Holiday reading list 2022

The end of term is here, and with that comes a much needed winter break. One thing that I enjoy prior to Christmas break is compiling a list of books for my holiday reading. It gets me excited for the holiday season. I also enjoy sharing books, and have grown to like the idea of …

Book review: Fantastic numbers and where to find them

My PhD supervisor, Tony, has published a book. It's titled, Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity. Full disclosure: I read one of the earliest drafts, which must have been about two years ago. It was quite enjoyable witnessing the book develop, hearing about new chapter plans, and …

Thinking about philosophy and Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”

I find philosophy to be an incredibly controversial subject, one that is difficult to get a handle on. There is a value to philosophy, though I often struggle to understand it or place it. Perhaps this is because I lack a satisfactory definition of philosophy - a term which can represent so many different bases …

The Road to Reality

I have been reading, working through and thinking a lot about Roger Penrose's magnum opus, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe. It is a book that I cannot speak more highly about, possible one of the best books that I have read so far in my lifetime. My …

Social Pathology, Philosophy of Reason and Bloom’s “Against Empathy” – On Science, Ethics, and Knowledge

R.C. Smith To think of ethics is likely today to evoke the idea of empathy. Similarly, in the context of many mainstream discourses within social theory, to think of empathy is often to evoke philosophical consideration in the field of radical ethics. The same is true with the order of terms reversed. It is not …

Review: “The Gods in Whom They Trusted” – On Science, Knowledge and Ethics (Part 2)

R.C. Smith Ethics of Experience In think, ultimately,  what we read in The Gods in Whom They Trusted is a set of philosophical formulations that take the human tendency to formulate faith-based constructs, fundamental principles of “life direction”, “core or ultimate convictions”, or “visions of life” – very much in the philosophical sense of absolute first principles – as universal. …

Review: “The Gods in Whom They Trusted” – On Science, Knowledge and Ethics (Part 1)

R.C. Smith Introduction I recently read through and had time to consider Arnold De Graaff’s The Gods in Whom They Trusted: The Disintegrative Effects of Capitalism – A Foundation for Transitioning to a New Social World (2016). This book in particular is one, I think, that can best described as being part of the broader …