pangeaSteven Pinker is one of the world's leading authorities on language and the mind. His popular and highly praised books include The Stuff of Thought, The Blank Slate, Words and Rules, How the Mind Works, and The Language Instinct. The recipient of several major awards for his teaching, books, and scientific research, Pinker is Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.
Every evening our eyes tell us that the sun sets, while we know that, in fact, the Earth is turning us away from it. Astronomy taught us centuries ago that common sense is not a reliable guide to reality. Today it is neuroscience that is forcing us to readjust our intuitions. People naturally believe in the Ghost in the Machine: that we have bodies made of matter and spirits made of an ethereal something. Yes, people acknowledge that the brain is involved in mental life. But they still think of it as a pocket PC for the soul, managing information at the behest of a ghostly user.
Modern neuroscience has shown that there is no user. "The soul" is, in fact, the information-processing activity of the brain. New imaging techniques have tied every thought and emotion to neural activity. And any change to the brain—from strokes, drugs, electricity or surgery—will literally change your mind. But this understanding hasn't penetrated the conventional wisdom. We tell people to "use their brains," we speculate about brain transplants (which really should be called body transplants) and we express astonishment that meditation, education and psycho-therapy can actually change the brain. How else could they work?
This resistance is not surprising. In "Descartes' Baby," psychologist Paul Bloom argues that a mind-body distinction is built into the very way we think. Children easily accept stories in which a person changes from a frog to a prince, or leaves the body to go where the wild things are. And though kids know the brain is useful for thinking, they deny that it makes them feel sad or love their siblings.
The disconnect between our common sense and our best science is not an academic curiosity. Neuroscience is putting us in unfamiliar predicaments, and if we continue to think of ourselves as shadowy users of our brains we will be needlessly befuddled. The Prozac revolution provides an example. With antidepressant and anti-anxiety drugs so common, critics wonder whether we're losing the ability to overcome problems through force of will. Many an uncomprehending spouse has asked, "Why don't you just snap out of it?" But depressed people don't have lazy souls. The parts of their brains that could "snap out of it" are not working properly. To depressed people it is objectively obvious that their prospects are hopeless. Tweaking the brain with drugs may sometimes be the best way to jump-start the machinery that we call the will.
Prozac shouldn't be dispensed like mints, of course, but the reason is not that it undermines the will. The reason is that emotional pain, like physical pain, is not always pathological. Anxiety is an impetus to avoid invisible threats, and most of us would never meet a deadline without it. Low mood may help us recalibrate our prospects after a damaging loss. But just as surgeons don't force patients to endure agony to improve their characters, people shouldn't be forced to endure anxiety or depression beyond what's needed to prompt self-examination.
To many, the scariest prospect is medication that can make us better than well by enhancing mood, memory and attention. Such drugs, they say, will undermine striving and sacrifice; they are a kind of cheating, like giving the soul a corked bat. But anything that improves our functioning—from practice and education to a good night's sleep and a double espresso—changes the brain. As long as people are not coerced, it's unclear why we should tolerate every method of brain enrichment but one.
In Galileo's time, the counter-intuitive discovery that the Earth moved around the sun was laden with moral danger. Now it seems obvious that the motion of rock and gas in space has nothing to do with right and wrong. Yet to many people, the discovery that the soul is the activity of the brain is just as fraught, with pernicious implications for everything from criminal responsibility to our image of ourselves as a species. Turning back the clock on the ultimate form of self-knowledge is neither possible nor desirable. We can live with the new challenges from brain science. But it will require setting aside childlike intuitions and traditional dogmas, and thinking afresh about what makes people better off and worse off.
Steven Pinker on the Human Brainpangea2014-08-08 | Steven Pinker is one of the world's leading authorities on language and the mind. His popular and highly praised books include The Stuff of Thought, The Blank Slate, Words and Rules, How the Mind Works, and The Language Instinct. The recipient of several major awards for his teaching, books, and scientific research, Pinker is Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.
Every evening our eyes tell us that the sun sets, while we know that, in fact, the Earth is turning us away from it. Astronomy taught us centuries ago that common sense is not a reliable guide to reality. Today it is neuroscience that is forcing us to readjust our intuitions. People naturally believe in the Ghost in the Machine: that we have bodies made of matter and spirits made of an ethereal something. Yes, people acknowledge that the brain is involved in mental life. But they still think of it as a pocket PC for the soul, managing information at the behest of a ghostly user.
Modern neuroscience has shown that there is no user. "The soul" is, in fact, the information-processing activity of the brain. New imaging techniques have tied every thought and emotion to neural activity. And any change to the brain—from strokes, drugs, electricity or surgery—will literally change your mind. But this understanding hasn't penetrated the conventional wisdom. We tell people to "use their brains," we speculate about brain transplants (which really should be called body transplants) and we express astonishment that meditation, education and psycho-therapy can actually change the brain. How else could they work?
This resistance is not surprising. In "Descartes' Baby," psychologist Paul Bloom argues that a mind-body distinction is built into the very way we think. Children easily accept stories in which a person changes from a frog to a prince, or leaves the body to go where the wild things are. And though kids know the brain is useful for thinking, they deny that it makes them feel sad or love their siblings.
The disconnect between our common sense and our best science is not an academic curiosity. Neuroscience is putting us in unfamiliar predicaments, and if we continue to think of ourselves as shadowy users of our brains we will be needlessly befuddled. The Prozac revolution provides an example. With antidepressant and anti-anxiety drugs so common, critics wonder whether we're losing the ability to overcome problems through force of will. Many an uncomprehending spouse has asked, "Why don't you just snap out of it?" But depressed people don't have lazy souls. The parts of their brains that could "snap out of it" are not working properly. To depressed people it is objectively obvious that their prospects are hopeless. Tweaking the brain with drugs may sometimes be the best way to jump-start the machinery that we call the will.
Prozac shouldn't be dispensed like mints, of course, but the reason is not that it undermines the will. The reason is that emotional pain, like physical pain, is not always pathological. Anxiety is an impetus to avoid invisible threats, and most of us would never meet a deadline without it. Low mood may help us recalibrate our prospects after a damaging loss. But just as surgeons don't force patients to endure agony to improve their characters, people shouldn't be forced to endure anxiety or depression beyond what's needed to prompt self-examination.
To many, the scariest prospect is medication that can make us better than well by enhancing mood, memory and attention. Such drugs, they say, will undermine striving and sacrifice; they are a kind of cheating, like giving the soul a corked bat. But anything that improves our functioning—from practice and education to a good night's sleep and a double espresso—changes the brain. As long as people are not coerced, it's unclear why we should tolerate every method of brain enrichment but one.
In Galileo's time, the counter-intuitive discovery that the Earth moved around the sun was laden with moral danger. Now it seems obvious that the motion of rock and gas in space has nothing to do with right and wrong. Yet to many people, the discovery that the soul is the activity of the brain is just as fraught, with pernicious implications for everything from criminal responsibility to our image of ourselves as a species. Turning back the clock on the ultimate form of self-knowledge is neither possible nor desirable. We can live with the new challenges from brain science. But it will require setting aside childlike intuitions and traditional dogmas, and thinking afresh about what makes people better off and worse off.
-Steven PinkerBach and Quotespangea2018-01-17 | "There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be." Douglas Adams
"To take into the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be -- Death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the powerlessness of man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity -- to feel these things and know them is to conquer them." Bertrand Russell
"Of all the world's wonders, which is the most wonderful? That no man, though he sees others dying all around him, believes that he himself will die." - Yudhishtara answers Dharma, from "The Mahabharata"
"Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous." "We must cultivate our garden " Voltaire
The illusion that exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. Aleksandr Pushkin
Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
"Beautiful Fatalism" is a phrase from Ernest Hemingway used to describe warriors "who stayed loyal to a doomed cause."
Freud was a hero. He descended to the Underworld and met there stark terrors. He carried with him his theory as a Medusa's head which turned these terrors to stone. psychiatrist R. D. Laing
"...and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending." — Herman Melville (Moby Dick)
"I would know Thee, Unknown Though who grips deep in my soul, wandering through my life like a storm, Thou inconceivable, my kin! I would know Thee, even serve Thee." Nietzsche at twenty years old
"As to gods, I have no way of knowing either that they exist or do not exist, or what they are like." Protagoras ( 5th C. BCE)
"Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation." Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (Persian Sufi Mystic) aka Rumi
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world" Ludwig Wittgenstein
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding of a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) English physicist, mathematician.
"Memento Mori" Remember that you will die in Latin. "Amor Fati" Amor fati is a Latin phrase coined by Nietzsche To Love your Fate.
