Last year was a year of exposure - if I was going to write I wanted to be well-versed in my various interests, so I committed to reading 52 books through the year. Taken together with the launch of a new, information-heavy career trajectory, this was a lot of work for my poor eyes. But I did succeed, and coming out the other side I feel knowledgeable in a way that I never have before.
While wanton exposure may feel enlightening, I have noticed that when encountering certain intellectual stumbling blocks my instinct has been to reach for the book with the answer rather than sketch it out myself. Since I'd rather be compared to an encyclopedia than a reference catalogue, 2016 will be a year of integration. I want to take the things I've learned about and begin to apply them to my life in a way that encourages commitment and standing on positions rather than floating back and forth between them. Eventually I'd like this to lead to a year (or more!) of action, but that will come with time (and *ahem* financial savings). All that said, I'm pleased with the fortuitousness of my current circumstances and plan to make the most of them.
I'll list the 52 books I read last year below, for those interested. Some topics I pursued were evolution, genetics, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, the rationality of religion, critical thinking, political history, psychology of ethics, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. I would never claim expertise in any of these areas, but now that I know a little more about them I hope I can pursue my remaining questions in a more productive and properly contextualized fashion.
Being exposed to lots of new facts and ways of thinking can be destabilizing, and that's definitely something I experienced last year. There was a lot of questioning and introspection happening between the reading. Although I'd like to work on planting my feet a little more sturdily this year, I've also come to realize that fear of destabilization is unsustainable. The world is changing quickly, and our most important ideas are starting to be supplanted by new ones that are radically different. This progression is both a challenge and a warning: the challenge is to be a part of shaping the future, the warning is not to fade away as a spectator who merely allows it happen.
Developing my philosophical virtues will help prepare me for the future and embrace the life I have along the way. I'll try to write some shorter articles more frequently to document my path as it continues to extend out before me.
Reading list 2015:
1. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion - Jonathan Haidt
2. Meaning in Life and Why it Matters - Susan Wolf
3. The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism - Octavio Paz
4. The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? - David Brin
5. Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis, and the Misrepresentation of Humanity - Raymond Tallis
6. Argumentation: Critical Thinking in Action - David Lapakko
7. Experiments in Ethics - Kwame Anthony Appiah
8. Mind: A Historical and Philosophical Introduction to the Major Theories - Andre Kukla
9. Freedom Regained: The Possibility of Free Will - Julian Baggini
10. Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism - Paul Boghossian
11. Summers of Discontent: The Purpose of the Arts Today - Raymond Tallis
12. Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us - Claude Steele
13. The Ego Trick: In Search of the Self - Julian Baggini
14. Love: A History - Simon May
15. Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era - James Barrat
16. ID: The Quest for Meaning in the 21st Century - Susan Greenfield
17. Curiosity - Alberto Manguel
18. Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk - Massimo Pigliucci
19. Monoculture: How One Story is Changing Everything - F.S. Michaels
20. Brainstorm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences - Rebecca Jordan-Young
21. History of Ethics Volume 1: Graeco-Roman to Early Modern Ethics - Vernon J. Burke
22. On the Move: A Life - Oliver Sacks
23. Truth - John D. Caputo
24. Minds and Computers: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence - Matt Carter
25. In Defense of Science: Why Scientific Literacy Matters - Frank R. Spellman
26. Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind - Jesse J. Prinz
27. Truth - Chase Wrenn
28: Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution - Peter J. Richardson
29. The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science - Will Storr
30. DNA: The Secret of Life - James D. Watson
31. The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture - Matt Ridley
32. The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution - Gregory Cochrane
33. Genetics and Philosophy: An Introduction - Paul E. Griffiths
34. A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History - Nicholas Wade
35. Theatre of the Mind: Raising the Curtain on Consciousness - Jay Ingram
36. Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality - Theodore Dalrymple
37. The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Scientific Age - John Horgan
38. Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring Sanity to Our Politics, Our Economy, and Our Lives - Joseph Heath
39. Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible - Jerry A. Coyne
40. The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation - John Horgan
41. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon - Daniel C. Dennett
42. War of the Worldviews: The Struggle Between Science and Spirituality - Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow
43. Theism and Explanation - Gregory W. Dawes
44. Is There a God? - Richard Swineburne
45. The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus
46. Understanding Beliefs - Nils J. Nilson
47. The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life - Nick Lane
48. The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science - Siddhartha Mukherjee
49. Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them - Joshua Greene
50. Intuition Pumps and other Tools for Thinking - Daniel C. Dennett
51. Biology as Ideology - Richard C. Lewontin
52. The Quest for a Moral Compass - Kenan Malik
Bolded = favourites
What a list! This year will feature a bit less reading, but more writing and thinking are to come, as well as a list of films I've watched that will be just as long as this one :)
See you soon.
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