. I haven’t been reading a lot of books in recent years. Perhaps that will change.
I used to love Verne so much. From the Earth to the Moon is my favorite.
Our three main books this summer have been “Spark, The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain,” by John J. Ratey; “Thirty Tomorrows“, by Milton Ezrati, about how changes in both technology and demographics will be reshaping the global work force and economies over the next few decades; and “The Rodale Book of Composting“, which should be self-explanatory.
Philosophy of Composting! I love it! Does it leave any doubt about how to dispose of the book once you’ve completed it?
Was never into Jules Verne, for me it was Edgar Rice Burroughs.
I never read fiction(unless evo is that) and never read books. On the internet or youtube you can get everything now. Books are over. I did read Locke’s second recently. i read acts and facts from ICR.
I do pay attention to many subjects.
the big read for the summer for peopole interested in origin stuff and so science is the recent ID book. Thats the rebel read this summer and most important intellectual new book it seems to me.
Further:
The Philosophy of Nature: A Guide to the New Essentialism
Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics
A History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Greece and Rome From the Pre-Socratics to Plotinus
Peter Thiel – Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tim Berners-Lee – Weaving the Web: The Original DESIGN and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web
Nick Bostrom – Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor – Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity
Augustinas Dainys – The Main Paradigms of Contemporary Lithuanian Philosophy
William H. Draper – University Extension: A Survey of Fifty Years 1873-1923
Etienne Gilson – From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution
Raymond Tallis – Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity
Have you read Sorokin’s “Sociology of Revolution”, thread author? It comes from a giant mind of the mid-20th c. a unique figure who was there during the revolutions, member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and secretary to Prime Minister Alexandre Kerensky. He taught in the same department (before over 6 decades of closure) of my alma mater. And he was Orthodox Christian, not a grating narrow-minded right-winger evangelical Protestant like you’re probably accustomed to in the USA these days. So perhaps it will be seen as ok that he believed in Orthodoxy.
Early in the summer I was reading material on emergence and mental causation. Several papers by Kim setting the terms of the argument most NRPs reply to. Chalmers and Bedau on Strong versus Weak. Papers from MacDonald and MacDonald Intro to Emergence In Mind and Clayton Re-Emergence of Emergence. Woodward’s replies to Kim, especially Woodward (2010) : Mental Causation and Neural Mechanism.
Currently Philosophy and Cog Sci. Clark’s Mindware, modern overview with many good refs, Pfeifer and Bongard’s How the Body Shapes the Way we think (more about NFAI and robotics than people), Howhy’s Predictive Mind, papers by Clark, Friston, Rao, Eliassmith on Bayesian Brain/Predictive Mind.
Suggested reading for religionists:
http://howgodworks.com/why-should-we-actively-work-to-eliminate-religion/
http://godisimaginary.com/
The Old and New Testament by God.
Sal:
Didn’t you get the memo, Sal? Those were written by people, not by God.
If that’s the case, then “God” is a pen name, so it’s still a proper byline. 🙂
I usually don’t read books cover to cover, the only other one I remember reading cover-to-cover was the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airman Knowledge Book, a few hundred pages about 14 years ago. I scored 100% on the exam, and the examiner’s gave me that look of “you smart a –.”
🙂
It’s definitely the case, unless God has severe problems with truth and consistency.
It’s the Aeronautical Information Manual, and I got 100% too. 🙂
Keiths,
It is not the AIM! It is a book like this one:
Anyway, I just remembered, the other books I read cover to cover:
and
and
Ironically, I’ve never read No Free Lunch cover to cover, nor Darwin’s Black Box. I read everything except one chapter of Denton’s book, Evolution a Theory in Crisis, the chapter I didn’t read was on the mechanics of protein translation which I learned elsewhere and which Denton said one could skip if they already were familiar.
Mung,
I’ve read all his other stuff — I’ll pick that one up.
I just finished “Annihilation Score” by Charle Stross. It’s the latest in his Laundryverse series where Lovecraft meets the British civil service.
I think we can safely assume Sal hasn’t spent the summer learning anything about geology or biology. ROM all the way.
Sal:
Yes, it is. The AIM matches your description (except that you got the name wrong), and the test guide doesn’t:
You got the name wrong, Sal. What’s the big deal? Just accept it and move on.
ROM? Read Only Memory, meaning my memory can’t be written to?
The OP seemed to be about books, I didn’t mention peer-reviewed papers on biology and the ENCODE consortium some of which I’ve shared here at TSZ.
Obviously you guys are to prejudiced to read papers favorable to ENCODE and epigenetics since much of neo-Darwinism is a synthesis of Mendelian inheritance and Darwinism and lots of epigenetic phenomenon don’t follow Mendelian models.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Mendelian_inheritance
Wouldn’t that depend on whether, by “…a few hundred pages…”, Sal meant 250 or over 700?
