I was hoping that this book might give me some clarity about Islam and Muhammad. Daniel Peterson is one of my author heroes and I generally enjoy his writing. He also has a reputation that he can be acerbic in his writing, especially in the defense of the LDS faith. He is also an Professor of Islamic Studies and the editor-in-chief of the BYU Islamic Translation Series, which is a series of translations of philosophical works by Islamic scholars to make them more accessible to the West. They are printed with the Arabic text on one side of the page and the English on the other side. From what I've been able to determine they are well accepted. So he's got to know a lot about Islam.
Dr. Peterson's writing in this book is as always good and I actually learned some things about Muhammad that I didn't know. I've read a couple of different accounts of Muhammad. In some he seems to be a really nice guy. In the other he seems to be a blood thirsty tyrant. I'm not sure where the truth lies, probably somewhere in the middle. My first reaction after reading this book by Dr. Peterson was that he was taking the apologist track, but then I started thinking about it a little more and realized that he really didn't take that track at all. He may not have talked about some of the more grizzly aspects of Muhammad's life, like Robert Spencer does, but he doesn't sugar coat them either.
The fact is that Muhammad really did accomplish something that is amazing. He started an Empire that rivaled any other great empire builder such as Alexander, and he did something that Alexander didn't do, his Empire stayed together and grew after he died. Alexander's didn't even survive the what would have been his life span had he lived. I think he did this by being a really good leader, and he was probably a pretty good religious leader as well for his time. And I think this is what Dr. Peterson shows in this book.
First off Muhammad would get 1/5 of all the booty from the raids and battles that the muslims had, and all indications are that he used this to support the people who came to Medina as emigrants. He didn't live in a lavish lifestyle. That's certainly different than most despots.
The Battle of Uhud which was a route of the Muslims. One of the main reasons was because of the calvary led by Khalid ibn al-Walid. Later he converted to Islam and became a great general in the rise of the Islamic caliphate both during Muhammad's life and after. This shows remarkable leadership. Another thing that I didn't know is somewhat ironic that Dr. Peterson pointed out.
"Less than three decades after Muhammad's death, the Ummayads, the descendants of Abu Sufyan, ruled the empire from Damascus. The strongest leader of that house was Mu'awiya, the son of Abu Sufyan and of Hind, who had torn out and eaten the liver of Muhammad's uncle following the Battle of Uhud."
After the defeat of Mecca many of Mohammad's former opponents converted to Islam and were allowed to, despite calls for revenge. If people were willing to follow Allah and his Messenger, the Messenger was willing to let them, and in the end, in many cases that turned out to work well for Islam.
Mohammad was probably not any more ruthless than any other great empire builder. Many people have talked about how Constantine was not a very good Christian and did what was necessary to hold his empire. And his lasted quite a while. Charlemagne was the same way. He could be ruthless when it was called for. His Empire didn't last to long after his death. The difference between these men and Muhammad is that a billion people don't look to them as the "perfect" example and they do to Muhammad. So while Charlemagne might have killed 2000 pagans in a day, no Christian thinks that should be emulated as a good thing to do. But when Muhammad did anything, like marry the wife of a man he had defeated and decapitated on the same day, or consummate a marriage with a nine year old wife, or kept slaves or etc. There are a lot of people in the world today who think it's perfectly fine to act that way today because Muhammad did it. Dr. Peterson doesn't point any of these things out, but they happened.
So I would recommend this book. It's well written and you can learn some things about Muhammad. I don't think he tells the whole story about Muhammad, but he does tell an important part of it.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Great Courses: Great World Religions: Judaism
This was an awesome course. This was the first course I've heard from Dr. Gafni, but it will not be my last because after hearing this course I searched for more lectures by Dr. Gafni and found that he has one more set. Consider me sold. I learned something during every lecture. That usually happens, but with Dr. Gafni it seemed enlightening to me. He obviously loves the topic and presented it well.
Highly recommended.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Great Courses: Great World Religions: Islam
When I saw who was giving this course I was prepared to hate the course. Dr. Espisito is a well know Islamic scholar who is an Islamic apologist. He will not even condemn Hezbollah or Hamas. He portrays them as a Sinn Fein type organization with an IRA arm. However, Sinn Fein never felt that the Northern Ireland shouldn't exist, just that Ireland shouldn't be under British Rule. Hezbollah and Hamas both think that Israel should not exist at all, and have that as a goal in the charters of their organizations. Granted some people in those organizations have thought they were violent enough against Israel and will broke away, but they are not like Sinn Fein.
With that being said I didn't actually dislike the course as much as I thought I would, and I actually learned a few things, although not many. I agree with many who have said that it probably would have been better to have a believer give the course than an outsider. Dr. Espisito is Roman Catholic, which doesn't really matter, except that he's not Muslim. Also, he does give a biased presentation of Islam, but to be fair, he gives the presentation that most people in academia give of Islam, which I think is disturbing.
I will give some examples. He doesn't present the crusades as an outright attack by the Christians on the innocent Muslims, he does give some background and that the Byzantine Emperor had called for help with the Muslim attacks. He also said that one reason the Pope called for the crusades was to increase his political position. I haven't heard that before, and it's probably got some truth behind it. He also said that there were hero and villains on both side on the war. Then he proceeds to talk about the Crusaders sack of Jerusalem and King Richards massacre of the prisoners at Ayyadieh. He then talks about how Saladin spared Jerusalem when he took it. He doesn't mention the account of Saladin taking Hattin. Saladin's secretary writes this account of how he treated the prisoners there: "[Saladin] ordered that they should be beheaded, choosing to have them dead rather than in prison. With him was a whole band of scholars and Sufis and a certain number of devout men and ascetics; each begged to be allowed to kill one of them, and drew his sword and rolled back his sleeve. Saladin, his face joyful, was sitting on his dais; the unbelievers showed black despair." He also doesn't mention that the Saladin planned to treat the prisoners at Jerusalem the same way. The reason he didn't it was because of an agreement he had reached with Christian commander of the city Balian of Ibelin who had threatened to kill all of the Muslims in the city of Jerusalem before Saladin could reach it if he didn't agree to spare the prisoners. He also only "spared" the prisoners that could be ransomed to freedom, the rest were sold as slaves. Nice guy Saladin. If you go to the Wikipedia account of the massacre of Ayyadieh it ends with this ironic sentence
"Aayadieh is perhaps the strongest refutation of Richard as a courteous and chivalrous warrior king. On this occasion his almost "theatrical" staging of the massacre showed that he was capable of using terror tactics in an attempt to terrify his opponents into submission. Ironically, Saladin's counter massacre did not hurt his reputation."
Many people point out how well Richard and Saladin got along even though they were adversaries. Saladin even sent his physician, who was probably much, much better than anything Richard had, to treat him when Richard was ill. They probably got along well because they were kindred spirits. Why does Dr. Espisito not tell this, if he "has" to tell about the villains of the plot why only the Christian villians? Muslims know Saladin, and not the happy charitable Saladin the west is told about by Dr. Esposito.
