online archive
12:00PM
JUL 5 2007
Sexual identity, philosophy and history, science and more
Cass Sunstein (Chicago): On the Tension between Sex Equality and Religious Freedom. Louis Michael Seidman (Georgetown): Gay Sex and Marriage, the Reciprocal Disadvantage Problem, and the Crisis in Liberal Constitutional Theory. Hormones affect men's sense of fair play: Next time you have to negotiate a deal with a male business contact, you might want to check his hormone levels first. A new study shows that men with high levels of testosterone are more likely to turn down low offers, even if they stand to gain money by accepting them.
From The Medieval Review, a review of The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory by Bruce Holsinger. A review of Wonderful Blood: Theology and practice in late medieval Northern Germany and beyond by Caroline Walker Bynum. A review of The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution: Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, and the Cultivation of Virtue by Matthew L. Jones.
From ReadySteadyBook, an interview with Dan Hind, author of The Threat to Reason: How the Enlightenment was hijacked and how we can reclaim it (and part 2 and part 3 and part 4).
From Metapsychology, a review of Melancholy And the Care of the Soul: Religion, Moral Philosophy and Madness in Early Modern England by Jeremy Schmidt; a review of Rousseau: The Sentiment of Existence by David Gauthier; a review of Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human Sciences by Karsten R. Stueber; a review of Hot Thought: Mechanisms and Applications of Emotional Cognition by Paul Thagard; a review of Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth, and the Human by Barbara Herrnstein Smith; a review of Undoing Perpetual Stress: The Missing Connection Between Depression, Anxiety and 21st Century Illness by Richard O'Connor; and a review of Why People Die by Suicide by Thomas Joiner.
From Seed, Chuck Hoberman + Lisa Randall: The inventor and the physicist meet up to talk about shape; and does the universe repeat once every trillion years? Gut instinct isn't science: If it were, the world really would be flat, wouldn't it? David P. Barash explains. From Wired, a look at how, for certain tasks, the cortex still beats the CPU. I Am Worm, Hear Me Roar: A study that connects birth order and I.Q. reminds us that the fight for self-definition starts much earlier than freshman year (and a quiz).
