A LOT GOES ON INSIDE A FISH
Peter Godfrey-Smith:
Fish will count objects in experimental tasks. They use counting as a last resort, apparently, using other clues if they can, but the same is true of dolphins and people. Fish have learned to discriminate different styles of music – blues from classical – and could extrapolate from one blues artist to another; they were not learning the quirks of one performer. This is a quite abstract feat of pattern-recognition. A lot goes on inside a fish. … Why, then did fish (or some of them) become so smart? The question must first be asked the right way. The wrong way to ask it is: “Why do fish need to be smart?” This is not a question of need, but of relative advantage. If you are a fish, can you do a bit better than others in your population if you are a bit smarter, especially given the costs of building and running a larger brain? If you can indeed do better, what gives rise to this advantage? Much of the answer seems to be that fish, even more than seems immediately apparent, are gregarious animals. They are continually interacting with others. Social interaction creates a complex environment for an animal, and is very often a driver of the evolution of intelligence. This principle was originally developed for primates, where especially large brains are found in the more social species, but it has a broader application, and fish look like a likely case.
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ON KEEPING A NOTEBOOK
I’m currently reading Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. I’ll have more to say about the book in my what I’m reading section after I finish reading it, but he has me thinking about how and why I take notes on my reading and also – in my journal – on my life. This is especially on my mind these days because the move to denote as my note-taking and journaling environment has me re-reading many notes I’ve made over the past several years. One thing that really fascinates me is how I’m reminded of events and readings that I’d completely forgotten – but, once reminded, I find that these things are once again in my mind. Perhaps I can say what I’m thinking more clearly — though I’m more than a little frustrated by having absolutely no memory of experiencing or reading something I describe in an entry written only a few years ago, I’m fascinated by how reading what I wrote has brought that experience back to mind rather vividly. Of course I’m reminded of what I described in the text that I’m now re-reading, but I can also remember other things associated with whatever it is that is described there. It’s as though the small bit that I wrote and can now read is the key that unlocks a much larger trove of memory. Funny how the mind works.
Read moreTHE SHORTCOMINGS OF THE UNITED STATES
W.E.B. Dubois, writing in 1958:
There was a day when the world rightly called Americans honest even if crude; earning their living by hard work; telling the truth no matter whom it hurt; and going to war only in what they believed a just cause after nothing else seemed possible. Today we are lying, stealing and killing. We call all this by finer names: Advertising, Free Enterprise, and National Defence. But names in the end deceive no one; today we use science to help us deceive our fellows; we take wealth that we never earned and we are devoting all our energies to kill, maim, and drive insane, men, women and children who dare refuse to do what we want done.
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ON THE ABOLITION OF ALL POLITICAL PARTIES
In 1943, the French philosopher and activist Simone Weil was living in London. She was close to death – she had contracted tuberculosis, and her condition was made even worse because she insisted that she would eat only what her French colleagues were allowed to eat in their occupied country. She died in hospital that year when her heart failed, but the coroner’s report was stark: She “slayed” herself by refusing to eat.
Read moreREMEMBERING GERMANY'S PAST; REFLECTING ON THE PRESENT
It’s a standard move in the last 10 days – has it really been only ten days? — to say that we’re at an inflection point in history, perhaps most profoundly in the United States, but also in other parts of the world. Many are saying that we’ve not seen anything like this in the United States; some are predicting that this could be the of our democracy, however flawed it’s been. I’ll leave it to others more knowledgeable than I about these things to make this judgment, though I do think that even if this is a decisive moment we should acknowledge the underlying factors that have brought us to this moment.
Read morePOWER OF GREAT FICTION
Agnes Callard:
All fiction offers up the possibility of escape from everyday life, but great fiction allows us to explore what we otherwise look away from.
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QUOTIDIAN LIFE IN THE MIDST OF TURMOIL
Or perhaps I could call this post “How does one live in a world that seems to be falling apart?”
Read moreWHAT TO SAY ON A DAY LIKE TODAY?
I’ve struggled to write this post. What to say on a day like today? Of course there are so many things I might say about the day because of its significance – after all, Martin Luther King, Jr. lived a life worth celebrating. Moreover, we’re still in the official mourning period for President Jimmy Carter, whose life as a human being is an inspiration to all who care about other human beings. But there’s also that other agenda item – an agenda item that represents a series of events that has already caused harm to many and promises even more suffering for many more people. I hope against hope that the transition marked by this event will turn out to be a temporary detour, and that the long arc of the moral universe will bend once again towards justice, both in whatever remains of our country and also in the world more generally.
Read moreCOMPLICATIONS IN SAGEN'S PALE BLUE DOT
Samantha Harvey:
(I’m not sure how much of the power in this text will survive my ripping it out of context, but I can’t resist the urge to put it here. Perhaps a bit of table-setting will help. On its surface, Harvey’s novel describes a day in the life of 6 astronauts (actually, 4 astronauts and two cosmonauts) from five different countries in orbit around the earth. In this excerpt, she begins with an account of training in perspective that the six people experienced before their time in space.)
Read moreWRITING FOR CLARITY, BUT NOT TOTAL CLARITY
Thomas Merton:
“I am still trying to find out: and that is why I write.”
“How will you find out by writing?”
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