"The last thing man can admit to himself is that his life-ways are arbitrary: this is one of the reasons that people often show derisive glee and scorn over the 'strange' customs of other lands—it is a defense against the awareness that his own way of life may be just as fundamentally contrived as any other. One culture is always a potential menace to another because it is a living example that life can go on heroically without a value framework totally alien to one's own." Ernest Becker
"She (nature) destroys us--coldly, cruelly, relentlessly, as it seems to us, and possibly through the very things that occasioned our satisfaction. it was precisely because of these dangers with which nature threatens us that we came together and created civilization, which is also, among other things, intended to make our communal life possible. For the principal task of civilization, its actual rasion d' etre, is to defend us against nature." Freud
"If the world shoud break and fall on him, it would strike him fearless." - The Roman Poet Horace
“Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own: he who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today. Be fair or foul, or rain or shine the joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine. Not Heaven itself, upon the past has power, but what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.” Horace
The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. - EO Wilson
"History is a child building a sand-castle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man’s power in the world." Heraclitus
"Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves." Alain de Botton
"We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." George Orwell
"Great is he, who conquers the frightful. Sublime is he, who, while succumbing to it, fears it not." Philosopher Schiller
"The art of living well and the art of dying well are one." Epicurus "I have found power in the mysteries of thought, exaltation in the changing of the Muses; I have been versed in the reasonings of men; but Fate is stronger than anything I have known." -Euripides, Alcestis, 438 B.C.The Epic Stars - ft. Christopher Hitchens, Alex Filippenko, Neil deGrasse Tysonpangea2016-07-11 | Christopher Hitchens, Alex Filippenko Astronomy, Extinction Dinosaurs, Mass Extinction Evolution Universe journey, death of the sunNature’s Beauty and Cruelty in the Artwork of Lauren and Caitlinpangea2016-03-05 | http://laurenmarx.com Lauren Marx Explores Nature’s Beauty and Cruelty in “American Wilderness” by Nastia Voynovskaya http://hifructose.com/2015/05/04/lauren-marx-explores-natures-beauty-and-cruelty-in-american-wilderness
I hope to remind those who view my artwork that we too are animals, embedded in this fragile world even as we poison it. My work alludes to the boundaries that separate humans from animals both physically and metaphysically, and the way in which these boundaries are warped by science, mythology, and religion alike. Like the gods of so many myths Humanity has warped the world into our own image, and it is this often frightening image I hope to reflect in my work. for more information here are a few interviews I’ve done: the Hidden People: http://thehiddenpeople.com/interviews/caitlin-hackett
“In my work I attempt to capture the often volatile human-animal relationship as well as a reflection of my own sorrow over the loss of wild species and wild places.
I am faced with the fact that we live in a planet in decline, where nearly every natural ecosystem in the world is withering to dust. Human kind has created a planet of refugees; animals forced to flee ever farther from the insatiable encroachment of urban development, victims of a war for space which they cannot hope to win. Like the gods of so many myths we humans have warped the world into our own image, and it is this often frightening image I hope to reflect in my work.”The Emperor Julian and the last stand of the old gods (331 - 363)pangea2016-03-05 | Author Lars Brownworth on Julian: http://larsbrownworth.com
(born ad 331/332, Constantinople—died June 26/27, 363, Ctesiphon, Mesopotamia), Roman emperor from ad 361 to 363, nephew of Constantine the Great, and noted scholar and military leader who was proclaimed emperor by his troops. ulian’s freedom as a student had a powerful influence on him and ensured that for the first time in a century the future emperor would be a man of culture. He studied at Pergamum, at Ephesus, and later at Athens. He adopted the cult of the Unconquered Sun.
That his literary talent was considerable is demonstrated in his surviving works, most of which illustrate his deep love of Hellenic culture. Julian had been baptized and raised as a Christian, but, although he outwardly conformed until he was supreme, Christianity in its official guise meant to him the religion of those who had murdered his father, his brother, and many of his relations and, as such, was hardly likely to commend itself to him. He found far more solace in his philosophic speculations. This reaction has sometimes been defended as natural but eccentric. Natural it certainly was, but it is a misinterpretation of the age to imagine that Julian was alone in preferring Hellenism to Christianity. Society, and particularly the educated society in which Julian was at home, was in fact still largely if not predominantly pagan. Even bishops were proud of their Greek culture; no one was proud of the exotic degeneracy and extravagance of the court of Constantius. It is not surprising that Julian’s austerity, chastity, and enthusiasm for the heritage of Greece found a sympathetic response among many of his cousin’s subjects. Julian wrote an attack on Christianity, “Against the Galileans,” that is known today only by fragmentary citation. “The trickery of the Galileans”—his usual term—has nothing divine in it, he argues; it appeals to rustics only, and it is made up of fables and irrational falsehoods. The invasion of Persian territory was always a lure in antiquity and one to which Julian was not immune. Motivated by a desire for military glory and a decision to reassert Rome’s preeminence in the East, he assembled, despite counsels of prudence from Rome and the Levant, the largest Roman army (65,000 strong and backed by a river fleet) ever to head a campaign against Persia. The Persians, aided by the desert, famine, treachery, and the incompetence of the Romans, once again proved themselves superior. During a disastrous retreat from the walls of Ctesiphon, below modern Baghdad, Julian was wounded by a spear thrown “no one knew whence,” which pierced his liver. He died the next night at age 31, having been emperor for 20 months.
“How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.” ― Gore Vidal, Julian
The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World A history of Julian, the grandson of Constantine, and his failed attempt to reverse the Christian tide that swept the Roman Empire
• Portrays the “Apostate” as a poet-philosopher, arguing that had he survived, Christianity would have been checked in its rise
• Details reforms enacted by Julian during his two-year reign that marginalized Christians, effectively limiting their role in the social and political life of the Empire
• Shows how after Julian’s death the Church used paganism to represent evil and opposition to God, a tactic whose traces still linger
The violent death of the emperor Julian (Flavius Claudius Julianus, AD 332-363) on a Persian battlefield has become synonymous with the death of paganism. Vilified throughout history as the “Apostate,” the young philosopher-warrior was the last and arguably the most potent threat to Christianity.
“I have been reading Plotinus all evening. He has the power to sooth me; and I find his sadness curiously comforting. Even when he writes: “Life here with the things of earth is a sinking, a defeat, a failure of the wing.” The wing has indeed failed. One sinks. Defeat is certain. Even as I write these lines, the lamp wick sputters to an end, and the pool of light in which I sit contracts. Soon the room will be dark. One has always feared that death would be like this. But what else is there? With Julian, the light went, and now nothing remains but to let the darkness come, and hope for a new sun and another day, born of time’s mystery and a man’s love of life.” ― Gore Vidal, Julian
“Like the rest of us, Constantius was many men in the body of one.” ― Gore Vidal, JulianRise of the Robots and the future job market - Martin Ford interviewpangea2015-06-07 | http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/books/review/rise-of-the-robots-and-shadow-work.html Martin Ford documents in “Rise of the Robots,” the job-eating maw of technology now threatens even the nimblest and most expensively educated. Lawyers, radiologists and software designers, among others, have seen their work evaporate to India or China. Tasks that would seem to require a distinctively human capacity for nuance are increasingly assigned to algorithms, like the ones currently being introduced to grade essays on college exams. Particularly terrifying to me, computer programs can now write clear, publishable articles, and, as Ford reports, Wired magazine quotes an expert’s prediction that within about a decade 90 percent of news articles will be computer-generated.In his new book, Rise of the Robots, Ford considers the social and economic disruption that is likely to result when educated workers can no longer find employment.
Sir Martin Rees on rise of AI: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/11605785/Astronomer-Royal-Martin-Rees-predicts-the-world-will-be-run-by-computers-soon.html What about other future technologies — computers and robotics, for instance? There is nothing new about machines that can surpass our mental abilities in special areas. Even the pocket calculators of the Seventies could do arithmetic better than us. In the Nineties, IBM’s “Deep Blue” chess-playing computer beat Garry Kasparov, then the world champion. More recently, another IBM computer won a television game show that required wide general knowledge and the ability to respond to questions in the style of crossword clues. We’re witnessing a momentous speed-up in artificial intelligence (AI) – in the power of machines to learn, communicate and interact with us. Computers don’t learn like we do: they use “brute force” methods. They learn to translate from foreign languages by reading multilingual versions of, for example, millions of pages of EU documents (they never get bored). They learn to recognise dogs, cats and human faces by crunching through millions of images — not the way a baby learns. Deep Mind, a London company that Google recently bought for £400 million, created a machine that can figure out the rules of all the old Atari games without being told, and then play them better than humans. It’s still hard for AI to interact with the everyday world. Robots remain clumsy – they can’t tie your shoelaces or cut your toenails. But sensor technology, speech recognition, information searches and so forth are advancing apace. Google’s driverless car has already covered hundreds of thousands of miles. But can it cope with emergencies? For instance, if an obstruction suddenly appears on a busy road, can the robotic “driver” discriminate whether it’s a paper bag, a dog or a child? The likely answer is that it won’t cope as well as a really good driver, but will be better than the average driver — machine errors may occur but not as often as human error. The roads will be safer. But when accidents occur they will create a legal minefield. Who should be held responsible — the “driver”, the owner, or the designer? And what about the military use of autonomous drones? Can they be trusted to seek out a targeted individual and decide whether to deploy their weapon? Who has the moral responsibility then?The Goddess - In Mythology and Historypangea2015-06-07 | http://www.ancient.eu/religion/ A general introduction to the goddess myth in human history. The divine, the feminine, fertility, mother earth. Religious history, paganism, women, religion in antiquity, power and women.
Bona Dea, ( Latin: “Good Goddess”) in Roman religion, deity of fruitfulness, both in the earth and in women. She was identified with various goddesses who had similar functions. The dedication day of her temple on the Aventine was celebrated May 1. Her temple was cared for and attended by women only, and the same was the case at a second celebration, at the beginning of December, in the house of the pontifex maximus, where the pontifex’s wife and the Vestal Virgins ran the ceremony.
Mother Goddesses: In many mythologies there is a supreme goddess, ancient greek Gaia and the Maori goddess Rangi reresent Mother Earth. Bona Dea's main temple was on the Aventine hill in Rome, and admitted only women. Music was played during the ceremony and would drive some women into a frenzy. Bona Dea the good goddess.
Isis inherited power from Ra when she learned his name and she then passed this power to her son Horus.