Dr Espisto also says that every one of the suras, or chapters, of the Quran, starts with the bismillah "In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful" That's mostly true, except that it doesn't start the 9th Sura, or the "so called", as Dr. Esposito would say, Sword Sura. That's what the "critics" of Islam call it, the name that Muslims give it is "The Repentance" or "The Ultimatum." As Dr. Espisito says, "Many, not all consider this the last word of Mohammed..." He says this about Quran 9:71-72 and says that this is how a man should treat his wife, as an equal. I didn't know that those ayahs were interpreted that way and were applied to marriage. So I learned something there. Dr. Esposito also didn't mention that there is another ayah in the Quran 4:34 that says that it's OK to beat your wife if she's disobedient, but that since the 9th Sura comes later it abrogates the former ayah. It's good to know that some Islamic scholars interpret the Quran that way.
Dr. Esposito also talked about the ayahs that the "critics", as Dr. Esposito called them, always talk about. The so called "sword verses". I was actually surprised that he talked about these at all. Not to worry though. We just don't understand them in context. Many Christians understand that other Christians will rip proof texts out of the Bible and that when put in context they can sound different, so Dr. Esposito is going to set our minds at ease here. He quotes 9:5 "Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them and prepare for them each ambush." Yes you're right Dr. Esposito that sounds terrible, so here is the second line that puts it in context and makes it all OK. "But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free." Really Dr. Esposito, putting it in context makes it better!!!! If we convert and pay the zakat (which he talks about as one of the pillars of Islam) the Muslims are supposed to leave us alone, otherwise it's OK to ambush us idolaters? That doesn't seem to make it any better to me.
Also, although he mentioned it with respect to marriage he doesn't mention that these so called "sword verses" are also in the last word of Mohhamad, and the only sura that doesn't start with the bismillah, the 9th Sura. He also doesn't talk about the ayahs that say that Muslims should not be friends with Christians or Jews. It's things like this that make people say that Dr. Esposito is giving a slanted view of Islam.
Now that I've written how bad the lectures are, they actually aren't that bad. The lecture I learned the most on was lecture 4 about how the different law codes came about and the Sufis. Also, Dr. Esposito is a much better scholar of Islam than I am, or I hope he is, and he does seem anguished that there is no Islamic nation that is not plagued by terrorist unrest or civil war. He also seems to really believe that Islam has been hijacked by a violent minority. It does seem that way to me, however, I don't think that ignoring the reasons that there is that violent minority is the way to help reform Islam. Judaism and Christianity have changed over the years. Jews have worked out how their religion works without a temple. Christians, and Jews have worked out how to get around slavery and usury. There are plenty of ways that the Quran can be interpreted peacefully, and America should be a safe haven for all Muslims that want to take that path. Dr. Esposito says that is what he is doing, and I truly hope he is, but in my opinion, closing your eyes to all the bad things about Islam is not helping it reform, it's just letting the wolf into the sheepfold.
With that being said I didn't actually dislike the course as much as I thought I would, and I actually learned a few things, although not many. I agree with many who have said that it probably would have been better to have a believer give the course than an outsider. Dr. Espisito is Roman Catholic, which doesn't really matter, except that he's not Muslim. Also, he does give a biased presentation of Islam, but to be fair, he gives the presentation that most people in academia give of Islam, which I think is disturbing.
I will give some examples. He doesn't present the crusades as an outright attack by the Christians on the innocent Muslims, he does give some background and that the Byzantine Emperor had called for help with the Muslim attacks. He also said that one reason the Pope called for the crusades was to increase his political position. I haven't heard that before, and it's probably got some truth behind it. He also said that there were hero and villains on both side on the war. Then he proceeds to talk about the Crusaders sack of Jerusalem and King Richards massacre of the prisoners at Ayyadieh. He then talks about how Saladin spared Jerusalem when he took it. He doesn't mention the account of Saladin taking Hattin. Saladin's secretary writes this account of how he treated the prisoners there: "[Saladin] ordered that they should be beheaded, choosing to have them dead rather than in prison. With him was a whole band of scholars and Sufis and a certain number of devout men and ascetics; each begged to be allowed to kill one of them, and drew his sword and rolled back his sleeve. Saladin, his face joyful, was sitting on his dais; the unbelievers showed black despair." He also doesn't mention that the Saladin planned to treat the prisoners at Jerusalem the same way. The reason he didn't it was because of an agreement he had reached with Christian commander of the city Balian of Ibelin who had threatened to kill all of the Muslims in the city of Jerusalem before Saladin could reach it if he didn't agree to spare the prisoners. He also only "spared" the prisoners that could be ransomed to freedom, the rest were sold as slaves. Nice guy Saladin. If you go to the Wikipedia account of the massacre of Ayyadieh it ends with this ironic sentence
"Aayadieh is perhaps the strongest refutation of Richard as a courteous and chivalrous warrior king. On this occasion his almost "theatrical" staging of the massacre showed that he was capable of using terror tactics in an attempt to terrify his opponents into submission. Ironically, Saladin's counter massacre did not hurt his reputation."
Many people point out how well Richard and Saladin got along even though they were adversaries. Saladin even sent his physician, who was probably much, much better than anything Richard had, to treat him when Richard was ill. They probably got along well because they were kindred spirits. Why does Dr. Espisito not tell this, if he "has" to tell about the villains of the plot why only the Christian villians? Muslims know Saladin, and not the happy charitable Saladin the west is told about by Dr. Esposito.
Dr Espisto also says that every one of the suras, or chapters, of the Quran, starts with the bismillah "In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful" That's mostly true, except that it doesn't start the 9th Sura, or the "so called", as Dr. Esposito would say, Sword Sura. That's what the "critics" of Islam call it, the name that Muslims give it is "The Repentance" or "The Ultimatum." As Dr. Espisito says, "Many, not all consider this the last word of Mohammed..." He says this about Quran 9:71-72 and says that this is how a man should treat his wife, as an equal. I didn't know that those ayahs were interpreted that way and were applied to marriage. So I learned something there. Dr. Esposito also didn't mention that there is another ayah in the Quran 4:34 that says that it's OK to beat your wife if she's disobedient, but that since the 9th Sura comes later it abrogates the former ayah. It's good to know that some Islamic scholars interpret the Quran that way.
Dr. Esposito also talked about the ayahs that the "critics", as Dr. Esposito called them, always talk about. The so called "sword verses". I was actually surprised that he talked about these at all. Not to worry though. We just don't understand them in context. Many Christians understand that other Christians will rip proof texts out of the Bible and that when put in context they can sound different, so Dr. Esposito is going to set our minds at ease here. He quotes 9:5 "Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them and prepare for them each ambush." Yes you're right Dr. Esposito that sounds terrible, so here is the second line that puts it in context and makes it all OK. "But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free." Really Dr. Esposito, putting it in context makes it better!!!! If we convert and pay the zakat (which he talks about as one of the pillars of Islam) the Muslims are supposed to leave us alone, otherwise it's OK to ambush us idolaters? That doesn't seem to make it any better to me.
Also, although he mentioned it with respect to marriage he doesn't mention that these so called "sword verses" are also in the last word of Mohhamad, and the only sura that doesn't start with the bismillah, the 9th Sura. He also doesn't talk about the ayahs that say that Muslims should not be friends with Christians or Jews. It's things like this that make people say that Dr. Esposito is giving a slanted view of Islam.
