Beware of neo-Deistic pseudoreligion.… Read the rest

Centrality is so uncool that the margins are as full of people as Bangkok or the Aran Islands.… Read the rest

‘Mathematics is absolutely integrated with Western civilization, which conquered and dominated the entire world.’… Read the rest

‘Anthropologists are trained to appreciate cultural differences, but they can’t stand it within their own profession.’… Read the rest

No, linear doesn’t mean what pomos think it means.… Read the rest

The shift from logic to history, and the perennial appeal of irrationalist programs.… Read the rest

Why did it take the US Senate forty years to ratify the UN Genocide Convention?… Read the rest

What is a government department doing endorsing the idea that traditions and myths count as evidence?… Read the rest

Do scientists ‘keep the faith’ and if so is that a good thing? Is religion a good source of morality?… Read the rest

Dowsing, homeopathy, Tarot cards and their relevance to mental health professions, and, of course, alien abductions.… Read the rest

What is the difference between genuine inquiry and the sham and fake variety?… Read the rest

Psychoanalysis was never, despite Freud’s ‘positivist rhetoric,’ a science; it was a ‘purely speculative enterprise,’ argues Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen.… Read the rest

In their ‘paranoiac and demonological theology of science’ Lewontin, Kamin and Rose fire both barrels with equal monotony and imprecision: ‘determinism’ and ‘reductionism’. But the gallant little fire brigade has perpetrated a fatuous little book.… Read the rest

No it’s not just an accident that the character who gets Tom Hanks killed in Saving Private Ryan is both an intellectual and a coward. Spielberg is making a point, a bad point, and we need to pay attention.… Read the rest

‘We no longer defer to bishops or politicians; scientists are simply facing the same fate.’ Yes but bishops are one thing and scientists are another. We can demand that scientists produce evidence, but what evidence can a bishop offer?… Read the rest

In the 1992 article that he expanded into an excellent book, Barber examines the ways Identity and Shopping are dividing the world between them.… Read the rest

Extreme diets and extreme investing, diversity all around, along with a consensus as ironclad as any in the ’50s.… Read the rest

Being on the side of the rich and powerful ought to make it hard to play victim, but the right in the US manages it by seeing ‘liberal’ bias in the media even when it’s…not there.… Read the rest

Is feminism about being a fragile flower needing protection and consolation at every hint of conflict? Or is it about being a cactus and fighting back. Wendy Kaminer disavows florality.… Read the rest

James Wood on the grim outlook for social realism and ‘hysterical realism’, which may allow a space for the aesthetic and the contemplative again.… Read the rest