Philosophy

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David Berlinski

[long_description] The claim that to act freely is to be able to do otherwise has become the reigning assumption of the free-will debate, and the lever by which determinists such as Robert Sapolsky, in Determined, dismiss free will as an illusion. David Berlinski subjects the claim to a sustained logical analysis, tracing what "could have done otherwise" must mean across its modal and causal commitments, and reaches a contrary conclusion: that acting freely is a matter of how one acts, not of what one might instead have done.

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Songlines

Sheldon Lee Glashow

[short_description] Jeremy Bernstein’s book A Song for Molly is a fantasy in the form of fictional autobiography. He weaves around many seminal intellectual achievements in a delightful example of episodic storytelling.

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Beyond Dignity

Sophia Catalano

[short_description] Pico della Mirandola is today wrongly considered “a prophet of human dignity”—a title that Brian Copenhaver believes was thrust upon the Renaissance philosopher through the lens of subsequent ideas.

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The Restless Cosmopolitan

George Scialabba

[short_description] From the Cynics to Adam Smith to today, Martha Nussbaum has followed one question through the history of moral philosophy: Are basic material and social resources essential to human dignity?

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The Rise of the Architectural Cult

Nikos Salingaros

[short_description] In Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism, James Stevens Curl argues that modernist architecture is ill-adapted to human needs.

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Past Masters of the Postmodern

Simon Blackburn

[short_description] There is a widespread sense, Simon Blackburn observes, that a number of philosophical theories have escaped the academic world, and, in the wild, are doing great harm. Chief among them: postmodernism.

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Dialectics of Darkness

Egil Asprem

[short_description] On the persistence of magic in modernity: Egil Asprem reviews The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences by Jason Josephson-Storm.

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Nature and the Babylonians

Daryn Lehoux

[short_description] How did the ancient Mesopotamians conceive of nature and science? Daryn Lehoux reviews a new account, Before Nature: Cuneiform Knowledge and the History of Science, by Francesca Rochberg.

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The Grand Illusion

Michael Tye

[short_description] Daniel Dennett has a knack for telling many scientists what they want to hear: nothing in philosophy might cause them to lose sleep. They are right not to lose sleep, but not for the reasons provided.

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Gödel: The Third Degree

Graham Oppy

[short_description] Formulations of Gödel’s ontological argument in third-order modal logic, Grapham Oppy argues, allow us to decide between theistic and naturalistic positions.

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How Things Hang Together

George Scialabba

[short_description] George Scialabba reviews Convergence: The Idea at the Heart of Science by Peter Watson, and his description of the progressive unification of the sciences.

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Spheres

Pieter Lemmens

[short_description] From microspheres to macrospheres: Pieter Lemmens reviews German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s Foams: Plural Spherology, the conclusion of his vast and fascinating Spheres trilogy.

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