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"One of the main tasks for human reason is to make the universe we live in understandable to ourselves. This is the task of science. There are two different components of about equal importance in this enterprise. The first is poetic inventiveness ..."
– Karl Popper
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Author Archives: Rafe
Criteria for the CR scholar award
Just in case people were wondering, the criteria for the CR scholar are more or less the same as those for the Rhodes Scholarship. literary and scholastic attainments; energy to use one’s talents to the full, as exemplified by fondness … Continue reading
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A C Grayling (ed) Philosophy 1.
“the missionary possibility immediately suggested itself of promoting the university’s conception of what is central to philosophical study. This volume is the result.” The object of this investigation is to find where the thoughts of Popper and critical rationalism stand … Continue reading
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A C Grayling, a very model of a modern public intellectual
“Analytic philosophy is not so much a school of thought as a style or method. It is a style of philosophizing which seeks to be rigorous and careful…” A C Grayling A C (Anthony) Grayling (1949 – ) is the … Continue reading
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CR Scholar 6: Peter Klein
The trigger for this award is a new course on Austrian economics that Peter has designed for PhD students. Peter Boettke has given this a big rap. His latest book is a collection of essays on entrepreneurship and this Wik … Continue reading
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CR Scholar 5: Karl Popper
This award is designed to encourage the living rather than remember the dead and forgotten but a nice little paper by Karl Popper came to mind while I was writing about Grayling’s views on science. Karl Popper was a little-known Austrian-born … Continue reading
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A C Grayling posing problems that are solved by CR
Some comments on What is Good? by A C Grayling (2003). The bottom line: The issues in moral philosophy that he broached have been left unresolved, with favourable handwaving in the direction of science and negative handwaving in the direction of … Continue reading
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More on the advance of reason: Two theories of democracy
Picking up some more points from Luke Slattery’s piece which was noted yesterday. One of the heroes of the article was the philosopher A C Grayling. Another hero of the piece is democracy. So the virtues of rationality, free speech, liberty and … Continue reading
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Reason on the offensive: the return of the Enlightenment
That is the heading of a recent piece in The Weekend Australian newspaper by Luke Slattery, an experienced reporter and editor on education, arts and letters. He has been a sympathetic but critical commentator on postmodernism (sympathetic, like myself, in the sense of being prepared to … Continue reading
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CR Scholar 4:Michael Giffin
Michael Giffin is a US-born scholar and editor, based in Sydney. Well versed in philosophy and hermeneutics from Aristotle to the present, his special research interest is the nineteenth and twentieth century novel in English that interrogates classical metaphysics from a neoclassical, … Continue reading
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CR Scholar 3: Jack Birner
Jack Birner, né en 1951, a étudié les affaires commerciales et administratives internationales à Nijenrode-Breukelen, aux Pays-Bas. Puis, il s’est orienté vers l’économie et la philosophie à l’université d’État du Michigan (BA en 1972). Il a commencé des études de … Continue reading
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