Critical review of Scott Soames's What is Meaning?

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) is surely one of the more remarkable figures in the story of global electrification. Rivalling Thomas Edison for the title of chief Wizard, both in his own time and ours, almost every invention of modern life has at some point been attributed to Tesla: from the communications media of telephone, fax, radio, and television, through the military utilities of radar and remote-control weapons, and (most plausibly) the systems of alternate current generation and transmission that power our world. (...) And yet Tesla died impoverished and alone in a New York hotel room with his greatest plans for wireless power transmission abandoned and derided, if they were remembered at all. Tesla’s image as something of a martyr to an ungrateful world has indeed generated a cult following in recent decades, doubtless fired in part by the Serbian nationalism that has justly helped raise the profile of Albert Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Marić (e.g. M. Popović, In Albert’s Shadow: The L .. (shrink)

Narratives and economics are normally not connected issues, mainly because economic science has for years focused on the ability to measure and especially use quantitative methods to understand the...

With this first part of the eleventh volume, Bruce Kirmmse et al.’s monumental task of translating Søren Kierkegaard’s journals and notebooks begins to draw to a close. The journals and notebooks t...

This admirable book describes the lives and friendship of two of the greatest thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment: David Hume and Adam Smith. Its account of their careers, writings and interacti...

Volume 25, Issue 4, June 2020, Page 493-494.

Princeton Readings in Political Thought is one of the most engaging and up-to-date samplers of the standard works of Western political thinking from antiquity through modern times. Organized chronologically, from Thucydides to Foucault, the book brings together forty-four selections of enduring intellectual value--key articles, book excerpts, essays, and speeches--that have shaped our understanding of Western society and politics. Readers will find this work to be an invaluable reference, and they will enjoy not only the varied selections but also the (...) lucid introductions to each historical era and the brief sketches of each thinker. The book includes the writings of many of the most distinguished observers of the Western experience from classical times, the Middle Ages, modern times, or the ideas of twentieth-century political philosophers and ideologists. (shrink)