2,310 words
A society can become technologically modern while remaining intellectually pre-modern. Satellites may be launched into space while superstition governs everyday decisions. The result is not progress but instability—a condition that can be described as second-hand modernity.
How can a society produce seemingly world-class engineers and nuclear scientists while remaining deeply irrational? (more…)
Portrait by Joshua Reynolds
Portrait by Joshua Reynolds
5,714 words
How fares the Truth now? — Ill?
— Do pens but slily further her advance?
May one not speed her but in phrase askance?
Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?
— Thomas Hardy, “Lausanne, In Gibbon’s Old Garden: 11-12 p.m.”
The 110th anniversary of the completion of the Decline and Fall at the same hour and place
Edward Gibbon was born in Putney, England on May 8, 1737. He was the sole survivor of a family with seven children; he had five brothers and one sister who all died in infancy. (more…)
122 words / 2:01:50
The eclectic scholar Kathryn S. returned to join host Nick Jeelvy on the latest broadcast of The Writers’ Bloc for a discussion on Orientalism — what happens when Western man gazes eastwards — and it is now available for download and online listening. (more…)
7,156 words
1. Introduction
The thesis of this essay is that it is wise to be superstitious. To put it differently, I will argue that my readers should be superstitious — or that they should embrace the superstitious nature they already have (for most of us have it), rather than try to disown superstition. (more…)
1,790 words
It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the part of the spectators; as befitted a people amongst whom religion and law were almost identical . . . — Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
The superstitious mind is a powerful thing. It manages fear and apprehension. (more…)