A bewitching tale

. . . of how Jacquetta Hawkes' country was formed Chapter I. Two Themes:a) the author describes her little hemmed-in London garden. b) she speculates about how the world was formed and how it depends totally on the sun. "Writing in 1949 I say that night and day were formed. It is, I know, foolish…

Intelligent Design

I’m sure there must be various ways to introduce the elements of science in schools, some good and some bad. Let the reader judge. Aged 9, I was excited by the prospect of Science lessons. We started by proving the existence of air, a project which seemed disappointingly trivial and uninteresting. We thought we knew…

Becoming Animal

I had thought of writing a review of David Abram’s book, Becoming Animal, but the breadth of its vision, the variety of its original ideas, the density of its poetical descriptions would take a long time to digest, before I could say anything of value. It would have been easier if I didn’t admire it…

Wittgenstein

The other day I was writing about being nineteen and somehow feeling the same way fifty years later. But it was a mysterious feeling because I could not adduce a single instance of nineteenhood to illustrate my point. So it is a coincidence that I first discovered Wittgenstein at that age. Discovered is hardly the…

Panspermia

Ashok in a blog post called Heaven, Scientifically Speaking refers to a theory called Panspermia. He thought I would be interested, or in his words, “excited”. I was in fact curious to ask myself why I am not excited. First his title. To me, Heaven, which featured in my recent post Aylesbury walkabout, is a…

Fresh air

Painting by Anne Adams, an ex-scientist who became afflicted with a partial dementia which has affected her verbal powers. The barrenness of these pages lately means doesn’t mean I’ve not been thinking of offering something to my reader. On the contrary. Though afflicted by a species of writer’s block, I’m not bereft of thoughts and…