https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=Robert.adlington 2026-11-05T01:02:07Z User contributions MediaWiki 1.44.5 https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Illusions&diff=1636 2026-11-04T16:06:11Z

<p>Robert.adlington: Created page with &quot;== Foreword == == Exodus == * ...seeing the other person in the way you only see another person once in your life, in the fleeting second between seeing and perceiving: up close, exposed, wide open, untouched by experience, judgement or routine, infinitely extended, yielding to all possibilities - a new face, a moment plunged in the light of perception and already lost as she stood up too hastily to preserve it... == Dismissal == * ...lately she had begun to think at the...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>== Foreword ==<br /> == Exodus ==<br /> * ...seeing the other person in the way you only see another person once in your life, in the fleeting second between seeing and perceiving: up close, exposed, wide open, untouched by experience, judgement or routine, infinitely extended, yielding to all possibilities - a new face, a moment plunged in the light of perception and already lost as she stood up too hastily to preserve it...<br /> == Dismissal ==<br /> * ...lately she had begun to think at the wrong moment about how she'd managed to never make a misstep, because she'd wanted to keep doing precisely the same thing, rather like someone who, on account of some vexing internal shift, abruptly starts asking himself what leg he uses to get out of bed in the morning, how he should wash himself and so forth, neck first? Arm?<br /> * Things that had never needed to be jotted down, had never been forgotten, were slipping through the tight weave of notes in her calendar - wordless instructions, routine matters that weren't lost entirely but had run together in her subconscious into a fermenting mass that exhaled a poisonous fog of confusion.<br /> * ...and suddenly, in one of the uncleared basements between the rows of new buildings, an abyss opened up, dragging her, by the thread of the smell, step by step towards its source. It was calling out to her, to her memories, to the street on which she was standing, while out of the rubble the house in which she'd resided back then rose up again, swift and silent. The hose loomed in the night, for it had become night, and she was responsible for it, there was no version of Gertrud Schramm who was not responsible, the air-raid warden was in the hospital and she was his deputy.<br /> == Clarion ==<br /> * ...He had no need for feelings. What he had was an infinite need to be alone, to be left in peace...<br /> * Onlookers - always he imagined there were onlookers...<br /> * Really and truly, life for him was an encumbrance.<br /> * For one effervescent second, he was filled to the brim with something that couldn't be named, something he had experienced once before. But when? Where? His nerves leaped up and his skin felt tight, much too tight, too narrowly tailored for the sudden expansion - a distension, a straining, a hunger, a thirst for ejaculations that had never been satisfied. A cry reached him from the false depths of the poster and, to his astonishment, he possessed the answer. Without even needing his cooperation, the word punctured through the years of debris with the sharpness of a pointed spear: Clarion! Piercing. Shattering.<br /> * Hesitantly, he dangled the word into the startled swarm of his memories as a sort of hook, a lure, a sound, and he listened, he waited, he held himself stiff and still in the ebb and flow of traffic, a piece of driftwood lifted up and snared by the shores of the stream, until finally,, from far away, he could make out Mark's voice: 'They call it a clarion, it's a kind of bugle.' And then Mark whispering again, very close to his ear...<br /> * Yet even still, something of his excitement remained in the atmosphere, some inner tremor that had been communicated to his eyes and seemed, through his eyes, to seize the street, whose façades, flowing together in their everyday familiarity, suddenly began to flicker as though something lay behind them, as though they had been awakened and wanted out, wanted to walk alongside him to accompany him, whether he turned left or right...<br /> == The Clique ==<br /> * ...forgetting the office so completely it was like she'd only dreamed it.<br /> * ...not a trace of anything, as though the affair with Charles had never happened, as thought the whole scandal when it finally came out were nothing more than a soap bubble popping in the air.<br /> * If you do not think about it, she thought, then it simply did not happen...<br /> * ...she could see the Saturday afternoon splitting in two on the strip of pavement in front of her and flowing in different directions.<br /> * If only you could split yourself like an earthworm and go in two directions at once, but no one has figured that one out; Therese had no choice but to be a single entity, or pretend to be a single entity, and that was actually her problem, that was why she couldn't cope with her strange life, which had a tendency to split into different compartments when she would have preferred to experience them all at once.<br /> * The trouble was just - she stirred her espresso contemplatively - that she belonged everywhere more or less, or perhaps a bit less than more, she considered with amusement. That she was always on the edge of things.<br /> * ...she felt as though she were outside the moment, as though she were too big a loop in a net that was already loosely woven, the faces to her left and right became alien to her, she wondered how she had ended up here, why she wasn't somewhere else, on her way home, in her pad, in the office, in her apartment or somewhere in between.<br /> * ...in reality, she thought, all the workers who were typing so zealously, who were taking notes in shorthand, who were telephoning and running around with their files, they were all dangling in the middle of nowhere: a thousand meters under the sea.