Category: Books

One of the more amusing applications on Facebook is “My Questions”, in which you can post a simple question on your profile and invite friends to answer it. The app comes with some pretty dumb suggested questions, but I’ve had fun with several of my own, particularly “How far do you live today from where you were born?” and “What’s the most adventurous CD/download you’ve bought recently?”
Today I decided to ask the big one. No, not “Do you believe in god?”, or “UFOs?”, or life after death. (And not “Boxers or briefs?”, either!) I’ve decided that the fundamental question is this:

Dualist or monist? (“Dualist” – mind/spirit/soul and body/brain are separate entities; “Monist“: it’s all physical, “Minds are what brains do”.)

In part, I’m drawn to this question because I’ve been reading Nicholas Humphrey’s excellent book “Leaps of Faith: Science, Miracles, and the Search for Supernatural Consolation“. It came out in 1996, but I’ve only just got round to it. Humphreys is unusual in being a philosopher who is also a professor of psychology (or should that be the other way round?). Rather than taking on the questions of religious faith directly, he concentrates on the question of belief in the paranormal.
One of the great surprises in the book is that he refutes the view of the primacy of personal experience. It is widely held that the main reason why people hold counter-intuitive, unpopular, or counter-evidentiary beliefs is because they have had some personal experience which trumps the rules of reason and evidence. (“I never believed in ghosts until I saw one.”) Humphreys presents compelling data to show that this is at best a secondary factor. People are actually very skeptical about their own unusual experiences; they place far more weight on the reported experiences of others, particularly if they’re in a group of “true believers”
One of the things I’ve been puzzling over for a number of years is what (if any one thing) is the root cause of religious belief. Is it deference to authority (from parent via induction to a super-parent)? Is it anthropomorphism and intentional ascription (to thunder, the sun, etc.)? Is it rationalizing death by imagining continued life? Or it is purely cultural, with imagined (but knowingly fictional) stories taking on the authority of tribal rituals? I’ve recently come to the conclusion (which I think is Humpheys’ position, too) that the root cause is a personal dualism: that the most economical way in which we can model and make sense of our own existence is through dualism. And of course culture reinforces this. The fact that every single scientific and medical discovery of the last three hundred years endorses the monist viewpoint is unlikely to shift the cultural needle around the dial very much.
The fact is that even the most hard-core monist is likely to relax in the company of fictional dualism and supernaturalism. From H.P.Lovecraft to “Harry Potter” to “The Matrix” to Stephen King, to “Star Wars”: we accept these ideas as an integral part of our culture and social psychology. But there is a price to pay. It seems likely that every time someone accuses science of draining the magic out of life, it’s because they cannot distinguish between the cultural and the scientific. It seems obviously silly to me: do we, as a society, appreciate art, poetry, and beauty any less than our 17th century forebears? It seems unlikely, in spite of three centuries of relentless scientific discovery.
In any case, Humphreys’ book is well worth reading for many other reasons. His critique of the paranormal is devastating – if ESP is real, why doesn’t it affect the results of routine eye examinations?! If these are natural processes, why do they only show up in tawdry huckster settings? Good fun, and lots to think about.

Watched: La Belle Noiseuse (1991). One of the longest films I’ve ever seen (236 minutes), and I loved every moment of it. As one reviewer put it, “it actually feels liberating to watch a film that doesn’t limit itself to a predetermined time constraint.” The tempo here is that of real life, not the urgency of storytelling. The film is an extraordinary investigation of the relationship between artist and model, between subject and object. If a great painter were to capture your essence on canvas, could you handle it?
This is the perfect Netflix film: Few DVD rental places will carry it, I doubt it will ever be shown on cable TV, and having seen it once I don’t want to do so again.
Read: Hugh Laurie’s The Gun Seller. Not quite sure how I missed this when it came out in 1998, but I’m glad I got around to it. Imagine Ian Fleming’s 007 as interpreted by a tag-team of P.G.Wodehouse and Douglas Adams.
I hadn’t realized until I’d finished (at 2am – it’s the kind of book that you can’t put down) that it was published before 9/11. These days, satire has a hard time keeping up with reality, but Laurie’s still ahead. I see that he has a new novel out next month…

