Monthly Archives: May 2018

Link: Wills on Carter on Ideology v. Religion

Posted on 29 May 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

From Garry Wills’ review of Jimmy Carter’s new book Faith, in the New York Times Book Review a couple weeks ago (posted online earlier): In the ideology that the right thinks is a religion, the sin of sins is abortion, … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Storytelling; Religious Fundamentalism and Fake News; the Attraction of Conspiracy Theories

Posted on 15 May 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

Time magazine, December 5, 2017, Jeffrey Kluger: How Telling Stories Makes Us Human [S]torytelling is a powerful means of fostering social cooperation and teaching social norms, and it pays valuable dividends to the storytellers themselves, improving their chances of being … Continue reading →

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E.O. Wilson: What Is Man?

Posted on 14 May 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

From the first page of his book HALF-EARTH: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (2016). What is man? Storyteller, mythmaker, and destroyer of the living world. Thinking with a gabble of reason, emotion, and religion. Lucky accident of primate evolution during … Continue reading →

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Michael Benson’s SPACE ODYSSEY

Posted on 11 May 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

This is not my usual methodical summary with comments, but rather a compilation of random bits that stood out, as I read this book, without taking notes. I was struck again and again by how key plot points, or techniques … Continue reading →

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C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures, The Third Culture, Big History, and 2001

Posted on 10 May 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

C.P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures” is the famous 1959 lecture and then essay about the divide between the scientific community and the literary ‘intellectual’ community, an essay much referenced in books about the acceptance of science in modern culture (with, … Continue reading →

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Richard Feynman’s Meaning, and Being Savvy

Posted on 3 May 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a short book of three essays first delivered as lectures at the University of Washington in Seattle, in 1963, gathered into a book published in 1998. Feynman, of course, was a famous CalTech physicist influential for work in quantum … Continue reading →

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