On Occam's Razor

“Occam’s razor was never meant for paring nature down to some beautiful, parsimonious core of truth. Because science is so difficult and messy, the allure of a philosophical tool for clearing a path or pruning the thickets is obvious. In their readiness to find spurious applications of Occam’s razor in the history of science, or to enlist, dismiss, or reshape the razor at will to shore up their preferences, scientists reveal their seduction by this vision. But they should resist it. The value of keeping assumptions to a minimum is cognitive, not ontological: It helps you to think. A theory is not ‘better’ if it is simpler—but it might well be more useful, and that counts for much more.”

"The Tyranny of Simple Explanations" - http://theatln.tc/2bxsMEi. It is interesting that the closest thing to Occam's razor found in Occam's actual works is cited in this article as follows: “It is futile to do with more what can be done with fewer" (Summa Logicae, 1323).

On the Talmud

“Clearly, each of these scenarios is more far-fetched than the last. The rabbis are trying to save appearances, to preserve an internally incoherent law, no matter what logical contortions are required. The Gemara never does seem to settle on just one explanation for how an ox could ever become forewarned with regard to people, and the proliferation of arguments from different rabbis is a sign that perhaps no satisfying answer is available. In the attempt to make the biblical law clearer and more useful, the Talmud has instead created a new series of difficulties. This dynamic is one reason the process of interpreting and codifying Jewish law is open-ended: The Talmud is not the end of argument, but the beginning.”

"Tied Up in Knots Over a Goring Ox" - http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/208336/daf-yomi-172

On Goethe

“Robertson’s final chapter turns to religion. Raised a Protestant, Goethe retained a soft spot for Luther’s Bible. At heightened moments he tended to recycle its phrases and imagery. Yet many of the outward manifestations of Christianity filled him with loathing. He abhorred the sight of crucifixes and the sound of church bells. By contrast, he inclined sympathetically towards Judaism and Islam, which refrain from depicting the deity in visual terms... This enduring commitment to striving, so often taken as the key to Faust’s career, is perhaps best viewed as the inevitable legacy of the Enlightenment. Its value is thrown into question by the multiple murders, brute thuggery, land-grabbing and summary evictions in which he was complicit, along with the invention of capitalism through the creation of paper money and the use of slave labour in a colonial context. Readers of The Essential Goethe may judge for themselves to what extent the early Faust foreshadows twentieth-century brutalities. If his trajectory should be followed by purification and transfiguration, that would surely be, as Gandhi is reported to have remarked of European civilization, a good idea.”

Osman Durrani, "Many Aspects of Goethe" -http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/fragments-of-confession/

On Bonhoeffer's Anti-Judaism

“On 2 July 2000, Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority, deferred action on the petition to have Dietrich Bonhoeffer named a righteous gentile. My contention is that critics of this decision conceal a more pernicious difficulty that arises in Bonhoeffer’s Lutheran legacy. David Nirenberg’s recent Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, demonstrates the history and development of such categories with particular attention to Luther. What goes unnoticed is the ongoing operations of anti-Judaism in later theologians such as Bonhoeffer. Although Bonhoeffer may not have been anti-Semitic, the degree to which his theology remained bound to centuries old anti-Judaism is another matter.”

Timothy Stanley, "Bonhoeffer's Anti-Judaism," Political Theology - http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10773525.2016.1187000. This is the abstract from an article I wrote for Political Theology that is now available in volume 17, issue 3. The premise is focused on Bonhoeffer, but is equally applicable to other Christian thinkers of the time, such as Barth.

Reading Religion Review

“Stanley’s Ricoeurain critique of Habermas sheds light on why this volume itself resists ‘integrating’ the diverse and at times conflicting voices that it includes. The work’s task, as Stanley notes, is neither to ‘settle’ the question of religion and the (post-)secular, nor to predict their futures. Rather, it presents a welcome invitation to wade patiently through the unsettling muddiness of the debate itself, relinquishing any imminent prospect of coming unstuck. The work addresses itself, therefore, not to a bounded ‘postsecular’ but to the uncertain space that comes ‘after secularization’ in academic theory.”

