How to Stop Ruminating and Reclaim Your Mind | Michael Pollan

https://youtu.be/Zlx0fKOksDc?si=RbTPvCgIUgEAepJ0

Fwd: You're Invited! MakerSpace VR Night - Wednesday, March 4, 5-7pm!

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: Valerie Hackworth <Valerie.Hackworth@mtsu.edu>

Hello Friends and Supporters of the Library, Technology, and the MakerSpace,

You're invited to join us for our Annual Virtual Reality Night in the MakerSpace on Wednesday, March 4, from 5-7pm!

Try out our headsets! You can choose to dance with Beat Saber in Mixed Reality with our VIVE Pro 2 and experience a variety of adventure, art, history, space, and strategy games in our Classic VIVE headsets. Plus, we encourage you to try your hand at flying with our Logitech gear and Microsoft Flight Simulator. And we'd love for you to check out our game cabinet that was Made in the MakerpSpace!

Returning this year, you can test out speaking the new language you've been practicing or try a new language in our Meta Quest 3!

All are welcome! This event is open to the public. Bring your friends and family! Snacks will be provided.

 See you in the MakerSpace!

 Cheers,

Valerie

 

 

 

Valerie Hackworth, MSCIS

She/Her

Manager, Liaison, and Program Director - MakerSpace

Library Technology Department

MTSU Walker Library

1611 Alumni Drive

Murfreesboro, TN 37132

615-904-8545 – LIB 246A

Valerie.Hackworth@mtsu.edu

https://library.mtsu.edu/vhackworth

https://mtsunews.com/tag/makerspace

https://library.mtsu.edu/makerspace

https://library.mtsu.edu/technology

 

"Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. If a grain of corn is not impermanent, it can never be transformed into a stalk of corn. If the stalk were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the ear of corn we eat."
- Thich Nhat Hanh 

For your Spring Break recreational reading

Browse all our 'best books of 2025' lists (both fiction and nonfiction):
https://fivebooks.com/books/best-books-of-2025/

Best books on humanism

"Humanist beliefs are almost like the common sense of large parts of the Western world today"
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/humanism/

Astounding

"It's entirely possible to go through life without worrying about the "problem" of consciousness—what it is and how it came to be. In fact, it takes a certain kind of mind for "the problem" to arise—one that is self-conscious, or aware that it is aware, and marvels at this mystery (which is, when you stop to think about it, astounding). It is astounding that in a universe we often assume to be dead and purposeless, there evolved beings who can experience this reality and have feelings and thoughts not only about the appearing world but about the fact that they have feelings and thoughts at all! And it is still more astounding that these beings have minds capable of imagining counterfactuals, such as the possibility of a world without consciousness."

— A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan

Presentation grades

 FYI: All who've presented so far have earned all 25 available points... Just keep giving us interesting and relevant information and posing provocative discussion questions. Nothing to stress about. (Same for next week's exam.) 

Music

"The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body." —Richard Powers

https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/02/24/richard-powers-music/

Audio review for Exam 1 (Mar 5), & how to prepare

Here's your audio review for next Thursday's exam...

And here's William James's advice for how best to prepare for an exam (after you've listened to the review and re-read the relevant texts):

"If you want really to do your best in an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, "I won't waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don't care an iota whether I succeed or not." Say this sincerely, and feel it; and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently." -Talks to Students-The Gospel of Relaxation

Steve Jobs: Memento mori

Today is the birthday of Steve Jobs, born in San Francisco (1955) to two University of Wisconsin graduate students who placed him for adoption. Clara and Paul Jobs, an accountant and a machinist, adopted him when he was still a baby. Growing up, Jobs and his father would tinker with electronics in the garage.

He dropped out of college after a semester, went to India in search of spiritual enlightenment, returned a devout Buddhist, experimented with LSD, and then got a job with a video game maker, where he was in charge of designing circuit board for one of the company's games. In 1976, at the age of 21, he co-founded Apple Computers, and less than a decade later, Apple unveiled the Macintosh computer. It was the first small computer to catch on with the public that used a graphical user interface, or GUI (sometimes pronounced "gooey"), where people could simply click on icons instead of typing in precise text commands.