Now that I've written how bad the lectures are, they actually aren't that bad. The lecture I learned the most on was lecture 4 about how the different law codes came about and the Sufis. Also, Dr. Esposito is a much better scholar of Islam than I am, or I hope he is, and he does seem anguished that there is no Islamic nation that is not plagued by terrorist unrest or civil war. He also seems to really believe that Islam has been hijacked by a violent minority. It does seem that way to me, however, I don't think that ignoring the reasons that there is that violent minority is the way to help reform Islam. Judaism and Christianity have changed over the years. Jews have worked out how their religion works without a temple. Christians, and Jews have worked out how to get around slavery and usury. There are plenty of ways that the Quran can be interpreted peacefully, and America should be a safe haven for all Muslims that want to take that path. Dr. Esposito says that is what he is doing, and I truly hope he is, but in my opinion, closing your eyes to all the bad things about Islam is not helping it reform, it's just letting the wolf into the sheepfold.
Friday, February 14, 2014
Great Courses: Comparitive Religions
One of my main interests in listening to Great Courses lectures is listening to the courses on religion and philosophy. I saw this lecture series and thought it would be interesting. I can only say that it's a very basic course. If you didn't know that humans are pretty much the same throughout time and history this series will show you that they are.
I only listen to the lectures, and I must say that Dr. Kimball's presentation was passionless. I had to listen to the first lecture over because I believed he said that he was a Christian minister. I kept wondering what a sermon by Dr. Kimball would be like if this was what his lectures were. I found it funny too because you can tell that he has been very involved in the ecumenical movement and had very interesting stories to tell, but he gave them in a very flat tone. I personally didn't find this lecture series very informative and couldn't really recommend it unless it was to someone who know nothing about comparative religious studies at all.
I only listen to the lectures, and I must say that Dr. Kimball's presentation was passionless. I had to listen to the first lecture over because I believed he said that he was a Christian minister. I kept wondering what a sermon by Dr. Kimball would be like if this was what his lectures were. I found it funny too because you can tell that he has been very involved in the ecumenical movement and had very interesting stories to tell, but he gave them in a very flat tone. I personally didn't find this lecture series very informative and couldn't really recommend it unless it was to someone who know nothing about comparative religious studies at all.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Daniel Peterson and the Mormon Studies Review, A Nice Ending it Seems
Something funny happened a while ago. I got a check from the Maxwell Institute returning some money because I was not going to be getting a volume of the new "Mormon Studies Review". They'd just renamed it from FARMs Reviews. I didn't think much of it. Then I heard that Dan Peterson had been fired, and that was upsetting to me, and apparently it was upsetting to him. Then I received a volume of "Mormon Studies Review".
It seems like it's laying out the philosophy of the Review going forward. The editor wrote an introduction and he said that the guiding principle of the Review was going to be friendship. There was also an article by Brian D. Birch called "In Defense of Methodological Pluralism: Theology, Apologetics, and the Criticle Study of Mormonism." That's a mouthful. In the article he talked about the different methods of Mormon Studies, and he talks about how aplogetics would fit in. He says that one filed is called "negative aplologetics" and that is where critics are answered. He said that one of the main proponants of that field was Daniel Peterson and went on to say some good things about him. Also, Dr. Peterson had an article included as well. I was hoping that there wasn't going to be an enduring rift and it seems like there is not going to be one.
After getting the latest Review I did a search on google to see if I could find any more information on the firing. I did find that Dr. Peterson had supposedly written 100 page article on someone named John Dehlin who runs a web site called Mormon Stories where people who have left the Church can write their stories. Obviously it's an anti-Mormon site, and I haven't even visited it. It probably says that it's out to present all views, but it won't. Any way John apparently didn't like what was going to be said about him and called a General Authority and was able to get the article pulled, which threw off the publishing because now there was a 100 page hole. Then they stopped publishing and fired Dr. Peterson. After all of that I decided that I would really like to see that article.
I'll admit that Dr. Dan Peterson is a hero of mine. Mainly because of one article he wrote called "Nephi and his Asherah." I'd always wondered about the how Nephi goes from not know what the tree in his father's vision meant to knowing that it was the love of God after seeing the Saviour's birth. A vision of "A virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins" that later has a baby. There had always been a disconnect there for me, and Dan made the connection powerfully. I once got to meet Dr. Peterson at a FAIR Conferance, and told him how much I liked that article. I asked him if many people have told him they liked it and he said I'm one of the few, and then I asked if it was controversial at all and he said it was a little. Any way I loved it, and after that I look for things that he's written and always enjoy them. I don't always agree with him, but I always enjoy his writing.
Anyway I liked what Dr. Peterson did in the old Review however I was sometimes surprised at the polemical tone that the book sometimes took. I don't think it's as bad as what is written in books about the LDS Church so I always took it with a grain of salt, but I could see how it might not be something that a scholarly journal produced by BYU would want to be associated with. Now I just hope that the Maxwell Institute doesn't kill the spirit of FARMS. I loved FARMS, for me it was a breath of fresh air, just the kind of stuff I loved and needed. I would wait for their books and publications and pounce on them when they came out. Pretty much anything they produced I bought and read. I don't know if I'm going to continue doing that anymore. I mean do I really want to read about Mormon Gender Studies? Maybe not, although the article I did read was not as bad as I thought. Maybe I'll have to take a wait and see attitude.
However, I do know that I want to support Dr. Peterson's new Journal, well over a year old now, "The Interpreter." When people have questions about the Church, and they've read some anti-Mormon liturature I'm pretty sure that the information I'm going to get from the Review might not help so much. It might help if it a professor that has a question, but I don't know many people like that. I'm pretty sure I will get some good information from the Interpreter though, just like I used to get good information from the old Review.
With all that being said I guess that I'm going to have to step up and read Dr. Peterson's "Muhommad: Prophet of God." I'm just aftaid that I'll find that I disagree with what he says and that he's an apologist for Islam. After all that is Dr. Peterson's main field of study. But then again I'll probably get a lot of good things from it. I should just read it and see what he says. Don't be a chicken.
It seems like it's laying out the philosophy of the Review going forward. The editor wrote an introduction and he said that the guiding principle of the Review was going to be friendship. There was also an article by Brian D. Birch called "In Defense of Methodological Pluralism: Theology, Apologetics, and the Criticle Study of Mormonism." That's a mouthful. In the article he talked about the different methods of Mormon Studies, and he talks about how aplogetics would fit in. He says that one filed is called "negative aplologetics" and that is where critics are answered. He said that one of the main proponants of that field was Daniel Peterson and went on to say some good things about him. Also, Dr. Peterson had an article included as well. I was hoping that there wasn't going to be an enduring rift and it seems like there is not going to be one.
