Prejudice

I have realized that I close almost all my eHarmony matches based on the individual’s interest in books. Hmm.

I skip to that part of the profile. If “books? I can’t remember the last time I read a book…” then close match. Very simple.

I am clearly prejudiced.

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Word of the Day: fete
a festive celebration or entertainment

The Inverse Proportion Between Mountain Climbers and Writers

Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.
- Thomas Berger

Jig and a Book

What do you do when your biggest questions have been answered? Well, dance a jig or something. Since you can’t see my jig I’m currently dancing, I’m just going to post about the book that caused the jig. (Actually, the only time I “jig” is on the tennis court and that’s really more of a victory dance… which isn’t really condoned in tennis… very sad, as it’s the best part of my game.) It is Proper Confidence by Leslie Newbigin. The subtitle is Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship. Many of the questions I’ve posted on this blog I’ve viewed as, essentially, unanswerable. But he answers them! At least to my satisfaction.

So I’ll provide a rundown of the book and hopefully persuade you also to pick up this gem.

1) First it should be noted that this is a Christian book. That means he operates out of a worldview soaked in Christian assumptions and beliefs. For the non-Christian, I still think this book would be beneficial because it is primarily philosophical – and only secondarily theological – and deals with problems that affect the church only because first they affected our culture at large. He is well spoken and thought provoking.

2) The first point of the book: Christian epistemology requires a scrapping of classical Greek epistemology. This has a thousand implications – many of which are disturbing, all of which are interesting – but I’ll leave those inside the book.

3) His next topic is what happens when that scrapping does not occur and instead classical Greek epistemology holds sway, as it does today. As you might imagine, Descartes gets a lot of air time.

4) Nihilism is next.

5) He discusses different kinds of knowledge: intellectual versus personal, in other words, knowing a fact versus knowing a person, and the inherent risks of knowing a person.

6) Fascinatingly, he attacks the dichotomy between objective and subjective knowledge. He bases his thoughts off a 20th century Russian scientist turned philosopher. It is decently convincing and is core to the argument of his whole book. (I’ve never heard anyone challenge this dichotomy. Am I out in left field? Perhaps it is more common than I realize?)

7) But primarily he dismantles some of the core principles of modernity. In its place, he talks of personal knowledge, how a knower must “commit” to what he knows, and the inherent personal risk always involved.

Unfortunately, my above post is not particlarly well written and, conceptually, does this book little justice. Please keep that in mind. I view this post is as a bit of a conclusion to the many conversations occuring previously on this blog: interesting thoughts, but mostly unanswered questions. As he makes his points far better than I would, I am just pointing to this book. At only 100ish pages, it is an easy read! I feel like I could stop blogging now – because he actually answered the questions I thought couldn’t be answered.

And for the record, I’m still jigging.

The Seekers

“Caught between two eternities–the vanished past and the unknown future–we never cease to seek our bearings and our sense of direction. We inherit our legacy of the sciences and the arts… We glory in their discoveries and creations. But we are all Seekers. We all want to know why.”

I have a book recommendation! “The Seekers” by Daniel J. Boorston (1998). It’s fabulous. It provides a philosophical framework excellent for those who’ve heard things but don’t know where to put them in the context of history. It starts with our oldest documented belief systems and hits Homer, Socrates,  Machiavelli, Calvin, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Kierkegaard, Hegel, and Einstein along the way. While it appears that philosophical questions are the weightiest questions we can ask, Boorstin is actually able to add to this weight. He has a written style which is compelling, easy, and thoroughly inspiring. He’s eloquent. If it’s possible to add to the grandeur of these concepts, he does.

Interestingly, he doesn’t shun evaluation. It seems it is politically correct to be “unbiased” but certainly this isn’t really possible. I assume he has this in mind, and he presents his viewpoints anyway, from time to time. This creates a far more engaging and meaningful experience.

The book generally flows chronologically, starting with Christianity and Islam (a higher way), then the way of the philosophers (referencing self for answers), abandoning the question all together (asking how instead of why), and last bewilderment (today’s “conclusion”). That trajectory could seem entirely depressing but the book ends positively. (Also, a reader doesn’t need to agree with the author.) At the end we no longer seek for meaning, but we find meaning in the seeking. We see Einstein on his death bed, asking for his formulas again. He did not find, but he had sought.

To put it mildly, I highly recommend this book. It is colorful, thought provoking, and a phenomenal example of good writing.

Heroes of the Imagination

I told myself not to post until I had something worth saying (as opposed to my previous post). And I can’t do it.

I am about 26 pages into a book entitled The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination. It covers all known history and tries to sum things up: an incredibly aggressive attempt but certainly not the first one. Let me qualify that a little. The author, Daniel J. Boorstin, has three books in a series. The first is entitled The Discovers, the second is this one, and the third is The Seekers. This one focuses on art while the first touches science and the third religion. But, he is wise enough to see that they don’t really separate so what you get in this book – the art-focused one – is all of the above: philosophy, religion, science, the whole gamut.

Yeah, so only 26 pages in. This is no time to report. But I am. Boorstin taught history for 25 years, was director for part of the Smithsonian, and has served as the Librarian of Congress. The book is amazingly easy to read and he addresses one of my favorite topics – the relation between philosophy and theology. Good man! Anyway, when I have something truly worthwhile to report, I will. Perhaps I should start one of those seriously nerdy pages which states which books you are currently reading. That could be embarrassing.

Soaked

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.

– Hart Crane