Athena, also spelled Athene, in Greek religion, the city protectress, goddess of war, handicraft, and practical reason, identified by the Romans with Minerva. She was essentially urban and civilized, the antithesis in many respects of Artemis, goddess of the outdoors. Athena was probably a pre-Hellenic goddess and was later taken over by the Greeks. Yet the Greek economy, unlike that of the Minoans, was largely military, so that Athena, while retaining her earlier domestic functions, became a goddess of war.
She was the daughter of Zeus, produced without a mother, so that she emerged full-grown from his forehead. There was an alternative story that Zeus swallowed Metis, the goddess of counsel, while she was pregnant with Athena, so that Athena finally emerged from Zeus. Being the favourite child of Zeus, she had great power. http://www.goddess-guide.comThe Earth is a very small stage in the Cosmic arenapangea2015-05-15 | Featuring Carl Sagan, Martin Rees, Richard Feynman, Christopher Hitchens, Alex Filippenko, Stephen Hawking
"we make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers" and "We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering." Carl Sagan
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding of a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) English physicist, mathematician.
"What are the lessons to be learned from this journey of the mind [through the universe]? That humans are emotionally fragile, perennially gullible, hopelessly ignorant masters of an insignificantly small speck in the cosmos. Have a nice day." Death By Black Hole, Neil deGrasse Tyson
Dante : “I saw this globe so lost in space that I had to smile at such a sorry show.”
"A general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the god portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy much less of a universe." Carl Sagan
"If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust." (Alain de Botton)
"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." Albert Einstein
The cosmic perspectiveCleopatra - A Lifepangea2015-01-02 | Stacy Schiff interview http://www.stacyschiff.com/index.html Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a son with Caesar and—after his murder—three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since. Cleopatra is known to have been the first in the family of the Ptolemies of Egypt to have learned to speak the local tongue. She is said to have also spoken: Greek (native language), the languages of the Medes, Parthians, Jews, Arabs, Syrians, Trogodytae, and Ethiopians (Plutarch, according to Goldsworthy in Antony and Cleopatra.Cleopatra was the last pharaoh of the Macedonian dynasty that had ruled Egypt since Alexander the Great left his general Ptolemy in charge there in 323 B.C.
Angelina Jolie Cleopatra movie: Rudin told Jolie: "The only thing standing between us and this movie is your learning ancient Egyptian. Could you be ready by January 5?" Jolie, however, wanted to proceed with caution. "I think we have to clean up the script and then enhance. I have crossed out many things and made adjustments," she wrote in an email to Pascal in January. "I would like to strip the things that lead it off track first. We need to be clear and efficient in order to get this done in a decent time. I started to re read the book [2010 bestselling book Cleopatra: A Life, written by Stacy Schiff] and I am talking to philosophy teachers ect." For Jolie, she wanted the focus of the story to be a historically accurate one about Cleopatra herself without Hollywood-style embellishments. In a private email, Pascal wrote to Rudin: "[Angelina] will like it CUZ there is barely any vulnerability left in her character and she now seems responsible for everything that ever happened," but turning the film into a commercial success was also a concern. "We are gonna have to lean on her to make it a love story [with Marc Anthony]," Pascal wrote.American Founders inspired by Classical Greece and Romepangea2014-12-14 | John Adams thought of himself as an American Cicero, the great Roman lawyer and civic leader. George Washington portrayed himself as Cincinnatus, the Roman farmer-turned-general; he made his soldiers at Valley Forge watch his favorite play, Cato, about the Roman patriot who fought against Caesar’s attempt to take over Rome. James Madison looked upon Solon and Lycurgus, two Greek lawgivers, as models for his Constitution-making. Alexander Hamilton regularly and pointedly used pertinent Greek and Roman pseudonyms in publishing pamphlets arguing policy positions — the outstanding case was, of course, his choice of “Publius” for the Federalist Papers; Publius being Publius Valerius Publicola, a founder of the Roman Republic. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, authors of the Federalist Papers, advocating ratification of the new US Constitution, signed themselves jointly as 'Publius', recalling Publius Valerius Poplicola, first consul of the Roman Republic. Universities in that era placed enormous emphasis on reading Latin and Greek authors. Women read classical books, Abigail Adams wrote regular letters to her husband, John Adams, signing herself as Portia, wife of Brutus. The dialogue with the history of Antiquity helped to separate the new republics, the bastions of liberty, from the old feudal and monarchic regimes of Europe. The Lycian League, which brought together twenty-three Greek city-states, was held up as a model of an excellent republic model. Jefferson stated in 1795 on the American experiment that 'we have seen no instance of this since the days of the Roman republic.' "What Athens was in miniature America will be in magnitude. The one was the wonder of the ancient world; the other is becoming the admiration of the present." Thomas Paine, Rights of Man From the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution, the Founding Fathers looked to classical history as a reliable guide to their successful experiment in building a lasting republic.
http://chqdaily.com/2013/07/21/morning-lecture-guest-column-classical-influences-on-the-founders-myth-or-reality Classical training usually began at age eight, whether in a school or at home under the guidance of a private tutor. One remarkable teacher who inculcated his students with a love of the classics was Scotsman Donald Robertson. Many future luminaries were enrolled in his school: James Madison, John Taylor of Caroline, John Tyler and George Rogers Clark, among others. Robertson and teachers like him nourished their charges with a healthy diet of Greek and Latin, and required that they learn to master Virgil, Horace, Justinian, Tacitus, Herodotus, Plutarch, Lucretius and Thucydides. Further along in their education, students were required to translate Cicero’s Orations and Virgil’s Aeneid. Fortunately for the young Founding Fathers, the teachers of the day exercised their students in Greek and Latin, so that their pupils could meet the rigorous entrance requirements of colonial colleges. Those colleges stipulated that entering freshmen be able to read, translate and expound the Greco-Roman classical works. Students were taught lessons in virtue and liberty from the works of Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch, Livy, Sallust, Tacitus and Polybius. Thomas Jefferson’s classmates recalled that he studied at least 15 hours a day and carried his Greek grammar book with him wherever he went. Because of the formidable classical curricula at colonial colleges, the classics became a well from which the Founders drank deeply. In the classics, the Founding Fathers found their heroes and villains, and they also detected warning signs along the road of statecraft on which they would tread. "As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, Oct. 31, 1819Death and Existentialism - Irvin Yalom interviewpangea2014-12-08 | Irvin D. Yalom, M.D., is professor emeritus of psychiatry at Stanford University. He continues his clinical practice and lectures widely in the United States. Existential therapy has been practiced and continues to be practiced in many forms and situations throughout the world. Organized around what Yalom identifies as the four "ultimate concerns of life"—death, freedom, existential isolation, and meaninglessness—the book takes up the meaning of each existential concern and the type of conflict that springs from our confrontation with each. He shows how these concerns are manifested in personality and psychopathology, and how treatment can be helped by our knowledge of them.
Drawing from clinical experience, empirical research , philosophy, and great literature, Yalom has written a broad and comprehensive book. It will provide an intellectual home base for those psychotherapists who have sensed the incompatibility of orthodox theories with their own clinical experience, and it opens new doors for empirical research. The fundamental concerns of therapy and the central issues of human existence are woven together here as never before, with intellectual and clinical results that will surprise and enlighten all readers.Zora Neale Hurston excerpt I have lived in many wayspangea2014-12-08 | "I have given myself the pleasure of sunrises blooming out of oceans, and sunsets drenching heaped-up clouds. I have walked in storms with a crown of clouds about my head and the zig zag lightning playing through my fingers. The gods of the upper air have uncovered their faces to my eyes. I have made friends with trees and vales. I have found out that my real home is in the water, that the earth is only my step-mother. My old man, the Sun, sired me out of the sea."
Zora Neale Hurston
The Sum of Life
"Great is he, who conquers the frightful. Sublime is he, who, while succumbing to it, fears it not." Philosopher Schiller
"The art of living well and the art of dying well are one." Epicurus The Courage to Be and the Courage not to Be. "To take into the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be -- Death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the powerlessness of man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity -- to feel these things and know them is to conquer them." Bertrand Russell
"Freud was a hero. He descended to the Underworld and met there stark terrors. He carried with him his theory as a Medusa's head which turned these terrors to stone." psychiatrist R. D. Laing "A young shepherd I saw, writhing, gagging, in spasms, his face distorted, and a heavy black snake hung out of his mouth. Had I ever seen so much nausea and pale dread on one face? He seemed to have been asleep when the snake crawled into his throat, and there bit itself fast. My hand tore at the snake and tore in vain; it did not tear the snake out of his throat. Then it cried out of me; "Bite! Bite its head off! Bite!" Thus it cried out of me — my dread, my hatred, my nausea, my pity, all that is good and wicked in me cried out of me with a single cry.