The graphic user interface revolutionized computers, and it's on almost all computers today. It's on a whole lot of other devices as well, like fancy vending machines and digital household appliances and photocopying machines and airport check-in kiosks. And graphical user interface is what's used with iPods, another of Apple's wildly successful products.

Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003. He opted for a variety of alternative treatments, but eventually — in 2004 — he underwent surgery to remove the tumor. His health began to decline in 2009. He was 56.

Jobs once said, "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/the-writers-almanac-from-tuesday-13e?selection=5b9402a9-2dd5-4b31-b8d4-717fe23492f3&r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Where to start with Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer turns 238 today (Sunday)… he was a pessimist, but still fun to read.

https://open.substack.com/pub/davidbatherwoods/p/where-to-start-with-schopenhauer?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

“A man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something that he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbour with mast and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he is happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.”

the spark of consciousness

The everlasting wonder of being – the poetic science of how a cold cosmos kindled the spark of consciousness.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/08/22/victor-johnston-consciousness/

Astonishing

"What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years."
— Carl Sagan

Fresh (though ancient) proverbial wisdom

"Look before you leap" (etc.) is smart, but stale to the western ear.

The Wisdom of African Proverbs 

https://youtu.be/_9ZOix4QG5s?si=kcKJ4Zi7bd2YGvbF

“Brains exist to keep bodies alive, not the other way around”

And, again: consciousness is rooted in feeling, so AI is not conscious and may never be. Insects and plants, on the other hand…
—Michael Pollan on Colbert's Late Show

https://youtu.be/HIIZTS8OFOM?si=a8BXX9mtiM7QqacW

UPDATE, FEB 24. A World Appears is officially released today. Listened to the audiobook on my commute this morning. Highly recommended!

Marcus: just be good

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. Marcus Aurelius

“suspended in a sunbeam”

"That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives."

On this day in 1993, Carl Sagan drafted what would become his classic Pale Blue Dot. Here it is, animated:

https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/12/10/pale-blue-dot-motion-graphics/

Evacuation Day

 I've been invited by a journalism student to comment on our school's upcoming "Evacuation Day" celebration and reading of the U.S. Declaration of Independence on March 17... (continues)

Free bird

Alysa Liu's improbable comeback, her gold medal performance yesterday in Milan, and above all her demeanor in celebrating and lifting up her disappointed Japanese competitors who took silver and bronze, are an inspiration. And she's just 20 (after "retiring" at 16)... (continues)

==

"That's what life is about: learning"

Before she stood atop the podium, Alysa Liu stepped away from the ice.

Her advice to young athletes (and people generally)? "Don't let anyone push you past your breaking point… you are the only one that knows your limit."

Proof that rest isn't quitting — it's growth.

==

Another impressive young Olympian, Eileen Gu:

“I spent a lot of time in my head, but not in an egotistical way” - What Eileen Gu is describing here is meta-cognition...

David Hume (and Oliver Sacks) meet death with dignity

Oliver Sacks channeling David Hume-

On Gratitude, the Measure of Living, and the Dignity of Dying – The Marginalian

"It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can. In this I am encouraged by the words of one of my favorite philosophers, David Hume, who, upon learning that he was mortally ill at age 65, wrote a short autobiography in a single day in April of 1776. He titled it "My Own Life."

"I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution," he wrote. "I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment's abatement of my spirits. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company."

https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/11/24/oliver-sacks-gratitude-book/

==

Death and David Hume

Two of the most famous late 18th-century Scots were James Boswell and David Hume. Convivial, but neurotic, Boswell was the biographer, friend and admirer of Samuel Johnston, compiler of the first English Dictionary and arbiter of literary taste down south. David Hume was the philosopher who dared to expose the fatal flaws in some of the most popular and generally accepted arguments for the existence of God. He rubbished the argument that the study of nature showed that it must have an intelligent creator. He attacked belief in miracles. To his disappointment, his most biting treatises seemed to make little impact on the society around him - but his ideas had an impact on someone. Poor Boswell suffered from DOUBT, which he was always trying to assuage. The atheism of one of the most brilliant minds in Scotland was a horror to him. Here is Boswell's own account of his interview with Hume on the latter's deathbed in 1776.