Sal, you just confirmed my suspicions. You read AIG and other rot that quote mines biology and geology. Your understanding of epigenetics is pathetic wishful thinking.
I have the FAR-AIM book and it’s not the same as the Knowledge Book. I even provided a link to the Jeppesen Collection of the FAA Knowledge Exam questions that I learned from. That’s the problem with you Keiths, you’re eager to disagree with basic stuff just to prove me wrong.
Here is the FAR-AIM book,
http://faraim.org/
here is the Jeppesen Book I read:
http://jeppdirect.jeppesen.com/product_details.jsp?id=prod854
If you didn’t like my shorthand for the the Jeppesen book, you could have asked for a clarification, but instead you jumped right in there and said it was the AIM, and it’s not, that’s a different book.
Reader’s can see for themselves they are different books! Sheesh. I referred to it not by the exact title if that’s your complaint, but clearly they are different books. If you didn’t like my use of the exact title, that’s fine, but it’s not the same book as the AIM.
The Big deal is you keep demanding I agree with you, you’re eager to save face rather than admit a mistake. You demand I ascent to stupid statements like, ” 500 flips of a fair coin that all come up heads is perfectly consistent with fair coins” or your insistence that I wrote down a sloppy equation even after I pointed out it’s on the NIST website:
It’s fun debating you because you just never back down even when you’re dead wrong. Demonstrates you debate on the net not for the sake of truth but to save face. In contrast, when I’ve changed my mind and decided I’m wrong about something, I make a public apology.
You want me to make a correction about my short hand fine!
But Keith’s is trying to dictate to the readers what I did or did not read. He’s also going to dicatate to me what books I did or did not read cover to cover and insist I agree with him.
Are you going to accept Keith’s version of my personal book reading history or his version of my personal book reading history? Too funny! 🙂
I haven’t. Sounds interesting. Thanks.
I did recently read Kerensky’s The Catastrophe and much of Richard Abraham’s bio of Kerensky. I’ve come to think Lenin’s characterization of K as “the little braggart” wasn’t too far wrong.
Good grief, Sal. If you insist it was the test guide, not the AIM, then I believe you.
See how easy that was?
Now if you could just do the same regarding the coin flip question…
ETA: This was a response to a comment that Sal deleted. Sal, why do you keep doing that?
Looks like petrushka was responding to the same deleted comment.
You mean like a holy ghost writer?
Except, ironically, it’s the people who were the unholy ghostwriters.
Found a comment by Sal in the spam filter. Not sure how it got there but I’ve unspammed it.
The argument is over which book I read cover to cover, Keiths is trying to dicatate to me which book I read cover to cover. Too funny.
There are two separate books. The FAR/AIM and the one I referred to as “Aviation Administration’s Airman Knowledge Book” off the top of my head but which has the proper title:
Private Pilot FAA Airmen Knowledge Test Guide .
I don’t have the exact book from 2001 with me any more. But it is not the same book as the AIM, and often the AIM is not sold separately but is combined with the FAR book (Federal Aviation Regulations) to be the FAR/AIM.
You can see for yourself the books in question:
vs.
And usually, the AIM isn’t published as AIM, it’s usually FAR AIM!
The big deal is you’re telling me what book I did or did not read cover to cover. I don’t recall reading the FAR-AIM cover to cover, but I do recall reading a book of test bank questions which off the top of my head I referred to as the Knowledge Book which is currently 250 pages. You’re insisting you understand my book reading history better than me.
The big deal is you want to save face rather than try to clarify things. You want me to ascent to stupid claims like “500 flips of a fair coin that all come up heads is perfectly consistent with fair coins” or that an equation that is publicly available through NIST is my “sloppy equation”
You’re insisting I agree with your version of my book reading history, not my version of my book reading history. When going to flight school I had the FAR/AIM and the Private Pilot FAA Airmen Knowledge Test Guide appropriate for 2001. Those are two separate books, not one and the same.
They are not the same book because I had 1 of each, now you’re telling me what books I did and did not have in my book collection in 2001 since you insist the two books are one and the same? Too funny Keiths. Do you like creating your own reality and demand I agree with you even about what was and was not in my book collection in 2001.
If you’re so dogmatic and closed minded and fundamentalist about your own beliefs about trivial stuff that’s not even your own business (like my book collection in 2001), how impartial and trustworthy are you about other more weighty matters?
Already answered.
Think it happened when I had two edit windows to the same comment.
Unfortunately, I have since retyped the comment. Sorry, Alan.
😀
I know, right? keiths makes these low statements and then demands we ascent to them. Sheesh. I just try not to decent to his level.
Oh yeah, that is the best book as God is the best author. It really tells everything unlike any other book in history. He hit the main points.
I think Guns, Germs, and Steel is better.
Robert Byers,
It’s all right, you’re in; no need to grovel. Did he write the Koran and the Apocrypha too?