This month we read The Enigma of Reason. In the book, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber consider a double enigma: If reason is so valuable, such a boon to our cognition, why did it evolve only in human beings? Second, if reason is supposed to be so good, why are we so bad at it? […]
Book Club: Tao Te Ching (March 2018)
This month we read Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. About the book: the book is comprised of eighty-one short chapters which cover the ways of the “Way” and lay out all the main ideas of one, Taoism (also known as Daoism) of the world’s oldest philosophies. The main attraction to this way of thinking […]
Book Club: The Elephant In The Brain (February 2018)
This month we read The Elephant In The Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson. About the book: Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather, but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may […]
Book Club: Seeing Like A State (January 2018)
This month we read Seeing Like A State by James C. Scott Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning theory realized in Brasilia, the Great Leap Forward in China, agricultural “modernization” in the Tropics?the twentieth century has been racked by grand utopian schemes that have inadvertently brought death and disruption to millions. […]
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