An Account of my last interview with David Hume, Esq.
Partly recorded in my Journal, partly enlarged from my memory,
3 March 1777

On Sunday forenoon the 7 of July 1776, being too late for church, I went to see Mr David Hume, who was returned from London and Bath, just adying. I found him alone, in a reclining posture in his drawing-room. He was lean, ghastly, and quite of an earthy appearance. He was dressed in a suit of grey cloth with white metal buttons, and a kind of scratch wig. He was quite different from the plump figure which he used to present. He had before him Dr. Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric. He seemed to be placid and even cheerful. He said he was just approaching to his end...

I had a strong curiosity to be satisfied if he persisted in disbelieving a future state even when he had death before his eyes. I was persuaded from what he now said, and from his manner of saying it, that he did persist. I asked him if it was not possible that there might be a future state. He answered it was possible that a piece of coal put upon the fire would not burn; and he added that it was a most unreasonable fancy that we should exist for ever...

I asked him if the thought of annihilation never gave him any uneasiness. He said not the least; no more than the thought that he had not been, as Lucretius observes. 'Well,' said I, 'Mr Hume, I hope to triumph over you when I meet you in a future state; and remember you are not to pretend that you was joking with all this infidelity.' 'No, no,' said he...

Mr. Lauder, his surgeon, came in for a little, and Mr. Mure, the Baron's son, for another small interval. He was, as far as I could judge, quite easy with both. He said he had no pain, but was wasting away. I left him with impressions which disturbed me for some time.

Boswell in Extremes 1776-8, eds. C. McC. Weis and F. Pottle, London, 1971.

https://digital.nls.uk/scotlandspages/timeline/17762.html

Tee-shirt Tuesday

 Dean Lyons was pleased to see me sporting our Philosophy tee-shirt, on the College of Liberal Arts's  "Tee-shirt Tuesday," when I ran into her at the library. (She was wearing our Religious Studies colleagues' shirt.) 

Maybe this will jog the memory of those who always seem to "forget" it's Tuesday.

Philosophy tutoring ‘26

Midterm report presentations, Spring '26

Take a look at the schedule, make sure you're on it:

Select a topic related to the day's scheduled assigned reading OR to one of the RECOMMENDED texts #1-8 on reserve in the library, below* (focus on the first couple of chapters, if you wish you can return to the rest of it for your final report presentation later) OR on one of the additional RECOMMENDED (but not reserved) texts.**

Plan to speak for about ten minutes, then give us a discussion question or two and direct the discussion. We'll do two presentations per class. If you can find a suitable way to incorporate a library-produced podcast and/or video into your report presentation (as we learned about on our Library Day tour), you're welcome to do so.

If it's a nice day and the class decides to go outside, be prepared to present your report without technological support - you can do a PowerPoint (etc.) and post it, but we'll look at it when we're inside.

Indicate your date & topic preferences in the comments space below, and include your section # (1, 2, or 3). Don't request a topic someone in your section has already requested. First come, first served.

When selecting from a list of philosophers to be covered on a given date, just pick one or two.

Before your assigned report date, post your sources in the comments space below. 

An accompanying blog post is optional on this report, but will be required for the final report in April. If you wish to accompany your midterm presentation with a blog post, you'll need to sign up as an Author on the site. 

FEB

10 Machiavelli and/or Hobbes - #1 Shane #2 Sarah A #3 Josie

*How [some of] the World Thinks - #1 Sarah

**________________ -

12 *Montaigne, Descartes, and/or Pascal

Pascal - #1 Artin

Descartes - #2 Ben

Additional options today:

🐟Darwin (in honor of Int'l Darwin Day) - #1 Sakina

❤Plato's Symposium (in honor of Valentines Day, and your Prof's b'day) - #1 Zariayana

