The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

The Modern Mind: An intellectual history of the 20th Century
Peter Watson
Perennial, London, 2001

Links:

Amazon
Wiki entry on the author


This work is a remarkable scholarly achievement. The author admits he cannot cover in detail all the relevant ideas of the last century yet he does an excellent job in providing the reader with a sweeping panorama of 20th century thought.

The writing is lucid and entertaining, though at times I found some of the material covered tedious. That is to be expected, a coverage of this extent is bound to leave the individual reader with pages tedious to read. That is not the author's fault, it is just a function of human behavior. This is a valulable text, one that should be read in its entirety and then kept handy as a reference source.

The Intelligent Universe by James Gardner

I have long toyed with the idea that intelligence is embedded in the universe, it is not an emergent property but an intrinsic property. Materialists will resile at that idea but they can eat my shorts. As I like to say, how is it that in this materialist universe our most powerful tools are ideas?

I have long been sceptical of the strict materialist position because I have always found the probabilities of life emerging, let alone the marvellous complexity and diversity of life, as being so improbable that Hoyle's famous comment about life arising by chance being akin to a hurricane going through a junkyard and creating an aircraft in the process to be a reasonable argument. There is an important caveat here and it is this: when confronted with mysteries don't embrace ghosts to deal with the mystery. Acknowledge the mystery but don't second guess it.

Re inventing Gravity: a Physicist Goes Beyond Einstein

Physics is something I read for fun because I'm too ignorant to analyse it. I love it though, the research is fascinating and hats off to the physicists who labor so hard and long to uncover the mysteries of the universe.

For a preview of this work you can refer to this website of Prof Moffat.

Full credit to John Moffat for presenting very complex arguments in a highly accessible literary style that kept me going at a cracking pace. The man is not only a brilliant intellectual but an excellent communicator. If you are not familiar with the issues concerning gravity you will find this text difficult but if you are someone like myself who has held a life long fascination with physics and cosmology you'll find this text to be a hoot of a read.