The shepherd, however, bit as my cry counseled him; he bit with a good bite. Far away he spewed the head of the snake — and he jumped up. No longer shepherd. no longer human — one changed, radiant, laughing! Never yet on earth has a human being laughed as he laughed! O my brothers, I heard a laughter that was no human laughter; and now a thirst gnaws at me, a longing that never grows still. My longing for this laughter gnaws at me; oh, how do I bear to go on living! And how could I bear to die now!"Pyrrho and Ancient Skepticismpangea2014-12-08 | *credit to The History of philosophy without any gaps by Professor Peter Adamson. Pyrrho was a Greek philosopher from Elis, and founder of the Greek school of skepticism. In his youth he practiced the art of painting, but passed over this for philosophy. He studied the writings of Democritus, became a disciple of Bryson, the son of Stilpo, and later a disciple of Anaxarchus. He took part in the Indian expedition of Alexander the Great, and met with philosophers of the Indus region. Back in Greece he was frustrated with the assertions of the Dogmatists (those who claimed to possess knowledge), and founded a new school in which he taught fallibilism, namely that every object of human knowledge involves uncertainty. Thus, he argued, it is impossible ever to arrive at the knowledge of truth (Diog. Laert, 58). It is related that he acted on his own principles, and carried his skepticism to such an extreme, that his friends were obliged to accompany him wherever he went, so he might not be run over by carriages or fall down precipices. It is likely, though, that these reports were invented by the Dogmatists whom he opposed. He spent a great part of his life in solitude, and was undisturbed by fear, or joy, or grief. He withstood bodily pain, and when in danger showed no sign of apprehension. In disputes he was known for his subtlety. Epicurus, though no friend to skepticism, admired Pyrrho because he recommended and practiced the kind of self-control that fostered tranquillity; this, for Epicurus, was the end of all physical and moral science. Pyrrho was so highly valued by his countrymen that they honored him with the office of chief priest and, out of respect for him, passed a decree by which all philosophers were made immune from taxation. He was an admirer of poets, particularly Homer, and frequently cited passages from his poems. After his death, the Athenians honored his memory with a statue, and a monument to him was erected in his own country.
Pyrrho left no writings, and we owe our knowledge of his thoughts to his disciple Timon of Phlius. His philosophy, in common with all post-Aristotelian systems, is purely practical in its outlook. Skepticism is not posited on account of its speculative interest, but only because Pyrrho sees in it the road to happiness, and the escape from the calamities of life. The proper course of the sage, said Pyrrho, is to ask himself three questions. Firstly we must ask what things are and how they are constituted. Secondly, we ask how we are related to these things. Thirdly, we ask what ought to be our attitude towards them. As to what things are, we can only answer that we know nothing. We only know how things appear to us, but of their inner substance we are ignorant. The same thing appears differently to different people, and therefore it is impossible to know which opinion is right. The diversity of opinion among the wise, as well as among the vulgar, proves this. To every assertion the contradictory assertion can be opposed with equally good grounds, and whatever my opinion, the contrary opinion is believed by somebody else who is quite as clever and competent to judge as I am. Opinion we may have, but certainty and knowledge are impossible. Hence our attitude to things (the third question), ought to be complete suspense of judgment. We can be certain of nothing, not even of the most trivial assertions. Therefore we ought never to make any positive statements on any subject. And the Pyrrhonists were careful to import an element of doubt even into the most trifling assertions which they might make in the course of their daily life. They did not say, "it is so," but "it seems so," or "it appears so to me." Every observation would be prefixed with a "perhaps," or "it may be." http://www.iep.utm.edu/pyrrho/The Renaissance - The coals from Antiquity helped light the Modern flamepangea2014-12-07 | History teacher Lars Brownworth: “There was something mysterious about the Byzantine empire to me, this sense that it was lost history,” “America is very much a Protestant country, and we really don’t feel like we’re connected to the Eastern world, that we don’t share values. But it’s not a coincidence that the Renaissance kicks off after the fall of Constantinople. A lot of those Greek-speaking intellectuals fled to the West, bringing their knowledge of the classics. That knowledge had been kept alive with the Byzantines.”
At the center of The Swerve is the forgotten story of a 15th-century Italian book hunter named Poggio Bracciolini, who set out on several expeditions throughout monasteries on the Continent and England, hoping to discover some lost classical texts. Poggio served as scribe and secretary in the Papal Court, a place he cynically thought of as, "The Lie Factory." But his passion was for books, especially for the ancient authors, copies of whose books, if they survived at all, had been squirreled away in monasteries.— the philosopher George Santayana would call this “the greatest thought that mankind has ever hit upon” — that all matter, including human beings, is made up of atoms that are in eternal and swerving motion.
Yeats called one passage in “On the Nature of Things” “the finest description of sexual intercourse ever written,” which is no mean praise. Montaigne’s essays contain more than 100 quotations from Lucretius’ poem.
Lucretius speaks across the millenniums because he offers “the power to stare down what had once seemed so menacing,” Mr. Greenblatt writes. Human beings, as transitory as everything else, should jettison their fears and “embrace the beauty and pleasure of the world.”
Lucretius played down the beauty of his own poetry, Mr. Greenblatt observes, comparing his verses “to honey smeared around the lip of a cup containing medicine that a sick man might otherwise refuse to drink.”One of the startling pieces of information Greenblatt shares with the lay reader is just how few classical works managed to crawl into the Middle Ages. Greenblatt tells us that: "Apart from [some] charred papyrus fragments recovered from [a villa near Pompeii], there are no surviving contemporary manuscripts from the ancient Greek and Roman world. Everything that has reached us is a copy, most often very far removed in time, place and culture from the original. And these copies represent only a small portion of the works even of the most celebrated writers of antiquity. [For instance,] [o]f Aeschylus' 80 or 90 plays and the roughly 120 by Sophocles, only seven each have survived." One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions. One of the ancients whose works seemed to have completely disappeared in what Greenblatt calls the "great vanishing" was the Roman poet Lucretius, whose name was mentioned in some other classical works that did survive. On a fateful January day in 1417, the intrepid Poggio found himself in the library of a German monastery and reached up for a manuscript. It turned out to be the only surviving copy of Lucretius's poem, "On the Nature of Things" — a rich, dangerous, mind-blowing poem written around 50 B.C., whose ideas, Greenblatt says, would jumpstart the Renaissance and lay the groundwork for Modernity.Spillover - Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemicpangea2014-10-16 | Interview with Author David Quammen. Ebola, SARS, Hendra, AIDS, and countless other deadly viruses all have one thing in common: the bugs that transmit these diseases all originate in wild animals and pass to humans by a process called spillover. The emergence of strange new diseases is a frightening problem that seems to be getting worse. In this age of speedy travel, it threatens a worldwide pandemic. We hear news reports of Ebola, SARS, AIDS, and something called Hendra killing horses and people in Australia—but those reports miss the big truth that such phenomena are part of a single pattern. The bugs that transmit these diseases share one thing: they originate in wild animals and pass to humans by a process called spillover. David Quammen tracks this subject around the world. He recounts adventures in the field—netting bats in China, trapping monkeys in Bangladesh, stalking gorillas in the Congo—with the world’s leading disease scientists. In Spillover Quammen takes the reader along on this astonishing quest to learn how, where from, and why these diseases emerge, and he asks the terrifying question: What might the next big one be?The Viral Storm - The Dawn of a New Pandemic Agepangea2014-10-16 | Interview with Stanford biologist Nathan Wolfe. Why does the threat of pandemics seem to be growing, as with recent bird and swine flu outbreaks? With the doggedness of a medical detective, Stanford biologist Wolfe attempts in this engrossing and fast-paced chronicle of medical exploration and discovery to uncover how pandemics start, why we are now plagued by them, and what we can do to prevent them. Viruses, Wolfe points out, are ubiquitous and not all harmful; marine viruses, for example, help maintain environmental equilibrium by killing certain bacteria. Wolfe traces how human evolution has made us more vulnerable to dangerous viruses, arguing forcefully that the domestication of animals provided close contact with a small set of animals, allowing their microbes to cross over into humans and spread widely through increasingly settled and sedentary populations. He reiterates that preventing the spread of various microbes is as simple as practicing good hygiene, but he observes that such practices are impossible for much of the developing world. So he and his institute, the Global Viral Foundation, are now developing strategies such as monitoring the butchering of wild game (through which microbes could jump into humans) to better forecast and to prevent large viral outbreaks. ur ape ancestors picked up viruses from insect bites and from the animals they hunted, giving them a rich microbial repertoire. That would diminish, not only because the grasslands were less fertile ground, but because the pioneer groups were small. This evolutionary "bottleneck" resulted in the loss of some pathogens (the bugs either killed their hosts or the survivors became immune, leaving no one to infect). The advent of cooking would further reduce the repertoire. But then came animal domestication and farming, upping the repertoire as people in settled communities became targets for new microbe sources. Fast-forward to today's hugely interconnected urbanized world and, you have the ingredients for a pandemic: a worldwide outbreak of disease spread from human to human. That happened with HIV, the result of two monkey viruses that combined in a chimpanzee, which was later eaten by hunters.A Planet of Viruses - Carl Zimmerpangea2014-10-16 | Interview with science writer Carl Zimmer. Viruses are the smallest living things known to science, and yet they hold the entire planet in their sway. We’re most familiar with the viruses that give us colds or the flu, but viruses also cause a vast range of other diseases, including one disorder that makes people sprout branch-like growths as if they were trees. Viruses have been a part of our lives for so long, in fact, that we are actually part virus: the human genome contains more DNA from viruses than our own genes. Meanwhile, scientists are discovering viruses everywhere they look: in the soil, in the ocean, even in deep caves miles underground.
A Planet of Viruses pulls back the veil on this hidden world. It presents the latest research on how viruses hold sway over our lives and our biosphere, how viruses helped give rise to the first life-forms, how viruses are producing new diseases, how we can harness viruses for our own ends, and how viruses will continue to control our fate for years to come.The Weird Lives of Viruses - Carl Zimmerpangea2014-10-16 | In his book A Planet of Viruses, science writer Carl Zimmer catalogs a menagerie of viruses, from the bacteriophages that prey on ocean-dwelling microbes to those which infect humans, such as smallpox, HIV. Did viruses help make us human? As weird as it sounds, the question is actually a reasonable one to ask. And now scientists have offered some evidence that the answer may be yes.
