Sorin Adam Matei
Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.
A book that promises to be a great introduction to the “why” of philosophy… EXAMINED LIVES From Socrates to Nietzsche By James Miller Illustrated. 422 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $28. Excerpt If the proof of a pudding is in the eating,…
Image by dewfall via Flickr New York Times reflects on an emergent turn toward higher emphasis on “skills” in American colleges. Is this desirable? Should we abandon philosophy departments? How about math? THOMAS COLLEGE, a liberal arts school in Maine, advertises itself…
Summary of Francis Bacon’s New Organon theory of the Four Idols of Knowing In Book I of the New Organon (Aphorisms 39-68), Bacon introduces his famous doctrine of the “idols.” These are characteristic errors, natural tendencies, or defects that beset the mind…
The Syllogistic “Aristotle’s most famous achievement as logician is his theory of inference, traditionally called the syllogistic (though not by Aristotle). That theory is in fact the theory of inferences of a very specific sort: inferences with two premises, each of which…
I have been reading Jenkins‘ Convergence Culture and I ran into this jungle of Star Wars fan movies: http://www.theforce.net. Noteworthy (according to Jenkins): Evan Mather Although I’ve known of this genre for some time I never realized how many sites and amateur…
This is companion site to Weinberger’s “Everything is Miscellanous.” I am preparing this for a future review of the book. I start with a list of links to important concepts created through Amazon.com and Alibris. When I finish this list I will…
Front Porches and Public Spaces: Planned Communities Online Susan Huelsing Sarapin Comm. 632: Online Interaction Professor: Dr. Sorin Matei November 19, 2006 Introduction Where else today but in the cost-effective frontier of cyberspace can the average person construct a community?1 With widespread…
John Henry makes the very persuasive point that magic thinking is at the very core of the modern experimental method. Francis Bacon, the inventor of the experimental and inductive methods was seriously committed to a research program inspired by magic. In the…