After getting the latest Review I did a search on google to see if I could find any more information on the firing. I did find that Dr. Peterson had supposedly written 100 page article on someone named John Dehlin who runs a web site called Mormon Stories where people who have left the Church can write their stories. Obviously it's an anti-Mormon site, and I haven't even visited it. It probably says that it's out to present all views, but it won't. Any way John apparently didn't like what was going to be said about him and called a General Authority and was able to get the article pulled, which threw off the publishing because now there was a 100 page hole. Then they stopped publishing and fired Dr. Peterson. After all of that I decided that I would really like to see that article.
I'll admit that Dr. Dan Peterson is a hero of mine. Mainly because of one article he wrote called "Nephi and his Asherah." I'd always wondered about the how Nephi goes from not know what the tree in his father's vision meant to knowing that it was the love of God after seeing the Saviour's birth. A vision of "A virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins" that later has a baby. There had always been a disconnect there for me, and Dan made the connection powerfully. I once got to meet Dr. Peterson at a FAIR Conferance, and told him how much I liked that article. I asked him if many people have told him they liked it and he said I'm one of the few, and then I asked if it was controversial at all and he said it was a little. Any way I loved it, and after that I look for things that he's written and always enjoy them. I don't always agree with him, but I always enjoy his writing.
Anyway I liked what Dr. Peterson did in the old Review however I was sometimes surprised at the polemical tone that the book sometimes took. I don't think it's as bad as what is written in books about the LDS Church so I always took it with a grain of salt, but I could see how it might not be something that a scholarly journal produced by BYU would want to be associated with. Now I just hope that the Maxwell Institute doesn't kill the spirit of FARMS. I loved FARMS, for me it was a breath of fresh air, just the kind of stuff I loved and needed. I would wait for their books and publications and pounce on them when they came out. Pretty much anything they produced I bought and read. I don't know if I'm going to continue doing that anymore. I mean do I really want to read about Mormon Gender Studies? Maybe not, although the article I did read was not as bad as I thought. Maybe I'll have to take a wait and see attitude.
However, I do know that I want to support Dr. Peterson's new Journal, well over a year old now, "The Interpreter." When people have questions about the Church, and they've read some anti-Mormon liturature I'm pretty sure that the information I'm going to get from the Review might not help so much. It might help if it a professor that has a question, but I don't know many people like that. I'm pretty sure I will get some good information from the Interpreter though, just like I used to get good information from the old Review.
With all that being said I guess that I'm going to have to step up and read Dr. Peterson's "Muhommad: Prophet of God." I'm just aftaid that I'll find that I disagree with what he says and that he's an apologist for Islam. After all that is Dr. Peterson's main field of study. But then again I'll probably get a lot of good things from it. I should just read it and see what he says. Don't be a chicken.
Science: It's Not What It's Cracked Up To Be part 2
Science doesn't really exist. Scientific beliefs are either proved wrong, or else they quickly become engineering. Everything else is untested speculation. — James P. Hogan
Since I wrote the first part of this series I went back and reread "Kicking the Sacred Cows." I figured since it seemed to be such an influential book I should maybe reread it. I was surprised at what was in it. Mostly I was surprised at what was not in it. It turns out that in my researches on the internet a lot of what I learned was beyond what Mr. Hogan was talking about and pointed me towards. However, he did say a lot of good things. I particularly like the quote above which is what he starts his book out with, right at the beginning of the introduction.
In my listening to the lectures on the Philosophy of Science I learned something that is amazing. Science is founded on a logical fallacy. At one time scientists, or natural philosophers as they were then known, knew this and worried about it. Today scientists don't seem worried about it at all, just the Philosophers of Science, and I'm pretty sure that most of the rest of us don't know anything about it. The fallacy is called Affirming the Consequent, or sometimes Affirming the Ascendant.
It goes like this, A therefore B, does not necessarily lead to B therefore A. Mr. Hogan gives the best example of this I think. If the sprinklers turn on the grass will be wet. Ok the sprinklers turn on and the grass is wet, that's true. Say the next morning you wake up and go outside and find that the grass is wet, does that mean the sprinklers turned on? No it doesn't. Maybe it rained, or maybe there was a hard dew last night, or maybe a UFO passed by and emptied it's cooling tanks on your lawn. See that last part is where Mr. Hogan's science fiction writing comes in and why I thinks his example is so great. Much better, I think that the wikipedia version which can be found HERE.
How does that apply to science. Well as I said it's foundational, but let me explain something first. There are two ways that we can come to knowledge. One is called deductive reasoning, and it is full proof and gives an excellent example from the history of philosophy. A standard example is
All ravens are black. P1
That is a raven P2
Therefore is is black. D1
As long as the premises are true the deduction is true. The history part is they used to say "All swans are white," but when Australia was discovered they found black swans and therefore the first premise was not true anymore. They've never, so far, found a raven that was not black. The problem with deductive reasoning is that it's not predictive so your limited in what you can learn.
The second kind of reasoning is inductive reasoning and it is where you reason from specific facts to general facts. It's power is that it's predictive. It goes like this
The sun has always risen in the morning.
Therefore it will rise tomorrow, and every morning after.
Bertrand Russel who was a very smart man and wrote "Principia Mathmatica", liked to show that this type of reasoning is flawed and to show it he talked about a hen who reasoned, every morning the farmer brings me food, and went out to meet the farmer every morning for breakfast, until the farmer one morning cut her head off so that he could eat her for dinner.
However, while inductive reasoning is flawed, it's power is that it's predictive and allows us to do things in life and so we depend on it. So what does this mean? It means that we depend on the logical fallacy of Affirming the Consequent to do science. Lets go back to Mr. Hogans example
If the sprinklers turn on P1
The grass will be wet D1
In science we call P1 the hypothesis. So we give it a fancy name and then forget about it. The problem is that as a society we give science such a high level of credence, that we don't always question what they are saying when we should be questioning them a lot more. Karl Popper a famous philosopher of science saw this problem and said that a statement can only be meaningful if it can be falsified. The above statement could be falsified. I could cover the grass with a tarp and turn on the sprinklers then the grass wouldn't get wet. The scientist would then go back and either discard the hypothesis or alter it to fit the then known facts.
Now I think what the problem is really is that we, who live in the first world, live in a world that is a world of engineering marvels, and we falsely attribute it to science. I'm not saying that science is not part of engineering I'm just saying that we can't see science, but we can see engineering. Let me give a perfect example.
At the turn of the century, most "scientists" were saying that it was impossible for man to achieve heavier that air flight, or powered flight. Why? Because up till then all attempts at it had failed and they were explaining why. The a couple of bike mechanics ignored the scientists, the Wright Brothers, and built an airplane. Then the scientist got involved and started to improve on the Wright Brothers invention and in less that 70 years we went from powered flight is impossible, to putting a man on the moon. And that is pretty much how science works. However the scientists had to discard their hypothesis.
As I was thinking about this topic I was wondering if engineering, or technology, is still driving science. Now we have big science, which I think is a problem, and I wasn't sure. Then I serendiptiously read the December 2013 issue of the Smithsonian magazine. It was the issue where they were talking about the people they gave their innovation awards to. One of them was Professor John Rogers. For his PhD research he was doing research that could determine the properties of thin films by subjecting them to laser pulses. Before he was out of school chip manufacturers were interested in the research. The way they were then measuring the ultra thin layers of a microchips was by tapping them, which was not only slow but risked corrupting the chips. The laser system would be much better. Dr. Rogers and a classmate recruited students from the management school and came up with 100 page business proposal.