I just finished reading The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry by Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed. It’ an extraordinary book: revelatory and yet deeply frustrating. Please read it: you will be a wiser, more informed citizen for doing so, even though you will not be happier.
Ahmed’s basic thesis is that there ought to be an independent public inquiry. He explains why – the obvious internal inconsistencies in the official record, and the discrepancies between the official explanation and the documented facts of the case. This part is blindingly obvious, because the inconsistencies are so clear and egregious. Next, he points out that any comprehensive inquiry should follow the links between the various actors – radical Islamic groups in the UK, Islamists elsewhere (especially Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Central Asia, and Algeria), western intelligence agencies, and certain commercial interests. The network of connections, deals, compromises, and double-crosses that he describes is both head-spinning in its detail and compelling in its logic.
And it’s this that makes it so depressing. We’d like to be able to explain things in terms of simple causes and effects, because then we can imagine that things might have been otherwise – if only Bush hadn’t invaded Iraq, if only Blair hadn’t been a poodle, then perhaps 7/7 wouldn’t have happened. But after reading Ahmed’s book, this is exposed as simple wishful thinking. These events are part of far-reaching, long-running geopolitical patterns, which individuals, however prominent, can do less to change than we would like. For example: the explosives used on 7/7 almost certainly came from Bosnia, but the British can’t admit this without also admitting a slew of related deals and relationships that they and the Americans have been – and are still – involved in. Terrorist attacks are simply part of the cost of doing business. This is not the stuff of conspiracy nut-cases: it’s all documented. But nobody wants to look at it.
Ultimately, of course, this book is self-refuting. Ahmed calls for a public inquiry, but then makes it crystal clear why the UK and US governments could never allow such an inquiry to take place. But the world is a much leakier place these days- witness Abu Ghraib – and books like this are the result.

My reading material this evening is The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, a wonderful children’s science book published in 1960. ((Hat-tip to Boing-Boing.)) Of course it’s been out of print since the mid-60s, and no-one would publish such a volume in these litigious days. Fortunately, somebody has scanned it, and a BitTorrent PDF is a couple of mouse-clicks away. ((I’m using Transmission these days – a very nice BitTorrent for the Mac.))
The writing is wonderful – clear, accurate, and never condescending. And the experiments take me back over 40 years: preparing hydrogen from HCl and zinc (and “popping” it, of course); ranking various acids and bases; preparing plastic sulphur (sorry, “sulfur”); preparing and testing ferrous chloride and ferric chloride; and so forth. Happy days…..

Prompted by Charlie‘s comment on my posting about science fiction books, I’ve been reading some Ursula Le Guin. Having really enjoyed The Left Hand of Darkness, I immediately started in on The Dispossessed. That was three weeks ago; I just finished it tonight. Barely. Willing myself to complete it. Trying to summon up a little curiosity about how it might end.
I know it’s supposed to be a masterpiece, but these flat passages about these desiccated people on their minimalist world failed to grab me. (For hardscrabble life on the edge, give me Steinbeck any day.) And the more I read, the more I felt that these characters were all simply stereotypes representing facets of the sociopolitical debate that seized so many at the end of the 60s, from Paris to Berkeley. When the helicopter-borne troops moved in, and the strikers were hunted through the city, I could practically see the footnotes about Paris ’68 and Kent State. And the future, for all concerned, was so damned bleak that I almost gave up on it.
Oh, well. Can’t win them all. What next, I wonder? I’d like to find the first book in a nice space-opera series, with just the right kind of cynical… oh, wait: that’s DVDs. OK: give me something like Feersum Endjinn, or a new Neal Stephenson (but with an editor, please – not like the undisciplined ramblings of the Baroque Cycle).