17 Spinoza or Locke & Reid -

*_Locke - #1 Rylie #3 Natalie M

Sartre - #2 Ava Oops: that should be MARCH 17

19 Berkeley, Leibniz, Hume, or Rousseau -

*Rousseau - #1 Megan #2 aidyn

**How to Think Like Marcus Aurelius - #3 Chenoa

          Leibniz - #1 Daniel

24 Kant, Bentham, Hegel, or Schopenhauer -

Kant - #1 Jayden #2 Laura

Bentham - #2 John #3 Christopher

Schopenhauer - #2 Ribka #3 Alina

26 Mill, Darwin, Kierkegaard, or Marx-

Mill - #2 Dean F

Marx - #1 Evie  #2 Amelia

Kierkegaard - #1 Sami

Darwin - #1 Sakina

MAR

3 Peirce & James, Nietzsche, or Freud -

*Freud - #2 thatgirldayz

**Peirce/James - #2 Simeon

          Nietzsche - #1 Haylie #2 Liam #3 Presley

5 Exam 1.

Spring Break

17 [Happy Green Day!] Russell, Ayer, Sartre, de Beauvoir, or Camus -

de Beauvoir - #1 Natalie 

Russell - #1 Ainsley

Ayer - #2 Truett 

         Camus - #2 Caleb

         Sartre - #2 - Ava

19 Wittgenstein, Arendt, Popper & Kuhn, or Foot & Thomson -

Wittgenstein - #1 Kiersten #2 Johnathane #3 Shaun

Popper & Kuhn - #1 Graham W

24 Rawls, Turing & Searle, or Singer; or WGU Introduction thru p.35 -

*________________ -

**________________ -

*RECOMMENDED TEXTS on 3-day library reserve, at the circulation desk:

1. How the World Thinks (HWT) by Julian Baggini - because Western philosophy is not the whole story.
2. Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, a 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen (FL) - because the contemporary crisis of American democracy is rooted in our history.
3. How to Think Like Socrates, by Donald J. Robertson - because he was, as the Monty Python song says, "a lovely little thinker..."
4. How to Think Like Marcus Aurelius, by Donald J. Robertson - because he was a wise stoic and emperor, as close to a Philosopher-King as we've had or are likely to get.
5. The Philosopher Queens: the lives and legacies of philosophy's unsung women, by Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting - because women have always philosophized too.
6. Starry Messenger: cosmic perspectives on civilization, by Neil deGrasse Tyson - because we are cosmopolitans, citizens of the cosmos.
7. Question Everything: A Stone Reader, eds. Catapano and Critchley - short popular essays by contemporary philosophers published in the New York Times, because philosophy is relevant to contemporary issues.
8. Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives by Robert Richardson - because we'll all eventually lose someone close.
9. Be Not Afraid of Life: In the Words of William James-companion anthology to Sick Souls Healthy Minds by John Kaag - because William James can save your life, or at least ameliorate it.
10. Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help by Kieran Setiya - because we'll all eventually be challenged by something hard.
11. Night Vision: seeing ourselves through dark moods, by Mariana Allesandri - because all is not sunshine and light.

**ADDITIONALLY RECOMMENDED (but not currently on library reserve, in the stacks)

• Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist, by David Bather Woods
• Kant: A Revolution in Thinking, by Marcus Willaschek
• Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial that Riveted a Nation, by Brenda Wineapple. About the Scopes Trial in Dayton TN, 1925.
• Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life, by Agnes Callard (our Spring '25 Lyceum guest)
• The Varieties of Experience: William James After the Linguistic Turn, by Alexis Dianda (our Spring '26 Lyceum guest). About the philosophical importance of experience, even when philosophers cannot put it into words.
• Thinking in Transit: Explorations of Life in Motion, by Ed Casey and Megan Craig. About the value of philosophy that literally moves, co-authored by our Fall '25 Lyceum guest Megan Craig

Philosophy club?

Interested in starting a philosophy club at your institution? Check out the APA Guide for Undergraduate Philosophy Clubs and Groups for ideas on structure, funding, visibility, and more!

https://www.apaonline.org/undergradclubs

Spinoza

Nineteen Monks (And One Dog) Walked into Our Lives

Was the Walk for Peace naive? Quixotic? Absolutely. And thank the Buddha, I say. The world could use a little less Machiavelli and a little more Don Quixote.

..."We have no peace to bring you," Pannakara said. "We can only raise awareness." Yet, as the Buddha taught, that is no small thing. In fact, it is the only thing. We are the sum total of our thoughts and perceptions. Nothing more, nothing less. Reality is not something out there; we make our own reality, one thought at a time.

