Rationality: what it is, why it seems scarce, why it matters by Steven Pinker (Allen Lane, 2021) A logical argument in favour of logic? Pinker often writes with such clarity and energy that ones can be swept up in the flow and not stand back to say “hand on a minute! It’s not as simple… Continue reading You know it makes sense
Author: simongardner344
Am I a robot?
12 Bytes: How artificial intelligence will change the way we live and love by Jeanette Winterson (Vintage, 2021/2022) This was Love(lace) at first byte. The book begins with a lively survey of the history of AI. This is no dry chronology but a tale bursting with brilliant personalities, none greater than Ada Lovelace, the Countess… Continue reading Am I a robot?
Fred amongst the Stars
The Nature of the Universe: A Series of Broadcast Lectures by Fred Hoyle (Basil Blackwell, 1950) I think that within 100 years it may indeed be possible to leave the Earth, or at any rate for rockets containing radio-operated cameras to do so. Fred Hoyle (1950) 1950. Seventy-two years ago. That is just within living… Continue reading Fred amongst the Stars
At the Cutting Edge
This is the history of an idea that was once revolutionary and that continues to shape the modern world.
The Queen is Dead, long live …
The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes (Picador, 2017) A story as old as time bears retelling. A mother’s grief, star-crossed lovers, and two generations of strife and tragedy – there is so much drama in the story of Queen Jocasta and King Oedipus that it holds up to interpretation and adaption from age to… Continue reading The Queen is Dead, long live …
Faster Higher Stronger
Endure: Mind, Body and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance by Alex Hutchinson (Harper Collins 2018/2020) The four minute mile, the two hour marathon. These iconic times are two of the most famous mythical barriers in athletic performance. But are the limits that constrain what a human can do primarily physical, or are they… Continue reading Faster Higher Stronger
Charged with meaning
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree. Ezra Pound (How To Read, 1931) The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams (Vintage 2020/2022) Who write’s the dictionary? Who decides which words are included and which excluded? Whose language is it, anyway? This wonderful novel is anchored in the real… Continue reading Charged with meaning
Stories tumbled by the tides of time
Philip Hoare’s digressions and tangents balloon into sea monsters, bigger than the narrative boat we thought he was steering.
Lost & Found
Wayfinding: The Art and Science of How We Find and Lose Our Way by Michael Bond (Picador, 2020) We are wanderers. Twentieth Century GPS worshippers with hunter-gatherer brains. Neuroscience has identified specialised brain regions adapted for specific navigation skills. There are boundary cells, grid cells, head direction cells. How they are coordinated is the focus… Continue reading Lost & Found
So what do you know?
Or rather, what can we know? Donald Rumsfeld is wrongly mocked for a “misunderstimated” quote when he served under President George Dubbya Bush. There may have been many things in his political career for which he deserved ridicule, but not for this: as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we… Continue reading So what do you know?