I thought people might be interested in this. It's a great resource. It lists the scientific and philosophical primary sources it considers central to intellectual understanding and provides links to the documents themselves, including papers and full books. The list is enlightening all by itself.

https://antilogicalism.com/primary-sources/

Don't let the website's name, Antilogicalism, throw you.

:up:

This a really neat (and free) book I came across just looking at the free books on Amazon for my Kindle.

It's also free from Springer: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-03633-1

Information—Consciousness—Reality: How a New Understanding of the Universe Can Help Answer Age-Old Questions of Existence is a dissertation that looks to summarize all the "big ideas" of human knowledge. It starts from how mathematics can describe reality and allow us to make predictions about the world. It divides the methods of mathematics into two categories, the mathematics of the continuous, which we use in our universal laws, describing symmetries, etc. and the mathematics of the discrete (graph theory, chaos theory). It also has a lot on epistemology and the philosophy of science. Basically, it's a big picture look at the edifice of human knowledge, with a focus on the twin "revolutions" of information and chaos. It even goes a bit into markets and politics (applying insights from earlier sections on mathematics, philosophy, and physics), and niche areas like cryptocurrency.

Then part two looks at all the problems with knowledge. All the ways what we can know is fundamentally limited, Hume's argument against induction etc.

The last part is authors foreword looking vision of how our knowledge could progress. Going off the summary he gives to start (haven't made it to the end), he focuses more on the potential fruits of information science, hence the title.

Really seems like a great summary resource.

Also reading The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces. It focuses on how matter, particles with mass, emerge from energy. The other big focus is on the energy content of the "vacuum" and all that goes on there. It includes a really good attempt to explain quantum chromodynamics and quarks intuitively, although it is really hard for me to wrap my head around local symmetries. The explanation of how an area of (mostly) empty space (which may not exist like we think it does) produces quark condensate, generating quarks from nowhere because their existence is more stable than their not being, is very good too. A lot of intriguing questions on what the vacuum is (definetly not empty space) from a Nobel laureate doing his best to make this stuff intuitive, great stuff.

And I read Hoffman's The Case Against Reality recently, which is already discussed in detail in this thread: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/720043

Lectures on Ideology and Utopia
by Paul Ricoeur

Jonathan Wild
by Henry Fielding

A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy By Jane McAlevey

So far it’s fantastic.

Just finished Dark Money by Jane Mayer

The Magus of Strovolos by Kyriacos C. Markides

I’ve heard a YouTube lecture from Mayer on this but never read the book.

Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
by Henry Fielding

I just finished my first Krasznahorkai. Satantango.

Wow.

I look forward to his other novels now.

A brief modification:

I thought my father was God, Paul Auster

The Holy man of Mount Koya, Izumi Kyōka (泉 鏡花)

Runaway horses, Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫)

The Magus of Strovolos by Kyriacos C. Markides — Noble Dust

I took a look. From the Amazon blurb is sounds a bit like Carlos Castenada's books, e.g. "The Teachings of Don Juan." I was heavy into them in my youth in the 1970s. Have you read any?

I just finished 'David Copperfield' for the second time and found it no more convincing than the first. The narrator claims to be the author of several well-known books but I have never found any other works by him. Enquiries at the library or bookshop produce only the autobiography I already have. It is highly amusing and very well written but I don't trust its truthfulness one bit.

I've avoided Castaneda because I've read that the books were largely shown to be fictitious. Daskalos (as the Magus is called) is much more obscure of a figure, as far as I can tell, so there's less mythology surrounding him. I'm not aware of Markides' account as having been called into question. He's an anthropologist and seems trustworthy. You can even find interviews with Daskalos on youtube.

His ideas are a marriage of Christian mysticism and Hinduism, in a nutshell, which automatically attracted me. If you read mystic literature across disciplines, and then read this account, it's basically all the same thing. It's the Perennial Philosophy.

