Chronologically arranged list of
interesting books - science, philosophy, novels, whatever - I've
recently read. By-and-large, these are books I like; otherwise I
wouldn't have finished them. Must-read books have titles.
2008
- Liberty Bar by
Georges Simenon (1932). A classical Inspector Maigret novel.
Tight and sparse prose, about murder, human weakness, lust and alcohol
among the beautiful surroundings of the Cote D'Azur and about somebody
who had it all but who, in middle age, threw it all away because he
could not resist temptation. Not cynical but sad & poignant.
Recommended.
- Spook Country by
William Gibson (2006). A continuation of his earlier novel
Pattern Recognition. It deals with the familiar Gibsonian
themes of the nature of art and media (he introduces locative
art, that exploits a combination of VR and GPS-sensitive
interactive art), the socio-cultural effects of advanced technology,
the privitization of functions that were previously carried out by the
government and the shady underbelly of society, inhabiting by post
9/11 intelligence and military operatives as well as criminals and
private individuals with unlear motivations (but a far cry from the
much more free-wheeling Sprawl that figures so prominently in his
earlier signature cyberpunk stories). The novel follows a variety of
characters around Los Angeles (at the W and the Standard) and New York
who don't know what they are doing until they all converge at a
warehouse in Vancouver. The denouement is a bit thin but that's not
the point of the novel.
- Against Love: A Polemic by
Laura Kipnis (2003). A witty, and at times very funny
cultural-study tract considering the many and varied benefits of
adultery. One of Kipnis' often repeated points is that the prevalence
of adultery constitutes a referendum on modern monogamy. With roughly
half of all marriages ending in divorce, perhaps it is time to change
the institution itself. She argues that it could not survive without
being constantly ideological reinforced via the idealization of
romantic love as the sine qua non norm in pop-culture, movies,
books, songs, religious institutions, and the law (in most countries,
bigamy is a crime). Viewed from a Marxist point of view, marriage is
too much work and not enough play and submitting to the repressive
regime of marriage that she lovingly describes in pages upon pages
(based, perhaps, on personal experiences) of ascerbic prose, is simply
a private enactment of a larger social conformity demanded by
capitalism. And so she sounds the clarion call: when romantic love and
sex become buried under careers, childen, and daily life, adultery
liberates the adulterer. Like any polemic, she chooses not to defend
the other side. She never mentions the obvious powerful biologcial
urges that drives the vast majority of us to serial monogamy and
completely sidelines the stability, friendship, and love that can be
found in so many long-term marriages. Read this not for a penetrating
analysis about the flaws in this ancient institution and what could be
done to make it more sustainable in today's culture but for some very
funny prose and great quotes (for example, Adultery is the sit-down
strike of the love-takes-work ethic; or It is at least a
reliable way of proving to ourselves that we're not quite in the
ground yet .
- His all-time classic,
partly autobiographical novel of self-discovery, liberty, determinism
versus freedom, the meaning of life, and the various shades of love.
At its heart is the obsessional relationship between the protagonist,
Philip, and the vulgar cockney waitress Mildred that almost proves his
doom. He is deeply enslaved to her, against his will, and he knows
this and, yet, is powerless to do anything about it. This brings to
mind Spinoza's Ethics, "Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of
the Emotions," where Spinoza writes "The impotence of man to govern or
restrain the [emotions] I call bondage, for a man who is under their
control is not his own master, but is mastered by fortune, in whose
power he is, so that he is often forced to follow the worse, although
he sees the better before him." Truer words never spoken.
- Artifacts - An Archaeologist's Year in
Silicon Valley by
Christine Finn (2001). Interesting account of one year - 2000,
the height of the dot com bubble - a British archaeologist, actually
more of a social anthropologist, spent in and around Silicon
Valley. Her main vehicles are interviews - including one with Carver
Mead. She considers the culture and its traditional roots, its
transition from rural to hypermodern, its artifacts and what is lost
in the hubris and the Über-emphasis on speed and
technology.
- Water for Elephants by
Sara Gruen (2006). Wonderful account of the romantic
and brutal aspects of circuit life in Depression-era 'Small Town
America' told from the vantage point of the protagonist growing old
and senile in a nursing home; his feelings of helplessness and anger
that he experiences in such a setting are well described. He recounts
his early life as a 23 year old dropout from Cornell following the
suddent death of his parents in a car accident and his running away
with a circus. The protagonist finally finds happiness after death,
murder and a stampede. A roaring good read.
- The Last Lecture by
Randy Pausch and Jeff Zaslow (2008). Very well
written, short instant classic of the inspirational literature.
Pausch, a CS proofessor at CMU, is diagnosed with terminal pancreatic
cancer. Following a beautiful germanic academic tradition of giving a
last lecture - summarizing and celebrating one's lifetime academic
achievements (Abschiedsvorlesung) - he focusses on his
childhood dreams and how critical they are forming a happy, and
situated and ethical person. A bit sentimental at times. In the face
of certain death, Pausch clearly has lust and zest for life - he talks
ever so fondly about his father, his wife, his children, his students,
his doctoral adviser and other heroes in his life. Despite the fluff,
definitely to be recommended.
