Category Archives: History
A philosophical apology from 1919 for not being pro-war
Leiter posted the PDF of this on his site. I can’t help but reproduce some of the choicer quotes: “DEAR FRIEND: Your letter gently but un-mistakably intimates that I am a slacker, a slacker in peace as well as in … Continue reading
Filed under History, Logic and philosophy, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, Sermon, Social evolution, Truisms
The Shandyan dilemma
Reginald Hill, author of the Dalziel and Pascoe detective series among many others, has died. This is a partial post I started some time back, so I thought I’d post it as is. In Recalled to Life, Reginald Hill has … Continue reading
Filed under Evolution, History, Philosophy, Social evolution
Evolution quotes: Quetelet on populations
Populations arise imperceptibly; it is only when they have reached a certain degree of development that we begin to think of their existence. This increase is more or less rapid, and it proceeds either from an excess of births over … Continue reading
Happy Newtonmas
Isaac Newton was born on the 25th of December (under the old Calendar; in our calendar he was born on 4 January, but ignore that for this post). In a wonderful marriage of good scholarship and computers (often a very … Continue reading
Filed under History, Logic and philosophy, Science
The meaning of Christmas
Tony Piro creatively borrows from Peanuts. Click on the picture to see the full comic. Tony has Linus give a fairly standard view, that Christmas is based on prior religious traditions. He carefully avoids making Linus repeat the “Christmas is … Continue reading
Filed under History, Humor, Pop culture, Religion
Rise of the Planet of the Moralists 2: chains and trees
Rise of the Planet of the Moralists Series1: Introduction2: Chains and Trees 3: Clades and grades4: Predicting traits5: Social dominance and power Very famously, Darwin came up with the idea of the evolutionary tree. What is not often realized is that it is the tree … Continue reading
Filed under Biology, Epistemology, Ethics and Moral Philosophy, Evolution, History, Philosophy, Social evolution
