People Reading Why Truth Matters
A brief review of WTM in the Guardian today. A favourable review mostly – calls it lively. It takes issue with our putative slapping around of Derrida, which was actually far more of a slapping around of one of his fans, but that’s okay.
People have also alerted me to some nice blog posts on the book. This one for instance by an ex-Mormon. His self-description in the margin makes him sound like a B&W kind of guy:
I’m a full-time academic trying to make my way in the world and recover my own independence of thought and feeling…I was raised Mormon and was quite believing until college, when I gradually began to make an intellectual and spiritual split. The gay thing was always lurking in the background, but I didn’t have the courage to deal with it until I was nearly 30. I am pretty far to the left politically, but try to be as critical as possible of my values and work to envision pragmatic solutions to real problems instead of being driven by ideology. This often leaves me out of step with other thinkers and activists on the left, the queer left in particular.
He went to Brigham Young, so he was interested in the excerpt from WTM on the implications of BYU’s religious policy for freedom of academic inquiry.
My concern, however, is more global. What happens to the quality of education when this kind of policy is enacted on its faculty? Furthermore, what is the quality of the education on a campus where 95% of the faculty are believing, temple-recommend holding members who agree with the policy and therefore do or say nothing that may be challenging to the world views of their students? Isn’t that the very nature of a university education? To have our foundations laid bare and examined?
Yup; what indeed. Good to meet you, Todd.
This one is very pleasing, because it starts with the author’s “reasons for taking readers on this ongoing tour of modern genetics. The words truth and mystery pretty much summarise most of Pundit’s reasons. A lot of discussions about modern genetics tend to lack truth, or all too sadly, miss out on the mystery.” then goes on to quote the last page or so of the book. I gather he liked it, I gather he liked the little aria to truth and mystery we finished off with (with help from Dawkins and Ridley). I’m glad he did.
I’m also a fan of Butterflies and Wheels, as well and Dawkins and Ridley (and perhaps even more of a Ridley fan than of RD, as Matt achieves much without the same fame factor as RD).
Modern genetics is a pretty good choice to illustrate how rigourous science can encompass both truth and mystery, as we surely don’t know all the answers, and many surprises continually emerge from unexpected discoveries and the hard analytical grind.
GMO Pundit
Hey, good to meet you too, David. I’ve added your blog to the Links page.
My copy of Why Truth Matters finally arrived about a week ago. I’m a bit snowed under with work, but have managed to get through a few chapters, and really, really like what I see so far. Expect I’ll do a review on my (hardly widely read) blog when I do get through.
Aw, thanks, AJ. (shuffle shuffle)