<br /> * How could you explain to him that nothing was there, nothing sinful or tragic, nothing depraved or immoral, 'It just happens that way, Papa, I don't do anything about it, I have the feeling I'm not even there,' she had said, 'It means nothing to me. Do I look depraved to you?'<br /> * As she turned away, the apartment, the red balloon, emerged more clearly in her vision - a side stage that was in the shadows before, yanked suddenly to the front and illuminated with hidden spotlights.<br /> == The First Dress ==<br /> * -<br /> == Vanishing Points ==<br /> * ...everyone Westermann had ever known, everyone including the people in his office, in the shops, in trams and neighboring apartments, seemed to disintegrate into loosely bundled prisms with no core or substance, circling one another, refracting one another, blindingly iridescent like some material whose base color is indeterminable.<br /> * ...as though it were all a distant memory, almost untrue, transformed into mere anecdote through the magic of someone paying attention.<br /> * This was Mark's great gift, the ease of his chatter, his perspective, his ability to exalt images out of the grey stream of everyday life, the feeling of being free to do this, that, whatever you pleased.<br /> == The Apartment ==<br /> * -<br /> == Dreamlight ==<br /> * As fragments of headlines, leads, reviews and advertisements assembled into strange, slightly grotesque and senseless combinations at the surface of her perception, a deeper layer of her consciousness wrestled doggedly, with tenacious strength, to identify a connection between everything, to locate a causal source for the chain of fatal accidents that had befallen her over the past twenty-four hours, to find the trespass on which everything could be strung, the mistake that must be hiding somewhere in plain sight.<br /> * Suddenly, as though the proper temperature and pressure level had finally been reached or the proper catalyst finally activated, the scattered components of her anxieties knitted together and took shape. A visible target was now offered, and the vague formless indignation that had borne her forwards since her dreary awakening began speeding in circles like the needle of some delicate instrument, signaling at a single point.<br /> * ...she remembered exactly where it had been in the paper, the article that was forcing itself into her memory...<br /> == Homeward Bound ==<br /> * The image sank deep inside him, singed itself painfully into his flesh, mingling in the depths with everything else that had left him behind and was perpetually leaving him behind...<br /> * And if someone tells you he would've written poems, would've painted pictures, would've made music if only life gave him time, then you laugh right in his face and explain that if nothing comes out, there's nothing inside, and if there's nothing inside, nothing comes out. Everybody is what they do, and what they do is what they are, and that's all there is to it.<br /> == The Second Dress ==<br /> * She sends out her feelers into the timeless room and, with a bold decisiveness, declares it to be summer, declares it to be the Côte du Midi, and already she can feel, with the aid of reactivated memories, the gently caress of sand between her naked toes, the shimmering play of sunbeams upon eyelashes that are opening hesitantly...<br /> * ...how ridiculous it was to love books when there were such better things to love...<br /> * ...everything on the brink, everything near enough and far enough to be touched but not injured, to be isolated but not shut off.<br /> * She saw applause in the glances of the people walking by and detached herself from herself - all part of the game - to approach herself from their vantage, smiling and filled with admiration.<br /> * Everything was just like this time. But 'this time' had changed in the meanwhile, it had beautifully transformed, it had emerged perfectly round, perfectly gleaming out of a pool of wishful dreams. Each day of the three hundred and sixty-five intervening days had woven new threads into it, had woven more blue into the sky, more gold into the sand, more splendor into the encounter.<br /> * She downed the rosé like medicine and observed how an intoxication began to rise, cloudily and foggily, into the gap that had opened up between herself and her performance. Already her memories were being coated with a light mould of imprecision.<br /> == Family ==<br /> * ...feeling that she was a being of lesser density than them, a being of looser structure...<br /> * Obediently she closed her eyes, she emptied her mind and let everything run through her like a sieve...<br /> *... Even Therese, who understood none of it and never got around to understanding anything because her senses were so entirely absorbed by the intoxication of feelings that were contradictory yet mysteriously mingles, that were dissolved yet connected, that were small yet comprehensive, that were empty yet fulfilled.<br /> * ...down to the rotten cores that she knew were there, she was so certain of it they might as well be her own core, only she didn't make so much effort to pretend everything was okay.<br /> * And maybe she would have formulated it more seriously if another Therese hadn't been standing behind a column over there, sniggering and whispering to her: 'Look at that, the floozy found religion, one Sunday without a rendezvous and she drops in the lap of the Lord.' She said the words anyway, yet nothing happened...<br /> * The other Therese was suddenly beside her again, she was standing behind the gate with eyebrows raised, the corners of her mouth drooping mockingly, saying, 'Aw, poor you. What did you expect?'<br /> * ...you needed to take a certain attitude towards life, you needed a tough shell to protect you from self-exposure. You couldn't just show you cared about something. What was the point of anything in the end?<br /> * Nobody stopped her from going where she wanted; the problem was that she didn't know where she wanted to go, and so she remained standing where she was, she'd just as well stand there as someplace else...