The New York Times op-ed page is becoming rather apocalyptic. First we had David Brooks’ pontificating on the “End of Philosophy;” now the NYT offers an op-ed from Mark C. Taylor on “The End of the University As We Know It.” Any undergraduate contemplating graduate education shouldn’t be surprised by Taylor’s sobering take on the…
David Brooks’ column today, “The End of Philosophy,” is a tad over-billed. I think he’s right to highlight that recent work in neuroscience, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology has increasingly made us appreciate that we human animals make our way in the world not primarily as “thinking things;” rather, our conscious, intentional choices and actions…
It’s almost disturbing how many times in a day I find quotes from Top Gun making their way to the tip of my tongue. (This is one of the aspects I recall from The Reluctant Fundamentalist: how young financial analysts spoke in Top-Gun-ese to one another with such fluency and understanding, like a secret language…
As I noted earlier, I made several contributions to the Immanent Frame symposium on Wolterstorff’s Justice: Rights and Wrongs. Wolterstorff generously wrote a response to those three pieces entitled “The Fine Texture: A Response to Smith.” And Immanent Frame has now posted my reply to Wolterstorff, “‘Bob and Weave’: A Response to Wolterstorff.” Here’s a…
Folks on the East Coast might be interested in attending an upcoming conference at the MacMillan Center at Yale University, “Exploring the Post-Secular,” April 3-4, 2009. It’s free and open to the public. It’s a working conference, bringing together an interdisciplinary collection of scholars to share drafts of what will eventually be chapters of a…
NPR commentators this morning seem positively giddy about the news that today President Obama will sign an order overturning the Bush administration’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. They seemed particularly fond of the mantra that this administration would be guided by “science, not politics”–and that Obama’s administration would further “separate” science and politics. This,…