They were giving a presentation to an executive from Tencor and were showing many, many screens of equations and theories telling how the could determine the properties of the thin films stiffness, delamination, longitudinal sound velocity, thermal transfer etc. Finally the executive said I don't care about any of that can you tell me how thick the film is? Rogers said yes they could but it was something they hadn't even put in the business plan, because as a scientist it was probably the least interesting thing about thin films.
Matthew Banet, who was the friend who co-founded the startup said: "It was a seminal moment in all of our lives. We went back with our tails between our legs." They went back and worked on their equipment until it could measure variations in thin films as small as on tenth of an angstrom. Dr. Rogers said that "sometimes the technology push drives scientific understanding, rather than the other way around." He also said that Tencor's requirements forced them "to understand a lot more about the optics and physics and acoustic and signal processing. It put all scientific research into the context of something that could have value beyond publication in a scientific journal."
The startup, Active Impulse Systems raised $3 million in venture capital funding in 1995. They produced their first unit, the InSite300, in 1997, and sold the compony in August 1998 for $29 million.
That's how it works. Science turns into engineering that we can see and makes the world a better place. Science that never turns into engineering is just guessing. That's all it is. Here is something that I also learned in the lecture series. Every thing that science believed was true at the beginning of the 20th century turned out to be wrong by the end. Why should be believe that it will be any different at the end of the 21st Century?
Since I wrote the first part of this series I went back and reread "Kicking the Sacred Cows." I figured since it seemed to be such an influential book I should maybe reread it. I was surprised at what was in it. Mostly I was surprised at what was not in it. It turns out that in my researches on the internet a lot of what I learned was beyond what Mr. Hogan was talking about and pointed me towards. However, he did say a lot of good things. I particularly like the quote above which is what he starts his book out with, right at the beginning of the introduction.
In my listening to the lectures on the Philosophy of Science I learned something that is amazing. Science is founded on a logical fallacy. At one time scientists, or natural philosophers as they were then known, knew this and worried about it. Today scientists don't seem worried about it at all, just the Philosophers of Science, and I'm pretty sure that most of the rest of us don't know anything about it. The fallacy is called Affirming the Consequent, or sometimes Affirming the Ascendant.
It goes like this, A therefore B, does not necessarily lead to B therefore A. Mr. Hogan gives the best example of this I think. If the sprinklers turn on the grass will be wet. Ok the sprinklers turn on and the grass is wet, that's true. Say the next morning you wake up and go outside and find that the grass is wet, does that mean the sprinklers turned on? No it doesn't. Maybe it rained, or maybe there was a hard dew last night, or maybe a UFO passed by and emptied it's cooling tanks on your lawn. See that last part is where Mr. Hogan's science fiction writing comes in and why I thinks his example is so great. Much better, I think that the wikipedia version which can be found HERE.
How does that apply to science. Well as I said it's foundational, but let me explain something first. There are two ways that we can come to knowledge. One is called deductive reasoning, and it is full proof and gives an excellent example from the history of philosophy. A standard example is
All ravens are black. P1
That is a raven P2
Therefore is is black. D1
As long as the premises are true the deduction is true. The history part is they used to say "All swans are white," but when Australia was discovered they found black swans and therefore the first premise was not true anymore. They've never, so far, found a raven that was not black. The problem with deductive reasoning is that it's not predictive so your limited in what you can learn.
The second kind of reasoning is inductive reasoning and it is where you reason from specific facts to general facts. It's power is that it's predictive. It goes like this
The sun has always risen in the morning.
Therefore it will rise tomorrow, and every morning after.
Bertrand Russel who was a very smart man and wrote "Principia Mathmatica", liked to show that this type of reasoning is flawed and to show it he talked about a hen who reasoned, every morning the farmer brings me food, and went out to meet the farmer every morning for breakfast, until the farmer one morning cut her head off so that he could eat her for dinner.
However, while inductive reasoning is flawed, it's power is that it's predictive and allows us to do things in life and so we depend on it. So what does this mean? It means that we depend on the logical fallacy of Affirming the Consequent to do science. Lets go back to Mr. Hogans example
If the sprinklers turn on P1
The grass will be wet D1
In science we call P1 the hypothesis. So we give it a fancy name and then forget about it. The problem is that as a society we give science such a high level of credence, that we don't always question what they are saying when we should be questioning them a lot more. Karl Popper a famous philosopher of science saw this problem and said that a statement can only be meaningful if it can be falsified. The above statement could be falsified. I could cover the grass with a tarp and turn on the sprinklers then the grass wouldn't get wet. The scientist would then go back and either discard the hypothesis or alter it to fit the then known facts.
Now I think what the problem is really is that we, who live in the first world, live in a world that is a world of engineering marvels, and we falsely attribute it to science. I'm not saying that science is not part of engineering I'm just saying that we can't see science, but we can see engineering. Let me give a perfect example.
At the turn of the century, most "scientists" were saying that it was impossible for man to achieve heavier that air flight, or powered flight. Why? Because up till then all attempts at it had failed and they were explaining why. The a couple of bike mechanics ignored the scientists, the Wright Brothers, and built an airplane. Then the scientist got involved and started to improve on the Wright Brothers invention and in less that 70 years we went from powered flight is impossible, to putting a man on the moon. And that is pretty much how science works. However the scientists had to discard their hypothesis.
As I was thinking about this topic I was wondering if engineering, or technology, is still driving science. Now we have big science, which I think is a problem, and I wasn't sure. Then I serendiptiously read the December 2013 issue of the Smithsonian magazine. It was the issue where they were talking about the people they gave their innovation awards to. One of them was Professor John Rogers. For his PhD research he was doing research that could determine the properties of thin films by subjecting them to laser pulses. Before he was out of school chip manufacturers were interested in the research. The way they were then measuring the ultra thin layers of a microchips was by tapping them, which was not only slow but risked corrupting the chips. The laser system would be much better. Dr. Rogers and a classmate recruited students from the management school and came up with 100 page business proposal.
They were giving a presentation to an executive from Tencor and were showing many, many screens of equations and theories telling how the could determine the properties of the thin films stiffness, delamination, longitudinal sound velocity, thermal transfer etc. Finally the executive said I don't care about any of that can you tell me how thick the film is? Rogers said yes they could but it was something they hadn't even put in the business plan, because as a scientist it was probably the least interesting thing about thin films.
Matthew Banet, who was the friend who co-founded the startup said: "It was a seminal moment in all of our lives. We went back with our tails between our legs." They went back and worked on their equipment until it could measure variations in thin films as small as on tenth of an angstrom. Dr. Rogers said that "sometimes the technology push drives scientific understanding, rather than the other way around." He also said that Tencor's requirements forced them "to understand a lot more about the optics and physics and acoustic and signal processing. It put all scientific research into the context of something that could have value beyond publication in a scientific journal."
The startup, Active Impulse Systems raised $3 million in venture capital funding in 1995. They produced their first unit, the InSite300, in 1997, and sold the compony in August 1998 for $29 million.