Stephanie Wright, "Review of Religion after Secularisation in Australia," New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, September 2015. 256 pages. - http://readingreligion.org/books/religion-after-secularization-australia. This is a new review site hosted by the American Academy of Religion. They very perceptively reviewed this recent edited volume. 

On Locke's Religious Self

“An analytic study of the theory of religion benefits from paying close attention to the concept of the self that emerges from it. This article applies this perspective in order to explore how John Locke, the renowned seventeenth-century British philosopher and a devoted Christian, perceived religion and religiosity. By studying Locke’s prodigious writings I identify the concept of self that Locke - knowingly and unknowingly - employs when trying to untangle the issues of religion. As a result, I introduce an added dimension of inquiry into Locke’s ideas about private and social religious faith and worship.”

Vered Sakal, "Two Conceptions of Religious Self in Lockean Religiosity," The Journal of Religion - http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/686565

On Academic Freedoms

“In 2015, Harvard University Press began to publish the Murty Classical Library of India, a series of editions and translations of texts in a wide range of Indian languages, under the direction of Sheldon Pollock, professor of South Asian studies at Columbia University. In February, 2016, 132 academics in India petitioned to have Pollock removed as general editor. They were raising their voices not as subject experts — many were scientists or doctors lacking competence to judge humanistic scholarship — but as Hindus. Why did Hindus in India care what a publisher in Massachusetts was doing? Because Hindus in America cared, and they had sent word to India to raise the alarm there, too. This attempt by faith-based groups to control what scholars say is symptomatic of a broader clash between pious and academic ways of talking about religion, which has also troubled scholars who write and teach about religions other than Hinduism, and threatens freedom of speech in America, India, and elsewhere.”

Wendy Doniger, "The Repression of Religious Studies" - http://chronicle.com/article/The-Repression-of-Religious/236166

On Ancient Technology

“Early researchers suspected right away that the Antikythera Mechanism was a mechanical sky chart of sorts—a machine that seemed to predict the position of celestial bodies, phases of the moon, and the timing of eclipses. But its mere existence was wildly anachronistic. The mechanism dated to around 200 B.C., yet nothing approaching its workmanship would reappear in history until the first mechanical astronomical clocks were built in Europe, some 1,500 years later... In the past decade, 3D scanning technology has helped reveal the inner workings of the device—including a set of interlocking gears—and an intricate set of inscriptions on the mechanism. Now, for the first time in the century since the Antikythera Mechanism was pulled from the sea, an international team of researchers has translated a significant portion of the text inscribed on the device... ‘So these very small texts are a very big thing for us.’ Big enough to determine that the mechanism was, Jones says, something of a ‘philosopher’s instructional device,’ and the text itself was a guide to reading it.”

"The Most Mysterious Object in the History of Technology" - http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/antikythera-mechanism-whoa/487832/ 

On Technology and Humanities

“Getting a humanities Ph.D. is the most deterministic path you can find to becoming exceptional in the industry. It is no longer just engineers who dominate our technology leadership, because it is no longer the case that computers are so mysterious that only engineers can understand what they are capable of. There is an industrywide shift toward more ‘product thinking’ in leadership—leaders who understand the social and cultural contexts in which our technologies are deployed.”

Damon Horowitz, "From Technologist to Philosopher" - http://chronicle.com/article/From-Technologist-to/128231/. See also his Ted talk "Why We Need a Moral Operating System," and Tristan Harris's more recent talk, "How Better Tech Could Protect Us from Distraction." Stanford's Biblio Tech and more longstanding Humanities Lab are two academic programs that seem to be doing this well.

On Liberal Arts + Skills

“The knock that liberal-arts graduates can have a tough time landing a first job is borne out by the data. Yet a new analysis of help-wanted postings for entry-level jobs suggests that those graduates can improve their job prospects markedly by acquiring a small level of proficiency in one of eight specific skill sets, such as social media or data analysis. In most cases, those skills increase salary prospects markedly, as well...Jobs for graduates with computer-programming skills paid nearly $18,000 more, and there were nearly 53,000 more of them.”

"Liberal-Arts Majors Have Plenty of Job Prospects If They Have Some Specific Skills Too" -http://chronicle.com/article/Liberal-Arts-Majors-Have/236749