Memory and memorial
What lasts is not just what we make.
What lasts is not just what we make.
A dialogue about life extension and limits, beyond biology and scholarship.
How Galileo's theory of parabolic motion leads to a new attribution of a 17th-C. painting.
Aristotle and the modern computer: how the Greek philosopher's logic influenced the mathematical equations that underlie digital computation.
Classical literacy and modern scholarship: how knowledge of Latin and Greek might deepen our current understanding of things, according to a German physicist; but the effort faces widespread difficulties: "No one learns Latin and Greek anymore, and therefore everything becomes superficial." This is the complaint of most learned journals, even though they themselves are simultaneously, and insensibly, [...]
How understanding the humanities' past illuminates their present and future importance, as they have discovered new findings critical to understanding our world.
"Philosophia vitae magistra": philosophy is the teacher of life Who is unaware that human life without the liberal arts is not only destitute and empty, but indeed far inferior and worse to that of many animals? When I then turn my attention to philosophy itself, how many times have I heard from you that it in [...]
The healing arts of writer and physician: how both treat the ailments and bolster the hopes of our humanity.
The current administration proposes to do away with the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as with the National Endowment for the Arts.
Modern tragedy: the fears of physical annihilation and the role of the writer Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of [...]