Sunday, September 30, 2012

'The Big Questions: Philosophy' by Simon Blackburn

I love philosophy and getting into philosophical conversations with people and friends over pretty much anything... from whether it was the chicken or the egg that came first or why we can't see time, but we sure as hell can feel it and know it's around us in abundance.  If you'd like to have somebody talk to you about these - and other such philosophical things - this book is most certainly for you.

I picked this book up in The Book Warehouse at Springwood for a tiny $10 and I have the other two in the series 'The Big Questions: The Universe' and 'The Big Questions: Mathematics'.  I haven't gotten my nose into those two yet, but I'm looking forward to them as I love anything to do with space travel and the planets and have done for as far back as I can remember and mathematics is a massive mystery to me and I'd like to know more about it.  Yesterday, I pulled this book out and showed my brother and his partner, Kat, they were intrigued by it.  So, I'm lending it to them for a while.  Well, until my next post, happy reading.  

3 comments:

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  2. I like philosophy too! One of my favorite classes in college was a couple of philosophy classes, not only due to the subject matter, but also because the professor who taught it was an amazing teacher and person.

    I read 'The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher' by Julian Baggini earlier this year. It gives a reader snippets of philosophical topics to think/mull over.

    Also, 'Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers' by by David Edmonds and John Eidinow is unbelievably captivating!! Here's the product review on Amazon:

    'On October 25, 1946, in a crowded room in Cambridge, England, the great twentieth-century philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper came face to face for the first and only time. The meeting -- which lasted ten minutes -- did not go well. Their loud and aggressive confrontation became the stuff of instant legend, but precisely what happened during that brief confrontation remained for decades the subject of intense disagreement.

    An engaging mix of philosophy, history, biography, and literary detection, Wittgenstein's Poker explores, through the Popper/Wittgenstein confrontation, the history of philosophy in the twentieth century. It evokes the tumult of fin-de-siƩcle Vienna, Wittgentein's and Popper's birthplace; the tragedy of the Nazi takeover of Austria; and postwar Cambridge University, with its eccentric set of philosophy dons, including Bertrand Russell. At the center of the story stand the two giants of philosophy themselves -- proud, irascible, larger than life -- and spoiling for a fight.'

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    1. I think everyone loves philosophy, but we really don't want to get into it too much or we might say something somebody might not like. So, we don't broach the subject with anyone but very close friends and relatives. So, when I found this book that covered a little of everything, I knew I could read any part of it in any order.

      Personally, I'd love to take a class in Philosophy, but it's something I really need to be passionate about long term, not just when I feel like - and that's something I have a problem with; my brain can't focus on one thing at a time... unless I'm writing a book! :)

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