The Self-Made Man Success & Stress-American Style

Customer Reviews:

A keepsake for desert dwellers.......2004-01-12

David Kniss, the author and former Butler player, readily admits that this book was somewhat rushed - 16 months in the making - considering Coach Butler's 32 year career. And while this is true, Kniss still delivers a cohesive timeline of Butler's life.
To anyone associated with the High Desert, Butler is an icon - a man who won more than 600 games throughout his career. Having played for Butler in the late '80s, I can truly say that he is one of the few men I admired growing up and I admire even more in posterity. Not only for the example that he set as an individual, but for his tireless effort in building a program that the entire community could rally behind.
And while it's admittedly a "regional" book, I feel its appeal would have been far greater if Mr. Kniss had asked tougher questions - particularly about Butler's feud with former principal Julian Weaver. Another component this book lacks is an assessment of the impact Butler has had on his players lives. Many of his former players, myself included, still communicate with him.
Despite its shortcomings, however, Kniss delivers a solid book on a legendary man. Now, hopefully Kniss will try his hand at documentary filmmaking.

From Ollie's Nephew.......2003-08-01

This book is a great read.

It reads like a research paper, but as family, I really enjoyed reading it.

The first couple of chapters really kept me interested, since it had family history. I'm not much of a sports fan, but I felt Kniss' passion for the game and his respect and admiration for my uncle. I can tell that it took a lot of research and hours of work to put it together. I especially enjoyed getting in-depth accounts of stories that I have only heard in passing over the years. I never fully realized how much my Uncle O.J. went through to get to where he is today. And I probably wouldn't if it weren't for Mr. Kniss.

Book Description

In a world dominated by teenagers, it is easy to forget that popular culture once catered to adults. A countercultural "Gen-X" writer shows in his new book that the rise of rock and roll and the suburbanization of America have produced a narcissistic society drained of joy and hope. Yet in the spreading revival of swing dancing-an artifact of a more sophisticated and convivial way of life-he detects a harbinger of cultural renewal.

Mr. Judge recalls the Washington neighborhood of Shaw, birthplace of Duke Ellington and once a stylish hub of black culture, which was suddenly devastated by riots and radicalism in the 1960s-a fate emblematic of urban America in general. Suburbia's simultaneous conquest of America delivered the death blow to adult culture. Without the traditional "third place"-the tavern, dance hall, or corner post office where neighbors once met-civic life withered and families retreated into domestic cocoons.

The rock-and-roll culture that replaced the ballrooms of Shaw is adolescent, narcissistic, and humorless to the point of suicide. And despite its pretense of rebellion, rock has become the establishment-elitist, intolerant, and hollow. Mr. Judge finds true rebellion in the exuberant, breezy, joyful world of swing, a world where people are not afraid to have fun. With its emphasis on elegance and maturity, practice and skill, and complementary roles for men and women, it is an antidote to our demoralized popular culture.

Customer Reviews:

Hitting the Nail on the Head!.......2000-08-09

How refreshing to find someone, in a world that tells us over and over that good's bad and bad's good, who can see and is willing to declare the emperor's nakedness. Mark Judge describes himself as a former left-wing radical who, through tough personal experiences, came to reject his own leftism. (Why is it almost always thus, and not the other way around?) By thoroughly and convincingly tweaking the precepts and icons of the left on the subject of our current American culture, he's undoubtedly invoked the ire and disdain of the literary establishment. So be it - the changes that he chronicles, centering around the Swing Revival in Washington DC in recent months, would never have occurred anyway had not that establishment's campaign of suppression and misdirection against our cultural life already begun to collapse into its own vacuum. At 118 pages it's a quick and easy, yet provocative, read; its rich set of references invites further study. If I were to pick a bone with Mr. Judge, though, it wouldn't be at all about his analysis and conclusions - for me they hit the nail right on the head! It would be about his somewhat pessimistic view that those of us with the common sense to be able to distinguish beauty from trash should be prepared to settle for a secret cultural life under the vast ocean of putrescence that styles itself as today's American culture. Remember the little boy who told the crowd what the emperor was really wearing? Take heart - we only need one plain voice being heard by most Americans to break this vast and entrenched spell against our better nature. After reading "If It Ain't Got That Swing," I'm persuaded that Mark Gauvreau Judge is now, and will continue to wax heavy as a key chord in that Voice. Thanks for a great book and keep swingin', Mr. Judge - they've wishfully pronounced Swing dead, but they ain't seen nothin' yet!

