Science and magic

by Charlie Huenemann I think it is fair to say that we usually see science and magic as opposed to one another. In science we make bold hypotheses, subject them to rigorous testing against experience, and tentatively accept whatever survives the testing as true – pending future revisions and challenges, of course. But in magic…
Bigger Knowledge, Bigger Problems

by Charlie Huenemann I routinely remind my students that human minds have always been as complicated as they are now, from when we dropped out of the trees to when we step upon the escalator. When we are reading in the history of ideas there is always the temptation to turn intellectual landscapes into cartoons…
The Monas Hieroglyphica, Feynman diagrams, and the Voynich manuscript

by Charlie Huenemann One of the strangest books to come out of Europe in the sixteenth century – and that is saying a lot – is John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica (1564). Dee was an English mathematician, court astrologer, diplomat, and spy. He was also a wizard, or at least an aspirant to wizardry. Like many…
A Dialogue on Politics as Game

by Charlie Huenemann Bill: Can you believe these Republicans?! Just four years after swearing up and down that no nominee for the Supreme Court should ever be approved in an election year for the president, and promising on their mothers’ graves that they would never do such a thing, here they are doing exactly that!…
The Tale of the Eloi and the Morlocks

by Charlie Huenemann H. G. Wells’ novella, The Time Machine, traces the evolutionary results of a severely unequal society. The Traveller journeys not just to the year 2000 or 5000, but all the way to the year 802,701, where he witnesses the long-term evolutionary consequences of Victorian inequality. The human race has evolved into two…
Too many books

by Charlie Huenemann It is commonplace to observe just how marvelous books are. Some person, perhaps from long ago, makes inky marks onto processed pulp from old trees. The ensuing artifact is tossed from hand to hand, carrying its cargo of characters, plots, ideas, and poems across the rough seas of time, until it comes…
Why materialism is false

by Charlie Huenemann Materialism is the view that everything that exists is made of matter. What’s matter? It’s hard to say with both precision and completeness, but it can’t be far off to think of matter as whatever can engage causally with the known forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, and atomic forces (strong and weak).…
Protective Living Communities

by Charlie Huenemann By 2025, protective living communities (PLCs) had started to form. The earliest PLCs, such as New Promise and New New Babylon, based themselves on rationalist doctrines: decisions informed by best available science, and either utilitarian ethics or Rawlsian principles of justice (principally, respect for individual autonomy and a concern to improve the…
What’s in your beetle box?

by Charlie Huenemann In thinking about knowledge and consciousness, it is just about irresistible to distinguish between the basic facts of what we observe and interpretations or beliefs about those facts. You and I see the same glass of water – maybe our perceptions of the glass are nearly identical – and yet you see…
Living in bubbles

by Charlie Huenemann “Every country is going through these decisions, none of us are through this pandemic yet, but some countries are starting to look at slightly expanding what people would define as their household — encouraging people who live alone to maybe match up with somebody else who is on their own or a…
Freedom and determinism: what we can learn from the failures of two pretty good arguments

by Charlie Huenemann The “Consequence Argument” is a powerful argument for the conclusion that, if determinism is true, then we have no control over what we do or will do. The argument is straightforward and simple (as given in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): Premise 1: No one has power over the facts of the…
Our very own annus mirabilis

by Charlie Huenemann The living few, and frequent funerals then, Proclaim’d thy wrath on this forsaken place; And now those few who are return’d again, Thy searching judgments to their dwellings trace. – John Dryden, Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders, 1666 This isn’t the first time universities have shut down from fear of pestilence.…
Thoughts on killing a dog

by Charlie Huenemann Last week we had our dog put down. It was time. She was getting old and facing some serious neurological difficulties. The tipping point was a pair of severe seizures in the middle of the night, spaced about a minute apart. I know that seizures can trigger more seizures, and as I…
Reflections on It-ing and Thou-ing

by Charlie Huenemann We find ourselves always in the middle of an experience. But it’s what we do next – how we characterize the experience – that lays down a host of important and almost subterranean conditions. Am I sitting in a chair, gazing out the dusty window into a world of sunlight, trees, and…
Conversation with a Genie

by Charlie Huenemann GENIE: AT LAST! Esteemed Master, you have released me from the ancient lamp! Out of my boundless gratitude, I shall grant you three wishes! TRAVELER: No thanks, I’m good. GENIE: Wait, what? TRAVELER: I’m good. No granting of wishes needed. Have a nice day. GENIE: But, Master, you must understand that you…
How to be kind

by Charlie Huenemann “There’s only one rule I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’” —Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater Despite Vonnegut’s strong counsel to babies entering the world, kindness seems to be in short supply. Little wonder. Our news media portray to us a world of power…
Experiencing the moment
by Charlie Huenemann David Hume, that most sly student of human experience, declared he couldn’t find himself anywhere. As he gazed inward, he came across sensations, feelings, passions, and moods, but he had never come across a self in the way one might come across a vivid shade of turquoise or a lampshade or a…
The Cyborg of Practical Wisdom
by Charlie Huenemann The biggest struggle my fellow modern-day cyborgs and I face is to create a virtual reality that connects more wholesomely with the human part of our nature. The artificial reality we currently plug into is a Terry Gilliam nightmare. Too many characters within it are armed, dangerous, and barbaric. The bright spots…
Hypatia of Alexandria: or, a primer on platonic love
by Charlie Huenemann Plato, as we know, told tales of an abstract realm beyond the senses, a realm beyond the dim and dark cave we call “the world.” It was a realm of forms, first glimpsed through the discipline of mathematics, and more thoroughly known through philosophical cross-examination, or dialectic. It’s not clear just how…