Tuesday, 30 October 2012

Philosophy
Top story

In Defence of Wonder and Other Philosophical Reflections by Raymond Tallis – review
6 Jul 2012: Stuart Kelly finds ideal company is which to exercise his mind
 Editors' picks

A life in philosophy: Peter Singer
 Peter Singer: 'I'd like to see it become unacceptable to be comfortably off and do nothing for the world's poor'

Love thy neighbour
 Why have we become so suspicious of kindness, one of our most basic - and pleasurable - human qualities, ask Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor
Brilliantly drawn girls
 Comics never used to be much fun for their rare female characters, but with more women in the industry, kick-ass heroines are taking over, writes Kira Cochrane
 The day of judgment, part two
Latest videos
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Jacques Barzun obituary
29 Oct 2012:  Eminent cultural historian whose work touched on literature, philosophy and music
Letter: the magic of DJ O'Connor
17 Oct 2012: Steve Ball writes: Dan O'Connor was a fine philosophy teacher, and at Exeter presided over an excellent department for this most slippery of subjects
Karl Popper, the enemy of certainty, part 5: the craving to be right

8 Oct 2012: Liz Williams: How to believe: The knowledge and certainty claims that are common to so many modern ideologies run contrary to Popper's thinking
Risk Intelligence by Dylan Evans – review
7 Oct 2012:  This study of our inability to assess risk intelligently has far-reaching implications – for society as much as the individual, writes John Naughton
Non-fiction roundup - reviews
5 Oct 2012: Steven Poole on The Art of Philosophy by Peter Sloterdijk, What Will You Do With My Story? by Elizabeth Meakins and Fifty Shelves of Grey by Vanessa Parody
Karl Popper, the enemy of certainty, part 4: Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend

1 Oct 2012: Liz Williams: How to believe: This diverse trio drove the philosophy of science forwards with their responses to Popper's theory of falsification
How travel limits our minds
30 Sep 2012: Julian Baggini: My train and plane journey demonstrates that how we travel reflects the way we think – and we have become a society of airheads.

Thursday, 4 October 2012


A blog dedicated to the wise and the philosophical
"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
William James
My laptop’s broken and the queue is at an end, so with my apologies, it might be a week or so until regular posting can resume. Feel free to submit in the meantime.
"Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends."
Cicero
"When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable."
Rene Descartes
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."
Thomas Huxley
"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."
Plato
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
Albert Einstein
"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor."
Voltaire