- The Philosopher's Dog - Friendships with Animals by
Raidmond Gaita (2002). This book should be for me - the
author, a moral philosopher, goes gaga over dogs and he used to be an
avid mountain climber. Lot's of interesting anectotes concerning the
canine (and the feline and the birdish) and the alpine (and his
father) abound. The central theme of the book is how knowledge of our
death makes us different from animals. He offers some strange
opinions without further justifications (uconditional love has no
application to animals). Overall, while a fine piece of writing on
friendship with animals it is not cut from a single, intellectually
convincing monolithic block.
- We Think the World of You by
Joe Ackerley (1960). Depressing and strange novel about
a psychological timid and stunted gay man who develops an obsession
with a German shepherd, Evie. She comes to completely dominate
his life. Set in the outskirts of impoverished post-WWII London among
working class people. I have an intense relationship to dogs - can't
pass one without talking to it - but this is unnatural.
- The Seeker by Sudhir Kakar
(2007). A historical novel, based on private letters and diary
entries of Madeline Slade, the daughter of a high British naval
officer, who joined Mahatma Gandhi in his Indian ashram, dedicated to
self-discipline, austerity and tolerance. The book describes in
compelling manner the intensity, dedication and intense need for
purity that drives a spiritual person such as Madeline to live what
most of us would consider a life of extreme deprivation and poverty
and how in the end she runs up against the limitations of her own
psychology. This is a nice quote, epitomizing the sense of the
book
Perhaps I still doubted whether a life of the mind (and at
least a modicum of the senses) I had envisaged for myself would also
provide enough nourishment for my spirit. Fifty years later, I
realize that I still do not have an answer. Perhaps this is a question
to which there are no answers, or one to which each must find the
answer on his own. I still wonder what it would have been like if I had
stayed with Bapu (Ghandi), immersed in a cause greater than myself,
guided through the journey of life by a man people have likened to the
Buddha and Jesus. Instead I chose to strike out on my own, with a road
map of happiness that detailed ways of satisfying the needs and
longings of my self. Yes, I chose to seek pleasure, however balanced
and sensible my pursuit might have been.
2007
- Jerusalem - City of Mirrors by
Amos Elon (1989). A collection of essays about the
fascination that the Holy city of Jerusalem has exerted on the Western
mind for the past three thousand years. A great counter-point to
Michener's The Source, it gives a sweeping view of this city's
bloody history, and its collection of zealots and sinners and saints
and plain nut cases (of course these categories are often
indistinguishable) who have been attracted to Jerusalem. The book
covers the post 1967 period, when Jews, for the first time since the
Roman empire took over direct control around the time of Jesus' birth,
control all of the city again. The book has minatory words for the
future - it remains unclear whether in this new age of religious
extremism, any stable and peaceful solution to people of very
different sensibilities co-existing side by side can be found. I read
this book as I was enjoying the warm hospitality of the Mishkenot Sha'ananim
Guesthouse, with a spectacular view from my bedroom window of the
walls of the Old City built in the 16th century by Suleiman the
Magnificent. Every night, I would venture forth to some part of the
Old City. After a while, however, the city and the inhabitants with
their obsession with the past and with living according to obscure
rules set down hundreds and even thousands of years ago, in a
completely different age, became oppressive. Elon's book well
expresses this. Take the Church of the Hold Sepulchre in which
five competing Christian sects jealously guard their particular
fraction of the sanctum. The city is all about the past and only very
little about the future. I happily made my escape to America, which
is the opposite. For better or for worse, the fault-lines of the
future run through California.
- Exceedingly well written romp through modern
fundamental physics, from quantum mechanics, special and general
relativity to inflationary cosmology (the masterful written chapters
10 and 11), superstrings and beyond. Himself a superstring theorist
(as if there were an exprimental superstring physicist) at Columbia,
Greene has a gift for the well-turned metaphor. His topic is, of
course, awe inspiring. Just consider that quantum fluctuations in the
pre-inflationary universe (a trillionth of a trillionths second after
the beginning of the universe) gave rise to the large scale
distribution of galaxies and clusters of galaxies we observe today.
Thus, fluctuations at the smallest of scales determines what happens
at the largests of all scales (and then some people consider the brain
a deterministic system)! Highly recommended to the educated reader; it
is not an easy read.
- Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by
Haruki Murakami (2006). More than two dozen surreal short
stories dealing with loss, alienation, the many ways that love can
develop and the essential strangeness and unfathomability of life. My
favorites are ``Man-eating cats" and "The kidney-shaped stone that
moves every day". Reminescent of Kafka.
- Les Adventures de Tintin: L'Etoile
Mysterieuse by Herge (1941). A one day academic
conference took place on at the Jerusalem guesthouse
where I was staying. Out of sentimentality - I read all 23 adventures
as an adolescent growing up in Marocco - I bought his tenth adventure
and enjoyed the clear, expressive drawing style and the warmly
rendered stock characters - Tintin and his inseparable terrier Milou,
Captain Haddock, and the single-minded and obsessed scientists.
