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Picking up a saw does not guarantee a straight cut. Holding a chisel does not make you a sculptor. Tools can amplify poor judgment as readily as good judgment. Their usefulness depends on the operator's ability to direct them, interpret feedback, recognize mistakes, and make corrections. Those requirements also apply…
I know this isn’t everyone’s experience growing up in Northern Virginia, but something I’ve realized after living here my entire life is how unusual the baseline expectations can be. Growing up, going to college never felt like a major accomplishment or even much of a decision; it was just what everyone was doing…
There are many other ways in which the game of Black-and-White is switched into the game of 'White must win,' and, like the battle for survival, they depend upon ignoring, or screening out of consciousness, the interdependence of the two sides. In a curious way this is, of course, part of the Game of Black-and-White…
I could fill Volumes with Descriptions of Temples and Palaces, Paintings, Sculptures, Tapestry, Porcelaine, &c. &c. &c. -- if I could have time. But I could not do this without neglecting my duty. The Science of Government it is my Duty to study, more than all other Studies Sciences: the Art of Legislation and…
Tolkien’s explanations of the differences between Good and Evil humanity – that the former descended from those who had greatest contactand affinity with the Elves in ancient times – does not obviously relate to pseudo-scientific explanations of racial difference; it smacks more of religious constructs of a “chosen…
Modern concepts of race were formulated as a “widely shared theory of biologically determined, physical, intellectual and moral differences between human groups.”35 Hannah Augstein identifies three key elements in nineteenth century race-thinking: that humanity can be divided into races “whose characteristics are…
Fantasy is a useful sub-set through which to explore popular culture not only because of its prominent position at the present historical moment,but because its inherently non-mimetic nature creates a space which is at least nominally not “the real world” and is therefore safer for cultural work around fraught issues…
Herbert’s critique of this seemingly countercultural utopia is precisely aimed at its conservatism. In necessarily rendering life static, the utopian vision must deny the instability of signification and that permits for change and development itself. In making this argument, I am aware that I am (or Herbert is)…
In the theoretical and critical literature of whiteness studies, one of the more often discussed ways in which the social efficacy of the category of whiteness has been maintained in the face of its various “leaks” is, ironically, through its erasure as a definable racial category, as was briefly mentioned in the…
This general paradigm is offered as a theoretical ground for the specific focus and readings of the rest of this book, which analyses in detail the issues of gender, race, and their representation in American SF. For, while the “cognitive” element of SF may not hold in all or even most cases, still SF, as a specular…
Since mere observation cannot provide the solution to a problem, no matter how accurately it is conducted the necessary next step is inference the process which leads from the present to the future, from the known to the unknown. Every inference is a sort of adventure. Another difference between the scientific method…
We can get rid of outdated ways of looking at things, of fixed experience, of ingrained intellectual habits, only by constantly expanding our experience and continually comparing one idea with another in order to select the better one. Because systematic science is the result of constant comparison of innumerable…
Now that we have looked at the differences between the experimental type of thinking and the other types we have discussed, we can see that it is superior to any of the others. Experimental thinking does, to be sure, emphasize systematization and classification, but as means, not as ends in themselves. And, along with…
The core of the problem is that Tolkien conflates race, culture, and ability. Hobbits, he says, are a race, and based upon a combination their hereditary traits and cultural practices, are better at being stealthy than other races. Tolkien does this throughout his novels, outlining the “racial” characteristics of men…
...Cartesian methodology calls for intellectual individualism; it emphasizes reason as the common possession of all men. The reason that people disagree is that their reason has been perverted by the wrong kind of education, or poisoned by superstition, or vitiated by preoccupation. Descartes held that all men had…
In his exploration into the nature of belief, seen from the psychological point of view Locke divided experience into two categories—first, sensation, or perception of external objects, and second, reflection, the activity in which the self observes its own state of mind, its own feelings and thoughts. According to…
“We really expect our romantic partners to have this shared reality — a similar view or understanding of the world to ours,” Van Duyn said. “It is much more important in romantic relationships than in other types of relationships because we are more dependent and interwoven in our day-to-day lives with our partners…
America is, in fact, the leading case in point of what may be thought of as the third great crisis in Western education. The first occurred in the fifth century H.C., when Athens underwent a change from an oral culture to an alphabet-writing culture. To understand what this meant, we must read Plato. The second…
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the…
I enjoy reading as much as anyone, but I find these kinds of posts to be very short-sighted. First off, civilization precedes mass reading by millennia. To attribute the Enlightenment and modern industrial civilization to reading, and any counter-movement against the Enlightenment as anti-reading, is to fundamentally…