The music one listens to actually matters.......2000-08-02

I don't see how one could read Mark Judge's book with any care and then write that in his ideal world "there would be a lot more Brittany Spears and N-Sync." He makes a solid argument that the kind of popular music people listen to has an effect on the tone of society. He goes on to argue that the popular music of 50 years ago was associated with a healthier social life than we have now. That is not "mindless nostalgia". Judge may or may not be right in his interpretation of the evidence (and I have my own doubts about swing music), but his book cannot be dismissed as a "boring, self-righteous rant against human expression and substance in art". Indeed, the thrust of his argument is precisely that the "substance" of art matters.

Book Description

Entertaining and Ingenious Puzzles and Problems for Every Day of the Year!

Customer Reviews:

Good oldies by goodies.......2003-12-31

Like climbing mountains, puzzle solving is all about the effort in getting there. Once you reach the top, it all looks so easy, especially when you can see the smooth slope on the other side that would have been so much easier. A puzzle is like that, in that after you have the solution, it is obvious.
This collection primarily contains puzzles of a type that can be considered oldies but goodies. The primary categories are letter rearrangements, finding words or names embedded in phrases, fill in the blank letters to create specific phrases, finding words, phrase recognition and number manipulation. There are 365 puzzles, one listed for each day of the year, although few if any are related to their day and solutions to all are included at the end.
The puzzles vary enormously in difficulty. Some I solved in seconds, and others totally stumped me, at least until I looked at the solution, which caused me to immediately whack my forehead. In general, I found the number manipulation problems to be easy and the word scramble puzzles to be hard. Your opinion of this collection will largely depend on your experience with puzzles. If you have a lot, you may fly through most of them, but if you are a novice, you most likely will struggle, although it will be well worth it.

Challenging at first, yet gets curiously easier.......1999-12-14

The first time I read this book, I found the puzzles very challenging; some, in fact, were very difficult. I re-read the book a few weeks later and found, however, the puzzles were not as difficult as I recalled. I was really disappointed by my third and fourth reading - the puzzles were not challenging at all!

A good book overall, but either I got a lot smarter during the three months I read and re-reread this book (I been taking flaxseed oil daily, which may explain this), or the publishers have devised some way to revise the book while it is in my possession.

This was the bestest best book I ever did read!.......1999-12-02

Gee Golly, When I fist started reading this book I thought well golly gee I must be in heaven. Later on I founed out that I wasnt, but It sure felt like it You shoul Read it.

A Classic Collection from a Master Puzzlemaker.......1999-01-31

When I first opened this book of 365 puzzles (yes, one for each day of the year) back when it was originally published (1981), little did I realize that I'd still be reading it almost 20 years later! The puzzles (created by Ben Hamilton, one of Britain's most respected puzzlemakers and the former Puzzles Editor for the monthly "Games and Puzzles" magazine) are short and concise in presentation, and are fun to solve. There are a variety of word, math, and logic puzzles to keep you from getting bored. Similarly, the puzzles range in difficulty so readers of all ages can enjoy this collection. The only weak point to this book is that while all the answers are provided, they tend to simply state the solution without reviewing the logic or mathematical proof, so if you don't know HOW to solve the problem, the solutions won't help much. Still, it is an indespensible and enjoyable collection of marvelous puzzles -- one that will likely stay on your bookshelf as long as it has on mine.

100 Numerical Games a dazzling and Stimulating Collection of Mindbenders, Brainteasers, and Puzzles

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100 Numerical Games a dazzling and Stimulating Collection of Mindbenders, Brainteasers, and Puzzles
Pierre Berloquin
Manufacturer: Barnes & Noble
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0760713944

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MINDBENDERS/BRAINTEASERS
Brandreth Gyles
Manufacturer: Bounty Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 185152522X

Adobe Press

Stop Stealing Sheep, Second Edition is a unique, entertaining, and educational tour through the most basic unit of written communication: type. World-renowned type experts Erik Spiekermann and E.M. Ginger explain in everyday laymen's terms what type is and how you can use it to enhance the legibility, meaning, and aesthetic level of your work. They elegantly touch on all aspects of typography, including the history and mechanics of type, how to train your eye to recognize and choose typefaces, and how to use space and layout to improve overall communication. Because type reaches across all boundaries and continually evolves, this edition is revised and updated to include new chapters on Web typography and other forms of online text display. You need no previous knowledge of typography to enjoy this book and apply its tenets to your daily work. A perennial bestseller since the first edition was published in 1993, Stop Stealing Sheep will draw you in with its beautiful design and layout, which makes liberal use of more than 200 illustrations and photographs.