- The Blue Mountain by Meir
Shalev (2001). Translated from the Hebrew. A folksy, whimsical
and fantastic account of the founding of an agricultural cooperative
by Ukrainian Jews in a swampy part of the Galilee. The novel spans
three generation of idiosyncratic individuals, their trials,
tribulations, loves and hates, all told by the grandson of the
founder, who ends a fat, rich and exiled undertaker.
- The Pea and the Sun: A Mathematical
Paradoxon by Leonard Wapner (2005). A non-mathematical
introduction into set theory and transfinite numbers, culminating in a
thorough discussion of the famous Banach-Tarski
Paradox. Take a sphere in three or more dimensions and partition
it into four non-overlapping subsets. When these are appropriately
moved around and re-assembled, you end up with two balls, each with
the same volume as the original sphere! No cheating occurs - the
subsets are only translated and rotated, no stretching or adding of
new matter. This violates our deeply held intuitions about
conservation of space/volume. Controversial when it was published by
the two Polish mathematicians Banach and Tarski in 1924, this result
is now accepted as a consequence of the axiom of choice. The paradox
does not apply to `real' physical space as the subsets in question are
non-measurable - they can't be obtained by cutting the sphere with a
knife (but maybe with Philip Pullman's
Subtle Knife from his His Dark Materials). Ultimately,
the Banach-Tarski paradox is a further weird consequence of infinite
numbers and sets similar to Hilbert's Hotel with its infinite
rooms. Wapner's book does an admirable job of conveying the relevant
mathematics in just over 200 pages.
- Hidden Dimensions - The Unification of
Physics and Consciousness by Alan Wallace (2007). A
gifted writer with a background in physics as well as a Buddhist monk,
Wallace makes several intriguing arguments in this easy-to-read
monograph. Most cogently, Wallace argues that science must make a more
serious attempt to study the phenomenological mind. Science spends
untold hundred of millions of $ each year on studying the objective,
third person manifestations of the subjective, conscious mind - think
of fMRI experiments in humans or electrophysiological investigations
of animal cognition. Yet we mind-brain scientists only make use of
very crude and unsophisticated descriptions of the subjective
attributes of the phenomenological mind. We ask subjects to rate the
intensity of some stimulus as 'low' or 'high' or whether or not
subjects saw a briefly flashed face. Yet any serious meditative
practice involves 1,000 to 10,000 or more hours of training to
contemplate the mind, without distraction of forms, of percepts, of
memories, of thoughts, of positive or negative emotions, of desires,
wants and fears. With the right attitude, these techniques are as
reliable as any scientific method (which likewise require year of
practice in the form of graduate school and post-doctoral
apprenticeship). I do agree with the author that the contemplative,
Eastern traditions have a lot to teach to Western science of the
mind.
Wallace's second, more lengthy pursued,
argument is that the modern view of physics as provided by quantum
mechanics and ancient Buddhists beliefs are congruent. Both assert
that the classical distinction between subject and object is illusory,
that both are deeply linked and that the so-called measurement problem
- think of Schrödinger's cat, Heisenberg's uncertainty
relationship, the collapse of the wave function, the many-worlds
interpretation of Everett and so on - and consciousness depend on each
other. One can't exist without the other, a variant of Idealism
(without subject no object). While this is an appealing notion, the
actual evidence on the ground that the brain relies in some
non-trivial sense on macroscopic quantum phenomena, in particular on
entanglement, is non-existent. Mind you, at 300 degrees Kelvin, the
brain is very hot. It is also wet and strongly coupled to the
environment. All of this makes it very unlikely that the brain is a
quantum computer. All the evidence is in favor of the 'boring'
hypothesis that at the scale relevant for its behavior, the brain
obeys classical physics. Furthermore, ever since I read Fritjof
Capra's The Tao of Physics donkey years ago, I'm skeptical of
the highly selective interpretation of these two radical different
domains of thought. As pointed out by Peter Tse, these
similarities should be viewed next to the significant
incompatibilities between the two - for instance, the Buddhists belief
in reincarnation, in various forms of extrasensory perception, and
other spooky stuff with no hard-nosed evidence. Anyhow, I enjoyed
reading the book and ordered Wallace's most recent one.
- Wonderful moving account of the
peripatetic, post-College, two year long peregrination - in the
original sense of pilgrimage - of Chris McCandless (alias Alexander
Supertramp) throughout the American West and his death from starvation
in the Alaskan wilderness north of Mt. McKinley in August of 1992.