If you’re sick right now with the flu or a cold, the viruses infecting you are just passing through. They invade your cells and make new copies of themselves, which burst forth and infect other cells. Eventually your immune system will wipe them out, but there’s a fair chance some of them may escape and infect someone else.
But sometimes viruses can merge into our genomes. Some viruses, for example, hijack our cells by inserting its genes into our own DNA. If they happen to slip into the genome of an egg, they can potentially get a new lease on life. If the egg is fertilized and grows into an embryo, the new cells will also contain the virus’s DNA. And when that embryo becomes an adult, the virus has a chance to move into the next generation.
These so-called endogenous retroviruses are sometimes quite dangerous. Koalas, for example, are suffering from a devastating epidemic of them. The viruses are spreading both on their own from koala to koala and from parents to offspring. As the viruses invade new koala cells, they sometimes wreak havoc on their host’s DNA. If a virus inserts itself in the wrong place in a koala cell, it may disrupt its host’s genes. The infected cell may start to grow madly, and give rise to cancer.
If the koalas manage to survive this outbreak, chances are that the virus will become harmless. Their immune systems will stop their spread from one host to another, leaving only the viruses in their own genomes. Over the generations, mutations will erode their DNA. They will lose the ability to break out of their host cell. They will still make copies of their genes, but those copies will only get reinserted back into their host’s genome. But eventually they will lose even this feeble ability to replicate.
We know this is the likely future of the koala retroviruses, because we can see it in ourselves. Viruses invaded the genomes of our ancestors several times over the past 50 million years or so, and their viral signature is still visible in our DNA. In fact, we share many of the same stretches of virus DNA with apes and monkeys. Today we carry half a million of these viral fossils, which make up eight percent of the human genome.The race to create the best Antiviral Drugs - Carl Zimmerpangea2014-10-16 | Interview with science writer Carl Zimmer. If you've ever had a bacterial infection like staph or strep throat, your doctor may have prescribed penicillin. But if you've had the flu or a common cold virus, penicillin won't work. That's because antibacterials only kill bacteria, and both the flu and the common cold are viruses. So for illnesses like the flu, doctors prescribe antiviral drugs, which target the mechanisms that viruses use to reproduce.
"For example, there are antivirals for the flu that interfere with the virus as it tries to get out of its host cell," says science writer Carl Zimmer. "So this molecule latches on to that particular protein that the virus uses to escape, and interferes with it so that the virus is trapped inside."
Zimmer's latest piece for Wired magazine profiles the scientists who are developing antiviral medications, and examines the new ways medicine is working to attack viruses. "There's this whole ecosystem of interactions going on inside our own bodies that we do not understand — barely at all," he says. "Scientists are just starting to figure it out with very big projects where they're sequencing all the genes these microbes have. But they're just at the beginning of understanding it."
Did viruses help make us human? As weird as it sounds, the question is actually a reasonable one to ask. And now scientists have offered some evidence that the answer may be yes.
If you’re sick right now with the flu or a cold, the viruses infecting you are just passing through. They invade your cells and make new copies of themselves, which burst forth and infect other cells. Eventually your immune system will wipe them out, but there’s a fair chance some of them may escape and infect someone else.
But sometimes viruses can merge into our genomes. Some viruses, for example, hijack our cells by inserting its genes into our own DNA. If they happen to slip into the genome of an egg, they can potentially get a new lease on life. If the egg is fertilized and grows into an embryo, the new cells will also contain the virus’s DNA. And when that embryo becomes an adult, the virus has a chance to move into the next generation.
These so-called endogenous retroviruses are sometimes quite dangerous. Koalas, for example, are suffering from a devastating epidemic of them. The viruses are spreading both on their own from koala to koala and from parents to offspring. As the viruses invade new koala cells, they sometimes wreak havoc on their host’s DNA. If a virus inserts itself in the wrong place in a koala cell, it may disrupt its host’s genes. The infected cell may start to grow madly, and give rise to cancer.
If the koalas manage to survive this outbreak, chances are that the virus will become harmless. Their immune systems will stop their spread from one host to another, leaving only the viruses in their own genomes. Over the generations, mutations will erode their DNA. They will lose the ability to break out of their host cell. They will still make copies of their genes, but those copies will only get reinserted back into their host’s genome. But eventually they will lose even this feeble ability to replicate.
We know this is the likely future of the koala retroviruses, because we can see it in ourselves. Viruses invaded the genomes of our ancestors several times over the past 50 million years or so, and their viral signature is still visible in our DNA. In fact, we share many of the same stretches of virus DNA with apes and monkeys. Today we carry half a million of these viral fossils, which make up eight percent of the human genome.Deadly Companions - How Microbes Shaped Our Historypangea2014-10-14 | Professor Dorothy Crawford's book gives us historical biographies of microbes that have caused human disease on a grand scale: bubonic plague and the Black Death, cholera, HIV, malaria, severe acute respiratory syndrome, smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, typhus and yellow fever are her major villains. Deadly Companions reveals how closely microbes have evolved with us over the millennia, shaping human civilization through infection, disease, and deadly pandemic. Beginning with a dramatic account of the SARS pandemic at the start of the 21st century, Dorothy Crawford takes us back in time to follow the interlinked history of microbes and humanity, offering an up-to-date look at ancient plagues and epidemics, and identifying key changes in the way humans have lived--such as our move from hunter-gatherer to farmer to city-dweller--which made us ever more vulnerable to microbe attack. Showing that how we live our lives today--with increased crowding and air travel--puts us once again at risk, Crawford asks whether we might ever conquer microbes completely. Among the possible answers, one thing becomes clear: that for generations to come, our deadly companions will continue to influence our lives like ebola.
Dorothy H. Crawford has been Assistant Principal for Public Understanding of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. She is author of the book, VIRUS HUNT . Her previous books include The Invisible Enemy, Deadly Companions, and Viruses: A Very Short Introduction.Into the Silent Landpangea2014-08-11 | Into the Silent Land is a collection of case studies and short tutorials on neuropsychology, which is the science of analyzing the relationship between personality, performance, and the anatomical and physiological structure of the brain. Fusing classic cases of neuropsychology with the author's own case studies, personal vignettes, philosophical debate, and thought provoking riffs and meditations on the nature of neurological impairments and dysfunctions.David Linden - Brain Evolution and Mating Behaviorpangea2014-08-11 | Human sexual and social behavior shares some similaries with that of rodents, but has some important differences as well. It shows much greater variability and individuality, for example, and is less closely tied to the olfactory system. At present, it is tempting to speculate that those of us with cheatin' hearts might have differences in brain dopamine, vasopressin, or oxytocin signaling when compared to our more faithful friends who have adopted the prairie vole lifestyle.” ― David J. Linden, The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good
As he did in his award-winning book The Accidental Mind, David J. Linden—highly regarded neuroscientist, professor, and writer—weaves empirical science with entertaining anecdotes to explain how the gamut of behaviors that give us a buzz actually operates. The Compass of Pleasure makes clear why drugs like nicotine and heroin are addictive while LSD is not, how fast food restaurants ensure that diners will eat more, why some people cannot resist the appeal of a new sexual encounter, and much more. Provocative and illuminating, this is a radically new and thorough look at the desires that define us.Robert Sapolsky - Are Humans Just Another Primatepangea2014-08-11 | Robert M. Sapolsky is the author of several works of nonfiction, including A Primate's Memoir, The Trouble with Testosterone, and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. He is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant. The human animal in all its fascinating quirks of nature is showcased in this thoughtful and entertaining essay collection from America's most beloved neurobiologist/primatologist. In these essays -- updated for this volume -- Robert M. Sapolsky once again applies his curiosity, compassion, and generous insight into the human condition to make a case for the science of behavioral biology that tells us who we are, why we are, and how we are. The first section, "Genes and Who We Are," addresses the physiology of genes, featuring a dissertation on "The 50 Most Beautiful People in the World" and tackling the vital question: How did they wind up on the list? Another essay explains the invisible genetic warfare that takes place between men and women as they conceive a baby and that continues as the fetus develops. As Sapolsky says, "Warning: this essay does not make pleasant wedding-night reading." The second section, "Our Bodies and Who We Are," focuses on our physical natures and dwells on such diverse topics as why dreams are in fact dreamlike, why we are sexually attracted to one another, and why Alzheimer's disease tends to be a postmenopausal phenomenon. As Sapolsky writes, "Sometimes, all you need to do is think a thought and you change the functioning of virtually every cell in your body." In the third section, "Society and Who We Are," Sapolsky takes his interdisciplinary curiosity out into the wilds of civilization and poses such interesting questions as: When and why do our preferences in food become fixed? Why do desert cultures tend to be monotheistic and sexually repressed, whereas rainforest cultures tend to be sexually relaxed and polytheistic? Why do different cultures think differently about dead bodies? "We are shaped by the sort of society in which we live," Sapolsky tells us, "and we would not be the same person if we had grown up elsewhere." In each of these investigations, we see a brilliant mind synthesizing his and others' research in a thoughtful, engaging, and witty voice that reveals the enormous complexity of simply being human. Charming and erudite in equal measure, this collection will appeal to the inner monkey in all of us.The Island of Knowledge - The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaningpangea2014-08-10 | http://www.npr.org/books/authors/163981307/marcelo-gleiser
Author Marcelo Gleiser: Last week, I came across George Johnson's piece for The New York Times, "Beyond Energy, Matter, Time and Space," where he writes, in his usually engaging style, about two recent books with opposite viewpoints concerning what we can and cannot know of the world.
