Hiding the Elephant

Jim Steinmeyer, Hiding the Elephant
When I was a young tyke, I watched an automobile race on the boob tube with my uncle John. No NASCAR or Formula One or Indy for us. It was some contest of rabbits--VW Rabbits. (Remember them? The modern update of the Beetle, with none of the charm.) Unwittingly, uncle John precipitated my demise into skepticism by pointing at the screen and saying, "See their tails?" I looked everywhere for cotton, but saw none, and protested. "No, look!" he said. "Look--there they are!" Radical doubt was minutes away.

With that random anecdote, I introduce Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear. Warning: if you are a true believer in Magic, stay away. In fact, if you think that analysis is inherently destructive, and that knowledge ruins art, do not read this book. Steinmeyer's survey of the history of famous (and lesser-known) stage magicians not only tells the stories and reveals the secrets, but includes photos and diagrams. Steinmeyer doesn't just throw back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz, but subjects him to a colonoscopy and a dental exam. Recommended for aspiring magicians or casual fans.

The Flickering Mind

Todd Oppenheimer, The Flickering Mind
No doubt the computer is the cureall for our time. I can't imagine a malady, complaint, or problem that can't be solved by a quick trip to the internet. Need a product review by a corporate shill? Epinions.com. Attacked by water-borne parasitic bacterioids? Should have read up on giardia. Suspect your wife of terrorist leanings? tips.fbi.gov, my friend.

Sadly, educationists--teachers, administrators, bureaucrats, parents, even students--have been suckered by the lure of the flickering CRT. Todd Oppenheimer dissects the history of technology in education, and his findings: it's overrated. No matter what the new gizmo or gadget, it can't supplant (and often gets in the way of) good teaching. Study after study shows that human interaction outweighs and outlasts the effects of technology on learning.

This is the must-read book for those concerned with the state of American education.

Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes (John Rutherford, trans.), Don Quixote

Attempting to add something new to the Quixote corpus would be like adding schmaltz to a Kincaid painting. This review, really, is just an excuse to boast that I've finished the thing, the bloated, repetitive monster, the comedy of errors, the accidental odyssey, the ultimate jesting trope. It took approximately ten hours, in 100-page chunks. It was, dare I admit it, fun.

Don Quixote is the first truly modern novel, a playfully ironic parody (and self-styled debunking) of chivalric stories, without precedent, and yet, to the modern reader, entirely familiar. (I had a similar sensation upon first seeing Citizen Kane.)

Let's get pseudo-Platonic for a moment, though, and count the steps between the reader and "reality" in just one scene.

In Part II, Chapters 23-24, Don Quixote describes his adventure in the Cave of Montesinos (hey-hey, Plato!), involving fantastical visions of crystal palaces and sumptuous maidens, a three-day trip that occurs in a bit over an hour, real time.

So we have:

1. Something happens in the cave
2. Quixote tells Sancho and Basilio about what happens in the cave (and possibly lies, or deceives himself)
3. The fictional historian Cide Hamete Benengeli recounts Quixote's words
4. The narrator translates Benejeli's history
5. Cervantes writes Don Quixote
6. Rutherford translates Don Quixote into modern-day English

Borrowing another allusion, the novel is an epistemological labyrinth, full of self-referential humor and sly irony, which make for delightful reading. I may not be so devout as William Faulkner, who "reread it once a year, 'just as some people read the Bible,'" but I'll definitely read it again.

Evolution from Creation to New Creation

Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett, Evolution from Creation to New Creation
Claiming the reasonable middle is risky in any debate. It upsets hardliners on either side, who deride it as sitting on a pointy picket fence--foolish, if not impossible. It's particularly risky to straddle the gap between dogmatic "creationists" and "evolutionists," whose idea of constructive dialogue is all woe-crying and warmongering, a church picnic with Sackloth Races and a Grenade Toss.

Ted Peters (a Lutheran theologian) and Martinez Hewlett (a Catholic molecular biologist) bring some needed balance and hope to the discussion, attempting to join together not only science and religion, but the warring factions on the theistic side of the contest. Their book presents a brief history of the development of evolutionary theory, and synopses of various points of view (covering, in separate chapters, the genesis and evolution of Scientific Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Theistic Evolution). Rather than just describe, however, they criticize each perspective, and offer up their own interpretation.

Peters and Hewlett should be commended for separating methodological naturalism--which is beyond repute--from its philosophical cousin, ontological materialism.

Is Darwinism merely an ideology that parades as science? No. Genuine science is present and available. Darwinian evolutionary biology qualifies as solid science because it generates proressive research--that is, hypotheses based upon its assumptions lead eventually to new knowledge about the natural world... Darwinism is explanatorily adequate (p. 21).