Customer Reviews:

Overly basic and poorly organized.......2007-07-15

I am a relative newbie to the study of typography, but still this book is far too basic. I learned a single fact which I had always been curious about - that the letterforms of smaller-point type are different from (not just smaller than) larger-point type in the same face - and that is a pretty elemental thing that most people interested in type are already aware of.
More suprisingly, there are some serious issues with the layout and typography of this book. Some sidebars, which are in small type, are set in yellow. Small yellow print on white paper? Surely a legibility no-no. Also, each page serves as its own mini-essay (and I do mean MINI; on most spreads, only the right-hand page has any text, and even then sometimes only half a page) but lacks a headline, so the reader has no idea what the page is about.
The only useful element in this book is the various type examples, which could easily be found elsewhere.

Good Introduction to Typography.......2007-06-13

I read this book for my first typography class at design school. It does a good job of giving the reader a feeling for different styles and personalities of letterforms. It is also written in a fun style that makes the book entertaining and easy to read for those just entering the design field.

Good type initiation book.......2007-01-02

The first time I saw this book it was in a fellow designer's bookshelf and I thought the title was humorous and very well targeted. Anybody who knows type understand the joke in "anyone who letterspaces blackletter type would steal sheep" and if you haven't heard of the quote nor get the joke then you are probably a type beginner who could use this book.

I don't agree with other reviews stating that the book is too basic and so it serves no purpose. Yes, it is basic, but 170+ pages of good basic introductory material. I would recommend it for student graphic designers, artists and multimedia designers who work with type but are not necessarily drawn to it. This book gives you the basics with a lot of examples and a humoristic approach that should keep you entertained long enough for you to grasp the ideas.

This is not a reference and it doesn't talk about advanced matters, but it will provide a tremendous wealth of knowledge to anybody new to type specifics. Sure one could get the basics from a 7-page pamphlet, but design is about making sense of the ideas and I can't imagine a beginner understanding all these concepts without the help of an array of examples such as the ones contained in this small book.

worthless...........2006-08-02

This is without a doubt the worst reference on typography that I have ever read. It is filled with useless metaphors and examples. I really expected more from the Adobe Press.

5 Quick Truths.......2006-01-24

1. Entertainment, not resource. Provides insight into the uses of type, as well as a brief history of many different typefaces. Robert Bringhurst's "The Elements of Typography" (0881792063) is a better book for those in need of a resource.

2. Aimed at a less experienced audience. Discusses type in relation to emotions, legibility, etc, though not in great depth. It does a great job of showing a beginner how important type is, showing a large number of examples of typefaces, and, possibly, inspiring them to look into the subject more thoroughly.

3. The quote used in the title did not come from the authors, it came from F. Goudy in 1936. Also, most of the fonts mentioned in the book cannot be found in Adobe's font library, some are over 100 years old. The book is not trying to sell you anything.

4. The book itself is a great example of what can be accomplished with type. It also contains many instances of type being used to great effect, while explaining how and why it works so well.

5. As someone interested in type, you could do much worse than this book. However, its simple nature, though complete and well-constructed, whets the appetite more than actually satisfying it.

Customer Reviews:

Oklahoma bad men and lawmen come to life.......2005-11-30

Art Burton's book tells the story of the Oklahoma's outlaws and the lawmen, who tracked them down. His emphasis is on blacks and native americans from the "Terrirorial Days" before Oklahoma's statehood in 1907. It's a "who's who" of Oklahoma's history and is very readable. There are many photograph's and Burton documents his research fully. A true historically accurate account of the Oklahoma's past. I would highly recommend this book!

Mike Koch, author of "The Kimes Gang."