That's how it works. Science turns into engineering that we can see and makes the world a better place. Science that never turns into engineering is just guessing. That's all it is. Here is something that I also learned in the lecture series. Every thing that science believed was true at the beginning of the 20th century turned out to be wrong by the end. Why should be believe that it will be any different at the end of the 21st Century?
Thursday, February 6, 2014
I'm Out to Improve Myself - And the Lord is Helping
Just before the New Year I was reading an article about a former missionary who'd gone to Hong Kong to expand his business. It was a Forbes magazine article and it really hit me that it was a pretty good article. He said that he was ADD and that he'd been stuck in a rut for the last 10 years of his life and needed to get out of it. He knew he could do better because he'd proven it to himself on his mission just how much he could accomplish when he stuck his mind to it. I'd been feeling that I was stuck in a rut and would like to improve myself, and I'd just recently found out that I might be dyslexic. This guy mentioned in his article that he depended on books like "Getting Things Done" and the "Power of Habit" to help him keep on track with his ADD. I'd read "Getting Things Done" and thought that it was a great book so I decided that I should read "The Power of Habit" since he'd recommended it. I was hoping that I could get some ideas from it and maybe start accomplishing a little more in my life.
If I have one gift in life it is that I have a love for learning, and in all my learning I try to get understanding about the gospel. I would like to think that I have a gift of being able to teach the things that I learn to others. I'm trying to share my ideas in writing more with this blog. To go along with that gift of learning I feel that I'm sometimes led to books, or topics where the spirit seems to whisper to me: "Buy this book it'll be a good one." That may be just the way I justify spending all the money I spend on books, but I really believe it happens and when I does I usually learn things, about the gospel generally and myself sometimes.
That's what happened when I read this article about this book. Then when I was looking at "The Power of Habit" I came across the book "The Willpower Instinct" and I felt I had to read that book as well. Then felt that I should read "Emotional Intelligence" and "Emotional Intelligence" and then I saw a Great Courses lecture series called the "The Spiritual Brain" and I felt I should get that as well. After I read the first two of these books it reminded me of "Feeling Good" which is a all time life changing book for me.
I started with "The Power of Habit" and it was pretty good in laying the ground work there's been a lot of study on the brain with new imaging techniques. Where people used to try and figure out what was going on in the head, they can now actually see. Well they can see where blood flow is, or electrical activity and they assume from that that that is where the activity is taking place. Three things I remember especially from this book is that: 1) Marketers use the power of habit to market to you. 2) Organizations have habits 3) That the brain can imprint habits without the conscious part of the brain helping.
Number three was especially fascinating. A man got some type of encephalitis that destroyed the part of his brain that consciously learns things. His wife was told that he needed exercise and that he could never leave the house alone because he wouldn't be able to find his way back. Well she took hime for a walk every day on the same path so that she could meet both of those conditions. One day the man left the house by his self and the wife freaked out, but the man came back on his own. Scientists who were interested in him would go on the walk with this guy and he would have no idea why he was turning on certain street, or where his house was when he was only a few houses away, but he would walk into the house sit in his chair and watch the history channel. His brain had created a habit he could follow although he no conscious memory of it. He could do the same thing with making himself breakfast. He would get up go to the kitchen and mage himself eggs and bacon, but he couldn't tell you where the kitchen was. The brain was building habits that could fire but he didn't consciously know what he was doing.
One key thing that I took away from this book, besides the interesting things I mentioned, is that their seem to be key habits that if someone will do they also start doing other things in their life as well. The classic example they give is that when someone starts exercising everyday as a habit it will start spilling over into other parts of their life. They might start saving more, or eating less or other things that they've wanted to do. He also says that you should examine your habits to see why you're doing something. He then gave an example about how he would always get up in the afternoon and go to the cafe at his work to get a cookie and then talk with coworkers. When he started to examine why he was doing this he found that he mainly was doing it as an excuse to talk to coworkers, so he started just visiting with coworkers instead. Something like that. However, he never tells you how to do this, what a key habit would be, or how to examine your emotions.
The second book, "The Willpower Instinct" was by far the most interesting, and some of the information in it was in the first as well I'm sure. The author of this book says that it's taken from a class that she gives as a extension course at Stanford University. When she first offered it she was worried that no one would show up, but they had to move the class 4 times that first semester until they were in the largest lecture hall at Stanford. I don't know how big that is, but I'm sure it's pretty big. She said that the way to use the book is to try and implement one chapter a week the way they do at Stanford. She said that you could obviously read it through at once to get an overall flavor, but that you should go back and do one chapter a week. So that's what I did.
One of the first things that the first two chapters teach if meditation and breathing practice. From my short experience with trying yoga I could see that both of these were simplified yoga practices without the religious aspects to them. In the meditation portion she said that people who practiced it after as little as 11 hours of practices imaging or their brain showed that the portions of the brain that control our willpower had become "thicker" meaning more connections had been made in those portions of the brain. This is pretty much the same thing that the professor in the "Spiritual Brain" had found and they'd had their participants do a meditation practice that was similar.
For years I've thought that the eastern religions with their knowledge and understanding of the spirit and body connection probably had a lot to teach the west. However, I never really understood what it was getting at and why it was important. This gives a great reason, and it might be a little different than the reason they teach the meditation practice, but all religions say that you should meditate, at least all the ones I know about.
Anyway as I've said I've tried the meditation and breathing practices and haven't really done them in a while, however I've started again and I find them very beneficial when I know what I'm doing them for, and they fit in my spiritual practices. I don't really want to try and have a nirvana experience by doing something that I consider in many ways a waste of time everyday. However, when she talked about controlling your breathing to help with relaxation and that you should shoot for 3-6 breaths a minute I thought that might be hard, but after doing it for a couple time the second week, because it's part of the second chapter, I found that I was able to do 3 breaths a minute already. So maybe somethings stuck with me after all.
Also, books talk about how the mind is wired with the amygdala, a part of the mind that is supposed to be very ancient. The amygdala controls the emotional part of the brain, and it starts to fire before your conscious part of the brain even gets the signals. It's also the part of the brain that seems to imprint emotional memory. Emotions turn out to be very important. There is a story about a man who had something happen so that his amygdala was damaged and he felt no emotion. Far from being a Spock or Data he couldn't make decisions any more because he couldn't feel that anything was important to do. Turns out that emotions are an important way to run our lives. Our prophets have always taught that one way the Lord, talks to us is through emotions and I think this shows that they're right.
One other thing that I found super interesting is in the 5th chapter which I re-read this week and that is the power of dopamine. The first indication of this was back in the '50s when some scientists were doing a test on some rats and had stuck an electrode into the rats brain. I turned out that when the rat was allowed to push a switch that would excite the electrode it would do it until it fell from exhaustion. When the made the rat run over an electrified field that would burn it's feet to push the switch they would do so until they could run anymore. The scientists thought they had found the reward center of the brain, but what they'd found was the anticipation portion of the brain, the place were dopamine was secreted. When they destroyed that part of the brain in the rats and then gave them sugar they would get the same dopey look on their face (that the authors words, she's very funny) they still got the reward, but now you couldn't get them to do anything to earn the reward because there was no dopamine.