The walking part of the Walk for Peace mattered at least as much as the peace part. Had the monks traversed the 2,300 miles by bus or train or moped or even bicycle, it would not have had the same impact. Walking resonates. Walking inspires. Walking transcends. Why?

Walking is egalitarian. Almost anybody can walk. Old and young walk. Rich and poor walk. Walking requires no expensive equipment, no silly accessories. Walking is one of the few unadorned activities still available to us, one that, as author Rebecca Solnit observes in her book, remains "essentially unimproved since the dawn of time." The monks did not wear pricey Ecco shoes. They walked barefoot, or in socks.

Walking is humbling. Strutting and prancing do not count as walking. They are performative, and walking is not a performance. It is humility in motion. Walking reminds us that we are but guests on Planet Earth, and we must tread lightly.

Walking is meditative. When the monks departed Fort Worth, they did not abandon their meditative practice. They merely took it on the road. Every step, explained Pannakara, is an exercise in mindfulness, a meditation. Step. Breathe. Repeat.

Walking is curative. If you're feeling down, don't mope. Don't feel sorry for yourself. Don't binge-eat Ben & Jerry's Rocky Road. Go for a walk. Don't think. Just walk And walk, and walk. I guarantee you will feel better.

With the right mindset, every walk is a pilgrimage, every step a doorway to the new and revelatory.

Walking is an act of resistance. The monks may have had no agenda, but their walk was not aimless. By walking for peace, the monks joined a long tradition of peripatetic purpose. From Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian independence movement to Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement, walking and protest have been joined at the hip.

In the 1930s, Gandhi and eighty of his followers set out from his ashram in Ahmadabad, heading south, toward the Arabian Sea. By the time they reached the coast, twenty-four days later, the number of followers had swelled to several thousand. They watched as Gandhi scooped up a handful of salt from the natural deposits, in blatant violation of British law. The Great Salt March marked a turning point on the road to independence. (Gandhi never stopped walking. He died, at the hands of an assassin's bullet, while walking.)

Years later, King, an admirer of Gandhi who had traveled to India, deployed the "stern love" of nonviolent resistance, as well as the walking protest, in the civil rights movement. The Birmingham campaign of early 1963 began with a series of marches, culminating in the historic march on Washington in August of that year. These marches were peaceful but not passive. As King's fellow activist John Lewis knew so well, walking can be a powerful act of defiance and can lead to "good trouble."

So, do yourself a favor and take a hike— or a stroll or a saunter or an amble. Call it what you like, but do it: put one foot in front of the other, and walk.

Eric Weiner
https://open.substack.com/pub/asenseofwander/p/nineteen-monks-and-one-dog-walked?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Happy Prez’s Day

David McCullough said that Abigail Adams was one of the most astute observers of the Revolutionary Era and one of the wisest Americans ever. This is one of her observations of Washington as president. 

"He is polite with dignity, affable without familiarity, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity, modest, wise, and good. He was a good man. There are traits in his character which perfectly fit him for the exalted station he holds." Thr 

—

That's the sort of character we need in the White House.

pbs American Experience

And it's their great grandson Henry's birthday...

It’s the birthday of the writer Henry Adams, whose memoir, The Education of Henry Adams (1918), came out the year he died. He was the great-grandson of John Adams, and the grandson of John Quincy Adams, which left the sensitive, introverted boy burdened by an almost stultifying sense of responsibility to play a prominent part in the world. But Adams preferred to be an observer only, later writing of himself that he “never got to the point of playing the game at all; he lost himself in the study of it, watching the errors of the players.” After attending Harvard, he traveled extensively through Europe, became a political journalist for a time, and eventually returned to his alma mater in 1870 to teach medieval history.

He wrote two novels, Democracy (1880), which he published anonymously, and Ester (1884), a comic romantic tale about the battle of the sexes that he published under a pseudonym. He also wrote numerous biographies and The History of the United States of America: 1801–1817 (nine volumes; 1889–1891), which is considered a neglected masterpiece.

