News Scientist is currently featuring a story titled “Unsung Heroines: Five Women Denied Scientific Glory.” The woman scientists featured are: Hertha Ayrton, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Gerty Cori (an odd choice given she was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize), Rosalind Franklin, and Lise Meitner. For my money, of the stories told here, those ofContinue reading “Unsung Heroines and Premature Glory”
Category Archives: Philosophy
Acts of Kindness: Writing to Writers, Especially Academic Ones
A couple of years ago, after reading Neil Gross‘ excellent biography of Richard Rorty, I sent him a short note of appreciation, telling him how much I enjoyed his book. Gross wrote back; he was clearly pleasantly surprised to have received my email. I mention this correspondence because it is an instance of an actContinue reading “Acts of Kindness: Writing to Writers, Especially Academic Ones”
Margaret Cavendish, Epicureanism, and Philosophy as Confession
In her erudite and enjoyable Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity Catherine Wilson makes note of Margaret Cavendish‘s participation in the so-called “Cavendish Salon” in Paris, which served as “the center of a revival of Epicureanism led by Hobbes and Gassendi.” Cavendish, who might have obtained her knowledge of that school of thought either throughContinue reading “Margaret Cavendish, Epicureanism, and Philosophy as Confession”
The Visually Sophisticated Society and “Seeing is Believing”
In 1980, Stephen Jay Gould and Steven Selden sent their copy of H.H Goddard‘s The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness to James H. Wallace, director of Photographic Services at the Smithsonian Institution. The photographs in Goddard’s book of the supposedly “feeble-minded” family had appeared to confirm their mental infirmity: All have aContinue reading “The Visually Sophisticated Society and “Seeing is Believing””
Schopenhauer on Revealing Our True Feelings
Thus spake Schopenhauer: If you want to know how you really feel about someone take note of the impression an unexpected letter from him makes on you when you first see it on the doormat.¹ Why does Schopenhauer imagine that these kinds of reactions of ours would be particularly revealing of our ‘true’ feelings towardsContinue reading “Schopenhauer on Revealing Our True Feelings”
American Workers to Bosses: You’re Always Right
Rebecca Schuman recently noted the case of an academic job applicant who lost out on a job offer because she dared negotiate: [A] job candidate identified as “W” recently received an offer for a tenure-track position at Nazareth College… W viewed the original bid as the opening move in a series of negotiations, and thus submitted… [a] counteroffer, afterContinue reading “American Workers to Bosses: You’re Always Right”
Carl Sagan’s Glorious Dawn: The Promise of Cosmos
The YouTube video titled “A Glorious Dawn” starring Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking (their voices run through Auto-Tune), and snippets from Sagan’s epic Cosmos, has now racked up almost nine million views and twenty-seven thousand comments since it was first put up sometime back in 2009. (Mysteriously, in addition to its seventy-seven thousand ‘Likes’ it hasContinue reading “Carl Sagan’s Glorious Dawn: The Promise of Cosmos”
Hankering for a ‘Comfortable’ Past
In Home: A Short History of an Idea (Penguin: New York, 1986, pp. 213) Witold Rybczynski writes: If department stores or home-decorating magazines are any indication, most people’s first choice would be to live in rooms that resemble, as much as their budgets permit, those of their grandparents….such nostalgia is absent from other periods of our everyday lives. WeContinue reading “Hankering for a ‘Comfortable’ Past”
Hot, Bothered, and Devout: The Religious Policing of Sex
Yesterday, I posted a review essay on a pair of books by SN Balagangadhara and Rajiv Malhotra that critique the field of “Indian studies.” In my essay I attempted to place into some context the recent controversy over the recall from circulation of Wendy Doniger‘s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History. Amongst the many chargesContinue reading “Hot, Bothered, and Devout: The Religious Policing of Sex”
SN Balagangadhara and Rajiv Malhotra on Reversing the Gaze
On 12 February, Penguin India announced it was withdrawing and destroying—in India—all published copies of historian Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History (2009). Penguin’s decision came after reaching an out-of-court settlement with Shiksha Bachao Andolan, which, in 2011, had filed a legal complaint objecting to sections of Doniger’s book. Amidst the vocal expressions ofContinue reading “SN Balagangadhara and Rajiv Malhotra on Reversing the Gaze”
Samir Chopra 