Green420
Well-Known Member
Thank you. I feel no one should be obliged to agree with what I say, as that would be authoritarian of me. But I do wonder what you disagree with.
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The Bookworm Corner
- Thread starter Grobalot
- Start date
florduh
Well-Known Member
Your excellent write-up convinced me to look up this book. The original title is, Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L'anti-Œdipe. Honestly, America should replace "e pluribus unum" on our money with "Capitalism and Schizophrenia". Perfectly explains our country.
Bazinga
Well-Known Member
Who is that in the car?Your excellent write-up convinced me to look up this book. The original title is, Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L'anti-Œdipe. Honestly, America should replace "e pluribus unum" on our money with "Capitalism and Schizophrenia". Perfectly explains our country.
el sargantano
Well-Known Member
I just didn't know about this Galactic Empire prequel written by Isaac Asimov himself.
He didn't add it officially to the main lore of robots, empires & foundations, but it rings some bells on future subjects developed on the next books he wrote:
/)
en.m.wikipedia.org
I'll pick it up from the public library during summertime and review it here soon after.
He didn't add it officially to the main lore of robots, empires & foundations, but it rings some bells on future subjects developed on the next books he wrote:
Nemesis (Asimov novel) - Wikipedia
I'll pick it up from the public library during summertime and review it here soon after.
im not a robot
Well-Known Member
oh i had no idea this thread existed. how nice.
honestly digital media has kept me more from reading than id like to admit. i periodically make resolutions to change this.
few books in recent memory have touched me as much as remainder by tom maccarthy
and annihilation by jeff vandermeer
neither one is exactly a hidden gem, both were turned into movies. but i think they are both brilliant.
oh and in terms of nonfiction, entangled life by merlin sheldrake also a great read. i wonder if this got referenced in the mushroom thread here...
i also really enjoyed the expanse series. however i got distracted midway through babylon's ashes, and now i lost the plot. my memory is terrible. i guess i should rerstart it. in your opinion @florduh - is this worth the effort, does the quality keep up with the earlier volumes?
honestly digital media has kept me more from reading than id like to admit. i periodically make resolutions to change this.
few books in recent memory have touched me as much as remainder by tom maccarthy
and annihilation by jeff vandermeer
neither one is exactly a hidden gem, both were turned into movies. but i think they are both brilliant.
oh and in terms of nonfiction, entangled life by merlin sheldrake also a great read. i wonder if this got referenced in the mushroom thread here...
i also really enjoyed the expanse series. however i got distracted midway through babylon's ashes, and now i lost the plot. my memory is terrible. i guess i should rerstart it. in your opinion @florduh - is this worth the effort, does the quality keep up with the earlier volumes?
Green420
Well-Known Member
Just read around 20 pages of Max Planck's the New Science, chapter 2 of "Where is Science Going" called "Is the External World Real?" It was a fascinating description of logical positivism, basically saying that the positivists do not understand how the works of Faraday and electromagnetism are possible from a positivistic view, seems to imply this and does not elaborate so I don't know why Faraday is not understandable from a purely sensory abstraction point of view. But that is what Planck is trying to say, is that the world breaks down at a quantum level, so the idea that there's just a non contradictory list of facts about the world, which excludes all aesthetic or ethical conclusions, is based on the idea that the external world is simply unknowable. We can make statements about it, but these statements as raw scientific data do not lead to new discoveries. Planck lays a logical contradiction in logical positivist thought out at the end of chapter, which is very clear and does not require background knowledge to understand - it's a contradiction to say that there's both an external world which is real, and an external world which is unknowable. How do you know it's real if it's unknowable is Planck's proposition.
Planck was anti fascist, in a way which he believed was the best he could do. He privately hated Hitler and the Nazis, but he kept his post because he believed it was good to uphold the law, according the introduction. Planck is still the sort of author who seems to separate facts from values, thinks there is a definite external world which has laws "independent" of the instruments of science as he describes, which is why the instruments cannot always be trusted. But he does not believe that ethics plays no role in what we do, he derides the positivists for their view that ethics and aesthetic conclusions are not part of the conclusions of scientific study. He goes through a brief history of modern science in the beginning which is nice if you already know a lot of the stuff like the Michaelson Morley experiment and the workings of Relativity. It's a crash course kind of thing, but when he gets more into the meat of the book later it becomes a real treat to listen to some of his descriptions of positivist, and hearing about the whole history of modern science in brief is not bad, it gives you an idea of some of the names which are worth having in your library, like Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Einstein, Bohr (Bohr I don't have), etc. And Planck doesn't use any logical notation to describe what he has to say, which I think is a mark of someone who understands what they say well enough to explain it simply.
Planck was anti fascist, in a way which he believed was the best he could do. He privately hated Hitler and the Nazis, but he kept his post because he believed it was good to uphold the law, according the introduction. Planck is still the sort of author who seems to separate facts from values, thinks there is a definite external world which has laws "independent" of the instruments of science as he describes, which is why the instruments cannot always be trusted. But he does not believe that ethics plays no role in what we do, he derides the positivists for their view that ethics and aesthetic conclusions are not part of the conclusions of scientific study. He goes through a brief history of modern science in the beginning which is nice if you already know a lot of the stuff like the Michaelson Morley experiment and the workings of Relativity. It's a crash course kind of thing, but when he gets more into the meat of the book later it becomes a real treat to listen to some of his descriptions of positivist, and hearing about the whole history of modern science in brief is not bad, it gives you an idea of some of the names which are worth having in your library, like Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Einstein, Bohr (Bohr I don't have), etc. And Planck doesn't use any logical notation to describe what he has to say, which I think is a mark of someone who understands what they say well enough to explain it simply.
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florduh
Well-Known Member
I'm sorry I just saw this!
I just finished the 8th and penultimate novel, Tiamat's Wrath. It might be the best of the series!
Babylon's Ashes was also a bit tough for me too. I despise Marcos Inaros. But a lot of the plots that begin in the early novels pay off in the final trilogy. I'm starting the final installment, Leviathan Falls, this week and am starting to feel sad about saying goodbye to this universe. I think it's worth giving it another shot from the top.