Chaucer and Chinese medicine
How Chaucer's pilgrims enact the walking cure in springtime crisis, in line with Chinese medicine.
13
04, 2020
30
04, 2016
Did Newton practice “junk science”? (Washington Post)
Did Newton practice junk science? A journalist takes issue with Newton's preoccupation with alchemy. As she puts it: ... Newton was super into alchemy, a medieval "science" that preceded chemistry. Practitioners believed it was possible to transform one metal into another. The ultimate goal was figuring out how to transform lead into gold, and the elusive [...]
29
04, 2016
Nature, time, and self-discovery
Nature, time, and self-discovery: a physicist speaks about the mysteries of our lives, hearkening to Lucretius: Nature is our home, and in nature we are at home. This strange, multicolored, and astonishing world that we explore -- where space is granular, time does not exist, and things are nowhere -- is not something that estranges us [...]
27
04, 2016
The master economy and student majors (Jeffrey Dorfman, Forbes)
The master economy and student majors: should states grant incentives to students to select a particular course of study? Dorfman says no: The logic behind such proposals is that state funding should be concentrated on where it provides the highest return on investment, so humanities and other majors perceived as leading to low-paying jobs don’t [...]
20
04, 2016
Critical reason and the life of the unconscious
Critical reason and the life of the unconscious: at what expense to our lives do we refine our reason, especially when it comes to understanding crucial matters of life and death? A man should be able to say he has done his best to form a conception of life after death, or to create some [...]
16
04, 2016
The fight over liberal arts education in Japan (Rie Mori, AAC&U)
The fight over liberal arts education in Japan. The humanities and liberal arts are under pressure from the government, but have allies in the business community. From the article: the national government wants to focus national resources for higher education on fields that nourish students’ skills that are immediately adaptable to the needs of the labor [...]
10
04, 2016
Wise fools and foolish wits
Wise fools and foolish wits: what experience should teach us, if we would learn from it: "To learn that we have said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing: we must learn that we are fools, a far broader and more important lesson." Michel de Montaigne, "On Experience"
5
04, 2016
A quarrel for the ages
A quarrel for the ages: Past Present, and Future are at odds with each other. Past: Can you hear me? Future: I am waiting for your voice, and your counsel. Speak up! Present: What's the fuss? Past: I am trying to speak to the Future. Future: I am trying to hear the Past. Present: You [...]
5
04, 2016
Computers transform our knowledge of the past (James O’Malley, Little Atoms)
Computers transform our knowledge of the past. According to the author, computerized quantitative analysis offers insights that traditional historical study cannot. From the article: Huge swathes of our past are slowly but surely getting digitised as old books and scanned and organised. It stands to reason that surely once the historians get to work it [...]
3
04, 2016
Judgments about the arts: mind what you put in!
Judgments about the arts: mind what you put in! Ben Jonson tells his audience how much they may assess what they see, depending on their means: It is further agreed that every person here have his or their free-will of censure, to like or dislike at their own charge, the playwright having now departed with [...]