December 5, 2012 at 1:00 pm
Expanding further on the works studied in CC106, here is the next analect from Nick Lane’s Life Ascending: The Great Inventions of Evolution: We may not enjoy the fact much, but we’ve recognized since the early 1920’s that going moderately hungry prolongs life. It’s called calorie restriction. Rats fed a balanced diet, but with about […]
December 5, 2012 at 12:43 pm
From a book that sometimes plays a part in CC106, Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, here is today’s analect: The Greenland Norse did succeed in creating a unique form of European society, and in surviving for 450 years as Europe’s most remote outpost. We modern Americans should not be too quick […]
November 29, 2012 at 5:10 pm
On November 20th, Professor Greg Fried (Suffolk University, Department of Philosophy), a long-time friend and colleague of the Core, lectured to the students of CC101 about Plato’s Republic. Here we offer an excerpt from his lecture: MORPHEUS: Do you want to know what it is, Neo? The Matrix is everywhere; it’s all around us, even now in […]
By mdimov
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Also posted in Academics, Core Lecturers, Curriculum, Great Ideas, Uncategorized
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Tagged Allegory of the Cave, fun, interesting, Matrix, pill, Plato, rabbit hole, Republic, Socrates
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November 28, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Yesterday’s analect from Paradise Lost can be contrasted with today’s choice: By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—
than rule down here over all the breathless dead. (The Odyssey, 11.556-8)
November 27, 2012 at 5:11 pm
Professor Ricks lectured today on John Milton’s Paradise Lost. From this spawns today’s analect: “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n” (Paradise Lost, Book 1, 258-263).
November 26, 2012 at 3:00 pm
In view of Professor Barfield’s lecture on 11/29 about Malinowski’s notions of exchange and reciprocity, here is today’s analect: Apart from any consideration as to whether the gifts are necessary or even useful, giving for the sake of giving is one of the most important features of Trobriand sociology, and, from its very general and […]
October 22, 2012 at 2:47 pm
An excerpt from The New Yorker magazine on “The Woman Reader” by Belinda Jack. In the history of women, there is probably no matter, apart from contraception, more important than literacy. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, access to power required knowledge of the world. This could not be gained without reading and writing, […]
December 6, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Although “The Iliad” and Psalms were sung to the lyre, music and poetry are now separate in the minds of most literary arbiters. Yet the critic Christopher Ricks contends that Bob Dylan’s fine, surprising language establishes him as a poet, whatever his medium. Leonard Cohen, accepting the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in October, […]
November 29, 2011 at 11:54 am
“I went back to all the advice I’ve been given about talking to a big group, and they said I have to tell a joke. I don’t know many jokes and all the ones I do know are math jokes. [. . . ] That was a joke.” “Math trains you to see what is […]
November 22, 2011 at 3:20 pm
“Socrates is proposing radical censorship so the young receive the right message from a very young age.” “The best soul will be ruled by reason or calculation. Justice is when each part of the soul — calculating, spiritedness, and desire — is minding its own business.” “Can you know about politics in the same way […]