Interesting piece of American history.......2002-11-03

Overall this was a pretty good book. Though it seemed a little disjointed at times, it was interesting reading about some Oklahoma history that usually isn't addressed.

The book discusses some of the most notorious black and Indian outlaws (and lawmen) of the Indian (and then Oklahoma) territory. I must admit that I had not heard of most of the names. I was surprised to read of how many black men had served as deputy United States Marshals in this region before statehood.

The author seems to have done extensive research on the subjet, and quotes regularly from newspaper articles and other writings from the late 1800's and early 1900's.

It must be great, BUT IT's MY DIRECT FAMILY>.......1999-06-13

To Whom It May Concern:

Your book must be great, but since it happens to be about my DIRECT grandparents, could you please send a courtesy copy to me. I tried ordering thru you and never rec'd the book. I have had excerpts read to me by other members of family that found the book & I must say I'm shocked. I feel I deserve the right to have a courtesy copy. Any and all of the part of S. P. Brassfield, Abner Brassfield and Abner Jr. you sure hit home. Thank you for your time, I will be anxious to hear from you.

Truly enjoyable.......1999-04-15

I consider a "must have" for your own personal library

EXCELLENT.......1999-03-30

"Black,Red and Deadly" was very well written with much unknown or once lost African American history.The author seems to transport his readers into the OLD WEST with exciting characters never seen in this light before.These characters and amagined scenes will hold you until THE END!

Customer Reviews:

Better than some of the reviews would suggest........2007-04-26

I almost did not read the book because of the negative reviews on this site. However, I read it and enjoyed it. Definately not for the serious scholar and the lack of any bibliography or notes is puzzling. However, it's a good, high-level review of the question regarding who wrote the works of Shakespeare.

A nice soft cover for "cross-the-pond" reading........2007-03-07

If you are a scholar, start with Brenda James' "The Truth Will Out." It is heavily footnoted and well researched.

If you are a Shakespearian novice flying to England (from the states) with time for leisurely reading, you could do worse than Bertram Fields' soft cover. It reads quickly, and you will be brought up to speed with the current arguments regarding Shakespeare's identity.

Both James and Fields come to the same conclusion: the real Shakespeare had to have been university educated, a continental traveler, multilingual, and of royal descent. It was rewarding to have first read James who identified a man who met the requirements, and then to read Fields and realize how close he came without being able to come up with a name.

It is clear that an actor with a fifth-grade education alone could not have written these plays. Reading James, Fields, and others regarding the authorship question will make you appreciate the Shakespearian plays even more. I would have enjoyed university western literature so much more (30 years ago) had I been aware there was even an authorship question. I would have read the plays more closely looking for my own clues. And that's the importance of books like Fields and James, keeping students (of all ages) excited about reading.

(By the way, it is interesting that Harold Bloom has written a book on the authorship of the Book of J, of the Bible, but has not written a book on the authorship of the Shakespearian plays. Or if he has, I am not aware of it, and I would welcome a reference.)

makes me cynical.......2006-11-19

From the the fine people who have brought us the illuminating, "If I Did It," came this earlier exercise in sleaze; this book's core deficiency is not so much its content but its exceptionally heavy lifting from previous authors, without which there would be no book at all here; this is a book which cearly would never have been published were it not for its author's dubious connections.

Merely Players.......2005-10-21

PLAYERS is a book by Bertram Fields which plunges us like a swift dive into the maelstrom, where only the brave and the foolish dare go, deep into the so-called "authorship question" of Shakespearean scholarship.

Fields, a laywer by trade, examines the possibility that the man we know as Shadespeare (the "Stratford man" as he is called here) did not write the works with which he has generally been credited. Since the 18th century, the skeptics have kept close pace with the believers, and for understandable reason. There is a paucity of known facts on the man from Stratford's CV. Surely if he was the greatest English playwright we'd have more knowledge about his life and death. And what about those signatures? He can't even spell his name the same way twice, how did that country bumpkin write HAMLET or THE WINTER'S TALE? No way! What would that hillbilly have possibly known about courtship politics in Italy and Bohemia, he never left England, and there were no books that could have filled him in. Could he have learned the Latin and Greek he needed at Stratford Junior High, I don't think so, but thousands of allusions of classical literature pepper his corpus.