An intense, idealistic young man from an educated and privileged
background, Chris was obsessed by a need for Tolstoyian purity and
poverty, living a rigorous, monkish life without any of the trappings
of modern civilization, and a need for adventure. Far from being
suicidal, Chris managed to survive for more then 100 days in the
wilderness on 10 pounds of rice he took along, whatever berries and
roots he could scrounge up and on what he could shoot. It reminds me
of what the philospher Richard Watson has
written about such driven personalities:
Suicide? Don't be absurd. They don't want to die. They don't
intend to die. They choose to do something very difficult right at the
limits of human possibility in order to savor the joy and satisfaction
of having done it. The risk is essential. It defines how hard it
is. Even more, risk of death raises awareness of life to a
peak. Socrates said, Know thyself. On the edge we are reminded of our
mortality, knowledge of which makes us human.
That's the way to live my life!
Krakauer uses elements of an earlier, autobiographical story
that I love -
The Devils Thumb from his collection of essays, entitled Eiger Dreams,
about his three week long solo climb of an isolated mountain in Alaska
- to explain why some men, driven by unresolved psychodynamic
conflicts, find such intense, solitary high-risk experiences so very
life-affirming. I confess that I only read the book after I saw the
eponymous movie that
closely follows the book and the life of Chris.
- How to be Idle: A Loafer's Manifesto
by Tom Hodgkinson (2007). Fun and quick read by the British
editor of a magazine, The Idler. A
tongue-in-check counterweight to Pieper's book
on leisure. Questions the strong association in Western cultures - in
particular in protestan, Anglo-Saxon countries - between idleness and
wasting time. The book makes the interesting sociological observation
that never has such a large fraction of the middle classes worked so
hard than today - despite technology, larbor-saving devices, extension
of life span, pension systems and so on. This certainly applies to
me. Yet I find it almost impossible to relax, to truly enjoy life. I
feel the need to work hard, or play hard, or run 20 miles, or read a
book a day. It's a compulsion.
- Wendepukte im Lebenslauf by
Jürg Willi (2007). A Swiss-Germany psychoanalyst's musing
about personality development following drastic changes in life
circumstances (death of a loved one, unemployment, divorce). He points
out the dramatic loss in the way one interprets the meaning of one's
life and its significance when leaving any long-term
relationship. Many years or even decades of joint experiences are rent
asunder with profound consequences for one's sense of
wholeness.
- Leisure - The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper (1948). Originally published in German
as Musse und Kult. On the importance of leisure, or
contemplative celebration or serenity. Citing Aristotle's ``we are
not-at-leisure in order to be at-leisure", Pieper argues that leisure
is at the basis of true culture and that Modernity, with its
insistence on total work, is forgetting this at its own peril. Today,
leisure is only meant to serve as a reprieve from work, to make us
more efficient or more creative. Leisure stands opposed to this
exclusive ideal of work as social function. Leisure does not exist
for the sake of work. It is of a higher order than the world of
work. Its justification is not that the worker should function
faultlessly and without a breakdown, but that he should be a man (in
this sense, leisure is totally opposed to laziness, idleness or
sloth). Pieper reminds us of the ancient origin of liberal arts. The
Artes liberales are those studies that serve no useful
function, that are only justified in themselves - while the artes
serviles are those practices that lead to useful knowledge
including the sciences, engineering, law, and medicine. The book
serves as a wonderful antidote, as a counterpoint, to the attitude to
life I, and most of my colleagues and friends, embody but that is so
difficult to give up: despite, or possible because, of our vast
technological powers, we work more than any other educated people in
history!
- Straw Dogs - Thoughts on Humans and Other
Animals by John Gray (2002). A cynical pessimist muses
about human nature, so-called progress - illusory except in the
sciences - vices of Christianity, the imbecility of any sort of
religious beliefs and other edifying themes. Well written but
predictably Cioran-like dreary. Can't recommend it.
- On the Road by
Jack Kerouac (1957). Well, I finally read this quintessential
'Beat Generation' novel in its 50-th anniversary edition - identical
to the original scroll the way Kerouac wrote it in 1951. It is a
continuous stream-of-consciousness creation and a great, hyperkinetic
account of Kerouac and his friend criss-crossing America in search of
adventure, girls, music, and booze. The last trip the book recounts,
from Denver to Mexico City in a few days, is a blow-out and a must
read. I love the book's raw and unsophisticated energy, enthusiasm
and zest for life "...because the only people that interest me are the
mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of
everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a
commonplace thing...but burn, burn burn like a roman candles across
the night." I understand well why this book can have such a big impact
on the adolescent male mind.