Apparently the brain send out dopamine when it thinks you should be taking action to do something. So if there's some tasty food around the brain starts telling you to crave it so that you'll go get the food. Apparently when getting tasty fattening food was scarce it was a good thing that your brain would put you in the mood for doing what it took to get it. You became a risk taking machine. But it might not be so good when tasty fattening food is all around you. She also said that when you saw a pornographic image the same thing happened your brain floods with dopamine. She said it probably happened because in the past you usually saw something like that only when you had a chance to spread your genes not on a daily bases. However, they've shown that showing people sexy images does flood the brain making it a risk taking machine which will cause them to spend more money for example. Obviously something that advertisers have figured out. When I was reading about some of the information that Bro. Christopherson talked about in his talk at the Priesthood Session in Oct 2012 one of the things that I found was that young men can get addicted to pornography or video games but it was the same addiction and addiction to arousal, or dopamine.
One interesting thing that this book talks about that there are 3 types of willpower. The "I will," the "I won't," and the "I want." She says that sometimes we can change an "I won't" to an "I will" challenge or an "I want". I'd never really thought about it that way before. It seems like I've always concentrated on the "I won't" part.
Anyway this book has much more information on how to implement willpower in your life, and how it works. I've really enjoyed this book and the insights it gives.
"Emotional Intelligence" was not that great of a book. I got the 10th anniversary edition of it. It gave some interesting information and ideas. Basically it says that Emotional Intelligence or EQ is more important to your success than IQ or your personal outlook. He says that research has shown that your IQ is pretty much set for life at birth, and that people seem to have a personal set point in the way they look at things. Some people are just more outgoing and some are just more timid. These traits appear in children at about 8 months and are pretty much set for life. However, you can change your EQ and it can make a great difference in your life. However, he doesn't really say how to do this other than some ideas on how to raise kids. It's sad the way some kids are raised.
"Emotional Intelligence 2.0" is totally different. It give you 4 basic areas that you can work on in your EQ and then give 63 different ideas to work on. Many of these ideas I've read about in other books but not explaining why they were important or how they were going to help. This book lays out a little more refined plan with explanation. It also says that you should just work on a few ideas at a time and then move on. Trying to change to much at once is overwhelming. In fact all the books say the same thing about only changing small things at first, although "Power of Habit" doesn't really tell you what to change, just that if you get a key habit it will change your whole life. I guess "Willpower Instinct" doesn't say what to change, just that you should only take on one challenge at a time.
Finally I listened to the "Spiritual Brain." It covered a lot of these areas but in a different way. The first part of the lectures, I think, where basically saying that religion does effect your brain in positive ways and here are the positive things that it does for you. He also knows that his research is very going to be controversial and he spent a long time talking about how he took questions that people were going to raise about his research were going to bring up. I found it amazing. At one point he talked about research that shows that Mormon males live longer and healthier lives as evidence that living a religious life is good. He said that at one of his presentations that a minister stood up and said that he thought that what he was doing wasn't very good because people are going to start to try to be religious for the physical benefits not for the theological ones. He said that that's not what he's doing and he doesn't think it would work anyway that people are only religious for the same reasons they've always been, but that here's more information about why it works. I think he's right and I like to hear stuff like that.
That was the first half of the lectures the second half I think was more about neruotheology which is a new field of study and he's written a book about it. In this section he tries to explain why the brain would believe the theological things that it might believe and why. I didn't find this section as interesting as the first section, and it may have been because I really wasn't prepared for it. I'm going to have to listen to it again. One interesting thing is that he talks about mystical experiences, and I found this interesting. He tries to lump Joseph Smith in with other mystics, but I now really see what Author Henry King and Hugh Nibley mean when they say that Joseph's account is the exact opposite of a mystical experience. He just went into a forest and tells exactly what happened, noting ineffable at all about what happened. In fact that seems to be the most amazing thing about the accounts of all prophets visions. The things that happens may seem bizarre in the telling but they're tellable. None of this I was light and dark at the same time, or I could touch everything at once. However, as the professor says many people of different religions have these experiences and all of them, after they have them say that they're life changing. Also, at least to me they seem to be remarkably similar no matter what religion the person having them is. However, it seems like most people have to work to attain these visions through some sort of meditation technique, that also seem remarkably similar.
This is what I found unattractive about the Buddhist meditations. I didn't want to spend all the time emptying my mind of everything, so that I could achieve some state of nirvana, that I don't think is important. However, this seems to be an experience that many religions have and from the descriptions it seems to be an experience that's very important to the people that have them. I'd say they're important, but I'd like to know why. The prophets teach us that we should ponder on things that we want to understand better, and many people have talked about how they have sudden enlightenment but it's on topics that are of concern to them. Some prophets have talked about how they've had visions opened up to them, like Nephi and Joseph F. Smith, but these are indescribable accounts of lights and feelings etc. It something that I'm going to have to ponder about, and I'm going to look more into neurotheology.
For me it's been an enlightening few weeks. I know that these ideas are going to be helpful to me and they're very exciting.
Great Courses Review: The Barbarian Empires of the Steppes
I'm becoming a Professor Harl aficionado. When I saw that he was the professor for this course I was excited about listening to it. I'm primarily a listener of the GC presentations, and Dr. Harl is one of the best.
I loved this series. When you stop and think about it, we learn in school about the West, and a little about the East, mostly China and a little about Japan and Korea, mainly as they interact with China. Then you learn about the fantastic Silk Road and how much impact it had in bringing the rich products of the East to the West. OK, did the Silk Road happen magically? Obviously no, and this series fills in the dark hole of how it worked.
One of the things that I really liked was that Dr. Harl said that Islam was influenced by the Persian Empire much more than the Roman Empire. In another lecture series, I can't remember off the top of my head, the Roman Empire is said to have left three civilizations in it's wake: Western, Eastern Orthodox, and Islamic. I've always felt that was wrong and that Islam was much more influenced by Persia than Rome. Dr. Harl makes the case for Persia as well, which is probably why I like it since it agrees with my thoughts.
I do find one thing funny about Dr. Harl's presentation. He doesn't give enough credit to the transfer of technology from the east to the west. He seems to think that the only idea that the West took from the East, via the Steppes, was gunpowder. He says the West took that technology and advanced it as artillery and hand held weapons which could be mounted on ships and this led to the West's subjection of the East. Well that's true, but the West also took the compass and improved it so they could sail their ships, they took printing and improved it so they could print cheap books and so transfer knowledge more easily, they took paper and used it in industrial amounts in the cheap books they read to transfer knowledge. They took algebra and applied it to real world applications so their mounted artillery worked better. I could go on. I think this is the first GC lecture series where I didn't think the lecturer gave the East enough credit for the West's development. It was bizarre. He may think that gunpowder was the most influential idea that was transfer ed, or had the most impact but it is weird that gunpowder is the only thing he mentioned.
Great course. I would highly recommend it.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Book Review — Emotional Intelligence 2.0
I think this will be a good book. It doesn't add a lot of information to the field of Emotional Intelligence for me but what it does do is give some guidance in how the reader can increase their Emotional Intelligence or EQ as it's called.