Besides, there were literally dozens of brilliant, upper class and good looking men all over Elizabethan England who might have written those works with more probability than the Stratford schlub. These include Francis Bacon, the eccentric philosopher; the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere; the playwright Christopher Marlowe, who was known to have written for the theater and whose murder might have been faked to allow him the psychic space to go on and improve his craft as "Shakespeare." Even Elizabeth herself might, everything else being equal have been the playwright, for she was well known as a stylist and could wield a pen with the best of them; perhaps only sexism has kept her towards the bottom of the bookies' chart of suspects.

Fields picks up each piece of evidence and examines it, both pro and con. The First Folio gets most of his respect, and he comes down hard on the point that, if someone else was Shakespeare, why did the First Folio, published shortly after the death of the man from Stratford, credit him with having written all the plays and poems? Were its editors in on some hoax? Wouldn't that be a little weird, indeed Masonically extravagant? If they were just patsies, innocent dupes, why prolong the charade past the point of the death of the real author? (Oxford, for example, died in 1604 for sure.) Nobody really knows what happened, and you'll have fun with Fields as he tries to make sense out of a confusing mass of facts, fictions, fallacies and far-fetched Tomfoolery. Along the way you might learn something you never knew before. I know I did.

Amateurish, but universities are to cowardly to touch subject.......2005-10-09

There are better works on "alternative Shakespeares" out there, but this one is presented as a lawyer's argument, and makes interesting reading.

Since Shakespeare studies are finally in the safe-keeping of the major universities, and since the academicians therein lack the courage to pursue this obviously pressing question, we have to read works like this and those by other amateurs like Sobran. Don't hold your breath for Alison Weir or anyone with a literature Ph.D. to take the leap, and start losing their grants.

Players: The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare

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Players: The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare
Fields
Manufacturer: Regan Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OEPU5C

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Pretty good

not good

Good overview of 20th century philosophy of science

A Splendid intro to common-sense epistemology!

An Original, Creative Philosophy

Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach
Karl R. Popper
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Consciousness & Thought | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
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The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Routledge Classics)

Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (Routledge Classics)

All Life is Problem Solving

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ASIN: 0198750242

Book Description

The essays in this volume represent an approach to human knowledge that has had a profound influence on many recent thinkers. Popper breaks with a traditional commonsense theory of knowledge that can be traced back to Aristotle. A realist and fallibilist, he argues closely and in simple language that scientific knowledge, once stated in human language, is no longer part of ourselves but a separate entity that grows through critical selection.

Customer Reviews:

Pretty good.......2006-04-17

Many reviewers have already put down a lot of information and advice on this book which I agree with and endorse. Karl Popper = brilliant philosopher of science, and his epistemology is pretty provocative. This book is about that epistemology.

I just wanted to point out, though, that Popper did not originate the idea of "Three Worlds" as most of the reviewers here seem to assert. He picked it up from Frege and ran with it. If you want the astounding arguments and proofs for the existence of said "Three Worlds," read "On Sense and Reference" and "Thought" by Frege--you can probably find both articles for free, online. If not, pick up virtually any anthology of analytic philosophy--they should be in there.

not good.......2003-07-01

This is a useless book, as I learnt after various re-readings of it and other philosohy of science books. The main points of the first chapter (on the problem of induction) have been long ago refuted by "the scourge of popperian deductivism", the great American philosopher Adolf Grünbaum. Popper's purported "solution" to the problem of induction is not taken seriously by professional philosophers (not to mention inductive logicians like Gaifman et. al.). The impression that one gets in the first (and last) reading of this chapter is the same as Schrödinger's, who said after reading Popper's Logik der Forschung (as reported by Feyeraband): "He says he does something about Hume's problem - but he doesn't, he just talks, and talks, and talks, and Hume's problem is still unsolved".

One of the notions which pervade the whole book, "verisimilitude", had been defined by Popper in a seemingly unobjectionable way in the 1960s, and verisimilitude was thought by Popperians (including Popper) to be an accessible and legitimate aim of science, given that truth was seen as an important but very elusive target. Popper even tells us here (chapter 8) that with his novel definition he has rehabilitated the notion of "verisimilitude" just as Tarski had rehabilitated the notion of truth. This turned out to be a vain hope. Popper's definition of verisimilitude was shown to be completely wrong - in that two FALSE theories could not be compared with respect to their verisimilitude in Popper's sense -, and moreover, since the 1970s all the work which has been done on this topic seems to support the conclusion that verisimilitude is neither a clear nor a useful a notion. Yet Popper had maintained that "we cannot do without this idea". The consequences of this failure for Popper's account of scientific knowledge, and for this book in particular, should therefore be evident for everyone. Moreover, the negative results concerning verisimilitude were discovered after the first edition of this book had been published. The make-shift amendments in the second edition are hardly enough to improve matters.