Several years ago I came across an incredibly funny satirical novel called Jennifer Government by Max Barry. American corporations rule the world; everyone takes his or her employer’s name as their last name; even government is not immune. Appropriately manic; lots of fun; presumed one hit wonder; forgot all about him.
And then a couple of weeks ago I was browsing through an airport bookstore (“Get used to disappointment”) and found Barry’s new book: Company. This is the perfect novel for everyone who has read a management guru’s book and wondered, “What would it be like to actually try that out here, where I work?” Now imagine an entire organization that, unbeknownst to its employees, exists only as a laboratory for experimenting with such management fads! Let the fun commence….
Not quite as strong as the earlier novel, but still a most enjoyable (and twisted) romp.

Spurred on by the prospect of reading the new Douglas Hofstadter book, I rearranged my priorities last night. I watched just the first half of Watford vs. Chelsea*, leaving the second half until this morning; this gave me the time to finish Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. I really enjoyed this: very powerful, strangely reminiscent of Gulliver’s Travels.
On the subject of sci-fi, I’ve always been a fan of Alastair Reynold’s work, especially his “revelation space” tales. Now he’s assembled a series of short stories, more or less connected with that alternate universe, under the title Galactic North. It came out in England in hardcover last October, and the U.S. hardcover publication is scheduled for June 2007. Imagine my surprise to find a paperback edition at Heathrow Airport a couple of weeks ago! I breezed through it on the three flights that occupied the following 24 hours (LHR-ORD, ORD-SEA, SEA-RNO), and I passed it on to a colleague as soon as I was done. Good stuff, not great; I recommend that you wait for the paperback. (However if you don’t plan to fly through Heathrow, there’s no telling how long you’re going to have to wait.)
—
* Chelsea just managed to scrape a win with a goal in the 90th minute. Frankly they looked unconvincing, and a bit tired. These days there are several EPFL clubs that are playing much better, and more entertaining football: ManU and Spurs are at the top of my list, with Liverpool rediscovering their form. It’s hard to imagine Chelsea retaining their title.

Oh joy, oh bliss! Doug Hofstadter has a new book out: I Am a Strange Loop. Consciousness as a self-referential phenomenon. I saw it quite by chance in a downtown bookshop, and seized it immediately. I am going to try to behave myself, and finish The Left Hand of Darkness* before I start looping….
—
* I have to confess that I hadn’t read this wonderful work by Ursula Le Guin before now. Charlie badgered me into getting a copy (along with The Dispossessed), and I’m glad he did.

I was in a bookshop this afternoon (yeah, I do occasionally visit bricks-and-mortar book stores), and I came across a very large and dazzingly white volume, The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe by Michael Frayn. I’ve always enjoyed his work, all the way back to The Tin Men in 1965, and I was tempted. But it was $32.50, and I decided that I should read the reviews first and then see what Amazon’s price was.
I’m glad I waited. The reviews were, for the most part, scathing, replete with adjectives such as “meandering”, “repetitive”, “tedious”, and “naive”. Here’s one reviewer at Amazon.co.uk:

In the more technical earlier chapters he completely loses the scientific and mathematical thread, making errors such as the claim on p 41 where he states with forceful amazement that there are two square roots of negative numbers as if this is a surprise to the likely readership. What he really means is there are two square roots for any number, but he misses this obvious fact and repeats the schoolboy mistake later in the book. This simply sets the scene for a plethora of later errors of a more significant scientific nature. […] I completed the book due to my respect for the author – I would not recommend it to anyone else unless seeking a critical exercise in the poor use of logic.

For the record, the Amazon.com price is $21.45. However I spent that money on two more CDs of Jonny Hahn’s solo piano music instead. (It was a beautiful afternoon here in Seattle, and Jonny was playing in his usual spot next to the Public Market.) For my various flights over the last few weeks I loaded my iPod with Jonny’s albums Collage and Lost in the Inzone, set it on “Repeat”, plugged in my headphones, and relaxed….
UPDATE: Here’s Colin McGinn, a philosopher who knows what he’s talking about, politely eviscerating Mr. Frayn.

There’s a nice review of books related to the “free will” debate over at the Financial Times. If you’re unfamiliar with the radical findings of Libet et al, you should check it out. I’m regretting the fact that I didn’t pick up Four Views on Free Will by John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom and Manuel Vargas, when I was recently in Blackwell’s. I guess I can wait until it’s released in the US….