Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

My recent reading has included A Troublesome Inheritance (2014) by Nicholas Wade. Wade is an experienced science journalist -- he is a graduate of King's College, Cambridge, was deputy editor of Nature , and before going freelance he was both a reporter and an editor at The New York Times, where  he wrote frequently about scientific and environmental matters. His book has the subtitle "Genes, Race, and Human History," which suffices to reveal how fraught is the subject matter. The point he wants to make is that biological evolution continues to change the human genome, and does so at time scales which are relevant to an understanding of history, not just dim pre-history. Evolution by natural selection isn't just about the fossil "Lucy" and her peers. It's about the fellow or gal in the mirror this morning. Evolutionary psychologists, he says, commonly "teach  that the human mind is adapted to the conditions that prevailed at the end of the...

Back when I was an undergrad at Marist College, a professor in an introductory psych course mentioned the degree to which sexual attraction in most animals is a matter of scent. Then he paused dramatically and asked: Is it a matter of scent for humans as a well? He answered himself after another pause, "Of course! That's why perfumes and colognes are such big business worldwide, after all." I've wondered about that from time to time. That is, I've wondered about the size of that industry, but I've never until quite recently wondered with sufficient intensity to do a google search. Here is some information: http://www.strategyr.com/MarketResearch/Fragrances_and_Perfumes_Market_Trends.asp According to these market researchers, the global market is projected to reach $40.6 billion by 2020. For a mere $4,950 I could buy a complete report on this market covering 354 companies in 492 pages, with 138 market data tables. Cool. I have $5,000 lying around ...

I never post on Tuesday. This week, though, I think I'll make an exception. As was widely expected, Governor Martin O'Malley has come in third in a three-candidate field in the Iowa caucus, part of the Democratic Party's primary campaign for its Presidential nomination. Worse, he received in essence no support and suspended his campaign before the votes had been counted. I spare O'Malley a moment of thought today because of a brief remark he made during the "town hall" meeting that the three candidates for that nomination held, in as non-debate-like a format as could be arranged, one week before the caucus. If I heard him right, O'Malley said that the difficulties faced by a progressive political agenda in the United States today are "the hidden God's way of letting us know the job is important." I hope I heard that correctly because it is a fascinating expression. One doesn't hear a politician use the phrase "the hidden God...

A quote from Sayers on education, from a 1947 essay: For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain. That insight was one she brought home to her readers through such personal questions as this: Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that to-day, when the proportion of literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass-propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard-of and unimagined? Do you put this down to the mere mechanical fact that the press and the radio and so on have made propaganda much easier to distribute over a wide area? Or do you sometimes have an uneasy suspicion that the product of modern educational methods is less good than he or she might be at disentangling fact from opinion and the proven from the plausible?

Fred Hoyle, the creator of steady-state cosmology, wrote something for Harper's about his agnosticism, back in 1951. The magazine has reprinted part of it in the January 2016 issue as one of their continuing "From the Archives" series. "[I]t seems to me that religion is but a desperate attempt to find an escape from the truly dreadful situation in which we find ourselves. Here we are in this wholly fantastic Universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance. No wonder then that many people feel the need for some belief that gives them a sense of security, and no wonder that they become very angry with people like me who say that this security is illusory."

Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created Dilbert, has said that there are only nine news stories, constantly re-written.  Every year at about this time I like to check the newspaper with his list in mind, to see if he is right. I'll start with his wording unmodified by examples.  1. EXTREME WEATHER BATTERS SOMEPLACE 2. IDIOTS KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE 3. POLITICIAN DOES SOMETHING ILLEGAL 4. PRIMATE ATTEMPTS INAPPROPRIATE SEX 5. EXPERT WARNS OF FINANCIAL CALAMITY 6. BIG COMPANY BUYS ANOTHER BIG COMPANY 7. FAMOUS PERSON DOES SOMETHING INTERESTING 8. A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY MIGHT BE USEFUL IN TEN YEARS 9. GOVERNMENT FAILS TO ACHIEVE A GOAL  I surveyed the news on one day (a few days back as it happens). Just by convenience, these headlines are all from January 21st. Well, actually, I cheated a little with one of them, but I'll let you dear reader do the work of figuring out which one that is. Without further ado.... 1. An extraordinary South African drought . 2....

Nurse Jackie is the weekly TV program Edie Falco did after The Sopranos wrapped. I was thinking while I watched an episode via Netflix recently that my mother, who was a nurse 'back in the day,' would love the show. But then I considered the drug-addicted character Falco plays and I thought ... oh, maybe not. Mom has a sense of humor about nursing but she has old-fashioned ideas about what kind of stories ought to be told. Jackie as portrayed in the series is such a mess of a human being that it is hard to imagine the series having been a hit without the genius of Ms Falco. She had made Carmela Soprano sympathetic, she could do so with Jackie Peyton. I was fascinated by a subplot of episode 4, season 1, in which Jackie's daughter Grace is diagnosed with having an "anxiety disorder" on the basis of such facts as that, when encouraged to draw something with crayons, she created a picture with grays and blacks, i.e. with no proper colors. Jackie's react...