GTFH: Morality and Meaning

It’s about time I posted the third half of my musings about God: The Failed Hypothesis. Though the book makes a good case for the non-existence of the Abrahamic God, it could have been argued better. The book’s real strength lies in its discussion of evolution and cosmology. Where the book ventures into morality and […]

GTFH: The universe

The most interesting parts of God: The Failed Hypothesis is not what the book has to say about god, but about science and morality (which I’ll save for a post next week.) In chapters four and five, the book tackles why there is something rather than nothing, and why our something is the way it […]

God: The Failed Hypothesis

I like messing around with God, or gods, or Cosmic Muffins, but that doesn’t mean I believe in any sort of god. So I was interested in seeing how God: The Failed Hypothesis, by Victor J. Stenger would apply the methods of science to the hypothesis that God exists. Like The Fabric of Reality, it […]

Re: Libraries in the Ancient World

A slim book that speaks of many books, from tablets to scrolls to codices, Libraries in the Ancient World, by Lionel Casson, offers a swift overview of book collections in the West. From the origins of writing, libraries have been dealing with cataloging the holdings, repairing damaged books, and preventing theft. In a way, all […]

The Fabric of Reality – Part II: What I didn’t like

As I mentioned last week, The Fabric of Reality is a thought-provoking book, but sometimes it’s just provoking. The book spends too much time blasting away at theories that aren’t useful and misrepresenting theories that are commonly accepted, not enough time crossing over some of its logical leaps, and no time at all discussing valid […]

The Fabric of Reality – Part I: The Good Stuff

Back in June, I wondered how long it would take me to read The Fabric of Reality, by David Deutsch. Well, it took just about a week. This is not a book to tackle at the end of the day. The book is so challenging, it’s physically tiring to read and think about and react […]

Re: American Creation

In light of the current election, it’s really interesting to read American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, by Joseph J. Ellis. The triumphs begin, of course, with winning the War for Independence, and the tragedies are rooted in contentious issues that were set aside in the immediate interest of securing […]

Re: The Great Warming

Before the Little Ice Age, there was the Medieval Warm Period. In Western Europe, the centuries around the first millenium were a time of mostly long, warm summers and a steady rise in prosperity. But of course, climate is global, and most of the rest of the world didn’t fare so well. In The Great […]

Re: Get Everything Done

I can’t help it if I’m a sucker for books with titles that make big promises. And the bigger the promise, the more skeptical you need to be. I was willing to believe in Get Everything Done, when Mark Forster confesses to being a procrastinator. I was won over by the insight he shows into […]

Re: Feathered Dragons

A change of pace from my usual light reading, Feathered Dragons, edited by Philip J. Currie and others, is a collection of papers about the transition from dinosaurs to birds. After an introduction by Robert T. Bakker, the first section is a broad overview. In the second section are several studies of fossils and tracks, […]