Category Archives: Book Notes

Item’s from Sunday’s New York Times: Pace of Change; Criticism; Religion in Politics; Creative Children

Posted on Thursday 4 February 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Most interesting, a review, by Paul Krugman, of a book by Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, whose thesis is that the extraordinary growth and change brought about by technology over the past century has pretty … Continue reading →

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EO Wilson, Consilience, 3

Posted on Saturday 23 January 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Third post about Edward O. Wilson’s 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. (first post; second post) Chapter 4, “The Natural Sciences”, focuses on the nature of science and how scientists actually work. The great divide among cultures on Planet … Continue reading →

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EO Wilson, Consilience, 2

Posted on Saturday 16 January 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Second post about Edward O. Wilson’s 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. (first post) Chapter 2, “The Great Branches of Learning”, seems a bit off the mark since it doesn’t address those branches directly. Wilson says the Enlightenment thinkers … Continue reading →

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EO Wilson, Consilience, 1

Posted on Wednesday 13 January 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

So now, after reading Edward O. Wilson’s The Meaning of Human Existence a bit over a year ago (last of five posts about it here), I’m returning nearly 20 years to one of his earlier, foundational I think, books: Consilience: … Continue reading →

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Review: The Outsider Test for Faith

Posted on Tuesday 12 January 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

John W. Loftus’s THE OUTSIDER TEST FOR FAITH: How to Know Which Religion Is True (2013) is a trade paperback book, one of a number of similar volumes I’ve perused over the past couple years, generally from Prometheus Books or … Continue reading →

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Review of David Silverman

Posted on Wednesday 6 January 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

The book is FIGHTING GOD: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World, just published in December 2015, and I’m not linking it with a cover image as I often do with books I review, since I can’t especially approve of … Continue reading →

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Science Fiction As a Prism in the Dawn

Posted on Thursday 31 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitle?

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Sean Carroll’s Reading List

Posted on Tuesday 22 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Sean Carroll is one of my favorite physicists who blogs, and whom I’ve linked several times before, most recently about his forthcoming book The Big Picture (due May 2016), and in a blog post a few days ago, he posted … Continue reading →

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Chris Mooney’s THE REPUBLICAN BRAIN

Posted on Friday 18 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

As I alluded in my previous post, I’ve been reading Chris Mooney’s 2012 book The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science — and Reality, which explores how psychology can inform the obvious fact that different people react … Continue reading →

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Jonathan Haidt’s THE RIGHTEOUS MIND: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, 3

Posted on Wednesday 9 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

First, an aside that I didn’t mention earlier, in the chapter about how people are more concerned about reputation than actually being virtuous. In the discussion about how you can use ‘reason’ to reach any conclusion (based on whatever you … Continue reading →

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