Category Archives: Book Notes

Steven Pinker: THE BLANK SLATE, post 2

Posted on Wednesday 5 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

(Advisory: I’m traveling to Austin TX tomorrow through Sunday, and so will not be posting here until next Monday, likely.) A key point about this book is that Pinker shows how the facts (the science) of human nature undermine both … Continue reading →

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Steven Pinker: THE BLANK SLATE, post 1

Posted on Tuesday 4 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: “The Modern Denial of Human Nature” (Viking, Oct. 2002, 509pp, including 75pp appendix, notes, references, and index) This is an enormous, thorough book on a topic already covered to some extent by several of the other major books I’ve … Continue reading →

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Visiting the Profound

Posted on Sunday 2 June 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Brian Greene on understanding reality as a collection of nested stories; Recalling analogous thoughts by Sean Carroll and others; Big Think’s Ethan Siegel on the success of modern fundamental science. Perhaps today we can step back from the paranoid, delusional … Continue reading →

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Jonathan Gottschall, THE STORY PARADOX

Posted on Monday 27 May 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a nonfiction book from 2021 that I read just a couple weeks ago. It’s similar in heft to the two books just discussed, in terms of length and conceptual depth, perhaps somewhere in the middle below Wilson and above … Continue reading →

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Woo-Kyoung Ahn, THINKING 101

Posted on Sunday 26 May 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: “How to Reason Better and Live Better” (Flatiron Books, Sept 2022, 276pp, including 21p of acknowledgements, notes, and index) Here’s another short book, read the same month as yesterday’s Robert Charles Wilson book though it was published a year … Continue reading →

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Robert Charles Wilson, OWNING THE UNKNOWN

Posted on Saturday 25 May 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a book about theology, atheism and the idea of God, from the perspective of a science fiction writer. Wilson is a significant contemporary SF writer whose fiction output has slowed in recent years; I reviewed his 2015 novel … Continue reading →

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Joshua Greene, MORAL TRIBES, post 2

Posted on Thursday 18 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Concluding summary and comments about this book. Some highlights: The author focuses on a modified utilitarianism, which he calls “deep pragmatism,” to solve tribal disputes in the modern world; He observes that “rights” are claims to end disputes, in order … Continue reading →

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Joshua Greene, MORAL TRIBES, post 1

Posted on Wednesday 17 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Here is a substantial book about human morality that offers ideas that, to me, help to knit together the ideas of others. For chronological context, this 2013 book follows, of course, the 1997 Pinker book that I recently read (review … Continue reading →

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Jaime Green, THE POSSIBILITY OF LIFE

Posted on Tuesday 9 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Here is a book published about a year ago now that turns out to be very similar, thematically, to the more recent book by Adam Frank, The Little Book of Aliens, that I reviewed here in January. That book was … Continue reading →

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Yuval Noah Harari, UNSTOPPABLE US, Vol. 2

Posted on Thursday 4 April 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: “Why the World Isn’t Fair.” (Bright Matter Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House; March 2024. xv + 189pp. With copious illustrations by Ricard Zaplana Ruiz.) This is the second volume in … Continue reading →

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