The ongoing spat between physicists and philosophers–sparked by David Albert’s negative review of Lawrence Krauss’ A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing–is the latest instance of a simmering conflict that seems to recur between the academic practitioners of discipline ‘X’ and philosophers who specialize in ‘philosophy of X.’ One kind of complaint madeContinue reading “The Physics-Philosophy ‘Kerfuffle’”
Author Archives: Samir Chopra
Misery Needs Company, Contd.
Misery Needs Company, Part Deux prompted a series of useful comments from readers Melon, Dan K., and JR. I’m going to respond here to a central thread therein. As Dan K. asks, ‘Are luxurious union contracts contributing in a significant way to our economic problems’? (By ‘economic problems,’ I presume state budgets like Wisconsin’s are atContinue reading “Misery Needs Company, Contd.”
Misery Needs Company, Part Deux: Scapegoating Unions
Reader JR left an interesting comment yesterday, responding to my post ‘Misery Needs Company: The American Worker’s Hostility Toward Unions.’ Rather than excerpt it here and respond piecemeal, I’m going to just write a few thoughts prompted by it. (Please do read the comment in full.) There are, I think, two points that are being conflatedContinue reading “Misery Needs Company, Part Deux: Scapegoating Unions”
Of Pugilistic Encounters and Uncanny Resemblances
In high school, I boxed for a year in the flyweight division. In the year-end boxing tournament, I lost in the final. To my best friend’s identical twin. Most people who I recount this story to are struck by the apparent weirdness of fighting an opponent that bore a striking resemblance to someone who IContinue reading “Of Pugilistic Encounters and Uncanny Resemblances”
Misery Needs Company: The American Worker’s Hostility Toward Unions
In the midst of a Facebook discussion about the possible reasons for Scott Walker’s victory in Wisconsin, a participant stated, [T]here is an incredible amount of hostility towards Unions, and a unique hostility towards Public-Sector Unions. If you look at what the Unions were fighting for it’s very hard for a private sector employee toContinue reading “Misery Needs Company: The American Worker’s Hostility Toward Unions”
The Human-Computer Chess Championship: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?
Should chess grandmasters play with a computer as an aid during a championship game? (Or, should the current world chess championship become the Advanced Chess World Championship?) Hartosh Singh Bal (‘Chessmate’, International Herald Tribune, June 5 2012) offers some arguments for this claim, but fails to consider a possible unintended consequence and leaves an interestingContinue reading “The Human-Computer Chess Championship: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?”
The Mountaineering Make-Over
A few days ago, as my nephew, an aspiring mountaineer who has been on expeditions to Kamet, Trishul, (both in the Garhwal Himalayas) and Stok Kangri (a trekking peak in Ladakh), chatted with me on Facebook, he said (roughly), You know, for me it’s no longer that away from the hustle-bustle, out to find myselfContinue reading “The Mountaineering Make-Over”
Teaching Descartes: It Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be
In ‘Five Parables’ (from Historical Ontology, Harvard University Press, 2002), Ian Hacking writes, I had been giving a course introducing undergraduates to the philosophers who were contemporaries of the green family and August der Stark. My hero had been Leibniz, and as usual my audience gave me pained looks. But after the last meeting, some studentsContinue reading “Teaching Descartes: It Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be”
Michelle Maltais’ Cyber-Weapon Fantasy About ‘War Without Bloodshed’
What is it about technology that makes so many, warriors and armchair-enthusiasts alike, imagine that it will make war, somehow, less bloody, less brutal, less inhumane? That never-ending and most curious of seductions is again visibly on display in Michelle Maltais’ article ‘Cyber Missiles Mean War Without Bloodshed’ (Los Angeles Times , June 2nd 2012).Continue reading “Michelle Maltais’ Cyber-Weapon Fantasy About ‘War Without Bloodshed’”
Geertz, the ‘Anthropological Understanding,’ and Persons
(As promised in an earlier post on Clifford Geertz, I will be posting a few reactions here to his essays in Local Knowledge.) In ‘”From The Native’s Point of View”: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding’, (from Local Knowledge: Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, Basic Books, New York, 1983, pp 59), Clifford Geertz writes, The concept of person is…an excellentContinue reading “Geertz, the ‘Anthropological Understanding,’ and Persons”
Samir Chopra 