The conception of knowledge as a Darwinian process is a nice idea, but it is rather vague and also too emphatic and one sided: knowledge also has its "Lamarckian" aspects. The story about the amoeba and Einstein (Einstein is not ESSENTIALLY more intelligent than the ameba) is funny. The production of correct answers cannot, it seems, be reduced to the sheer overproduction of hypotheses and the elimination of incorrect ones. The process of HOW some hypotheses are designed from initial data is also important - a logic of discovery, that is. Popper is not interested in this, despite the title of his classic book on scientific method - the reason being...that any process of discovery is not DEDUCTIVELY VALID!

Another curious feature of the "objective knowledge" which Popper describes is that it resides in a platonic heaven of "statements in themselves": it is a knowledge "without a knowing subject" (sic), although, curiously enough, it is somehow dependent (if I understood this platonic myth correctly) on what we humans do.

The chapter on "The aim of Science" contains a point which was made by Popper in 1949. Newton's theory does not entail Kepler's third law nor Galileo's law of falling bodies: it is actually incompatible with them. The incompatibility with Galileo's law was perhaps more well known before Popper wrote this essay than the incompatibility with Kepler's law. But the lesson which Popper derives from this, namely, that inductivism is refuted, is certainly spurious.

The chapter on clouds (inderterministic systems) and clocks (deterministic systems) is suggestive in the poetic wording and the stories, but does not add much to the debate of determinism-indeterminism. Popper believes that all systems are clouds, although some more clocklike than others. Here is an argument: the determinist thesis implies that a deaf physicist would have been be able to write Mozart's compositions just by knowing Mozart's physical state at a certain time and predicting what he would write in the pentagram; but this is absurd. Therefore determinism is wrong.

The chapter on Evolution and the tree of knowledge is all wrong. Popper's views on the (un)scientific character of evolutionary theory were shown to be wrong by scientists and philosophers alike. This time, Popper says that the only thing Darwin did was to show that evolutionary explanations "can exist", that is, "are not logically impossible" (!), and that no Darwinist has ever provided evolutionary explanations of anything at all. Later Popper admitted that his views on Darwinism were sheer mistakes, but even so the later reformulations of his views were found to be also terribly misleading and confused. What is even more curious, Popper objects to the usual definition of fitness in terms of reproduction rates on the grounds that it does not take into account that such rates might be due not to fitness but to fecundity; but his amended statistical definition of comparative fitness (A is more fit than B if its survival rate is greater and its fecundity rate is less or equal) has all the vices of every attempt to DEFINE fitness in terms of survival rates: it renders evolutionary explanations circular (A survived because fit, and A is fit because it survived).

The "Logic" part of Popper's "A realist view of Logic, Physics and History" (ch. 8) is extremely odd. He defends classical logic on sheer PRAGMATIC grounds (its utility as a canon of critical procedure), but he does not answer the question of whether there is any CORRECT logic amongst the many logics, which is the WHOLE question of "realism" about logic.

The chapter on Tarski (ch.9) is also mainly incorrect. His discussion of the problem of truth bearers in note 1 is completely muddled and rash. For instance, he says that he employs "sentence" as a synonym of "interpreted sentence OR PROPOSITION" (!). The interpretation of Tarski's theory as a theory of correspondence with FACTS is entirely arbitrary. Tarski nowhere talks about facts, but Popper speaks EVERYWHERE about them, even of "supposed" facts, of "real" facts, of "the world of facts" and what not. He also says that "Tarski's theory" allows us to define REALITY as "that with which true sentences correspond". Reality would in turn be "the set of real facts". It is needless to say that these grotesque fancies are not to be found nor suggested in Tarski's careful and precise work on truth.

There is almost nothing to be learnt from this book, and much to become confused about.