<br /> == Wrong Turns ==<br /> * ...and as she coasted along blindly in the taxi she didn't coast down streets, under the heavens, on the earth or among people, but all alone in the tunnel of her idée fixe, split off from everything.<br /> * ...groped through the tangle of her thoughts to located the thread that would unravel everything. But she couldn't find anything tangible, no beginning, no sequence of events, no ending, only a formless mass of circling fog that, with a clap, gave way to the boss entering the hallway... <br /> == The Third Dress ==<br /> == Foreword ==<br /> == Foreword ==<br /> == Foreword ==<br /> == Foreword ==</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Films&diff=1635 2026-11-02T09:32:50Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 */</p> <hr /> <div>== Films to Watch ==<br /> <br /> [https://www.cinealcazar.fr/fichier/programme.pdf Cinema Alcazar Program]<br /> <br /> * True Lies<br /> * Long Kiss Goodnight (Christmas Action) - https://www.avclub.com/women-of-action-the-long-kiss-goodnight-geena-davis-samuel-l-jackson<br /> * Wicker: https://youtu.be/HP0BWBWn14I?si=E5oThE4uNiED28b3<br /> * morvern Callar<br /> * Do the right thing <br /> * run Lola Run<br /> * Mind trips<br /> ** Triangle<br /> ** Beyond the infinite two minutes<br /> ** Enemy<br /> ** Under the Silver Lake<br /> ** The Vanishing<br /> ** Angel Heart<br /> ** Following<br /> ** The Invisible Guest<br /> ** Perfect Blue<br /> ** Resolution<br /> * fast times <br /> * the Jerk<br /> * Mutiny on the Bounty<br /> * Entrapment <br /> * Mask of Zorro<br /> * PTA - Hard Eight, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, etc<br /> * Little Big and Far - weird scandinavian film<br /> * This is Spinal tap<br /> * Big Night - Tucci and Shaloub<br /> * Punch drunk love<br /> * Boyhood <br /> * Kind hearts and coronets <br /> * A night at the opera <br /> * Blazing saddles <br /> * Lives of others<br /> * Lost in Translation <br /> * One flew over <br /> * Get out<br /> * Maltese falcon <br /> * Early mad maxes<br /> * Joule of the Nile<br /> * the man with two brains<br /> * Psycho Therapy - Steve Buscemi is a serial killer who wants to advise an author, but ends up playing a marriage counselor.<br /> * Early Steve Martin<br /> * A Complete Unknown <br /> * la La Land -<br /> * The Phoenician Scheme - new Wes Anderson comedy espionage thriller <br /> * Thelma - Grandma fights con artists<br /> * Kinds of Kindness<br /> * 2001<br /> * The Elephant Man<br /> * The Fabulous Baker Boys<br /> * Network<br /> <br /> == Films Watched ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 ===<br /> <br /> * 69. Cape Fear - Martin Scorsese<br /> * 68. Postcards from the Edge<br /> * 67. Scream 4 <br /> * 66. I Know What You Did Last Summer<br /> * 65. The Color of Money - Martin Scorsese<br /> * 64. GoodFellas - Martin Scorsese<br /> * 63. The Firm<br /> * 62. After Hours - Martin Scorsese<br /> * 61. The King of Comedy - Martin Scorsese<br /> * 60. Sinners<br /> * 59. The Sixth Sense<br /> * 58. Alter Ego<br /> * 57. Toy Story 5<br /> * 56. Franz K<br /> * 55. Taxi Driver - Martin Scorsese<br /> * 54. The Tailor of Panama<br /> * 53. La bataille de Gaulle: J'écris ton nom<br /> * 52. Heat<br /> * 51. Training Day<br /> * 50. The Guns of Naverone<br /> * 49. La bataille de Gaulle: L'age de fer<br /> * 48. Kind Hearts and Coronets<br /> * 47. Parasite<br /> * 46. Arsenic and Old Lace <br /> * 45. Get Out <br /> * 44. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (rewatch)<br /> * 43. Apex<br /> * 42. 21 Jump Street<br /> * 41. Scream 3 <br /> * 40. Shutter Island<br /> * 39. Scream 2<br /> * 38. Wall-E<br /> * 37. Get Smart<br /> * 36. Se7en<br /> * 35. The Producers<br /> * 34: Garfield: The Movie<br /> * 33. Leon<br /> * 32. Shimmer Lake<br /> * 31. Unforgiven<br /> * 30. A Mighty Wind<br /> * 29. Magnolia<br /> * 28. Escape from Alcatraz<br /> * 27. The Sting<br /> * 26. Pulp Fiction<br /> * 25. Failure to Launch<br /> * 24. Hudson Hawk<br /> * 23. Mystère à St Tropez<br /> * 22. The Thomas Crown Affair<br /> * 21. The Three Amigos (1986)<br /> * 20. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - Jonathon Demme<br /> * 19. Top Secret (1984)<br /> * 18. One Battle After Another (2025) - Paul Thomas Anderson<br /> * 17. Memento (2000) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 16. Pleasantville (1998) - Gary Ross<br /> * 15. The Fisher King (1991) -<br /> * 14. The Mastermind<br /> * 13. The Birdcage<br /> * 12. Fight Club (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Knives Out: Glass Onion (rewatch)<br /> * 10. Twins<br /> * 9. The Remains of the Day<br /> * 8. The Ladykillers<br /> * 7. Us (rewatch)<br /> * 6. Saving Private Ryan (rewatch)<br /> * 5. Event Horizon<br /> * 4. Insomnia (2002) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Knives Out (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Gattaca (1997) - Andrew Niccol<br /> * 1. Eddington (2025) - Ari Aster<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> * 65. Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)<br /> * 64. Miller's Crossing<br /> * 63. Blood Simple<br /> * 62. Crazy Stupid Love<br /> * 61. Happiest Season<br /> * 60. Bridge of Spies <br /> * 59. Identity<br /> * 58. Clueless<br /> * 57. Ace Ventura 2: Call of Nature <br /> * 56. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World<br /> * 55. Apollo 13<br /> * 54. LA Confidential (rewatch)<br /> * 53. Inside Llewyn Davis<br /> * 52. M3gan<br /> * 51. Clear and Present Danger <br /> * 50. 12 Monkeys<br /> * 49. No Country for Old Men<br /> * 48. The Hudsucker Proxy<br /> * 47. La Cuisse ou l'aile<br /> * 46. Mission Impossible : The Final Reckoning<br /> * 45. Dumb and Dumber <br /> * 44. Rear Window<br /> * 43. Raising Arizona<br /> * 42. Tenet (rewatch)<br /> * 41. The fifth Element <br /> * 40. Burn Without Reading <br /> * 39. The Big Lebowski (rewatch)<br /> * 38. Fargo (rewatch)<br /> * 37. 