Mark R. Kelly
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Recent Posts
- Steven Pinker on Knowledge and Education
- Kingsley Amis, NEW MAPS OF HELL
- Recent Links Saved from Facebook
- Links from NYT recently, with Comments
- Tim Crane, THE MEANING OF BELIEF
- de Camp & de Camp, SCIENCE FICTION HANDBOOK, REVISED
- Neil deGrasse Tyson, ASTROPHYSICS FOR PEOPLE IN A HURRY
- James Blish’s ISSUES AT HAND
- From the Ridiculous to the Sublime: My Own Journey to 2001
- Intro
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Meta
Category Archives: Human Progress
Links and Comments: Optimists; Bible; Children
Time Magazine’s current issue is called “The Optimists,” and is edited by Bill Gates. Steven Pinker has a piece: Why We Refuse to See the Bright Side, Even Though We Should According to the latest data, people are living longer … Continue reading
Posted in Children, Culture, Human Progress, Religion
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Perspectives: Dozois and Bryson
Recently on Facebook, Gardner Dozois quotes from At Home, by Bill Bryson (author of A Short History of Nearly Everything), on the closing years of the 19th century: “From the perspective of domesticity, there has never been a more interesting … Continue reading
Posted in Human Progress, Technology
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Wright: Nonzero: Intro and Chapter 1
I’ve decided to tackle three or four substantial nonfiction books, over the next few weeks, in the manner of reading books for college courses — that is, alternating among them over a quarter or semester-like period of 8 to 10 … Continue reading
Posted in Evolution, Human Progress, Robert Wright
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Pinker: Better Angels: Passages and Outline from the Preface
This is Steven Pinker’s big 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, that takes a long-range view of human history to show that the human condition, over millennia and especially in recent centuries and decades, … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Evolution, Human Progress, Humanism, Steven Pinker
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Big History
I’ve just recently become aware of the concept, and term, “Big History”. It happened when I saw a coffee table book, shown here, at Barnes & Noble a couple weeks ago, and glanced through it, noticing two names I recognized: … Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, Evolution, Human Progress
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The Enlightenment and This Moment in American Culture
From Washington Post, a week or so ago: Harvard scientist worries we’re ‘reverting to a pre-Enlightenment form of thinking’ Prompted by how some presidents — Bush 43, and now Trump — are actively pushing back against scientific findings and research. … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Human Progress
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Anthropocene and Harari
From last weekend’s New York Times Magazine, Is the ‘Anthropocene’ Epoch a Condemnation of Human Interference — or a Call for More?, by Wesley Yang. Noticed firstly as continued evidence of the currency of the term ‘anthropocene’ to refer to … Continue reading
Posted in Evolution, Human Progress
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A Vision of Possible Futures
Here’s a great video called Wanderers, by Erik Wernquest, that depicts visions of a future in which humanity has “conquered the solar system” in the words of this frame article at ScienceAlert.com. It’s narrated by Carl Sagan, whose introduction alludes … Continue reading
Posted in Human Progress, Space
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Pondering Immigration and the Future of the Nation
If there’s any one thing the United States might be remembered for, in future centuries or millennia long after the country has been superseded by newer, more advanced societies, it will be that it was a place for immigrants and … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Human Progress
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Carl Sagan, THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE (2006): History is a battle of inadequate myths
Here’s a book I had forgotten I had, relatively speaking; I obviously bought it back in 2006 or so, but I didn’t read it right away and so it sat on my shelves among many other books (by Sagan and … Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, Culture, Evolution, Human Progress, Provisional Conclusions, Religion, Science
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