On the one hand, we find philosopher Thomas Nagel, and the arguments from his 2012 book Mind and Cosmos. According to Nagel, simple materialism, as we understand it today, is insufficient to make sense of some of the most complex natural phenomena, life included. He proposes an extension of current ideas, still within the material, but into yet unknown modes of thinking.
On the other, we have the überplatonism of MIT physicist Max Tegmark, as explained in his book Our Mathematical Universe. According to Tegmark, math is not just the tool we invent to describe both physical reality and pure rational constructions, but the very essence of nature.
Johnson's concluding paragraph resonates strongly with my own book The Island of Knowledge. The main point is that it is naïve to believe we can have such a thing as complete knowledge of nature. There are two essential reasons for this belief.
The first is simply that to make models of nature we need data. This data comes from tools of all kinds, from microscopes and particle detectors to telescopes and mass spectrometers. Any tool has limits of precision and range. Hence, we are always partially myopic to what goes on. Tools can and will improve. But some shortsightedness will always be unavoidable.
The second reason is that nature itself operates within certain limits: the speed of light and the finite age of the universe delimit how far we can see in space and limit causal relationships; quantum uncertainties delimit what we can say about the position and velocity of submicroscopic objects, and imply in nonlocal correlations through entanglement; math itself has its limits, as Kurt Gödel explores in his incompleteness theorems. The same is true with computers, from Alan Turing's undecidability theorem.
So, the image of an island captures our struggle to make sense of things, surrounded by an ocean of the unknown. As the island grows, so do the shores of our ignorance: as we learn more about the world we are able to ask questions we couldn't have anticipated before.
To know it all we would need to know all questions. And that, of course, is clearly impossible.
Unanswerable questions invoke a feeling of humility, of how science is, in essence, an ongoing mosaic of ideas, a self-correcting narrative of what we can gather of physical reality. This is far from a defeatist view; in fact, it is liberating. What could be more exciting for us to realize that knowledge is an endless frontier?Giordano Bruno - Philosopher / Hereticpangea2014-08-10 | Interview with Ingrid Rowland author of Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic. (starts at 5 min mark)
Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) is one of the great figures of early modern Europe, and one of the least understood. Ingrid D. Rowland’s biography establishes him once and for all as a peer of Erasmus, Shakespeare, and Galileo—a thinker whose vision of the world prefigures ours.
Writing with great verve and erudition, Rowland traces Bruno’s wanderings through a sixteenth-century Europe where every certainty of religion and philosophy has been called into question, and reveals how he valiantly defended his ideas to the very end, when he was burned at the stake as a heretic on Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori.The Universe Within - Neil Shubin interviewpangea2014-08-10 | In The Universe Within, Neil Shubin reveals the connection between the evolution of the cosmos and the evolution of the human body.
Just as the history of the earth is written in the rocks, so too is the universe’s 14-billion-year history written in the human body. Starting at the smallest level, with our very molecular composition, Shubin explores the question of why we are the way we are, tracing the formation of the planets, the moon, and the globe of Earth through the development of the organs, cells, and genes that make up human life.The Gap - The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animalspangea2014-08-10 | Thomas Suddendorf author of The Gap. There exists an undeniable chasm between the capacities of humans and those of animals. Our minds have spawned civilizations and technologies that have changed the face of the Earth, whereas even our closest animal relatives sit unobtrusively in their dwindling habitats. Yet despite longstanding debates, the nature of this apparent gap has remained unclear. What exactly is the difference between our minds and theirs?
In The Gap, psychologist Thomas Suddendorf provides a definitive account of the mental qualities that separate humans from other animals, as well as how these differences arose. Drawing on two decades of research on apes, children, and human evolution, he surveys the abilities most often cited as uniquely human—language, intelligence, morality, culture, theory of mind, and mental time travel—and finds that two traits account for most of the ways in which our minds appear so distinct: Namely, our open-ended ability to imagine and reflect on scenarios, and our insatiable drive to link our minds together. These two traits explain how our species was able to amplify qualities that we inherited in parallel with our animal counterparts; transforming animal communication into language, memory into mental time travel, sociality into mind reading, problem solving into abstract reasoning, traditions into culture, and empathy into morality.
Suddendorf concludes with the provocative suggestion that our unrivalled status may be our own creation—and that the gap is growing wider not so much because we are becoming smarter but because we are killing off our closest intelligent animal relatives.
Weaving together the latest findings in animal behavior, child development, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience, this book will change the way we think about our place in nature. A major argument for reconsidering what makes us human, The Gap is essential reading for anyone interested in our evolutionary origins and our relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom.The Cosmic Cocktailpangea2014-08-10 | Katherine Freese is the author of The Cosmic Cocktail. She is one of the world’s leading researchers into the mystery of dark matter.
The ordinary atoms that make up the known universe—from our bodies and the air we breathe to the planets and stars—constitute only 5 percent of all matter and energy in the cosmos. The rest is known as dark matter and dark energy, because their precise identities are unknown. The Cosmic Cocktail is the inside story of the epic quest to solve one of the most compelling enigmas of modern science—what is the universe made of?—told by one of today’s foremost pioneers in the study of dark matter.
Blending cutting-edge science with her own behind-the-scenes insights as a leading researcher in the field, acclaimed theoretical physicist Katherine Freese recounts the hunt for dark matter, from the discoveries of visionary scientists like Fritz Zwicky—the Swiss astronomer who coined the term “dark matter” in 1933—to the deluge of data today from underground laboratories, satellites in space, and the Large Hadron Collider. Theorists contend that dark matter consists of fundamental particles known as WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. Billions of them pass through our bodies every second without us even realizing it, yet their gravitational pull is capable of whirling stars and gas at breakneck speeds around the centers of galaxies, and bending light from distant bright objects. Freese describes the larger-than-life characters and clashing personalities behind the race to identify these elusive particles.
Many cosmologists believe we are on the verge of solving the mystery. The Cosmic Cocktail provides the foundation needed to fully fathom this epochal moment in humankind’s quest to understand the universe.
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10196.htmlMoral Tribes - Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Thempangea2014-08-10 | Joshua Greene author of Moral Tribes. Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us) and for fighting off everyone else (Them). But modern times have forced the world’s tribes into a shared space, resulting in epic clashes of values along with unprecedented opportunities. As the world shrinks, the moral lines that divide us become more salient and more puzzling. We fight over everything from tax codes to gay marriage to global warming, and we wonder where, if at all, we can find our common ground.
A grand synthesis of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, Moral Tribes reveals the underlying causes of modern conflict and lights the way forward. Greene compares the human brain to a dual-mode camera, with point-and-shoot automatic settings (“portrait,” “landscape”) as well as a manual mode. Our point-and-shoot settings are our emotions—efficient, automated programs honed by evolution, culture, and personal experience. The brain’s manual mode is its capacity for deliberate reasoning, which makes our thinking flexible. Point-and-shoot emotions make us social animals, turning Me into Us. But they also make us tribal animals, turning Us against Them. Our tribal emotions make us fight—sometimes with bombs, sometimes with words—often with life-and-death stakes.
An award-winning teacher and scientist, Greene directs Harvard University’s Moral Cognition Lab, which uses cutting-edge neuroscience and cognitive techniques to understand how people really make moral decisions. Combining insights from the lab with lessons from decades of social science and centuries of philosophy, the great question of Moral Tribes is this: How can we get along with Them when what they want feels so wrong to Us?
Ultimately, Greene offers a set of maxims for navigating the modern moral terrain, a practical road map for solving problems and living better lives. Moral Tribes shows us when to trust our instincts, when to reason, and how the right kind of reasoning can move us forward.
A major achievement from a rising star in a new scientific field, Moral Tribes will refashion your deepest beliefs about how moral thinking works and how it can work better.Dying Every Day - Seneca at the court of Neropangea2014-08-08 | James Romm on Seneca at the court of Nero. Seneca, we must remember, lived through the horrors as well as the glories of antiquity, when bullies and psychopaths held both the living of your life and the manner of your dying in their hands. Whereas Socrates had only once been crucially involved in the political apparatus of fifth-century-B.C. Athens, Seneca was there at Rome’s dark heart. So did he detest himself toward the end of his life? Did he feel his mind and morals were mildewed by the miasma of Nero’s, and Rome’s, mania? He certainly favored a Stoical solution. In his “De Ira” Seneca writes: “You ask what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body.”
It is easy to be seduced by the stellar lineup of characters who graze Seneca’s life, particularly Nero — that autocratic, crazed, incestuous, debt-ridden dictator — dead at 30, but a man who had ruled a fifth of the world’s population for half his short life. From the first sentence it is clear that this book is going to be a pacey, breezy ride. Arguably there could be an iota less narrative brio: The breathless enthusiasm to fit all in can occasionally result in inconsistencies and an overreliance on ancient historical sources as hard fact. But when there is analysis, it brings real clarity. Indeed there are moments of brilliance. The philosophical torment of the later years and the drama of Seneca’s tripartite death once Nero turns against him (vein opening, hemlock draft and then asphyxiation in a hot bath) are dealt with masterfully.
Romm reminds us that we need to care about Seneca — he is a touchstone for the modern world. Christopher Columbus cherished his works and quoted his dream of “new worlds.” Seneca kick-started our tradition of premiers’ employing professional speechwriters. Above all, he embodies the central conflict of human life: Can we be good while engaging with the imperfect world around us? That is one of the questions Romm leaves open.