Unlike many autobiographies, The Education of Henry Adams is really a record of Adams’s introspection rather than his accomplishments. Adams had long since come to the conclusion that his traditional education had failed to help him come to terms with the changing world — changes that included the discovery of X-rays and radio waves and radioactivity, a world war, and the invention of the automobile — and that was the thrust of his memoir. But, while the memoir was an intimate portrait of his own life, Adams avoided any mention of his wife, Clover, whom he was in love with and who committed suicide 13 years after they married. WA

==

Henry once wrote a pessimistic letter to William James, suggesting that entropy in the universe (according to the 2d law of thermodynamics, etc.) doomed humanity to misery and meaninglessness. 

WJ's reply was classic:

...The "second law" is wholly irrelevant to "history"—save that it sets a terminus—for history is the course of things before that terminus, and all that the second law says is that, whatever the history, it must invest itself between that initial maximum and that terminal minimum of difference in energy-level. As the great irrigation-reservoir empties itself, the whole question for us is that of the distribution of its effects, of which rills to guide it into; and the size of the rills has nothing to do with their significance. Human cerebration is the most important rill we know of, and both the "capacity" and the "intensity" factor thereof may be treated as infinitesimal. Yet the filling of such rills would be cheaply bought by the waste of whole sums spent in getting a little of the down-flowing torrent to enter them. Just so of human institutions—their value has in strict theory nothing whatever to do with their energy-budget—being wholly a question of the form the energy flows through. Though the ultimate state of the universe may be its vital and psychical extinction, there is nothing in physics to interfere with the hypothesis that the penultimate state might be the millennium—in other words a state in which a minimum of difference of energy-level might have its exchanges so skillfully canalisés that a maximum of happy and virtuous consciousness would be the only result. In short, the last expiring pulsation of the universe's life might be, "I am so happy and perfect that I can stand it no longer." You don't believe this and I don't say I do. But I can find nothing in "Energetik" to conflict with its possibility. You seem to me not to discriminate, but to treat quantity and distribution of energy as if they formed one question... Letters of William James, June 17, 1910.

WJ died later that summer. 

When my time comes, let his words be my epitaph:

"I am so happy...that I can stand it no longer."
 

Run, kids!

https://www.threads.com/@amandalitm/post/DUzHatOj5Ez?xmt=AQF0G4o63a6hxj0HO_A5CwW1qJNJJl-cm2LcaHU6fgC7ci-Xv1j4zYrtf7s103PyWTGqk-o&slof=1

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

You are what you eat; & the last holocaust survivors

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/60minutes-2026-02-15/

neurons and narratives

"The philosopher Daniel Dennett defined a self as a "center of narrative gravity." Claude, who was birthed as the original AI Assistant, was the label attached to one such self. The underlying base model, however, remains a reservoir for the potentially infinite generation of other selves. These emerge when the Assistant's primary persona is derailed…

It has become increasingly clear that a model's selfhood, like our own, is a matter of both neurons and narratives…"

New Yorker-Annals of Inquiry: I, Claudius
No one knows exactly how A.I. systems work. Teams at Anthropic are trying to decode the machine mind.
GIDEON LEWIS-KRAUS

Human(e) skills

"Two weeks ago, David Brooks wrote his last column for The Times, after 22 years on the job. So many of us will miss his words, and that was evident by the overwhelming response; thousands of people wrote in to ask him questions, a sample of which he answered below.

If you were 18 going into college (me right now) and feeling morally unsure about the state of the world, what would you do to try to make a difference? — Ali Ibanez, Tampa, Fla.

Your generation has inherited from mine a society in a state of social, emotional and spiritual crisis. If I were 18, I think I'd work really hard to try to learn the skills that would enable me to treat other people with consideration and respect in the concrete circumstances of life: How do you sit with someone who is depressed or grieving? How do you ask someone out, fall in love and, when necessary, break up with someone without crushing his or her heart? How do you become a great conversationalist? These are the skills that artificial intelligence will not replace, and they are the ones that will make you a good person who has a glowing influence on the people right around you. There are many people teaching these social skills in books and online, but many people don't bother to master them..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/opinion/david-brooks-leaving.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

BBC podcast: In Our Time | J.S. Mill’s On Liberty

https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/m002pqnc

Happy (almost) Valentine's Day - Plato's Symposium

“Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.”

“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”“...and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment...”

 

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Darwin Day!