28 Days Later (rewatch)<br /> * 36. O Brother, Where Art Thou<br /> * 35. Mickey 17 <br /> * 34. Empire of the Sun <br /> * 33. The Fugitive <br /> * 32. Wet Hot American Summer (rewatch)<br /> * 31. Ted<br /> * 30. Hundreds of Beavers <br /> * 29. Wayne’s World (rewatch)<br /> * 28. True Grit (Coen Bros)<br /> * 27. Groundhog Day (rewatch)<br /> * 26. Moonrise Kingdom <br /> * 25. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatra <br /> * 24. Adaptation (rewatch)<br /> * 23. Romancing the Stone (rewatch)<br /> * Easter Film Festival<br /> ** 22. Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)<br /> ** 21. Witness<br /> ** 20. The Grand Budapest Hotel (rewatch)<br /> ** 19. Conclave<br /> ** 18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective<br /> ** 17. Lincoln<br /> ** 16. Being John Malkovitch (rewatch)<br /> ** 15. AI (rewatch)<br /> ** 14. The Royal Tenenbaums (rewatch)<br /> ** 13. Total Recall 1990 (rewatch)<br /> ** 12. In the Line of Fire (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Flow <br /> * 10. Juror No. 2<br /> * 9. The Savage Robot<br /> * 8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (rewatch)<br /> * 7. Dead Poet's Society<br /> * 6. Notting Hill (rewatch)<br /> * 5. My Neighbor Totoro (rewatch)<br /> * 4. Kiki’s Delivery Service (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Dr Strangelove (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Dune 2<br /> * 1. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me (rewatch)<br /> <br /> === 2024 and Earlier ===<br /> * The Big Lebowski<br /> * The Holiday<br /> * Love Actually<br /> * Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure<br /> * The Mask<br /> [[Category:Films]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Films&diff=1634 2026-11-02T07:09:10Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 */</p> <hr /> <div>== Films to Watch ==<br /> <br /> [https://www.cinealcazar.fr/fichier/programme.pdf Cinema Alcazar Program]<br /> <br /> * True Lies<br /> * Long Kiss Goodnight (Christmas Action) - https://www.avclub.com/women-of-action-the-long-kiss-goodnight-geena-davis-samuel-l-jackson<br /> * Wicker: https://youtu.be/HP0BWBWn14I?si=E5oThE4uNiED28b3<br /> * morvern Callar<br /> * Do the right thing <br /> * run Lola Run<br /> * Mind trips<br /> ** Triangle<br /> ** Beyond the infinite two minutes<br /> ** Enemy<br /> ** Under the Silver Lake<br /> ** The Vanishing<br /> ** Angel Heart<br /> ** Following<br /> ** The Invisible Guest<br /> ** Perfect Blue<br /> ** Resolution<br /> * fast times <br /> * the Jerk<br /> * Mutiny on the Bounty<br /> * Entrapment <br /> * Mask of Zorro<br /> * PTA - Hard Eight, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, etc<br /> * Little Big and Far - weird scandinavian film<br /> * This is Spinal tap<br /> * Big Night - Tucci and Shaloub<br /> * Punch drunk love<br /> * Boyhood <br /> * Kind hearts and coronets <br /> * A night at the opera <br /> * Blazing saddles <br /> * Lives of others<br /> * Lost in Translation <br /> * One flew over <br /> * Get out<br /> * Maltese falcon <br /> * Early mad maxes<br /> * Joule of the Nile<br /> * the man with two brains<br /> * Psycho Therapy - Steve Buscemi is a serial killer who wants to advise an author, but ends up playing a marriage counselor.<br /> * Early Steve Martin<br /> * A Complete Unknown <br /> * la La Land -<br /> * The Phoenician Scheme - new Wes Anderson comedy espionage thriller <br /> * Thelma - Grandma fights con artists<br /> * Kinds of Kindness<br /> * 2001<br /> * The Elephant Man<br /> * The Fabulous Baker Boys<br /> * Network<br /> <br /> == Films Watched ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 ===<br /> <br /> * 69. Cape Fear<br /> * 68. Postcards from the Edge<br /> * 67. Scream 4 <br /> * 66. I Know What You Did Last Summer<br /> * 65. The Color of Money<br /> * 64. GoodFellas<br /> * 63. The Firm<br /> * 62. After Hours<br /> * 61. The King of Comedy<br /> * 60. Sinners<br /> * 59. The Sixth Sense<br /> * 58. Alter Ego<br /> * 57. Toy Story 5<br /> * 56. Franz K<br /> * 55. Taxi Driver<br /> * 54. The Tailor of Panama<br /> * 53. La bataille de Gaulle: J'écris ton nom<br /> * 52. Heat<br /> * 51. Training Day<br /> * 50. The Guns of Naverone<br /> * 49. La bataille de Gaulle: L'age de fer<br /> * 48. Kind Hearts and Coronets<br /> * 47. Parasite<br /> * 46. Arsenic and Old Lace <br /> * 45. Get Out <br /> * 44. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (rewatch)<br /> * 43. Apex<br /> * 42. 21 Jump Street<br /> * 41. Scream 3 <br /> * 40. Shutter Island<br /> * 39. Scream 2<br /> * 38. Wall-E<br /> * 37. Get Smart<br /> * 36. Se7en<br /> * 35. The Producers<br /> * 34: Garfield: The Movie<br /> * 33. Leon<br /> * 32. Shimmer Lake<br /> * 31. Unforgiven<br /> * 30. A Mighty Wind<br /> * 29. Magnolia<br /> * 28. Escape from Alcatraz<br /> * 27. The Sting<br /> * 26. Pulp Fiction<br /> * 25. Failure to Launch<br /> * 24. Hudson Hawk<br /> * 23. Mystère à St Tropez<br /> * 22. The Thomas Crown Affair<br /> * 21. The Three Amigos (1986)<br /> * 20. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - Jonathon Demme<br /> * 19. Top Secret (1984)<br /> * 18. One Battle After Another (2025) - Paul Thomas Anderson<br /> * 17. Memento (2000) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 16. Pleasantville (1998) - Gary Ross<br /> * 15. The Fisher King (1991) -<br /> * 14. The Mastermind<br /> * 13. The Birdcage<br /> * 12. Fight Club (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Knives Out: Glass Onion (rewatch)<br /> * 10. Twins<br /> * 9. The Remains of the Day<br /> * 8. The Ladykillers<br /> * 7. Us (rewatch)<br /> * 6. Saving Private Ryan (rewatch)<br /> * 5. Event Horizon<br /> * 4. Insomnia (2002) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Knives Out (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Gattaca (1997) - Andrew Niccol<br /> * 1. Eddington (2025) - Ari Aster<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> * 65. Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)<br /> * 64. Miller's Crossing<br /> * 63. Blood Simple<br /> * 62. Crazy Stupid Love<br /> * 61. Happiest Season<br /> * 60. Bridge of Spies <br /> * 59. Identity<br /> * 58. Clueless<br /> * 57. Ace Ventura 2: Call of Nature <br /> * 56. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World<br /> * 55. Apollo 13<br /> * 54. LA Confidential (rewatch)<br /> * 53. Inside Llewyn Davis<br /> * 52. M3gan<br /> * 51. Clear and Present Danger <br /> * 50. 12 Monkeys<br /> * 49. No Country for Old Men<br /> * 48. The Hudsucker Proxy<br /> * 47. La Cuisse ou l'aile<br /> * 46. Mission Impossible : The Final Reckoning<br /> * 45. Dumb and Dumber <br /> * 44. Rear Window<br /> * 43. Raising Arizona<br /> * 42. Tenet (rewatch)<br /> * 41. The fifth Element <br /> * 40. Burn Without Reading <br /> * 39. The Big Lebowski (rewatch)<br /> * 38. Fargo (rewatch)<br /> * 37. 28 Days Later (rewatch)<br /> * 36. O Brother, Where Art Thou<br /> * 35. Mickey 17 <br /> * 34. Empire of the Sun <br /> * 33. The Fugitive <br /> * 32. Wet Hot American Summer (rewatch)<br /> * 31. Ted<br /> * 30. Hundreds of Beavers <br /> * 29. Wayne’s World (rewatch)<br /> * 28. True Grit (Coen Bros)<br /> * 27. Groundhog Day (rewatch)<br /> * 26. Moonrise Kingdom <br /> * 25. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatra <br /> * 24. Adaptation (rewatch)<br /> * 23. Romancing the Stone (rewatch)<br /> * Easter Film Festival<br /> ** 22. Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)<br /> ** 21. Witness<br /> ** 20. The Grand Budapest Hotel (rewatch)<br /> ** 19. Conclave<br /> ** 18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective<br /> ** 17. Lincoln<br /> ** 16. Being John Malkovitch (rewatch)<br /> ** 15. AI (rewatch)<br /> ** 14. The Royal Tenenbaums (rewatch)<br /> ** 13. Total Recall 1990 (rewatch)<br /> ** 12. In the Line of Fire (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Flow <br /> * 10. Juror No. 2<br /> * 9. The Savage Robot<br /> * 8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (rewatch)<br /> * 7. Dead Poet's Society<br /> * 6. Notting Hill (rewatch)<br /> * 5. My Neighbor Totoro (rewatch)<br /> * 4. Kiki’s Delivery Service (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Dr Strangelove (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Dune 2<br /> * 1. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me (rewatch)<br /> <br /> === 2024 and Earlier ===<br /> * The Big Lebowski<br /> * The Holiday<br /> * Love Actually<br /> * Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure<br /> * The Mask<br /> [[Category:Films]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Books&diff=1633 2026-11-02T07:08:07Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 (week 45) */</p> <hr /> <div>== Books to Buy ==<br /> <br /> Used:<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&amp;qid=1783763181&amp;sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&amp;sr=8-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman<br /> * Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan<br /> <br /> Paperbacks:<br /> * The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin<br /> * Alison Gopnik - The Philosophical Baby<br /> * A Natural History of the Senses- Diane Ackerman<br /> * Ram Dass - Be Here Now<br /> * luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&amp;pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&amp;pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&amp;pd_rd_i=1250266645&amp;psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 <br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&amp;qid=1784816314&amp;sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=elyn+saks&amp;qid=1783197867&amp;sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&amp;sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&amp;qid=1783198086&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&amp;sr=1-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet<br /> * Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&amp;qid=1775903643&amp;sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]<br /> * Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity<br /> * Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience<br /> * Lorrie Moore - Self Help<br /> * La Modification - Michel Butor<br /> * Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec<br /> * How Like a God - Rex Stout<br /> <br /> * Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur<br /> * Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau<br /> * Nausea - Sartre<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].<br /> * Building a second brain<br /> * how to solve it<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories <br /> * Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz<br /> *<br /> <br /> Hardbacks:<br /> <br /> * Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience <br /> <br /> * [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit <br /> * [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=thomas+sheehan&amp;qid=1771981151&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&amp;sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?<br /> * [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey<br /> * Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod<br /> * L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger<br /> * Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)<br /> * A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)<br /> * The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium<br /> * Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization<br /> * Consolations - David Whyte<br /> <br /> == Books to Read ==<br /> <br /> * Reading to Learn - William Zinger<br /> * Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut<br /> <br /> == Currently Reading ==<br /> <br /> * [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear<br /> *[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer<br /> * [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston <br /> *[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)<br /> *[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike<br /> <br /> == Books Read ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 (week 45) ===<br /> <br /> * 48. [[Illusions]]- Ruth Rehmann <br /> * 47. Die Stumme Tod (Rath #2) - Volker Kutchner - In German!