The Myths We Live By

In general, I am allergic to philosophy. It seems so abstracted from real life as to be meaningless, so caught up in minutiae as to lose track of the things we care about. But philosophical writing did play a role in my intellectual development. Reading Mary Mdigley’s “Science as Salvation” (along w......more

I didn't find the writing very accessible. And yes we've swung too far in the direction of reductionism- especially in medicine where the human body is broken down into a series of unrelated parts. But you can't blame science for bad science. And I think Midgley used bad science in some of her examp......more

The first read of my Portland book haul, this interesting work talks about the cultural meanings we ascribe to our knowledge. Midgley is a very testy thinker who doesn't like facile sloganeering, so she takes the science boys to task. The final chapters of the book focus on animal rights and are per......more