I'm having a similar experience right now. I'm reading The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, in which Wolfe claims that the narrative contained within is his translation of a manuscript that reached him by means of time travel from tens or hundreds of thousands of years in the future, but as far as I can tell there is no evidence for this. Nowhere has he given details about how he found the manuscript, and I can't find any reports about it. I'm forced to conclude that Wolfe made the whole thing up, which surely casts doubt on his reputation.

:smirk:

I sympathise. I think the rot set in with Tristram Shandy or perhaps even earlier with Don Quixote. But at least we can trust Tolkien.

But at least we can trust Tolkien — Cuthbert

Yes, I live in the heart of Mordor so I know it's all true.

:lol: I have a like/hate relationship with Dickens. After reading Copperfield some years ago I decided that I'd had enough of him for a while. I get the impression that he was a piece of work in real life.

:yikes:

I've avoided Castaneda because I've read that the books were largely shown to be fictitious. — Noble Dust

I read them when I was an impressionable youth. I think they probably had an effect on my current understanding of the nature of reality. So, true or false, they have influenced me and I remembering enjoying them.

Gorgeous writing about the moral circus of The TR45H Years ... :mask:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/kevin-mccarthy-lindsey-graham-trump-devotion-2024-election/661508/

I've avoided Castaneda because I've read that the books were largely shown to be fictitious — Noble Dust

Yes, that may be so, but when one avoids the drugs and reads carefully there are jewels of wisdom there. His instructions for what he called the Art of Dreaming are spot on and worked on my first attempt, providing an astounding experience that has stuck with me for half a century.

Currently I am reading Born to Climb: From Rock Climbing Pioneers to Olympic Athletes, by Zofia Reych. A beautifully written account of one of the fastest growing leisure sports and a young woman's journey along an existential path.

Yes, I live in the heart of Mordor so I know it's all true. — Jamal

I think our late friend Streetlight would disagree with you about where that is located.

August readings:

• The Origin of Phenomena, D. B. Kelley
• Defending the Axioms: On the Philosophical Foundations of Set Theory, Penelope Maddy
• Recognition or Disagreement: A Critical Encounter on the Politics of Freedom, Equality, and Identity, A. Honneth, J. Rancière & ed. Katia Genel

still reading:

• Byzantine and Renaissance Philosophy, vol. 6, Peter Adamson

re-reading:

• Understanding and Explanation: A Transcendental-Pragmatic Perspective, Karl-Otto Apel
• From the Book to the Book: An Edmond Jabès Reader, Edmond Jabès
• The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death, eds. Michael Martin & Keith Augustine

Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World
by Maryanne Wolf

Whether digital technologies may be impacting our capacity for critical thinking.

I'm reading The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe — Jamal

Finished it. Brilliant, and in my opinion gets steadily better as you go through the four parts. Sort of Jack Vance plus Nabokov, Borges and Proust. As it happens he was influenced by all of those, and references them pretty openly, though indirectly.

I must say though, I was able to get through it much more easily this (second) time round only because I was reading on an iPad, so I could look things up. Even a regular dictionary isn’t sufficient, because the lexicon makes use of many archaic words, so it was essential to have easy access to the web.

:100: :clap: :cool: Gene Wolfe binging is one my at least once a decade (purgative) rituals.

:up:

I’m sure I’ll read it again. Not right now though. Although I am curious about his other Sun books.

I must say though, I was able to get through it much more easily this (second) time round only because I was reading on an iPad, so I could look things up. Even a regular dictionary isn’t sufficient, because the lexicon makes use of many archaic words, so it was essential to have easy access to the web. — Jamal

I love paper books, but now I find myself tapping on words I want to know the definitions of or get more information on. Turns out that doesn't work. So I mostly stick to my Kindle. It has changed the depth of my reading experience. Sometimes I'll look up a word or place and then go off on a tangent for 15 minutes, looking at maps and photos, following a Wikipedia trail off into the sunset. Love it.