They also refute Scientific Creationism and Intelligent Design in short order.

It's not all dahlias, though. Peters and Hewlett underplay the deception and distortion that form the foundation of Scientific Creationism, calling the dispute a "conflict between science and science," when a more apt description would be a "conflict between science and pseudoscience."

They also underplay the theistic claims of Intelligent Design proponents (notably Johnson, Behe and Dembski). They quote Dembski saying

First off, intelligent design is not a form of anti-evolutionism. Intelligent design does not claim that living things came together suddenly in their present form through the efforts of a supernatural creator. Intelligent design is not and never will be a doctrine of creationism (p. 103).

They also claim that "William Dembski and Michael Behe rely increasingly on change over time, both requiring episodic or punctuated transcendental influence on evolutionary advance" (p. 104). If ID isn't "creationism," what of that "transcendental influence?" And what of Dembski's other published comments? Or the fact that one of his books is even titled Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology?

They also write, "[Dembski] does not reject the fossil record or the molecular evidence, as Johnson does" (pp. 111-112). Contrast that with Dembski's Five Questions Evolutionists Would Rather Dodge [pdf] in which he parrots standard creationist arguments. (The use of the word "evolutionists" is itself a red flag, as even Peters and Hewlett point out.)

These criticisms aside, Peters and Hewlett have done the near-impossible, creating an insightful book in an already overpopulated field.

Philosophy of Mind

Jaegwon Kim, Philosophy of Mind
Cartesian dualists, keep out. Jaegwon Kim's accessible, though difficult, survey of the issues and problems with physicalist conceptions of the mind wastes little time dispensing with substance dualism, the belief that

...each of is, at least as we exist on this earth, a composite being made up of two distinct substances, an immaterial mind an a material body.... There has been near consensus among philosophers that the concept of mind as a mental substance gives rise to too many difficulties and puzzles without compensating explanatory gains (pp. 3-4).

The rest of the book focuses on varieties of physicalism--from emergentism to reductionism, from behaviorism to functionalism--and dwells on the explanatory benefits of, and difficulties with, each perspective. Though the book is meant for the informed reader, as Kim notes,

In the course of writing this book, I was constantly reminded of what Sir Peter Strawson once said, namely, that there is no such tihng as "elementary philosophy" (p. xi).

Those who struggle through discussions of twin earths, Nagel-reduction, supervenience, and Turing machines will be rewarded with a new understanding of the complexity--and possibility--in the fields of neuropsychology and philosophy. The book is part of the Dimensions of Philosophy Series which is "dedicated to the next generation of philosophers and their students." A superlative achievement.

The Evidential Argument From Evil

Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil
If we grant that there is no logical contradiction in the statements "evil exists" and "God exists," we are left with a powerful objection: the empirical evidence for the former assertion compels us to doubt the latter. Daniel Howard-Snyder has assembled a formidable group of philosophers who, in a chronological series of essays, propose and challenge various conceptions of the evidential argument from evil. In the preface, Howard-Snyder writes,

...I didn't want just another collection of previously published pieces. Rather, I wanted a handful of the very best previously published essays to act as a stage upon which dialogue might progress, a place where new work might be done. However, I also wanted a collection that a student or educated layperson could understand, with only minimal assistance from an instructor or a course or two in basic philosophy (p. ix).

He has succeeded. Because of its chronological layout, the book allows us to see the evolution of the arguments in question--how they change or are abandoned--and, in the end, to realize that the question is far from settled.

The most interesting proposition, in my mind, comes from Paul Draper, who posits the "indifference hypothesis"--that even if an omnipotent, omniscient being created the universe as we know it, on the balance, the evidence doesn't favor its omnibenevolence.

The book isn't easy, but even at its most difficult is well worth the slog.

God, Freedom, and Evil

Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil
Is it possible, in slightly over one hundred pages, to destroy the logical problem of evil and rehabilitate the ontological argument for God's existence? If Plantinga's arguments are credible, then yes. In this slight volume by an intellectual heavyweight, Plantinga explores what he considers the fundamental objection to theism--how does evil exist if God is all-powerful and wholly good? Though I find his argument ultimately unconvincing because of its undefended presuppositions, it is clear, defensible, and entertaining.

On the way to rejuvenating the ontological argument--that a "being of maximal greatness," God, has been instantiated in one possible world (and, by logical extension, all possible worlds). Plantinga earns my respect for two reasons: first, he dispenses with the cosmological and teleological arguments on the way to restoring the ontological argument, showing that he is above casuistry in the cause of apologetics; and second, he admits that even if his rendition of the ontological argument is acceptable, it "establishes, not the truth of theism, but its rational acceptability" (p. 112). Only a combative anti-theist could find fault with that.