Good overview of 20th century philosophy of science.......2002-12-08

In a recent article on the relation between natural philosophy and quantum chromodynamics (the physical theory of the strong nuclear interaction), Frank Wilcek, a well-recognized researcher in elementary particle physics, included the following entertaining passage:

A man walks into a bar, takes a seat on the next-to-last stool, and spends the evening chatting up the empty stool next to him, being charming and flirtatious, as if there were a beautiful women in that empty seat. The next night, same story. And the next night, same story again. Finally the bartender can't take it any more. She asks, "Why do you keep talking to that empty stool as if there were a beautiful woman in it?".

The man answers, "I am a philosopher. Hume taught us that it's logically possible that a beautiful woman will suddenly materialize on that stool, and no one has ever refuted him. If one does appear, then obviously I'll seem very clever indeed, and I'll have the inside track with her."

"That's ridiculous", says the bartender, who happens to be a physicist. "Plenty of very attractive women come to this bar all the time. You're reasonably presentable, and extremely articulate; if you applied your charm on one of them, you might succeed".

"I thought about trying that," he replies, "but I couldn't prove it would work."

I included this passage in this review not to ridicule the work of David Hume but to emphasize that his philosophy of science is in no way troubling. The author of this book though spent most of his professional life attempting to refute the views of Hume and then justify the practice of science "objectively". In the first few paragraphs of this book, the author sounds bitter about the lack of recognition for his work on "the problem of induction", which he felt Hume had shown to have devastating consequences on the "truth" of science. The search for an objective, rational "foundation" of science has occupied the time of this author and many others, who hold to the idea that scientific knowledge needs such a foundation and the Humean challenge must be answered. To those readers who agree with the author in this regard, this book would be of interest. To those who do not, this book could possibly be read as an exercise in mental gymnastics. There are some places in the book where issues are raised that are important in fields such as artificial intelligence, but as a whole the book is typical of 20th century philosophy of science: it holds as axiomatic that scientific knowledge needs an underlying foundation.

Since I personally do not believe the David Hume has to be answered at all, a review of the author's arguments against Hume would be misplaced. Having read Hume's works in detail, and having walked away from them puzzled as to why they are considered so "formidable" or "devastating", my interest in this book was purely subjective: that of gaining insight as to why many philosophers of science are so deeply troubled by Hume's philosophy and other science skeptics. Finishing the book still left my questions unanswered in this regard, and judging by a perusal of the literature on the philosophy of science, Humean skepticism is still considered the "thing to answer". Scientific truth is still held in doubt to a large degree, and debates on it in the social and political realm usually take place in the context of religion or why creationism should be taught in the public schools.

But science needs no foundation. The game of philosophy should now be what consequences science has for philosophy. What theories of truth, of ethics, of knowledge, are possible for philosophy because of science? If this book were rewritten to reflect this attitude, its content would be very different, possibly more elaborate in its views. The avenues that science opens up in ethics, epistemology, and ontology are rich in information theory, mathematics, logic, and many other areas. Scientific and technological advances are exploding at an unprecedented rate, and no Humean challenge or backlash can stop it.....thankfully.

A Splendid intro to common-sense epistemology!.......2002-11-21

To those who've not read Popper before, I highly reccomend that you statrt now- and with this book. To those who have experienced these pages first-hand, you understand why Popper and the theories herein are so important.

As short-windedly as possible, I'd like to say how I came to read him. I had forayed into philosophy through Ayn Rand who managed to convince me- as she does so many readerss- that philosophy is a chasm between soft relativism and hard objectivism. Either one believes in absolute truth and reasons 100% ability to grasp it, she wrote, or that truth is a chimera and as such, reality is mutable. I believed her. Later though, I grew restless. Truth is out there, I supposed, but how can we guarantee that our beliefs are and will always be correct? Grudgingly, I read Popper and it all made sense.

Most are familiar with Poppers theories on demarcation and epistemology but this book goes into great detail on both in clear, enjoyable language. Truth, Popper tells us, is absolute. It is certainty that creates the dilemma. Since experience has shown us that objective reality exists, science works but does not take us the full way. Theories are superceded and what once seemed true may not tomorrow. So the ultimmate test of a theory should not be whether it can be VERIFIED- if we look for supporting evidence of a pretty good yet minorly false theory, we'll probably find it- but whehter the theory can be FALSIFIED- if we look for evidence against a pretty good yet minorly false theory, it's easier, quicker and beter to find IT. What does this mean? Reality exists, otherwise why do science- it's just our CERTAINTY of any belief that will prove elusive. This book, in its small yet powerful essays, explains, examines and defends this theory of an evolutionary approach to knowledge (i.e., science.) Popper is not Foucoult; his intention is not to destroy science but to enhance it.

