Edward Feser

Nothing is all the rage of late. Physicists Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss have devoted pop science bestsellers to trying to show how quantum mechanics explains how the universe could arise from nothing. Their treatments were preceded by that of another physicist, Frank Close (whose book Nothing: A Very Short Introduction should win a prize for Best Book Title)… Continue Reading »

How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed by Ray Kurzweil Viking, 352 pages, $27.95 What goes into making a human mind? Two key elements, distinguished by Aristotle and Aquinas, are phantasms and concepts—a distinction entirely overlooked by pop-science writer Ray Kurzweil in . . . . Continue Reading »

In a piece in the March issue of First Things, David Bentley Hart suggests that the arguments of natural law theorists are bound to be ineffectual in the public square. The reason is that such arguments mistakenly presuppose that there is sufficient conceptual common ground between natural law theorists and their opponents for fruitful moral debate to be possible… . Continue Reading »

Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism by Alvin Plantinga Oxford, 376 pages, $27.95 “Naturalism” is a slippery term. In one common usage, it is the methodological thesis that the only rational forms of inquiry are those using the methods of natural science. In another, . . . . Continue Reading »

To untutored common sense, the natural world is filled with irreducibly different kinds of objects and qualities: people; dogs and cats; trees and flowers; rocks, dirt, and water; colors, odors, sounds; heat and cold; meanings and purposes. A man is a radically different sort of thing from a rose, which is in turn no less different from a stone… . Continue Reading »

A Universe from Nothing:  Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing by lawrence m. krauss  free press, 204 pages, $24.99 Acritic might reasonably question the arguments for a divine first cause of the cosmos. But to ask “What caused God?” misses the whole reason classical . . . . Continue Reading »

The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions by Alex Rosenberg W. W. Norton, 368 pages, $25.95 The Atheist’s Guide to Reality is refreshingly and ruthlessly consistent. It is also utterly incoherent, and precisely because it is so consistent. In drawing out its absurd . . . . Continue Reading »

Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche by James Miller Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 422 pages, $28 People saying things: That is all that the history of philosophy is, and everyone knows it.” Thus did the curmudgeonly Australian philosopher David Stove sum up his field in The Plato Cult . . . . Continue Reading »