A few days ago we saw that Joe the Plumber (representing the view of thousands or millions of Americans) prefers the Bible to science books because science books go through constant revisions while the Bible contains eternal, unchanging truth. Of course, Joe the Plumber and company probably don’t realize that, over the last few thousands … Read more
The first time I read Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, I could not get over the chapter on Pythagoras. As Russell claims, “Pythagoras… was intellectually one of the most important men that ever lived, both when he was wise and when he was unwise. Mathematics, in the sense of demonstrative deductive argument, begins with … Read more
When scholars refer to you as “the philosopher” for about two thousand years, and everyone understands what that means, you’re kind of a big deal. That’s exactly what happened to Aristotle because, let’s face it, the man’s depth and breath of intellectual sophistication simply blew everyone out of the water for two millennia. If you want … Read more
If your knowledge of history comes from movies and popular culture, chances are that your historical understanding is probably more of a misunderstanding. Admit it: you think of Vikings wearing horned helmets, you can’t not picture Lady Godiva riding naked through Coventry, you pity Napoleon’s shrimp-like height and assume his quest for conquest was just … Read more
You’ve most likely watched the movie at some point. I recently also read the book. Both experiences are similarly soul-hitting, thought-provoking and existentially disturbing. Enlightenment through self-destruction? Freedom through loss? Power through lack of control? Immortality through suicide? If you don’t experience some major cognitive dissonance after watching the movie or reading the book, then … Read more
When it comes to the world beyond our direct, ordinary experience, we just don’t have what it takes to understand the differences in scale. If you are given a model Earth and Moon made to scale, for instance, and you’re asked to estimate how far apart they would have to be from each other to … Read more
I’ve had a weird relationship with the poetry of Billy Collins since I was a freshman in college: I found some of it to be great, interesting, eloquent, disciplined, musical writing, and some of it not even to merit the appellation of poetry at all. And don’t get me started on his Marginalia and the stupid … Read more
This famous phrase, made famous by Sir Isaac Newton, and celebrated ever since, may have been a public attempt at modesty and historical gratitude that was sure to endear him to, and inspire, subsequent generations of natural philosophers, but it may also have been a little bit of an underhanded insult to Robert Hooke, just … Read more
We’ve seen in previous episodes of this 60-second Adventures in Thought series, all sorts of philosophical, logical, mathematical and scientific paradoxes and all-around weirdness. To remind you, we’ve seen Zeno’s paradox concerning motion, the grandfather paradox concerning backward travel through time, John Searle’s chinese room thought experiment concerning thought and computation, Hilbert’s infinite hotel concerning … Read more
As it turns out, there are people who don’t quite understand the concept of a leap year. And while I was looking for pictures to post on this entry, I discovered that I wasn’t aware that there is some movie by the same name. I wasn’t impressed by the trailer, so why don’t we take … Read more