During a fun (and long) question-and-answer session after a lecture at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania — some of us were still going strong after three hours — I was asked my view on the origins of the Enlightenment. The first questioner noted that Jordan Peterson had spoken at Lafayette the year before and had argued […]
A difference with Jordan Peterson on Enlightenment foundations Read More »
Episode 4 in my Open College with Dr. Stephen Hicks podcast series. Audio links: iTunes Stitcher YouTube Topics: Our contemporary pessimists and cynics // Gray, Rorty, and Foucault // The Enlightenment and its promises // How to assess the Enlightenment era // Data // Postmodernism // Real concerns and trade-offs versus pessimism Transcription: Forthcoming Sources: Michel
“The Dim Ruins of the Enlightenment” [Open College series] Read More »
Our discussion is embedded below or at YouTube. Topics discussed: 1:00: The various uses of “postmodern” 3:30: The epistemology of reason in early modern philosophy 4:30: Pomo as a skepticism about reason by mid-1900s 5:00: Individualism in early modern philosophy 7:00: Pomo as a reaction to individualism 7:30: Social-psychological-linguistic determinisms of mid-1900s 10:10: Perception and
Tyler Ashby discussion: Pomo, Perception, and Reason Read More »
Você pode não se considerar rico. Deixe-me provar que você é. Em 1836, o homem mais rico do mundo era Nathan Rothschild. Ele tinha 58 anos de idade e, de acordo com um check-up médico no início daquele ano, com boa saúde para um homem na sua idade. O pai de Nathan iniciou um banco
A saúde e o homem mais rico do mundo Read More »
A fascinating article by a Polish philosopher, Professor Piotr Kostyło of the University of Casimir the Great. (Courtesy of the publisher, here is a PDF of Kostyło’s article.) Kostyło notes that this generation of postmodern thinkers seems to have turned against state-provided welfare programs. The usual left-right debate over welfare is between those who argue
Kostyło on postmodern dialectic of social care Read More »
The great Rosling has published another dramatic set of visuals — this one on the great progress in reducing child mortality rates in the developing world. One more data-driven reason for optimism.
Myths of developing nations: Hans Rosling Read More »
In my lifetime, here are the changes in life expectancy at birth for three countries: * USA: up from 70 to 78 years. * Brazil: up from 54 to 73 years. * Zimbabwe: from 51 up to 61, then down to 51 years. (Click the image for full size.) Source: Google Public Data via the
Life expectancy: USA, Brazil, Zimbabwe Read More »
One of the great publishing events in all of history was the French Encyclopédie of the eighteenth century, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert. It was a massive project: many authors, 71,818 articles and 3,129 illustrations, published in 28 volumes over 25 years. During my working visit to Guatemala, Luis Figueroa took
The Encyclopédie and I Read More »