Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life

London: Chatto and Windus, 2022

Claire Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman

I bought this as soon as I saw it, after having read a review of it in the LRB - it follows the lives and careers of Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth …

In Search of the Third Bird: Exemplary Essays from the Proceedings of ESTAR(SER) London: Strange Attractor Press, 2021

D Graham Burnett, Catherine L Hansen and Justin E H Smith (eds.)

It is said that Zeuxis went back to work on that painting, in the hopes of improving the child …

Hopscotch New York: Pantheon Books, 1966

Julio Cortázar (translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa)

I bought a copy of this a few years ago, and I'm not sure what made me start reading it this year. It's a self-consciously labyrinthine and ludic novel, following the anti-hero Oliveira's affairs and …

Anniversaries: from a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl New York: NYRB Classics, 2018

Uwe Johnson (translated from the German by Damion Searls)

A novel which appeared in German in four volumes from 1970 to 1983, and which has only been fully translated into English in this NRYB Classics …

One of the original promises of the net was that it would transcend territories, another part of John Perry Barlow’s declaration of independence which hasn’t worked out. I have a memory from the late 80s, when I was working for a small software company in Sydney, helping establish …

I went off Nate Silver a bit when I read The Signal and the Noise because I thought he was a bit scanty in explaining Bayesian analysis but mostly because he goes on about how true Bayesians should be prepared to back up their assessments of probabilities with a wager …

Being and Time New York: Harper & Row, 1962

Martin Heidegger (tr John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson)

I did that thing again, where my mood disorder kicks in and I read an interminably long and difficult work of philosophy. In my defence, if I’d read Being and Time when I …

If you think the title of this post is funny, and you have anything to do with science communication, we really need to talk.

In the couple of weeks I've seen infographics going around which try to correct non-technical people about the ways in which they use terms like "chemical …

Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism London: Verso Books, 2012

Slavoj Žižek

I've had problems with depression for my whole adult life: I am much better at managing it than when I was younger, but one of the bad habits which I find it hard to shake off is …

The Language of Science from the Fall of Latin to the Rise of English. London: Profile Books, 2015

Michael D Gordin

This book falls at the intersection of a few of my interests - language, the idea of an auxiliary or neutral meta-language, the history of science in general and academic …