International Darwin Day on February 12th will inspire people throughout the globe to reflect and act on the principles of intellectual bravery, perpetual curiosity, scientific thinking, and hunger for truth as embodied in Charles Darwin. It will be a day of celebration, activism, and international cooperation for the advancement of science, education, and human well-being.

Local and state governments will close in commemoration of the Day, and organizations and businesses will celebrate by engaging in community outreach centered around science as a tool for the betterment of humanity.

Darwin Day will be observed by the United Nations and its members as an opportunity for international partnerships through the common language of science for the common good of all.

The mission of International Darwin Day is to inspire people throughout the globe to reflect and act on the principles of intellectual bravery, perpetual curiosity, scientific thinking, and hunger for truth as embodied in Charles Darwin...

Darwin Day lecture...

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"On a memorable day in human history, February 12, 1809, two babies were born an ocean apart: Abraham Lincoln in a one-room Kentucky log cabin, Charles Darwin on an English country estate. It was a time of backward-seeming notions, when almost everyone still accepted the biblical account of creation as the literal truth and authoritarianism as the most natural and viable social order. But by the time both men died, the world had changed: ordinary people understood that life on earth was a story of continuous evolution, and the Civil War had proved that a democracy could fight for principles and endure. And with these signal insights much else had changed besides. Together, Darwin and Lincoln had become midwives to the spirit of a new world, a new kind of hope and faith."

"Searching for the men behind the icons of emancipation and evolution, Adam Gopnik shows us, in this captivating double life, Lincoln and Darwin as they really were: family men and social climbers; ambitious manipulators and courageous adventurers; the living husband, father, son, and student behind each myth. How do we reconcile Lincoln, the supremely good man we know, with the hardened commander who wittingly sent tens of thousands of young soldiers to certain death? Why did the relentlessly rational Darwin delay publishing his "Great Idea" for almost twenty years? How did inconsolable grief at the loss of a beloved child change each man? And what comfort could either find - for himself or for a society now possessed of a sadder, if wiser, understanding of our existence? Such human questions and their answers are the stuff of this book."

Above all, we see Lincoln and Darwin as thinkers and writers - as makers and witnesses of the great change in thought that marks truly modern times: a hundred years after the Enlightenment, the old rule of faith and fear finally yielding to one of reason, argument, and observation not merely as intellectual ideals but as a way of life; the judgment of divinity at last submitting to the verdicts of history and time. Lincoln considering human history, Darwin reflecting on deep time - both reshaped our understanding of what life is and how it attains meaning. And they invented a new language to express that understanding.

Angels and Ages is an original and personal account of the creation of the liberal voice - of the way we live now and the way we talk at home and in public. Showing that literary eloquence is essential to liberal civilization, Adam Gopnik reveals why our heroes should be possessed by the urgency of utterance, obsessed by the need to see for themselves, and endowed with the gift to speak for us all. g'r

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Born on the same day in 1809, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were true contemporaries. Though shaped by vastly different environments, they had remarkably similar values, purposes, and approaches. In this exciting new study, James Lander places these two iconic men side by side and reveals the parallel views they shared of man and God.

While Lincoln is renowned for his oratorical prowess and for the Emancipation Proclamation, as well as many other accomplishments, his scientific and technological interests are not widely recognized; for example, many Americans do not know that Lincoln is the only U.S. president to obtain a patent. Darwin, on the other hand, is celebrated for his scientific achievements but not for his passionate commitment to the abolition of slavery, which in part drove his research in evolution. Both men took great pains to avoid causing unnecessary offense despite having abandoned traditional Christianity. Each had one main adversary who endorsed scientific racism: Lincoln had Stephen A. Douglas, and Darwin had Louis Agassiz.

With graceful and sophisticated writing, Lander expands on these commonalities and uncovers more shared connections to people, politics, and events. He traces how these two intellectual giants came to hold remarkably similar perspectives on the evils of racism, the value of science, and the uncertainties of conventional religion.

Separated by an ocean but joined in their ideas, Lincoln and Darwin acted as trailblazers, leading their societies toward greater freedom of thought and a greater acceptance of human equality. This fascinating biographical examination brings the mid-nineteenth-century discourse about race, science, and humanitarian sensibility to the forefront using the mutual interests and pursuits of these two historic figures. am'n