Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
This is part of an ongoing series inspired by my reading of Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. A while back, I discussed the discovery of discovery, the historical development of the idea that there were things to discover in the world, things the ancients didn't already know. Harari flips this around, … Continue reading The crucial knowledge of ignorance
This is an ongoing series of posts on topics that catch my interest as I read Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Religion is one of those concepts, like life, beauty, or consciousness, that are difficult to define. I used to think it was just worship of God, or gods. But many … Continue reading The superhuman order definition of religion
In an ongoing series, I'm covering topics that catch my interest as I read Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. One topic that Harari returns to often is the idea of imagined worlds. Homo sapiens acquired the ability to create imagined worlds in what he called "the cognitive revolution". Most anthropologists see … Continue reading The maturity of fiction awareness
I'm continuing to work my way through Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and have just finished his section on the agricultural revolution. This is the transition from a hunter-gatherer foraging lifestyle, which humanity had followed for hundreds of thousands of years, to a settled farming one about 12,000 years ago. Harari describes … Continue reading Was the agricultural revolution a mistake?
I'm finally heeding all the recommendations and reading Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Harari is an excellent writer, and though at times he seems to present some unproven hypotheses as proven fact, and nine years after initial publication some of the information feels a bit dated, he makes up for it … Continue reading The ecological disaster of Homo sapiens
This weekend I finally got around to watching the movie Alpha. This is a story set in prehistory, about 20,000 BC. It's about a boy who gets injured and separated from his hunting party, and ends up thrown together with an injured wolf. He takes care of the wolf, and they develop a bond. The … Continue reading Alpha
Aeon this weekend highlighted a 2017 article by Joel Mokyr looking at how Europe became the richest part of the world (or at least one of the richest). Historically, there have been many theories, ranging from racist rationals, cultural ones, to it merely being Europe and the overall west's turn to be on top. That … Continue reading The rise of the west and the changing sociopolitical landscape
For most of human history, the Earth was seen as the stationary center of the universe, with the sun, planets, and starry firmament circling around it at various speeds. The ancient Greeks quickly managed to work out that the Earth was spherical but struggled to explain the motions of the heavens. Eventually Eudoxus, a student … Continue reading A theory more pleasing to the mind
I've been thinking lately about the history of science, particularly the period between 1500 and 1700, what is usually referred to as "the scientific revolution." I'm a bit leery of many accounts of this period, as they often assume that there's some bright line separating science from what came before. There's a tendency to look … Continue reading The discovery of discovery
Last week I started listening to a Sean Carroll podcast episode, an interview of Adam Becker on his book, What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics. Before even finishing the episode, I downloaded Becker's book and read it. Becker starts out in the early decades of the 20th century, when … Continue reading Recommendation: What Is Real?
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