“There is no such thing as mechanism,” Edwards argues (quoted in Jenson, America’s Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards , 25). He means that there is no such thing as “mechanics” if that means “that whereby bodies act each upon other, purely and . . . . Continue Reading »
“A team from University of Darmstadt has managed to stop light for an entire minute .” To get a bit of frozen light “they took an opaque crystal and fired lasers into it to disturb the quantum states of the atoms within. By creating two quantum states within those atoms, they were . . . . Continue Reading »
The ancient Pythagorean notion of a musical universe sounds quaint today, but it was still very much a live option during the era of the scientific revolution. David Plant explains how Kepler’s laws of planetary corresponded to the intervals of music: “Kepler’s First Law states . . . . Continue Reading »
Since Mendel, virtually no one has believed in the the Lamarckian idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. This means that inherited properties are considered biological, and specifically genetic. An organism with a certain genetic makeup will acquired new properties during its . . . . Continue Reading »
In the NYRB, Edward Mendelson suggests that there is a little zone of Protestant freedom within the controlled Papal structures of Apple: “AppleScript is protestant with a lower-case ‘p,’ as iOS and much of OS X is catholic with a lower-case ‘c.’ Like the Protestantism . . . . Continue Reading »
Thomas Nagel doesn’t much like John Gray’s latest , The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths , an assault on humanism along these lines. Gray rejects the idea that humans are unique, the notion that the mind reflects the order of the world, and the myth of progress. . . . . Continue Reading »
Judith Shulevitz offers a novel (ha!) defense of the liberal arts in the latest TNR . Liberal arts should be supported because they produce science fiction and science fiction inspires scientific breaththroughs that make a lot of money. Shulevitz’s challenge: “Take any world-altering . . . . Continue Reading »
Jonathan Edwards was the first, Stephen Holmes claims (in an essay in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian ), “on the American continent to have read Newton and Locke, and arguably amongst the first in the world to have appreciated the implications of what they had to say” (101). . . . . Continue Reading »
An 1880 ad for Singer Sewing machines offers a vision of humanity united by technology: “On every sea are floating the Singer Machines; along every road pressed by the foot of civilized man this tireless ally of the world’s great sisterhood is going upon its errand of helpfulness. Its . . . . Continue Reading »
The debate over Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False continues apace. The TLS reviewer observes that Nagel’s “provocation” of a book doesn’t simply demand an explanation for how consciousness . . . . Continue Reading »
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