The book lays out four areas where you can increase your EQ. I find this interesting once again. A few years ago I went to a training meeting offered by the group that I worked for. In that meeting they said that people had been dividing people into different groups of strengths for thousands of years starting with Socrates. They often divide them into 4 groups and the groups are similar sounding. I just remember this happening and that after the guy leading us that time said it I went and researched it on the web a little and he seemed to be right. Now here these guys are again dividing us into 4 Groups. That's got to be good.
I'm not going to tell you what the areas are, but they make sense. The book also give 63 ideas (I'm just repeating what I heard or read somewhere I didn't actually count them) about how to improve in these areas. I find this a very great idea. Many of these ideas I've read about before in self-help books, like remembering someone's name is very powerful. Yes it is and I'm terrible at it, but this give a good reason for why I should improve and how it will help overall. This book also makes the point that trying to change everything at once is over whelming and that you should just pick 3 ideas to work on. That really makes sense to me.
Buying the book also gives you access to a code that allows you to take a super special test (in their eyes I'm sure) that analyzes where you need help and then gives you suggestions on what you should start practicing. In a review about this book I read someone that said that the test was stupid and that it would be easy to ace. I'd have to say that I agree with that person, but only a moron would try to ace a test they were going to take for self improvement. Maybe acing the test if it were part of a job interview sure, but just for yourself? The test actually confirmed that I'm weak in areas I thought I'd be weak in, and stronger in areas I thought I'd be strong in, although not as strong as I'd like. They gave 3 suggestions of things to work on in the book and I agree with two of them but will probably change the third. Overall this seems to be a very promising book.
The book lays out four areas where you can increase your EQ. I find this interesting once again. A few years ago I went to a training meeting offered by the group that I worked for. In that meeting they said that people had been dividing people into different groups of strengths for thousands of years starting with Socrates. They often divide them into 4 groups and the groups are similar sounding. I just remember this happening and that after the guy leading us that time said it I went and researched it on the web a little and he seemed to be right. Now here these guys are again dividing us into 4 Groups. That's got to be good.
I'm not going to tell you what the areas are, but they make sense. The book also give 63 ideas (I'm just repeating what I heard or read somewhere I didn't actually count them) about how to improve in these areas. I find this a very great idea. Many of these ideas I've read about before in self-help books, like remembering someone's name is very powerful. Yes it is and I'm terrible at it, but this give a good reason for why I should improve and how it will help overall. This book also makes the point that trying to change everything at once is over whelming and that you should just pick 3 ideas to work on. That really makes sense to me.
Buying the book also gives you access to a code that allows you to take a super special test (in their eyes I'm sure) that analyzes where you need help and then gives you suggestions on what you should start practicing. In a review about this book I read someone that said that the test was stupid and that it would be easy to ace. I'd have to say that I agree with that person, but only a moron would try to ace a test they were going to take for self improvement. Maybe acing the test if it were part of a job interview sure, but just for yourself? The test actually confirmed that I'm weak in areas I thought I'd be weak in, and stronger in areas I thought I'd be strong in, although not as strong as I'd like. They gave 3 suggestions of things to work on in the book and I agree with two of them but will probably change the third. Overall this seems to be a very promising book.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Great Courses - The Philosophy of Science
This was a very tough course for me. I'm glad that I listened to the "Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It" before I listened to this, or I doubt that I could have understood any of it. Unless you have a real interest in this topic you might want to listen to the other lectures as well.
However, I've listened to this lectures series twice now, and gotten more out of it each time and I'll probably do a little more reading and come back to it again. I got one excellent term out of this series although Dr. Kasser never says it but he almost says it "Science is epistemologically privileged", and it's what he means. As a society we tend to think that if it's scientific the information must be better.
Dr. Kasser's presentation is excellent. If it wasn't I could never have stayed with the lectures. I thought he brought up a lot of good an interesting ideas, and I have to admit that I've always thought Science was a little special, even though I've always been glad to be an engineer and thought that engineering is better than science. I was surprised at many of the points that he brought up.
One thing that drives me crazy about this is how powerful a concept logical positivism is as a philosophy even though it's been mostly shown to be lacking. Most people that I know think that science is only facts that are indisputably proven. I kept hoping that he would bring up A.J. Ayer who said that the only thing wrong with logical positivism was that is was almost all wrong, but he didn't. I actually heard that in another Great Courses Lecture Series, but I forget which one it was.
Good course. I'd recommend it but with reservations.
However, I've listened to this lectures series twice now, and gotten more out of it each time and I'll probably do a little more reading and come back to it again. I got one excellent term out of this series although Dr. Kasser never says it but he almost says it "Science is epistemologically privileged", and it's what he means. As a society we tend to think that if it's scientific the information must be better.
Dr. Kasser's presentation is excellent. If it wasn't I could never have stayed with the lectures. I thought he brought up a lot of good an interesting ideas, and I have to admit that I've always thought Science was a little special, even though I've always been glad to be an engineer and thought that engineering is better than science. I was surprised at many of the points that he brought up.
One thing that drives me crazy about this is how powerful a concept logical positivism is as a philosophy even though it's been mostly shown to be lacking. Most people that I know think that science is only facts that are indisputably proven. I kept hoping that he would bring up A.J. Ayer who said that the only thing wrong with logical positivism was that is was almost all wrong, but he didn't. I actually heard that in another Great Courses Lecture Series, but I forget which one it was.
Good course. I'd recommend it but with reservations.
Great Courses - Science and Religion
Here's my review of this set of lectures. I don't know if it's going to get posted on the Great Courses site it's a little polemical.
I thought this was a very good set of tapes. I'me giving it a high ranking because of some of the low rankings that it's received. I thought this might be a good set of lectures to listen to, but I seriously thought it might just be covering ground that I've already covered in other lecture series that I've listened to such as "Skeptics and Believers". I looked at the rating and thought, man that's a low rating (it's actually gone up since I first looked at purchasing the set) and then I started reading the reviews. It was the low reviews of this set of lectures that did it for me. I bought it listened to it and enjoyed it.
There is a belief system in the world that hates religion, and believes that they have co-opted science. When you question their world view at all they become rabid. I think some of the reviews show this. Can you imagine that someone might question Saint Sagan!!!??? One of their most rabid leaders is Dr. Richard Dawkins, perhaps Pope Dawkins is better — who I believe hung out with Saint Sagan and may become unquestionable as well once he dies — who actually believes that the power of the state should be used to stop anyone from questioning his world view. That sounds exactly like the Catholic Church that tried to shut down Galileo. However, as Dr. Principe tries to show there was a lot more going on than just that they disagreed with Galileo. I don't know why Dr. Dawkins thinks that anyone that disagrees with him must be insane, and won't even debate with them because to do so give them credibility (I believe that's what he told Saint Sagan now that I think about it). If Dr. Dawkins is so sure about the power of his ideas he ought to debate every time he get a chance, to overcome their ideas with the power of his, not try to shut ideas down, but no: Shut those heretical ideas down he believes.
Anyone that would like a more nuanced approach to what has happened in the interactions between religion and science should like this set of lectures.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)