Hi Group:
As some of you know, one of my favorite past times is checking the
Sunday New York Times Book Review on the Web to see what the
fashionable intelligentsia are reading. This week presents a bonanza
of three reviews all relating to our mutual interest
First is the �Confucius Lives Next Door-What Living in the East Tells
Us About Living in the West.� An account of the social values of
Japan, Korea and China which makes the uptight Victorians look
like flower children at Woodstock by comparison.
Second, �Debating Darwin-Adventures of a Scholar." A historian of
science scrutinizes the Darwinization of everything, criticizes the
more pretentious forms of Darwinian philosophizing and confirms
that �secular science alone is no basis for moral or spiritual values.�
Third, �The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material
World." A philosopher examines human consciousness and argues
that the mind is too ill equipped to understand it. From the reviewer
we learn that the book "deepens one�s feeling for the material world--
the only world there is." (Would you guess he never heard of the
MOQ?)
The Times furnishes first chapters of all three books, and I found
each one fascinating reading, particularly the first chapter of
�Evolving Questions" where I learned that Darwin was more of a
Pirsigian than I ever imagined.
I also learned that the fashionable way to express the scientific world
view is to say, �law-bound system of matter in motion,� repeated
several times in the reviews and the books. You can�t go wrong
dropping that little phrase into your next paper or conversation. (-:
Platt
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