A Modest Construct | philosophy

Posts tagged `philosophy`

¶ A History of Western Philosophy

A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell: Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Year: 1946/1967; Pages: 895

Bertrand Russell is known for two things, depending upon the tradition from which you approach him: he’s an early and ardent atheist (perhaps the grandfather of the recent “New Atheist” movement popularized by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett), as made clear in Why I Am Not a Christian. Much less controversially, his contributions as a mathematician and logician (for which see his and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica) were perhaps the most important to formal Logic since the early Greeks.

§7038 · May 8, 2011 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, history, nonfiction, philosophy, reviews

¶ Solaris

Solaris by Stanisław Lem: Publisher: Mariner Books; Year: 1961/2002; Pages: 224

Solaris is considered one of Polish writer Stanisław Lem’s greatest books—certainly, it’s his most popular, having been adapted for film three times. But, while the original book was written in Polish, there has not, and still is not, a direct Polish-to-English translation available. The book available in your neighborhood bookstore is in fact an English translation of a French translation of the original Polish. I can’t speak to its quality, since I’m not familiar with the original Polish, but the things I’ve heard have been mixed.

§5601 · June 4, 2010 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, fiction, philosophy, reviews, science fiction

¶ Three Farmers On Their Way to a Dance

Three Farmers On Their Way to a Dance by Richard Powers: Publisher: McGraw-Hill; Year: 1985/1987; Pages: 457

Though it’s been over two years since I was first introduced to Richard Powers (via Galatea 2.2), this is regrettably only the second book of his that I’ve read. Powers’ books are not the sort of fluff you can just pick up any time you want, after all. Reading them—and I think this is the hallmark of great books—is a work of care and devotion. Otherwise, you might as well be reading Twilight.

Three Farmers On Their Way to a Dance is Power’s first novel (published way back in 1985, when I was born), but you’d never notice: it contains the same distinct Powerisms and the same quality of craft that mark every other book by him since.

§3838 · June 25, 2009 · 4 comments · Tags: Book Reviews, books, fiction, history, philosophy, reviews

¶ Unhappy Birthday

Today is my dad’s birthday—would be, if he hadn’t died this year.

I happen to be backing up some computer data and came across a large archive of documents that I took from his computer in the days after he died.

Going through a dead family member’s documents is always a strange experience, but it’s also a time for learning. There were no skeletons in my father’s proverbial closet, neo-Naziism or secret lives or anything like that. All we found was a shitload of credit cards, investment accounts, and backups of backups on his computer.

§3458 · December 18, 2008 · 4 comments · Tags: personal, philosophy

¶ I Am a Strange Loop

I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter: Publisher: Basic Books; Year: 2008; Pages: 436

I was vaguely aware of Douglas Hofstadter by reputation: his reputed magnum opus, a dense 1970s work called Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden ~~Brain~~ Braid, has been the subject of much praise and adulation. My brother, who read the work in question in the context of a college course, read and apparently enjoyed this new work by Hofstadter somewhere in the time surrounding the death of our father. It is from that recommendation that I picked the book up.

Before I started throwing adjectives or grades around, I should expand upon the context at play here: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden ~~Brain~~Braid was, if I may condense it thus, an exposition of Hofstadter’s thoughts on conscious and the nature of Self-with-a-capital-S. Despite the acclaim which this book earned him, Hofstadter was perturbed that much of his thesis was largely ignored or misunderstood, and so almost 30 years later comes this latest book about Self, and if I might guess, I would wager that none of the imprecision or vagueness or…. opaqueness… has been resolved in that span.

§2680 · September 19, 2008 · 10 comments · Tags: Book Reviews, books, nonfiction, philosophy, reviews