Existentialism - Philosophy 7

A long time ago, one of the readers of this blog alerted me to a 2006 course on Berkeley in existentialism (Phil 7). Hubert Dreyfus speaks about Existentialism in Literature and Film, touches on Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. As many would, I was expecting Sartre and I was not so keen on getting Kierkegaard. Not that I knew much of Kierkegaard, but I had him pegged as a Romanticist sufferer with a heavy, heavy Christian inclination.

I took the introduction lecture and even though I recognized it as a good lecture, it didn't connect. This semester the course has returned (now called Philosophy 7), but that was not what triggered me to try again. It was BBC's In Our Time. A university course sometimes needs some preparation, some previous disclosure of the subject field, in order to make one feel comfortable with the somewhat detached position of listening in on the lectures through podcast. You could take it up really seriously and read along with the students, but who has time for that? Besides, you do not have to pass the exam. The question is whether, with some general knowledge, listening in is going to deliver some education and entertainment.

It does. Actually existentialism is really fit for that. It is much more about experience and much less dry theory and abstraction as philosophy tends to be. Still I needed some entry. After having heard In Our Time's issue about Kierkegaard, I had a sufficient grip on him (and less objection) and suddenly Philosophy 7 opened up for me.

Unlike the university courses, In Our Time hardly has any entry level and thus it served as a great preparation and I would recommend this to everybody. First take Kierkegaard in In Our Time and then proceed to Huber Dreyfus's course at Berkeley.

More Berkeley:
The Making of Europe,
Shakespeare,
Non Violence,
Berkeley Spring 2008 has kicked off,
US History - from Civil War to Present.

More philosophy:
Philosophy Bites,
Wittgenstein,
The Popperian Pathway,
Socrates,
Introduction to Philosophy - cuny podcast.

More In Our Time:
Kierkegaard,
The Fisher King,
Albert Camus,
Guilt,
Victorian Pessimism.

In Our Time

BBC's podcast In Our Time releases on a weekly basis panel discussions on a wide variety of subjects exploring the history of ideas (or the history of thought as it was termed in previous seasons). Each and every issue is very much worthwhile listening to. Host Melvyn Bragg does an absolutely superb job of leading the discussion and the program makes sure he is always accompanied by three of the best academicians in the relevant fields.

Recent episodes paid attention to Kierkegaard, portraying the philosopher and giving an excellent overview over his thinking laying the foundation to existentialism. To the Dissolution of the Monasteries, bringing us close to the era when Henry VIII disconnected the Church of England from Rome and as a part of that process managed to dismantle hundreds of monasteries all over the land, thus removing an element of the culture which was so important until the end of the Middle Ages and needed to be replaced afterwards. Lastly to Newton's Laws of Motion; how Sir Isaac took an original approach in natural philosophy while he actually wanted to engage in theology and lay the basis for physics that still serves today.

In Our Time is regularly reviewed on this blog. It can be tracked with the label In Our Time. The podcast is one of the best that is around and fit to almost all audiences. Here is a list of past reviews:

General podcast review,
King Lear,
Ada Lovelace,
The Social Contract,
Plate Tectonics,
The Fisher King,
The Charge of the Light Brigade,
Albert Camus,
The Nicene Creed,
Four humor medicine,
The Sassanian Empire,
Mutations,
The Fibonacci Sequence,
The Prelude,
Oxygen,
Avicenna,
Guilt,
Taste,
Arabian Nights,
The Divine Right of Kings,
Antimatter,
Socrates,
Mass Extinction,
Common Sense,
Astrology,
Siegfried Sassoon,
William of Ockham,
Joan of Arc,
Gravitational Waves,
Victorian Pessimism.

Capitalism and Socialism

While Napoleon is still wreaking havoc in Europe, a development is noted by History 5, allowing England to enter the Industrial Revolution. How this is triggered by an agricultural revolution has already been reported in my review of last year's lecture. In this review, taking this lecture about the Industrial Revolution (audio, video) together with Capitalism and its Critics (audio, video) , I would like to mark another point that was taken from these lectures: with Industrial Revolution comes the rise of Capitalism, but simultaneously there is the critique. I was not sufficiently aware of that and sort of expected it to start with or around Karl Marx. Quod non.

Counter movements spring up immediately. While labor is being mechanized, people become worried and vandals named Luddites roamed the country demolishing machinery. Where this protest may seem reactionary and indicating the impossible yearning for days past, it is harder to label Charles Dickens's critique in his work 'Hard Times' (obligatory reading for the students of History 5) as such. His work is too complete as a social critique within a description of what goes on.

