And does not desire to be somplace else.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Midgley Reviews Dennett 
Mar 2nd, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘He tries much harder than he has before to show that he understands the importance of our inner life.’… Read the rest
Part History Part Polemic
Mar 2nd, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
And marred by bad arguments, Simon Wessely says of this book about science and the chemical weapons industry.… Read the rest
Galen Strawson Reviews Daniel Dennett
Mar 2nd, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Dennett on the evolution of freedom.… Read the rest
Postmodernism and truth
Mar 2nd, 2003 | By Daniel DennettHere is a story you probably haven’t heard, about how a team of American researchers
inadvertently introduced a virus into a third world country they were studying.(1)
They were experts in their field, and they had the best intentions; they thought
they were helping the people they were studying, but in fact they had never
really seriously considered whether what they were doing might have ill effects.
It had not occurred to them that a side-effect of their research might be damaging
to the fragile ecology of the country they were studying. The virus they introduced
had some dire effects indeed: it raised infant mortality rates, led to a general
decline in the health and wellbeing of women and … Read the rest
Fear of the Improvised, Ambiguous or Indeterminate
Mar 1st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Writing is always profane and promiscuous, Terry Eagleton says. … Read the rest
Warning Signs of Fakery
Mar 1st, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
We all need to be able to detect bogus claims, Robert Park says.… Read the rest
And University Students Run Amok Too
Feb 28th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Debt and the equation marks=money can poison the teacher-student relation.… Read the rest
What Teachers Have to Face
Feb 28th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Violent students and low-level bad behavior drive teachers out of teaching.… Read the rest
Teachers Win a Decision
Feb 28th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The law lords in the UK decided teachers may refuse to teach students who have been expelled for violence then reinstated.… Read the rest
What Spinoza Knew
Feb 28th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Scientific American reviews Antonio Damasio’s Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain.… Read the rest
Made not Born
Feb 27th, 2003 8:03 pm | By Ophelia BensonI’ve been pondering this business of confusing or blurring the boundaries (see this week’s Bad Moves) between a religion and a group of people, between Judaism and Jews, Islam and Muslims, that I touched on in yesterday’s Note and Comment.
It all has to do with Identity Politics, I suppose, which is a large subject, and one we will be exploring in the future. It’s partly a generational matter. All those children of assimilated Jews who turned on their parents with cries of indignation at having been denied their heritage, their background, their identity, and turned into bland inoffensive no ones in particular when they could have been real Jews. It’s an understandable reaction, and yet it has some … Read the rest
The Times on Christopher Hill
Feb 27th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘No other historian had equalled Hill’s ability to blend a deeply sympathetic understanding of the poor and unlearned with a seemingly limitless knowledge of intellectual and religious doctrine and strife.’… Read the rest
Christopher Hill Obituary
Feb 27th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The Marxist historian of the world turned upside-down.… Read the rest
Eating Your Cake and Having It
Feb 26th, 2003 11:26 pm | By Ophelia BensonThere are some strange assumptions in this review of Adam Sutcliffe’s Judaism and the Enlightenment. For one thing there’s a confusion throughout between Jews and Judaism. For another and related thing, there is a confusion between Judaism as a religion and Jewishness as nationality or ‘ethnic’ ‘identity’. As a result, there is a confusion between criticising a religion and hating people or a people.
There is also a lot of familiar and none the less annoying sneering at the Enlightenment.
… Read the restThe British-born historian is not the first writer to knock Enlightenment thinkers off their pedestals. The period’s “dark side” has been a recurring theme for more than a century now. Critics (among them Friedrich Nietzsche, the Romantic poets, and
Fabricated Memories Can Be Scary Too
Feb 26th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Two Harvard psychologists test the reactions of people who say they have been abducted by aliens.… Read the rest
The Old ‘Science is Superstition’ Ploy
Feb 26th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Jonathan Reé reviews Dawkins’ new book: ‘Dawkins campaigns against superstition with the blind fervour of a religious fanatic.’ Good; too bad there aren’t more like him.… Read the rest
Merton Obituary in New York Times
Feb 25th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Role models and self-fulfilling prophecies and ‘an extraordinary range of interests that included the workings of the mass media, the anatomy of racism, the social perspectives of “insiders” vs. “outsiders,” history, literature and etymology.’… Read the rest
Robert Merton
Feb 25th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Obituary of innovative sociologist of science.… Read the rest
News Flash: Enlightenment Hostile to Religion
Feb 25th, 2003 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
A new book on the Enlightenment’s near-obsession with Judaism is a cautionary tale against ‘the seductions of rationalist absolutism.’ What of the seductions of irrationalism?… Read the rest