“It is the mind that makes us rich,” Seneca once wrote to his mother. Is it possible that the answer to the Seneca enigma may yet turn up, in his own wily words, on a long-lost papyrus or inscribed fragment? Alternatively, the secrets of Seneca’s stellar, flawed, all too human mind may stay where he took them, in the rich Italian earth and a premature grave. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/books/review/dying-every-day-by-james-romm.html?_r=0The Swerve - How the World became Modernpangea2014-08-08 | One of the startling pieces of information Greenblatt shares with the lay reader is just how few classical works managed to crawl into the Middle Ages. Greenblatt tells us that: "Apart from [some] charred papyrus fragments recovered from [a villa near Pompeii], there are no surviving contemporary manuscripts from the ancient Greek and Roman world. Everything that has reached us is a copy, most often very far removed in time, place and culture from the original. And these copies represent only a small portion of the works even of the most celebrated writers of antiquity. [For instance,] [o]f Aeschylus' 80 or 90 plays and the roughly 120 by Sophocles, only seven each have survived." One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions. One of the ancients whose works seemed to have completely disappeared in what Greenblatt calls the "great vanishing" was the Roman poet Lucretius, whose name was mentioned in some other classical works that did survive. On a fateful January day in 1417, the intrepid Poggio found himself in the library of a German monastery and reached up for a manuscript. It turned out to be the only surviving copy of Lucretius's poem, "On the Nature of Things" — a rich, dangerous, mind-blowing poem written around 50 B.C., whose ideas, Greenblatt says, would jumpstart the Renaissance and lay the groundwork for Modernity.Baruch Spinoza - Antonio Damasio and Rebecca Goldsteinpangea2014-08-08 | In 1656, Amsterdam’s Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza, and, at the age of twenty–three, he became the most famous heretic in Judaism. He was already germinating a secularist challenge to religion that would be as radical as it was original. He went on to produce one of the most ambitious systems in the history of Western philosophy, so ahead of its time that scientists today, from string theorists to neurobiologists, count themselves among Spinoza’s progeny.
In Betraying Spinoza, Rebecca Goldstein sets out to rediscover the flesh-and-blood man often hidden beneath the veneer of rigorous rationality, and to crack the mystery of the breach between the philosopher and his Jewish past. Goldstein argues that the trauma of the Inquisition’ s persecution of its forced Jewish converts plays itself out in Spinoza’s philosophy. The excommunicated Spinoza, no less than his excommunicators, was responding to Europe’ s first experiment with racial anti-Semitism.
Here is a Spinoza both hauntingly emblematic and deeply human, both heretic and hero—a surprisingly contemporary figure ripe for our own uncertain age. Contemporaries called him "Satan incarnate" and "the most impious atheist who ever lived upon face of the earth." But he is now revered as arguably the greatest philosopher since Plato, as the political theorist who first enunciated the general principles for a secular democratic society, and in many ways a modern saint. Baruch, later Benedict, de Spinoza (1632-77) devoted his adult life to thinking about the biggest questions of all: the nature of God and the universe, the function of religion, man's elusive quest for happiness, the ideals of government, how we should conduct our lives. His own was one of absolute simplicity -- a rented room, a little gruel for supper, an occasional pipe of tobacco, most of it paid for by his small earnings as a lens-maker. But, as the poet Heinrich Heine said, "All our modern philosophers . . . see through the glasses which Baruch Spinoza ground." Part of Spinoza's prescription for true happiness may sound familiar. The ancient Greeks advocated a stoic indifference to the world's ills; St. Augustine confessed that our hearts are restless until they rest in God; Buddhists believe that we must free ourselves from the wheel of desire to find spiritual beatitude. Unlike these austere systems, however, Spinoza's doesn't reject the body or the delights of the world: "It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another. For the human body is composed of a great many parts of different natures, which constantly require new and varied nourishment." And we should strive to be cheerful too: "Why is it more proper to relieve our hunger and thirst than to rid ourselves of melancholy?"Natures Nether Regions - evolutionary biologist Menno Schilthuizenpangea2014-08-08 | Menno Schilthuizen invites readers to join him as he uncovers the ways the shapes and functions of genitalia have been molded by complex Darwinian struggles: penises that have lost their spines but evolved appendages to displace sperm; female orgasms that select or reject semen from males, in turn subtly modifying the females’ genital shape. We learn why spiders masturbate into miniature webs, discover she dungflies that store sperm from attractive males in their bellies, and see how, when it comes to outlandish appendages and bizarre behaviors, humans are downright boring. What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us About Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves
Nature’s Nether Regions joyfully demonstrates that the more we learn about the multiform private parts of animals, the more we understand our own unique place in the great diversity of life.Natures Godpangea2014-08-08 | The erudite Thomas Jefferson, the wily and elusive Ben Franklin, and the under appreciated Thomas Paine, but also Ethan Allen, the hero of the Green Mountain Boys, and Thomas Young, the forgotten Founder who kicked off the Boston Tea Party—these radicals who founded America set their sights on a revolution of the mind. Derided as “infidels” and “atheists” in their own time, they wanted to liberate us not just from one king but from the tyranny of supernatural religion.
The ideas that inspired them were neither British nor Christian but largely ancient, pagan, and continental: the fecund universe of the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, the potent (but nontranscendent) natural divinity of the Dutch heretic Benedict de Spinoza. Drawing deeply on the study of European philosophy, Matthew Stewart pursues a genealogy of the philosophical ideas from which America’s revolutionaries drew their inspiration, all scrupulously researched and documented and enlivened with storytelling of the highest order. Along the way, he uncovers the true meanings of “Nature’s God,” “self-evident,” and many other phrases crucial to our understanding of the American experiment but now widely misunderstood.
Stewart’s lucid and passionate investigation surprises, challenges, enlightens, and entertains at every turn, as it spins a true tale and a persuasive, exhilarating argument about the founding principles of American government and the sources of our success in science, medicine, and the arts.Incomplete Nature - How Mind Emerged from Matterpangea2014-08-08 | As scientists study the minutiae of subatomic particles, neural connections, and molecular compounds, their attempts at a “theory of everything” harbor a glaring omission: they still cannot explain us, the thoughts and perceptions that truly make us what we are. A masterwork that brings together science and philosophy, Incomplete Nature offers a revolutionary, captivating account of how life and consciousness emerged, revealing how our desires, feelings, and intentions can be understood in terms of the physical world. As physicists work toward completing a theory of the universe and biologists unravel the molecular complexity of life, a glaring incompleteness in this scientific vision becomes apparent. The "Theory of Everything" that appears to be emerging includes everything but us: the feelings, meanings, consciousness, and purposes that make us (and many of our animal cousins) what we are. These most immediate and incontrovertible phenomena are left unexplained by the natural sciences because they lack the physical properties—such as mass, momentum, charge, and location—that are assumed to be necessary for something to have physical consequences in the world. This is an unacceptable omission. We need a "theory of everything" that does not leave it absurd that we exist.
Incomplete Nature begins by accepting what other theories try to deny: that, although mental contents do indeed lack these material-energetic properties, they are still entirely products of physical processes and have an unprecedented kind of causal power that is unlike anything that physics and chemistry alone have so far explained. Paradoxically, it is the intrinsic incompleteness of these semiotic and teleological phenomena that is the source of their unique form of physical influence in the world. Incomplete Nature meticulously traces the emergence of this special causal capacity from simple thermodynamics to self-organizing dynamics to living and mental dynamics, and it demonstrates how specific absences (or constraints) play the critical causal role in the organization of physical processes that generate these properties.Einsteins Godpangea2014-08-08 | Albert Einstein did not believe in a personal God. And his famous quip that "God does not play dice with the universe" was a statement about quantum physics, not a statement of faith. But he did leave behind a fascinating, largely forgotten legacy of musings and writings-some serious, some whimsical-about the relationship between science and religion and his own inquisitive reverence for the "order deeply hidden behind everything". Einstein's self-described "cosmic religious sense" is intriguingly compatible with twenty-first-century sensibilities. And it is the starting point for Einstein's God.
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish." — Albert Einstein, letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, 1/3/1954
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms." — Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born American theoretical physicist, quoted in The New York Times obituary, April 19, 1955
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." — Albert Einstein, 1954, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side
"I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him." — Albert Einstein, letter to Edgar Meyer, 1/2/1915Ghost on the Throne - The Death of Alexander the Greatpangea2014-08-08 | Alexander the Great, perhaps the most commanding leader in history, united his empire and his army by the titanic force of his will. His death at the age of thirty-two spelled the end of that unity.
The story of Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire is known to many readers, but the dramatic and consequential saga of the empire’s collapse remains virtually untold. It is a tale of loss that begins with the greatest loss of all, the death of the Macedonian king who had held the empire together.Natures God - The Heretical Origins of the American Republicpangea2014-08-08 | Matthew Stewart's book Nature's God. Where did the ideas come from that became the cornerstone of American democracy? Not only the erudite Thomas Jefferson, the wily and elusive Ben Franklin, and the under appreciated Thomas Paine, but also Ethan Allen, the hero of the Green Mountain Boys, and Thomas Young, the forgotten Founder who kicked off the Boston Tea Party—these radicals who founded America set their sights on a revolution of the mind. Derided as “infidels” and “atheists” in their own time, they wanted to liberate us not just from one king but from the tyranny of supernatural religion.
