The Spell of the Sensuous: Book Review
This book seems like “mine,” in a sense few ever turn out to be. That’s because it recognizes the difference between spoken and written language. It’s a subject of very long-term interest to me....
Category: evolution
Individual Development Repeats Species Development
The title refers to the theory “Ontogeny Repeats Phylogeny”, credited to the German biologist Ernst Haeckel. Since Stephen Jay Gould’s detailed investigation of it in 1977, it has some standing as a framework for...
homo interneticus
What a discovery (never mind that it’s been under my nose for years.)! I learned about Michael H. Goldhaber and his contrasting terms homo interneticus and homo typographicus in the journal The Economist just...
Proust and the Squid: Book Review
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, London: Icon 2008. It is a great title! In the end, though, I decided the title applied — lightly — to just...
Translating as Play
Long ago — 1968, to be exact — Vilém Flusser proposed a model of human communication based on games (yes, Wittgenstein IS in the background). It may sound like trivialization, but it isn’t. The...
Riddley Walker (book review)
This book is hard to read. The language insists on calling attention to itself, so no stars for “ease” or “comfort”. But I can’t imagine a more effective way of insisting on the fragility,...