Category Archives: Uncategorized

James Garvey, The Twenty Greatest Philosophy Books  Continuum, London 2006 The authors of the 20 greatest books are Aquinas, Aristotle, Ayer, Berkeley, de Beauvoir, Descarates, Hegel, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Locke, Marx, Mill, Neitzsche, Plato, Popper, Rousseau, Sartre, Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein. “Popper … Continue reading →

Gene Callahan has kicked off quite a debate with his post on evolutionary epistemology that was noted the other day. There are now over 80 comments. His main point seems to be that EE provides no “warrants” for knowledge approaching … Continue reading →

This thought has been hovering around in my mind for a while. It seems to me the core of the critical rationalist mindset. We create our problems by choosing our ends, and we can dissolve them just by changing our … Continue reading →

Alan Chalmers wrote a sensationally successful introductory book on the philosophy of science. What is this thing called science? first appeared in 1976 with revised editions in 1982 and 1999. Translated into fifteen languages it became a bestseller and a … Continue reading →

  This is a modified version of a paper on the philosophy and economics of liberalism. The paper was first written in the 1980s in a competition for a prize awarded by the Mont Pelerin Society. It was revised recently … Continue reading →

A few years John Quiggin and I locked horns over the philosophy of economics. John is a leftwing blogger and he supported the Lakatosian approach, which I contested in a prolonged exchange until I thought I had him on toast. Then … Continue reading →

In the last decade or so some bridges have been built between sociology and ecconomics. This raises the question, why did they separate?  Peter Boettke explored this question in a 1998 paper “Rational Choice and Human Agency in Economics and Sociology: … Continue reading →

Yesterday I discovered an interesting paper. It is “Why do Humans Reason: Arguments for an Argumentative Theory” by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber. Here is the abstract: Reasoning is generally seen as a mean to improve knowledge and make better … Continue reading →

Gene Callahan has posted a very strange criticism of EE, inspired by the scholarly but eccentric contrarian John Gray. “This [is] an objection to evolutionary epistemology in all of its forms—that there is no reason whatever for supposing that the … Continue reading →

About the different historical calenders. This calendar handles the change from Julian to Gregorian calendars in different countries. How a flintlock pistol works. With slow motion animation. The inventory of English royal ordinance in 1637. The formula to explain underwater … Continue reading →