If you're like me, in awe of Popper's theories, perplexed as to why more people aren't and would like to read others who give similar views, one can do no better than C.S. Pierce and John Dewey. Especially Dewey's "Quest for Certainty" which underlines the experimental process of knowledge and breaks down the false dualism of knowledge and action. Also, Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn (don't believe what Kuhn's critics, even Popper himself, says about him) have similar approaches. for a contemporaary Popperian style, read Susan Haack's "Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate." Not to dissuade you from reading this first as this is the starting points, the other books are enhancements. Fall in love with science!

An Original, Creative Philosophy.......2001-12-29

When an undergraduate in college, I was mainly exposed to so called "Continental" philosophy which seems to have a tendency, to say the least, toward bosh, and to analytic philosophy which seems to have a tendency, to say the least, toward triviality, plus, since it was a Catholic college, selections from Plato, Aristotle, and medieval metaphysicians.
I could not really acclimate myself with these doctrines. It is in a sense unfortunate that I found an alternative outside my formal schooling. With Popper I found someone who is readable--I think that any intelligent general reader can understand him--original, and with an outlook congruent with natural science.
He is known for his ideas on scientific method--that science does not really "prove" theories, but creates conjectures which have rich empirical content and withstand falsification. With ideas like this, decades ago, he attacked doctrines like Marxism, and psycho-analysis. Demolishing the claims of these doctrines may seem to be no big deal today, but decades ago they were major tools of our intellecutal elites.
This book covers old ground such as his views on science but also, it seems to me, breaks new ground. A new contribution is his theory of the Three Worlds, which I think is fruitful. He also deals with the question of free will, which I sense is the weakest part of his book.
Popper distinguishes three realms or 'worlds.' World1 is the world of physical objects; World2 is the world of our subjective beliefs, thoughts, feelings; World3 is what he calls an objective world of knowledge, the objective contents of thought--the knowledge contained in books, musuems, libraries, etc.
Popper holds that most philosophers considered the object of epistemology--the theory of knowledge--to be World2. Popper argues that this is misguided. He thinks it is, to use his words, "irrelevant." The proper object for epistemology is World3. We should concern ourselves not with justifying our subjective beliefs but with objective theories--their contents, the arguments supporting them, etc.
A theory of knowledge based on World3 has some interesting ramifications. It is immune from modern relativistic attacks (this is my personal view). World2 epistemology has premises, both implicit and explicit, that make it vulnerable to relativistic attacks. World3 epistemology, instead, proceeds with the GROWTH of knowledge. Another interesting feature of World3 is that, even though it is man-made, it is autonomous. If humanity were to disappear, World3 will still be "outthere". World3 is created by individuals with certain goals, but the contents of World3 seem to have a life of its own(and this is very metaphorical). It can be used by others in different ways, it leads to new problems and solutions not considered before, etc.
Popper also deals with the problem of understanding in the humanities. There are some who hold that there is a difference between understanding in the natural sciences and understanding in the human sciences--that in fields like history, psychology, sociology, one has to understand by a method which seems to me to be something like a mystical intuitive grasp of the thoughts of another. Popper thinks that this is old hat. The method to, say, reconstruct a damaged ancient text is fundamentally no different from understanding regularities in nature.
Popper died not too long before the advent of the world wide web. It seems to me that Popper's ideas on the three worlds are very applicable to the world wide web. The World Wide Web would fall under the category of World3. It has an ever expanding content of knowledge, of conjectures, of arguments and discussion. Being a part of World3, it is human made, but the world wide web has a certain autonomy. A road built on the web by one person for one thing can be used in different ways by different people.

Objective Knowledge : An Evolutionary Approach, Revised Edition

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Objective Knowledge : An Evolutionary Approach, Revised Edition
Karl R. Popper
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Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach
Karl R. Popper
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Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach
Karl Raimund Popper
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
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