<br /> * 46. [[Proto]]: How One Ancient Language Went Global - Laura Spinney<br /> * 45. [[Ways of Seeing]] - John Berger<br /> * 44. [[Shadow Ticket]] - Thomas Pynchon<br /> * 43. [[Hyperpolitics]] - Anton Jäger<br /> * 42. [[Words, Thoughts, and Theories]] - Alison Gopnik and Andrew N Meltzoff<br /> * 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan<br /> * 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach<br /> * 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung <br /> * 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger<br /> * 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges<br /> * 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley<br /> * 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck<br /> * 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng<br /> * 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self<br /> * 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang<br /> * 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral <br /> * 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.<br /> * 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter <br /> * 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)<br /> * 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell<br /> * 22. Der Nasse Fische (Rath #1)- Volker Kutscher (in German!)<br /> * 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab<br /> * 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade<br /> * 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn<br /> * 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> * 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen<br /> * 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard<br /> <br /> * 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington<br /> *14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands<br /> *13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms<br /> *12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> *11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar<br /> *10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> *9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola<br /> *8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine<br /> <br /> * 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle<br /> * 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson<br /> * 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie <br /> * 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola<br /> *3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott<br /> * 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum<br /> * 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> <br /> * 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)<br /> * 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball<br /> * 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards<br /> * 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins<br /> * 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis<br /> * 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola <br /> * 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler<br /> * 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya<br /> *47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers<br /> * 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts<br /> * 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola<br /> * 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)<br /> * 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky<br /> * 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac<br /> * 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)<br /> * 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac<br /> * 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)<br /> * 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)<br /> <br /> * 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)<br /> * 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry<br /> * 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife<br /> * 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges<br /> * 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin<br /> * 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener<br /> * 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater<br /> * 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman<br /> * 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton<br /> * 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July<br /> * 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter<br /> * 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards<br /> * 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer<br /> * 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman<br /> * 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle<br /> * 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham<br /> * 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark<br /> * 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath<br /> * 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)<br /> * 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett<br /> * 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]<br /> * 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter<br /> * 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> * 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux<br /> * 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett<br /> * 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)<br /> * 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque<br /> <br /> === 2024 ===<br /> <br /> * The Plot - Will Eisner<br /> * The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco<br /> * The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut<br /> * Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)<br /> * The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner<br /> * The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil<br /> * Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg<br /> * Le Ton Beau de…<br /> * The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson<br /> * Psychonauts - <br /> * The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut<br /> * In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel<br /> * Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson<br /> * Les Effinger - Gabriele Target<br /> * Triad - Tom Keve<br /> * Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig<br /> * The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich<br /> * How Language Works - David Crystal<br /> * The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf<br /> * [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter<br /> * [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> <br /> == Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==<br /> That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':<br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 1. Language &amp; Style Difficulties ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.<br /> * '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).<br /> * '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 2. Length &amp; Scope ===<br /> <br /> * '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.<br /> * '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.<br /> * '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 3. Experimental Structure ===<br /> <br /> * '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.<br /> * '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.<br /> * '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===<br /> <br /> * '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.<br /> * '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.<br /> * '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 5. Dense Intertextuality ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.<br /> * '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.<br /> * '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===<br /> <br /> * '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.<br /> * '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===<br /> <br /> * ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)<br /> * ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)<br /> * ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)<br /> * ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)<br /> * ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)<br /> <br /> [[Category:Books]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Books&diff=1632 2026-11-02T07:07:55Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 (week 45) */</p> <hr /> <div>== Books to Buy ==<br /> <br /> Used:<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&amp;qid=1783763181&amp;sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&amp;sr=8-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman<br /> * Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan<br /> <br /> Paperbacks:<br /> * The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin<br /> * Alison Gopnik - The Philosophical Baby<br /> * A Natural History of the Senses- Diane Ackerman<br /> * Ram Dass - Be Here Now<br /> * luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&amp;pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&amp;pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&amp;pd_rd_i=1250266645&amp;psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 <br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&amp;qid=1784816314&amp;sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=elyn+saks&amp;qid=1783197867&amp;sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&amp;sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&amp;qid=1783198086&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&amp;sr=1-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet<br /> * Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&amp;qid=1775903643&amp;sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]<br /> * Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity<br /> * Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience<br /> * Lorrie Moore - Self Help<br /> * La Modification - Michel Butor<br /> * Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec<br /> * How Like a God - Rex Stout<br /> <br /> * Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur<br /> * Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau<br /> * Nausea - Sartre<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].<br /> * Building a second brain<br /> * how to solve it<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories <br /> * Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz<br /> *<br /> <br /> Hardbacks:<br /> <br /> * Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience <br /> <br /> * [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit <br /> * [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=thomas+sheehan&amp;qid=1771981151&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&amp;sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?<br /> * [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey<br /> * Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod<br /> * L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger<br /> * Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)<br /> * A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)<br /> * The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium<br /> * Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization<br /> * Consolations - David Whyte<br /> <br /> == Books to Read ==<br /> <br /> * Reading to Learn - William Zinger<br /> * Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut<br /> <br /> == Currently Reading ==<br /> <br /> * [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear<br /> *[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer<br /> * [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston <br /> *[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)<br /> *[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike<br /> <br /> == Books Read ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 (week 45) ===<br /> <br /> * 48. Illusions- Ruth Rehmann <br /> * 47. Die Stumme Tod (Rath #2) - Volker Kutchner - In German!