Ayn Rand was a philosopher and an artist, and she carefully distinguished the status of works that are discoveries from those that are creations: “A scientific or philosophical discovery, which identifies a law of nature, a principle or a fact of reality not previously known, cannot be the exclusive property of the discoverer because (a) […]

I like the spirit of this.

Now back in Illinois, in studio I recorded a 15 one-minute answers to submitted questions: 1. Was Christianity at fault for the fall of the classical world? 2. Could you say that this country was founded on the work of slaves and it gave us an advantage over other nations?3. How does free will manifest

Very fine article by University of London philosopher John Sellars on Aristotle, “the single most influential human being ever to have lived.” I agree.   Related: My close reading of the first book of Aristotle’s classic Nicomachean Ethics, in the Philosophers, Explained series.

Algeria was the world’s largest wine exporter until the 1960s.[a] By a huge margin—more than the next six largest exporting countries (including France, Italy, and Spain)—combined. Then it collapsed. What happened? 1. Under French colonialism from the 1830s, the Algerian wine industry grew, though the regime was often brutal. 2. Then, from the 1950s and