They took the stage as representatives of “reason and wildness,” respectively, two articulate authors and thinkers who come at the world very differently.
Philosophy
Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo
Will Bobos ever see scientific truth?
Is scientific knowledge true? Or is it just one more made-up story of the world, with no greater claim on truth than any other?
Photo by Stefan Widua on Unsplash
The word yet hinges existential debate
Yet. Such a little word. Such a feisty little word.
John J. Audubon's illustration of Columbian hummingbirds
A lively debate among humanists
E. O. Wilson and Wendell Berry are unlikely opponents in the cultural wars.
Photo by S Migaj on Unsplash
Time to end debate on material vs. ideal
When I was in school back in the 1940s and ’50s — parochial schools — materialism was thrown up to us as the bugbear of bugbears. Not even “Godless communism” offered a more perfidious peril for our souls.
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash
There’s no dot com seen under the microscope
A small green leaf picked up on the college quad. It attracted attention by being small and green in a sea of autumnal colors. I was on my way to the Science Building, so I stepped into a biology lab and slipped the leaf onto the stage of a dissecting microscope.
The Hubble Deep Field photograph • R. Williams (STScI), the Hubble Deep Field Team and NASA/ESA
The discovery of ignorance
What is the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th-century?
“The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man” by Rubens and Brueghel the Elder (c. 1615)
Reconciling the ‘Adams’ of the soul
During this week of the winter solstice, Jews and Christians recall defining moments of their faith. In these darkest days of winter they celebrate festivals of light, calling out to their hidden god with longing and expectation.
Enlightenment visionary Thomas Jefferson
Waiting in the dark
The Enlightenment has been taking its knocks lately.
Engraving from ”De humani corporis fabrica” (1543)
Eyeing the machinery of the spirit
More than three centuries ago, Pascal said, “Man considering himself is the great prodigy of nature. For he cannot conceive what his body is, even less what his spirit is, and least of all how body can be united with spirit.”