- . When hiking over an alpine pass,
have you ever suddenly come across a gorgeous mountain valley filled
with horrible condos, ski lifts and hotel and have indulged in the
seductive fantasy `what if there wouldn't be any people around?' If
the answer is yes, this book is for you. An original and utterly
compelling, if morbid and sad, investigation into the future of our
planet sans people. In a doomsday scenario reminiscent of "The Quiet
Earth" or "The Day of the Trifids" or countless other science fiction
movies and novels , the author extrapolates into the proximal and
distal future with the aid of archeologists, biologists, physicists,
engineers and others. Weisman starts by imagining what would happen
to our houses and homes if people would simply disappear - wiped out
by a virus or whisked away by aliens. He figures it would take Nature
between 100 and 1,000 years to reclaim these, depending on how much
stonework was used in their construction. What would happen to
Manhattan? Within a day or two, the subway would flood and within a
few years, wolfs and other wild animals would soon haunt central park,
cats would became feral and would continue to hunt the grossly
increased bird population, and Lexington Avenue would cave in,
becoming a river in the process. Weisman visits places that have been
left alone for decades - the DMZ between the two Koreas, the 30 km
'Zone of Alienation' around Chernobyl, the Green Zone in Cyprus - to
observe how quickly Nature reclaims these regions. He figures that
there are still enough open lands with enough wild animals today that
they could rapidly do away with our domesticated animals we raise for
food, work or companionship (except for cats). However, this will not
be true anymore a century from now, when humanity will have wrecked so
much of the planet that only the suitably evolved successors of our
domesticated plants and animals will have filled ecological niches
occupied and swept clean by mankind. The most chilling chapters are
on the legacy left by plastic and nuclear energy, lasting well into
geological times. Neither existed 50 years ago; now about 500 nuclear
reactors litter the planet and 100 million tons of non-bio-degradable
plastics are produced every year. Among the longest lasting human
artifacts are the presidential portraits on Mount Rushmore - made out
of granite in a geological very stable part of the country - and the
two spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2 that have entered the distant realms of
the solar system where the sun's influence gives way to those of other
stars.
Parts of the book make for desolate reading. In my younger days, I
was 'Gung Ho' about the future of mankind. Now, when I see the mess we
have made of our planet, I frequently despair. This situation brings
to mind Shelly's Ozymandias
I met a
traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless
legs of stone
Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip,
and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those
passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless
things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And
on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king
of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing
beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless
and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Given the ever increasing pace of technological development and
economic expansion, this can't go on for very much longer without some
large scale catastrophic, planetary-wide reorientation, forcing us to
live within a dramatically reduced footprint (shades of Jared
Diamond's "Collapse"). A must read.
- The Magus by
John Fowles (1977). A novel that follows its hero, a rather
flawed but intelligent cynic with few ambitions, as he falls
unwittingly under the spell of a very rich and unusual patron while
teaching on a hauntingly beautiful and distant Greek island in the
early 1950s. This patron manipulates the hero using a large cast of
actors and actresses for unclear reasons. While the first few 300
pages are written in a very compelling and engaging manner, the
increasingly unrealistic arc of the story, the ever less compelling
coincidences, the passive nature of the hero, put me off the story. I
was glad it was over (by page 670!).
- Descartes - A Biography by
Desmond Clarke Barrett (2006). An exhaustive (at close to 500
pages) but not exhausting account of the peripatetic life of
René Descartes, the foremost philosopher of the modern,
scientific age (1596 - 1650). The Irish scholar Desmond places
Descartes's life into context, explaining the prevailing
philosophical, social and historic forces within which Desartes lived
and acted. Descartes comes across as a genius for his seminal
contributions to physics (his principle of inertia), mathematics
(Cartesian coordinate systems), physiology and metaphysics but not as
a pleasant fellow, a recluse, excessively adulatory to those above him
and hypersensitive to criticism from his peer. The book does highlight
the obfuscation of medieval scholasticism with their endless forms
(e.g. a burning piece of wood has an inherent property, a form, called
``burning"), their disdain for acquiring new knowledge, their endless
re-interpretations in the light of The Philosopher (aka
Aristotle). Descartes sweeps all of this away with his theory of
knowledge that opens the epistemic gap between our subjective feelings
and objective, external realities by explaining such sensations as
heat, light or hunger in terms of the action of particles that are
only distinguished by their size, shape and motion. The book well
describes the sociology of European scholars and their mode of
interactions. In some cases, nothing has changed from today: when
there was an intellectual dispute involving Descartes, the University
of Utrecht set up a committee of professors to report on it! Other
things have changed, as the style of academic disputes among natural
philosophers appears to be more gentile today. Witness the title of
this treatise (1640): A sponge with which to clean the filth of
the objections that James Primrose, Doctor of Medicine, recently
published against the Theses in support of Blood Circulation that were
recently disputed at Utrecht University.
- . A highly readable account of the crisis of Modern Man
as expressed most coherently within Existentialism. His account of
the decline of rationality, what he calls the dream of the "Crystal
Palace" (think of the Victorian world exhibit in London in the mid 19.
