Published on
16 April 2008
Introduction The topic that I will be looking at this evening will be related to some of the concerns that Thomas More had. In fact, my objective this evening is quite modest as I am an economic geographer who has an interest in philosophical issues but I am certainly not a political philosopher. I came […]
Published on
5 March 2008
Introduction For Richard Dawkins the truth needs to be told: ‘If this book [The God Delusion] works as I intend, religious people who open it will be atheists when they put it down’ (2006, p.5) So, Dawkins clearly believes that the truth needs to be communicated. Truthful knowledge ought to be sought and promoted. This […]
Published on
23 January 2008
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Flanders & Swann. When I was young, one of the few records we had at home was a ‘45’ with four Flanders & Swann songs, including Too Many Cookers. This was a tongue-in-cheek lament for the over-complication of the traditional British kitchen by the introduction of […]
Published on
4 December 2007
This is a large topic through which I am going to move with excessive speed. Essentially the problem of freedom is to do with the diversity of what we talk about in using the word ‘freedom’: that is, everything from the property of controlling our own actions when we think of freedom of will, to […]
Published on
7 November 2007
First of all, my apologies for bringing two great minds together in less than an hour. I wonder what Lady Bracknell would have said. ‘To tackle one great mind in less than an hour could be considered ambitious; to tackle two seems like carelessness.’ Not wanting to disagree with Lady Bracknell, I should nonetheless declare […]
Published on
28 March 2007
I’m sure we are all more or less in agreement about what we mean when we spell the word Enlightenment with a capital ‘E’. We are talking about the movement of ideas which came to dominate men’s minds during the 18th century, reaching an explosive climax in the French Revolution. But that as we know was […]
Published on
21 August 2006
At the age of fifty-six – thirteen months after his resignation as Lord Chancellor of England, ten months before his arrest, and two years before his death – Thomas More wrote the epitaph for his tomb, had it engraved in stone, and sent a written copy to Erasmus for publication. More explained this odd action […]
Published on
14 June 2006
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. Thomas Szasz (1973:115) 1. Introduction: No less a figure than Francis Fukuyama recently labelled Transhumanism as ‘the world’s most dangerous idea’. Such an eye-catching condemnation almost certainly denotes an […]