From badscience - Steve Fuller lent a fig-leaf of academic credibility to Intelligent Design in the Dover trial in the USA. Norman Levitt died recently which Steve Fuller used as the occasion to write a rather nasty ad hominem attack on Levitt. Here is the explanation for Fuller feeling the need to write such a worthless screed: Levitt’s scathing review of Steve Fuller’s book defending Intelligent Design.  I don’t feel comfortable with some of the ad hominem’s and downright abuse of Fuller that LEvitt indulges in, but most of the review is bang on the money, especially the stuff about computational complexity and randomness. Worth a read if you are interested in Intelligent Design and its flaws.

This volume of essays follows on from Grayling’s earlier book: The Meaning of Things – a favourite of mine.  The essays in The Reason of Things are all about applying philosophical reasoning to everyday concerns – sex, religion, politics, identity – the things that are important to us as we live our lives. It is fascinating seeing Grayling tease apart what is important about these topics, what is central and what is inessential, bringing the clarity of philosophical discourse to them and helping the reader understand what the implications are for living our lives. Recommended if you are interested in living your life consistently or in a principled fashion.

Intrigued by this review at Elsewhere, my like of a couple of Jam records and it leaping out at me at the local record store, I picked up a copy of the recently released Deluxe Edition of Paul Weller’s Wild Wood. A somewhat speculative purchase then, but I don’t regret it. The first thing that i should say is that it bears very little resemblance to the Jam. It does show the stamp of its influences (Neil Young, Soul, Nick Drake) without being imitative. A hard thing to achieve, a thing that many britpop bands imitated, and consequently didn’t achieve. More contemplative and personal than his work with the Jam, it i less catchy, but in some ways more satisfying. Recommended for those who like their rock tinged with maturity.

Key tracks:

• Sunflower
• Can You Heal Us (Holy Man)
• The Weaver
• Moon On Your Pyjamas

I have been reading a number of weighty tomes about great political crimes – communism, fascism, nazism – topics I find both fascinating and compelling, but not necessarily enjoyable. I can find immense satisfaction in reading good books on these topics, but they aren’t exactly light-hearted. In the middle of reading one of the best books in this area – The Third Reich in Power - I just had enough. I decided that I needed to read something more enjoyable even if of less moral weight. Something less worthy but more fun. So I have parked the weighty (figuratively and literally in the case of the aforementioned 700 page book) and taken up the more flighty. It is important I think to understand that reading is first and foremost a pleasure – otherwise it becomes a chore; work – that even reading about such serious matters can in some respects be pleasurable (the pleasure of discovery, of learning, of moral improvement, of comprehending) – but that when it ceases to be pleasurable one should stop, change and take up something else. I fully intend to return to The Third Reich in Power, but I will wait until I have recovered my sense of pleasure in that sort of reading first. In the meantime I think I will concentrate in reading about art, which is important but perhaps more fun.

Never look to Alain De Botton for answers. His philosophy is the kind that is thought provoking, that opens up questions, that unravels matters; not the sort that resolves things. That isn’t to say that you can’t arrive at your own answers after reading one of his books – but you’ll have to do some thinking yourself to get there. It also means that reading one of his books is a different experience from reading a “standard” philosophical work – he isn’t overly concerned with giving a systematic and consistent picture of his subject matter (in this case architecture) – and if you are expecting that you may find it frustrating. This book is an exploration of what makes architecture interesting to us as human beings, what makes us praise certain kinds of architecture, and what makes us claim that certain pieces of architecture are beautiful. The central claim of the book is that we call architecture beautiful if it promotes values that we wish to be central to our lives. He then tries to identify how architectures can promote those values, and which values are promoted by certain kinds of architectures. Both of these projects are approached unsystematically but with a view to pulling apart some important pieces of the puzzle of why we view architecture as important, how architecture can impact our lives (negatively or positively), and why we view certain pieces of architecture as good or beautiful. As a “theory of architecture” or a “theory of architectural beauty” I think this fails (though it fails in a beautiful manner!); but it succeeds – gloriously -  in highlighting a fruitful way of talking about architecture that readers may find helpful in understanding why they like certain things, and even quite different things in their homes and other buildings. If, like me, you can’t decide how you want to decorate or design your home, are pulled in different directions by the different things that you like, this way of thinking about it may help bring clarity to the chaos of your conflicting tastes. For those reasons, as well as the joyous style of its prose I heartily recommend it.

This book does a great job of tying together the diverse histories of communism(s) and communist movements from around the world, highlighting what they shared as well as where they diverged. Through examining communism in Soviet Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia, etc. we can see what was essential to communism (its authoritarianism and totalitarianism) from its inessential. However this is not as gripping as Service’s book on Lenin, and in attempting to be a broad survey of world communism it becomes too shallow in its treatment of particular instances of communism – and yet it is in only in understanding the particular that we can fully understand the general. It certainly enhanced my understanding of communism – especially in conjunction with his biography of Lenin, but left me feeling unsatisfied.

I have been a real fan of A.C. Grayling’s books of essays for some time. His wit and the directness of his thinking are unusual in this era of spin and style. So I was intrigued when I found out he had written this book – subtitled “The story of the struggles for liberty and rights that made the modern west”. It is certainly a subject that demands attention in this age of patriot acts, terrorism and counter-terrorism. The theme that the rights and liberties that we enjoy thoughtlessly in the west were hard won by our forebears is one that is an important reminder for us here and now, in New Zealand as in any other western democracy. After reading this book, though, I somehow left it much as I had entered it, feeling that it was a weighty subject that deserved a thorough treatment. It’s not that this is a bad book – it is in fact quite good – just that it feels like it should be a great book given the subject matter in order to do it justice. And, indeed, after reading this book I felt that I had only scratched the surface of the topic. So, a worthy introduction, but I am waiting for the in depth study.

I have been entrusted with looking after Conor on my own for the day. Only necessity would bring aout this drastic state of affairs, clearly. Jude has to go back to work and we haven’t quite got our childcare fully sorted so I have to fill in today.

Lenin had a massive influence on the 20th century, and is still a significant figure in the 21st, albeit somewhat diminished by the disintegration of the USSR. This book by Robert Service argues that story of how communism came to be a major political force in the world, and how the USSR came into being is intimately tied to the personal story of Lenin. It is a fantastic book, vivid and compelling, dense and thorough without being dull. In general I find biographies tedious – who cares what that famous figure did on their Sundays – I’d rather read about the events or things that made them famous than about the minutiae of their lives. But in this case Service focuses on those parts of Lenin’s life that shaped our modern world, showing how the early parts of his life shaped his outlook and approach to things in a way that had a material impact on the shape of the Russian revolution and thus on the Soviet state. Essential reading if you are interested in a history of Russia, totalitarianism or the 20th century in general.

After a long hiatus due to a new job, a new house and a baby (quite a bit for one year) I’m back posting. I may be a little bit less ambitious with the posts this time, as I have less time for such frivolities, but we’ll see.