The ideas that inspired them were neither British nor Christian but largely ancient, pagan, and continental: the fecund universe of the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, the potent (but nontranscendent) natural divinity of the Dutch heretic Benedict de Spinoza. Drawing deeply on the study of European philosophy, Matthew Stewart pursues a genealogy of the philosophical ideas from which America’s revolutionaries drew their inspiration, all scrupulously researched and documented and enlivened with storytelling of the highest order. Along the way, he uncovers the true meanings of “Nature’s God,” “self-evident,” and many other phrases crucial to our understanding of the American experiment but now widely misunderstood.
Stewart’s lucid and passionate investigation surprises, challenges, enlightens, and entertains at every turn, as it spins a true tale and a persuasive, exhilarating argument about the founding principles of American government and the sources of our success in science, medicine, and the arts.The Scientists - A History of Sciencepangea2014-05-20 | A general introduction to the great Scientists in human history.
"Sigmund Freud often remarked that great revolutions in the history of science have but one common, and ironic, feature: they knock human arrogance off one pedestal after another of our previous conviction about our own self-importance. The first that we associate with Copernicus, Newton, and Galileo that taught us that we weren't living on the central body of a limited universe. And that Darwin's was the second that taught us that we were not separately created in the image of a benevolent deity, but were part of a history of genealogical connectivity of all living things. Now, in an odd sense, we know how contentious the first revolution was; we know the story of Galileo. But the way I like to put it, I don't think that revolution was as important as Darwin's, because it's about real estate. The Darwinian revolution is about essence; it's deeper. The Darwinian revolution is about who we are, it's what we're made of, it's what our life means insofar as science can answer that question. " Stephen Jay Gould
"The importance of the Scientific Revolution for philosophy is beyond question. Modern philosophy the work of both rationalists and empiricists would have been impossible without great advances in physics. Analogously, therefore, we could anticipate that the Darwinian Revolution will have important implications for philosophy. Indeed, I would go further and say that we might expect Darwin's work to have even greater implications for philosophy than those of physics. The theory of evolution through natural selection impinges so directly on our own species. It is not just that we are on a speck of dust whirling around in the void but that we ourselves are no more than transformed apes. If such a realization is not to affect our views of epistemology and ethics, I do not know what is. As I said in the Preface, I find it inconceivable that it is irrelevant to the foundations of philosophy whether we are the end result of a slow natural evolutionary process, or made miraculously in Gods own image on a Friday, some 6,000 years ago. " Dr. Michael Ruse
Carl Sagan stated, "we make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers" and "We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering."
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding of a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) English physicist, mathematician.
Richard Feynman said, 'science is imagination in a straitjacket'.Mother Nature is Trying to Kill You (Interview with Dan Riskin)pangea2014-04-20 | Interview with Dan Riskin. It may be a wonderful world, but as Dan Riskin (cohost of Discovery Canada's Daily Planet) explains, it's also a dangerous, disturbing, and disgusting one. At every turn, it seems, living things are trying to eat us, poison us, use our bodies as their homes, or have us spread their eggs. In Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You, Riskin is our guide through the natural world at its most gloriously ruthless.
Using the seven deadly sins as a road map, Riskin offers dozens of jaw-dropping examples that illuminate how brutal nature can truly be. From slothful worms that hide in your body for up to thirty years to wrathful snails with poisonous harpoons that can kill you in less than five minutes to lustful ducks that have orgasms faster than you can blink, these fascinating accounts reveal the candid truth about "gentle" Mother Nature's true colors.
Riskin's passion for the strange and his enthusiastic expertise bring Earth's most fascinating flora and fauna into vivid focus. Through his adventures— which include sliding on his back through a thick soup of bat guano just to get face-to-face with a vampire bat, befriending a parasitic maggot that has taken root on his head, and coming to grips with having offspring of his own—Riskin makes unexpected discoveries not just about the world all around us but also about the ways this brutal world has shaped us as humans and what our responsibilities are to this terrible, wonderful planet we call home.The Self as Brain - Patricia Churchlandpangea2014-04-20 | Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain
A trailblazing philosopher's exploration of the latest brain science—and its ethical and practical implications. What happens when we accept that everything we feel and think stems not from an immaterial spirit but from electrical and chemical activity in our brains? In this thought-provoking narrative—drawn from professional expertise as well as personal life experiences—trailblazing neurophilosopher Patricia S. Churchland grounds the philosophy of mind in the essential ingredients of biology. She reflects with humor on how she came to harmonize science and philosophy, the mind and the brain, abstract ideals and daily life. Offering lucid explanations of the neural workings that underlie identity, she reveals how the latest research into consciousness, memory, and free will can help us reexamine enduring philosophical, ethical, and spiritual questions: What shapes our personalities? How do we account for near-death experiences? How do we make decisions? And why do we feel empathy for others? Recent scientific discoveries also provide insights into a fascinating range of real-world dilemmas—for example, whether an adolescent can be held responsible for his actions and whether a patient in a coma can be considered a self.
Churchland appreciates that the brain-based understanding of the mind can unnerve even our greatest thinkers. At a conference she attended, a prominent philosopher cried out, "I hate the brain; I hate the brain!" But as Churchland shows, he need not feel this way. Accepting that our brains are the basis of who we are liberates us from the shackles of superstition. It allows us to take ourselves seriously as a product of evolved mechanisms, past experiences, and social influences. And it gives us hope that we can fix some grievous conditions, and when we cannot, we can at least understand them with compassion.The African American Philosopherspangea2014-04-08 | A general introduction to the African American writers and philosophers.
"Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood." ― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
"I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America?" W. E. B. Du Bois
"Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books." Richard Wright
"The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. " ― James Baldwin
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., proclaimed: "We're going to let our children know that the only philosophers that lived were not Plato and Aristotle, but W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke came through the universe."The Existentialist Philosopherspangea2014-03-30 | A general introduction to the writers and philosophers of Existentialism.The Enlightenment Philosopherspangea2014-03-30 | A general introduction to the writers and philosophers during the Age of Enlightenment.The Renaissance Philosopherspangea2014-03-30 | A general introduction to the writers and philosophers during the approximate Renaissance period.The Muslim Philosophers (Medieval period)pangea2014-03-30 | A general introduction to the writers and philosophers of Islamic thought and philosophy during the Medieval period.The Christian Philosophers (Early & Medieval period)pangea2014-03-30 | A general introduction to the writers and philosophers of Early and Medieval Christianity.The Wisdom of Antiquity (Homer to Hypatia)pangea2014-02-22 | "Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization. Beneficiary of the Ionian Awakening, it had its citadel at the Library of Alexandria, where 2,000 years ago the best minds of antiquity established the foundations for the systematic study of mathematics, physics, biology, astronomy, literature, geography and medicine. We build on those foundations still. The Library was constructed and supported by the Ptolemys, the Greek kings who inherited the Egyptian portion of the empire of Alexander the Great. From the time of its creation in the third century B.C. until its destruction seven centuries later, it was the brain and heart of the ancient world.
The glory of the Alexandrian Library is a dim memory. Its last remnants were destroyed soon after Hypatia's death. It was as if the entire civilization had undergone some self-inflicted brain surgery, and most of its memories, discoveries, ideas and passions were extinguished irrevocably. The loss was incalculable. In some cases, we know only the tantalizing titles of the works that were destroyed. In most cases, we know neither the titles nor the authors. We do know that of the 123 plays of Sophocles in the Library, only seven survived. One of those seven is Oedipus Rex. Similar numbers apply to the works of Aeschylus and Euripides. It is a little as if the only surviving works of a man named William Shakespeare were Coriolanus and A Winter's Tale, but we had heard that he had written certain other plays, unknown to us but apparently prized in his time, works entitled Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet."
-Carl Sagan
My Homeric Cries:
In Basel, I stood undaunted Yet solitary there — God have pity, And I cried out: Homer! Homer! Thus annoying everyone. They go to church and then go home And laugh at the loud crier.
Now I no longer mind it; The finest audience Hears my Homeric cries And is quietly patient withal. As a reward for this exuberance Of kindness here is my printed thanks.
Nietzsche
"In Basel, I stood undaunted" (1869) Nietzsche acquired a position on the classical philology faculty at the University of Basel. The Swiss university offered Nietzsche the professorial position, and he began teaching there in 1869, at the age of 24Human Evolutionpangea2014-02-19 | Human Evolution:
Just as Galileo discovered that the Earth is not the center of a human centered Universe, Darwin's tree showed that Humans are not the center nor the end of the Animal Kingdom.
"We talk about the 'march from monad to man' (old-style language again) as though evolution followed continuous pathways to progress along unbroken lineages. Nothing could be further from reality. I do not deny that, through time, the most 'advanced' organism has tended to increase in complexity. But the sequence [allocated in most texts] from jellyfish to trilobite to nautiloid to armored fish to dinosaur to monkey to human is no lineage at all, but a chronological set of termini on unrelated evolutionary trunks. Moreover life shows no trend to complexity in the usual sense — only an asymmetrical expansion of diversity around a starting point constrained to be simple." Stephen Jay Gould
H. sapiens is but a tiny, late-arising twig on life's enormously arborescent bush — a small bud that would almost surely not appear a second time if we could replant the bush from seed and let it grow again." "History includes too much chaos, or extremely sensitive dependence on minute and unmeasurable differences in initial conditions, leading to massively divergent outcomes based on tiny and unknowable disparities in starting points. And history includes too much contingency, or shaping of present results by long chains of unpredictable antecedent states, rather than immediate determination by timeless laws of nature. Homo sapiens did not appear on the earth, just a geologic second ago, because evolutionary theory predicts such an outcome based on themes of progress and increasing neural complexity. Humans arose, rather, as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness." Stephen Jay Gould