century), the attendant decline of the luminous Medieval dream of an
orderly and comprehensible world, with God located at the apex, is
masterful. He traces the roots of existentialism from Plato,
Christian sources, Hebraism and Hellenism until he comes to
Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre. What becomes apparent
is the barren pursuit of these latter thinkers, obsessed with such
topics as dread, nausea, essence and being; far, far removed from the
ancient Greeks desire to comprehend the world in a rational
manner. Some quotes from the book: "And the final solution for Job is
not in the rational resolution of the problem, any more than it ever
does in life, but in a change and conversion of the whole man". Or
"Plato's is the classic and indeed archetypal expression of a
philosophy which we may now call essentialism, which holds
that essence is prior in reality to existence. Existentialism,
by contrast, is the philosophy that holds existence to be prior to
essence. The history of Western philosophy has been one long
conflict, sometimes explicit, but more often hidden and veiled,
between essentialism and existentialism." And "Most people, of course,
do not want to recognize that in certain crises they are being brought
face to face with the religious center of their existence. Such crises
are simply painful and must be got through as quickly and easily as
one can. Why, in any case, should the discovery of the religious come
to us at the moment in which we feel most sundered and alone, as
Abraham did on Mount Moriah or as Kierkegaard did face to face with
his own deprivation? Kierkegaard's answer to this is pretty
traditional: "The fear of the Lord", says the Bible, "is the beginning
of wisdom"; and for modern man, before that fear and as a threshold to
it, are the fear and trembling in which we begin to be a Self." And,
finally, "But the whole man is not whole without such unpleasant
things as death, anxiety, guilt, fear and trembling, and despair, even
though journalists and the populace have shown what they think of
these things by labeling any philosophy that looks at such aspects of
human life as "gloomy" or "merely a mood of despair." We are still so
rooted in the Enlightenment - or
uprooted in it - that these unpleasant aspects of life are like
the Furies for us: hostile forces from which we would escape. And of
course the easiest way to escape the Furies, we think, is to deny that
they exist. It seems to me no accident at all that modern depth
psychology has come into prominence in the same period as
Existentialism and for the same reason: namely, that certain
unpleasant things the Enlightenment had dropped into the limbo of the
unconscious have begun to backfire and have forced themselves finally
upon the attention of modern man.
- The Invincible by Stanislaw
Lem (1967). A thoughtful reflection on evolution,
self-organization, and the inability to communicate with a radical
different life form. This short book takes the form of a science
fiction novel in which a space ship, the "Invincible," lands on a
desert planet and is confronted by totally alien machine-life. After
the death of a civilization of biological creatures, their surviving
machine artifacts fought each other and finally, after eons of
selection pressure, evolved into tiny, cellular-like, hexagonal
organisms that can aggregate - if the need arises - into gigantic
cloud-like colonies with highly adaptive behaviors. Written many
years before the birth of Artificial Life, Lem is pessimistic
about the possibility of fundamentally incompatible creatures
understanding each other.
- Bethlehem Road Murder by Batya
Gur (2004). Her last novel involving the pensive Chief
Superintendent Michael Ohayon of the Jerusalem police. A very
slow-moving and thoughtful and terrifying murder mystery. It starts
out with this clarion call: "There comes a moment in a person's life
when he fully realizes that if he does not throw himself into action,
if he does not stop being afraid to gamble, and if he does not follow
the urgings of his heart that have been silent for many a year - he
will never do it."
- From Bauhaus to our House by Tom
Wolfe (1981). A wonderful essay in book-form, nay, a hilarious
diatribe against the excesses of modern, i.e. Bauhaus,
architecture. He describes how Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and
Gropius (aka the White Prince) invented their minimalist style on
anti-bourgeois-principles, ending up with the soulless naked, steel,
glass & concrete buildings we associated with modernism (and some
forms of post-modernism). Following the rise of the Nazis, this
arcane and esoteric cult of the minimal ('less is more') was then
imported to America where it took hold among university architectural
departments, inhibiting and delaying the emergence of a genuine
American style of architecture. Chapter V "The Apostates" is the
apotheosis of Wolfe's book, dealing in one fell swoop with the
sterility of much of modern art in painting, music, photography,
philosophy and architecture. Personally, I never understood why
people - including my parents - held the Bauhaus in such high esteem
since most of their houses and offices were sans life, devoid of the
organic, cold. Why would anybody sane want to live in such a building
if they didn't have to? (however, let it be said that two of the most
comfortable chairs I own are Bauhaus designed: Breuer's Wassily Chair
and the Rietveld's chair, built by my son Alexander; and three of
Josef Albers color prints 'homage to the square' given to me by my
father, hang in my lab). Wolfe is a gifted writer: "which is to say,
the proper concern of philosophy was the arcane of the philosophical
clerisy itself", "as the Eagle screamed his supremacy in the twentieth
century".
- Free Will - a very short introduction
by Thomas Pink (2004). Highly unsatisfactory defense of
libertarian freedom - a position I am very sympathetic to - by purely
philosophical arguments combined with appeal to common sense (where
would physics or biology be if physicists or biologists would limit
themselves to understanding biological creatures, elementary particles
or the cosmos in terms of our common sense notions of time, space,
wave, particle and so on). There is almost complete disregard for any
scientific arguments for or against the various positions on free will
that philosophers have advocated (Pink concentrates almost exclusively
on Hume, Hobbes, Kant, Acquinas, Calvin; the 20-th century and its
discoveries seems to have passed him by). This monograph represents
the worst kind of armchair philosophizing, uninformed by and seemingly
indifferent to relevant knowledge gained by studying animal decision
making, studies of patients with relevant brain lesions, a thorough
discussion of the physics and the mathematics of causation). Pink
offers a vague account in which 'libertarian freedom' can influence
events without amounting to either a random choice of yet another
cause.
