First the positives: I found this book informative and interesting on several levels – not having read a whole lot of anthropology. The essential message I took away was that human development and the way we organize our societies, is a complex process and the simple narrative of – small hunting bands led to organized…

The coolness question is really the wrong question for Adam and the Ants – but it’s still relevant. I went to see them live in London in 1981 and was blown away by a couple of things Adam wrote in the programme notes. I can remember him saying he was a fan of Michael Jackson,…

My opinion on D.H. Lawrence is inescapably mixed. He’s one of my favourite writers, and there are passages in his works that no other writer could have written (in a good sense). But on the other side of the ledger, Lawrence went through a fascist period for several years, often rejected science and rationality, and…

“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a razor and a mirror lay crossed” etc etc James Joyce’s Ulysses – published in 1922, banned, controversial, “ground-breaking”. I have many, many times heard the novel extolled as one of the greatest feats of literature in history, number one…

We were discussing the most influential figures in human history. I was plumping for Isaac Newton. My friend said Marx and Freud. I immediately said, “both fading.” I don’t think my friend was overjoyed with that reaction. But that is what I continue to think, on further reflection. Both have been extremely influential – I…

Mountains and molecules have an existence that does not depend on being experienced by a human or animal subject; they are ontologically objective. Pains, tickles, and itches exist only insofar as they are experienced by a subject. They are ontologically subjective. John Searle, After the End of Truth – part 1 The above quote is…