In my last three essays I posted, Mathematical Models of Human Communities: Parts and Wholes, Mathematical Models of Human Communities: We Live in Narratives, Not in Models, and Mathematical Models of Human Communities: Randomness, I acknowledged the usefulness and potential truthfulness of mathematical models but claimed we need to consider wider aspects of this world … [Read more…]
Shortly after I published my essay, Mathematical Models of Human History: Are They Plausible?, on the use of mathematical models in history, I saw an article by Stephanie Pappas summarizing some results of work done by Simon Powers, “a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolution at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.” Powers is working … [Read more…]
According to a couple of dictionaries, an `explanation’ is “Something that explains” or equivalent definitions of the sort which would gain a failing grade on a junior high school test back in the days when American schools were so tough we had to write essays explaining how it was possible to walk uphill going to … [Read more…]
Is the invisible hand justly celebrated by Adam Smith really the hand of the pilgrim human community, of the Body of Christ forming—however imperfectly and incompletely—in this mortal realm? Yes, though the language is far from optimal and that language can lead to improper concepts regarding the Body of Christ and its relationships to human … [Read more…]
Judith Curry is Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Curry’s blog is well worth reading for reliable commentary on climate science and more general matters of science practice and of public policy in its relationship to science. One of her recent articles, More scientific … [Read more…]
In a short essay recently published under the byline of the staff of The American Conservative, Higher Culture, Better Politics, an argument is made which is in the right direction but steps into the water as the boat is pulling away from the dock: When a movement neglects culture and philosophy, one can be sure … [Read more…]
In an earlier essay, A Brain Shaped to Geometric Thought?, I responded to evidence that the brain does abstract from physical distance to derive, for example, an idea of emotional distance. This isn’t a matter fully understood, though the scientists seem to believe, as do I, that human beings have learned to unconsciously and consciously … [Read more…]
I distort for the sake of modern men who have trouble focusing upon reality. Apes are our cousins, not our ancestors; the terms used for the common ancestors of men and ape seem to change every few years or so. And those ancestors were only killers part of the time, perhaps less often than modern … [Read more…]
Folks who would be conservative, who would preserve what is good and even holy in the heritage of Western Civilization, still don’t get it. At least not fully, but some are trying hard to figure out what to do in a decaying and possibly collapsing West and some of those are risking their futures in … [Read more…]
In a typically erudite book review, The barbarism of reason: John Gray on the Notebooks of Leopardi , Gray tells us: With astonishing prescience, [the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837)] diagnosed the sickness of our time: a dangerous intoxication with the knowledge and power given by science, mixed with an inability to accept the humanly … [Read more…]