- The Wandering Jew by Stefan
Heym (1981). Translated from the german novel Ahasver. A
retelling of the story of Ahasverus, condemned to walk the earth until
Christ returns for refusing to offer Jesus a temporary restinng place
when he carried the cross to Golgotha. Similar to - but not as
powerful as - The Master and Margarita, it jumps back and forth
between the career of a spineless protestant elder in post-reformation
Germany, and his seduction by Lucifer, and the modern day German
Democratic Republic (now fortunately defunct).
- Altered Carbon by Richard
Morgan (2006). Fast-paced and quite violent cyberspace crime
noire, cyber-punk novel that takes place in San Francisco of the
25. century. It assumes that you can download your mind into any body
(sleeve). If the body is killed you download a backup copy of your
mind - sans the latest personal memories, of course - into the next
sleeve. I should write a critique of this from the point of view of
present-day neuroscience.
- The Varieties of Scientific
Experience by Carl Sagan (2006). Sagan's 1985 Gifford
Lectures on Natural Theology. Such a superb, clear and compelling
thinker and writer. The actual topic is more on natural knowledge but
Sagan touches on questions of why people believe, the weird and highly
idiosyncratic nature of beliefs, the question of God, what can science
confidently assert (plus, of course, on Sagan's signature themes of
astronomy, SETI and nuclear winter). An excellent job and a superbly
edited book. I recommend it highly.
2006
- Next by Michael Crichton
(2006). Crichton has turned into a cynic - every character in this
novel about human-animal chimera and the academic/biotechnology
establishment - is a sleaze ball driven by lust, publicity, or greed.
I think he's been living to long in La-La land; I can't recommend the
book. Crichton does not have a feel for what drives academic
scientists. He is right, though, about the deleterious effects of
granting patents on genes.
- The Dharma Bums by Jack
Kerouac (1958). Pleasant travel and mountaineering accounts of
two young men of the 'beat' generation in San Francisco and the High
Sierras.
- . An amalgamation of the social
sensibility of Jane Austen with the imagery and fantasy of JR Tolkien.
Takes place in a fictitious England during the Napoleonic Wars when
true "magic" is being rediscovered. Although 800+ pages long, this is
truly a novel that I wished would have been twice as long. I finished
it very late on Christmas Eve. My favorite novel of 2006.
- Discourse on Method and
Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes (1637
and 1640). Foundational texts of Western Philosophy and
Rationalism.
- Grown-Up Marriage by Judith
Viorst (2003). Folksy but enjoyable account of marriages and the
problems they encounter from a psychoanalyst.
- Descartes' Secret Notebook by Amir
Aczel (2005). A quick read of Descartes' life; not very
penetrating. Talks a bit about his mathematics and 'Euler's law
(F+V=E+2)" that Descartes discovered almost a century before
Euler.
- Intuition by Allegra Goodman
(2005). A very realistic depiction of life as a post-doc in a
high-pressure cancer biology lab. It shows how fraud could happen and
makes it plausible. Although not written by a scientist, the author
faithfully captures the atmosphere and typifies the various scientific
personae in a sympathetic manner. Has overtones of the David
Baltimore case.
- Measuring the World by Daniel
Kehlmann (2006; from the German). Very readable,
semi-fictionalized account of the lives of Carl Friedrich Gauss and
Alexander von Humboldt. One problem is that it's left unclear what
actually happened and what is purely imaginary.
- Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
(2006). ok collections of short stories. Nothing like
Neverwhere.
- Scream Queens of the Dead Sea by
Gilad Elbom (2004). Very funny but quite outrageous at
times. The front-page, "Sex! Heavy Metal! Linguistics!", gives it
pretty much away.
- The Question of God by Armand
Nicholi (2002). An excellent, interwoven biography of CS Lewis and
Sigmund Freud and how they dealt with the question of God. PBS made
this lecture series into a superb DVD.
- Chasing Daylight by Eugene
O'Kelly (2006). OK biographical account of an executive who
discovers he only has a short time left to live.
- Francis Crick - Discoverer of the Genetic
Code by Matt Ridley (2006). Precise and very readable
account of Francis' life. Probably the best for years to
come.
- The Primordial Emotions by Derek
Denton (2005). Short and very readable account of the evolution
of consciousness across a variety of species. Its center of gravity
is an interoceptor driven theory of consciousness, focusing on animal
and human experiments manipulating thirst, hunger, breathlessness,
micturition (the need to urinate), pain, temperature control,
ejaculation and so on.
- Darkness Visible - A Memoir of
Madness by William Styron (1990). Classical account of a
writer's descent (and ascent) into living hell in the form of a severe
and acute depression that almost ended in suicide. In this slim
volume, the author honestly tries to describe his internal state and
speculates on the various causes and effects of depression. I wasn't
as impressed with it as I felt I should have been from the book's
reputation. But I suspect it is like trying to explain color to a
color-blind person. If you don't have a morbid, negative personality
you have grave difficulties understanding this horrible condition.
