Category Archives: Philosophy

The Mathematics of Beauty

Posted on Tuesday 11 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

How mathematics is behind the things we perceive as beautiful, via Marcus du Sautoy; What is Trump trying to accomplish by reducing the number of diseases medicine can prevent children from getting?; Several items show confusion on the right between … Continue reading →

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Understanding Reality; the Capability Immaturity Model

Posted on Sunday 9 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Jim Palmer on the assumptions we make in trying to understand reality; Science academy axes climate section from manual for federal judges; About a “capability model” for immaturity. – – – Let’s return to one of Jim Palmer’s long essays … Continue reading →

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Arthur Brooks and Gary Snyder: Meaning and Wilderness

Posted on Friday 7 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Arthur Brooks on meaning and happiness (with my aside about the Ship of Theseus); Adam Frank on the poet Gary Snyder and the value of wilderness. – – – All right, let’s read Arthur Brooks again. Big Think, interview with … Continue reading →

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Tearing Down, and Tricksters

Posted on Wednesday 5 August 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

How Big Business is abandoning climate commitments; Attacks on the Endangered Species Act, and critical thinking; Trump thinks blue states are a threat to the nation; and about his irrationality; How to deal with uncertainty (and the conservatives who refuse … Continue reading →

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Thinking for yourself; Suicidal empathy

Posted on Wednesday 29 July 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Conditions for stupidity: outsourcing your thinking to an authority, willful ignorance, and conformity; No, ‘suicidal empathy’ is not destroying the West; Short items on Bari Weiss, windmills, blaming Canada, how Trump pled the fifth too, how Christians preach to captive … Continue reading →

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We’re Not Asking the Right Questions, Perhaps

Posted on Monday 20 July 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

How the deep questions in life may not be the right questions, and a long essay by Jim Palmer about the crucial function religion served in human evolution; Trump’s latest corruption: insider trading; World Cup: Trump makes it about himself … Continue reading →

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“We think and dream and fuss and project entire worlds into existence”

Posted on Saturday 11 July 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

A new NYT newsletter called Gravitational Pull; Remembering Roger Williams, an early American advocate of religious liberty; And about early American philosophers Jonathan Williams and Benjamin Franklin; And revisiting Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, after 30 years; it’s still beautiful. … Continue reading →

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Today’s Words of Wisdom

Posted on Friday 29 May 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Richard Dawkins defends being a “cultural Christian” and suggests being a cultural scientist, appreciating the grandeur of our “increasingly understood universe”; Bertrand Russell suggested that intelligent people are those who see the world as it is, not as they would … Continue reading →

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Dan Barker, CONTRADUCTION

Posted on Wednesday 13 May 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

(UK: Hypathia Press, 2024, 111pp, including References but no index) Dan Barker (Wikipedia) is an atheist writer who was once an evangelical Christian pastor. I read one of his earlier books, LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE (review here), which challenged Rick Warren’s … Continue reading →

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UFOs, Consciousness, Being Savvy

Posted on Saturday 9 May 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Adam Frank on the new UFO data; Thoughts about being savvy, and reality-literacy, and the lack of evidence for both UFOs and God; Carlo Rovelli denies there is a “hard problem” of consciousness. – – – One more about the … Continue reading →

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