The French economist Sismondi tries his hand on the theoretical level, opposing the standing advocates in the field: Ricardo, Mill and Smith. In practice there are people like Robert Owen and Charles Fournier who try to establish societies that flourish without the use of capitalist principles. Only then we run into Karl Marx.

This is what I find so particularly compelling in this podcast; the lectures deliver a historical understanding. Whatever I thought I already knew and had fairly well understood is challenged and fine-tuned. This goes just as much for historical events and eras I am rather familiar with as for those of which I have a more sketchy knowledge.

More History 5:
Enlightenment and French Revolution,
Absolutism and Science,
Witches, plague, war and Hobbes,
Reformation,
Europe and 1492.

Anne is a Man! will be having a face-lift

Dear Readers,

Some time next month, I will give my blog a new look and feel and some improved functionality if possible. Until that moment I will be testing various options for design and if you like, you can track after the developments and give feedback and suggestions. I have set up four test blogs:
First. A 3 column design. I have seen most professional blogs had a 3 column design and I want to see if I can make it work for mine. The first worry: the text column must not be too narrow. If however the text is wide and the rest of the columns are also wide enough, the blog may look no good on smaller screens. Currently this blog can lose the columns in Firefox 1.5 with small screens.
Second Another 3 column look. The template for this design involved many advertisements I had to cut away and some of the empty spaces still need to be used for the better.
Third This 3 column design has a very elegant fractals element in it. In IE, however, the About section turns hidden. Another bug to struggle with. What I also like and very much want are the links on top that can serve as tabs and will be linked to a landing page, to the directories and other pages to enable easier navigation.
Fourth Back to the 2 column design. If three is too crammed, maybe two will be better after all. Also in this design we have links on top that can serve as tabs and will be linked to a landing page, to the directories and other pages to enable easier navigation.

Please send comments to my mail (Anne Frid de Vries -in one word- at yahoo dot co dot uk) or comment on this blog post. Thanks in advance.

War of the Worlds - Radiolab

WNYC's Radiolab dedicated a live broadcast to the War of the Worlds craze of 1938 and similar events. The radio show was, as usual also brought as a podcast.

Orson Welles allegedly didn't like H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds, nevertheless took it upon himself to turn the 19th century story into a radio play. Afterwards he claimed to have wanted to check the power of the new medium of radio and pretended to have wanted to teach the public a lesson in vigilance - not take anything they hear on radio for granted. In that light, the craze, the mass panic, showed the experience as a failure. Nevertheless, a radio maker in Quito, Ecuador, regarded it as a success and tried to emulate it in 1949, with disastrous effects. Riots and people killed and wounded.

Radiolab attempts to explain and shows that such a craze can still happen today, for which The Blair Witch Project movie was taken as an example. I am not sure whether their explanations are so strong, but one observation is brilliant: Welles' experience and approach have resulted in the opposite: news media use the pumped up language of impending disaster in order to draw the attention of the audience. The conclusion for Welles: the media are effective, too damn well.

More Radiolab:
Wright Brothers,
Morality.

Are we alone? - Science Podcast

Are We Alone? is a weekly hour-long radio magazine that covers a wide range of topics relevant to the new science of astrobiology. It is hosted by the SETI Institute's Senior Astronomer, Dr. Seth Shostak. Or in other words, we deal with a scientific grasp at extra-terrestrial life. The radio program is also published as a podcast.

From what I understand, life outside of earth is probable, but what we should expect to see (and maybe have already seen) are microbes from outer space. I remember an issue of In Our Time about Microbiology that had me knocked to the ground with the very notion of how little we know in this field. How vast it is and how varied.

But the real treat is the question whether there can be more complicated forms of life out there. Even if that is likely, we still need to push on and think of intelligent life. Then we hit the Drake Equation, which was analyzed in one of the latest shows of Are We Alone?. This equation tries to estimate the amount of intelligent life in the universe. It involves not just deducting the viable surroundings, but also the span of time an intelligent community remains alive. How long do civilizations live and enjoy their advanced technology? And possibly send out radio-signals that can be picked up by others?

Related reviews:
Plate Tectonics - In Our Time ,
Mutations - In Our Time,
Anitmatter - In Our Time ,
Gravitational waves - In Our Time ,
Roswell New Mexico - Physics for Future Presidents.