- The Search: How Google ad Its Rivals Rewrote
the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John
Batelle (2005). Humdrum, not very analytical, journalistic account
of Google.
- Book of Longing by Leonard
Cohen (2006). Poetry by the Canadian singer while living in a Zen
Monastery on Mt. Baldy, 20 miles from here.
- The Wine of Wisdom by Mehdi
Aminrazavi (2005). Insightful book on the life, poetry and
philosophy of Omar Khayyam and his enormously influential
Ruba'iyatt with his quatrains. Discusses his variable
reception in the West. I can recommend it highly.
- Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies
by Nancey Murphy (2006). A readable monograph on a theological
account of the mind-body problem on the background of physicalism.
Makes the interesting historical point that the belief in dualism was
not necessarily co-extensive with the belief in resurrection and an
eternal afterlife.
2005
- Pompeii by Robert Harris
(2004). Another great novel by the British historian; he is
particularly good and making you feel what it was like to be a Roman,
to think roman thoughts.
- (1975; but I read the updated 2002 edition). The
book by the Australian philosopher that gave the modern animal rights
movement its intellectual underpinnings. Compelling.
- Rethinking Life and Death by Peter
Singer (1994). A must-read book on traditional ethics, to what
extent they don't meet our modern needs and how to construct an ethics
for the 21. century.
- State of Fear by Michael
Crichton (2004). Takes a strong anti-global warming perspective
by selective (but correct) citations of the literature. He loses much
of my respect. The novel has the usual Crichtonian arc.
- Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
(2005). The usual Gaiman fare, well presented.
- Monsieur Monde Vanishes by Georges
Simenon (1952). My first Simenon novel (a stunning half a billion
copies of his books have been sold). Stark existentialist prose about
a well-off Parisian who suddenly one afternoon leaves his wife,
family, house and business for no compelling reason, on a whim. A
strangely compelling psychological drama.
- iCon - Steve Jobs - The Greatest Second Act
in the History of Business by Jeffrey Young & William
Simon (2005). Readable biography.
- The runner by Richard Watson.
A sparse, existentialist novel of an obsessive-compulsive runner and
his - on the whole - sad life and lack of any meaningful
connections.
- Happiness - The Science Behind Your
Smile by Daniel Nettle (2005). Popular account of the
psychology of happiness. The principal take-home message is the
disparity what peope want and what they like.
- Forward the Foundation by Isaac
Asimov (1993). Acceptable, fourth volume. I then re-read the
first volume of the original trilogy Foundation. Although I
loved it when I first came upon it as a teenager, I found the
characters stilted and one-dimensional. I still love the series for
the vast canvas in space and time that it paints upon. Curiously, in
Asimov's Galactic Empire, no significant advances in biotechnology
have been made from today. No Internet either. Asimov's creativity is
focused onto progress in physics and in the material
sciences.
- Oaxaca Journal by Oliver Sacks
(2005). Delightful travel journal of Sacks as he visits Mexico with
some botanical friends looking for ferns (yeah, ferns like in
plants). I loved it.
- . I like
Diamond and his universal, catholic view of the sciences and the
history. This book didn't disappoint, in particular his superb
discussion of the demise of the Viking settlements in Greenland and
the Eastern Island.
- . A very
perceptive novelistic account, in the form of a mystery story, of a
teenage boy with Autism/Asperger. The extent to which his
thought-patterns resemble that of a scientist (i.e. myself) is
disconcerting.
- The Shining Company by Rosemary
Sutcliff (1990). Pleasant historical adolescent novel set in
Arthurian England by the author of the impressive Sword at
Sunset.
- Fantastic Voyage by Ray Kurzweil &
Terry Grossman (2004). Intriguing and well-written book on
improving your health and (possibly) extending your lifespan. Goes
into great detail, with plenty of footnotes to dig into, discussing
the current literature on health, inflammation, nutrition, vitamin
supplements etc. What makes the book wacky is the - apparently
sincere - belief of the authors that true immortality, meaning to love
without death, is just around the corner. Kurzweil himself pops on the
order of 250 (this is not a typo) pills a day. Of course, they never
discuss in the book the vast potential for negative synergistic
effects all of these drugs and supplements.
2004
- Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
(2000). Written before the Da Vinci Code and much more
believable. At the heart this novel is about the conflict between
faith and science in modernity. The author writes about this theme in
such passionate terms that I suspect he himself is thorn by these
questions, as I am.
- . A thin but eminently readable and no-nonsense
book on how to live a full-filling and healthy life - including plenty
of advice on how to eat - by a philosopher (a specialist in
Descartes). What other dietary book has such chapter titles as
Fat, Food, Roughage, Running, Sex, How to Live and How to
Die. This last chapter is a jewel. I frequently consult this
book. Highly recommended.
Last modified on March 8. 2008 by Christof Koch