Category: education
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John Armstrong on the life blood of civilization
J.E. Lendon favorably reviews John Armstrong’s In Search of Civilization. The upshot of Armstrong’s book, Lendon means to show, is that economic liberty entails artistic liberty. Here are a few highlights from the review: The two imps of the ancient mind, that wealth is either irrelevant to the good life or its bane, still rule…
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Kathryn Schulz on being wrong
— I’d like to clarify Schulz’s otherwise fine lecture on the virtue of fallibility (I err, therefore I am). First, let’s distinguish between being wrong and going wrong. Being wrong entails self-loathing whereas going wrong suggests an error or lapse in judgment. The same goes for being right and heading in the right direction. The former is self-righteousness,…
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The Parable of the Talents
There are a few errors commonly made when people speak about the Parable of the Talents. The Parable naturally lends itself to misinterpretation in terms of quantitative comparison. The first man is given 5 talents, the second man 2 talents, and the third man 1 talent. We are thus tempted to evaluate the talents according to…
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On cellphone radiation, complexity, and humility
“The association [between radiation and brain cancer] does not stand out nor does it disappear into statistical white noise. Instead, it remains suspended, like some sort of peculiar optical illusion that is blurry to some and all too clear to others.” (Siddharta Mukherjee, “Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?”) — How do we know what we…
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On money, the scene of transaction, and philosophical counseling
I’ve been trying to achieve a sense of integrity (integritas). This life project has taken me in many directions, one being my relationship with my philosophical counseling conversation partner. In an earlier blog, I wrote about the need to stop calling her a “client” and to start using the term “conversation partner.” Now I want to…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 