<br /> * 46. [[Proto]]: How One Ancient Language Went Global - Laura Spinney<br /> * 45. [[Ways of Seeing]] - John Berger<br /> * 44. [[Shadow Ticket]] - Thomas Pynchon<br /> * 43. [[Hyperpolitics]] - Anton Jäger<br /> * 42. [[Words, Thoughts, and Theories]] - Alison Gopnik and Andrew N Meltzoff<br /> * 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan<br /> * 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach<br /> * 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung <br /> * 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger<br /> * 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges<br /> * 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley<br /> * 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck<br /> * 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng<br /> * 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self<br /> * 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang<br /> * 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral <br /> * 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.<br /> * 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter <br /> * 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)<br /> * 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell<br /> * 22. Der Nasse Fische (Rath #1)- Volker Kutscher (in German!)<br /> * 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab<br /> * 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade<br /> * 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn<br /> * 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> * 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen<br /> * 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard<br /> <br /> * 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington<br /> *14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands<br /> *13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms<br /> *12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> *11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar<br /> *10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> *9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola<br /> *8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine<br /> <br /> * 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle<br /> * 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson<br /> * 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie <br /> * 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola<br /> *3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott<br /> * 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum<br /> * 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> <br /> * 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)<br /> * 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball<br /> * 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards<br /> * 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins<br /> * 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis<br /> * 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola <br /> * 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler<br /> * 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya<br /> *47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers<br /> * 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts<br /> * 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola<br /> * 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)<br /> * 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky<br /> * 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac<br /> * 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)<br /> * 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac<br /> * 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)<br /> * 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)<br /> <br /> * 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)<br /> * 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry<br /> * 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife<br /> * 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges<br /> * 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin<br /> * 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener<br /> * 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater<br /> * 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman<br /> * 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton<br /> * 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July<br /> * 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter<br /> * 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards<br /> * 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer<br /> * 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman<br /> * 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle<br /> * 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham<br /> * 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark<br /> * 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath<br /> * 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)<br /> * 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett<br /> * 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]<br /> * 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter<br /> * 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> * 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux<br /> * 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett<br /> * 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)<br /> * 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque<br /> <br /> === 2024 ===<br /> <br /> * The Plot - Will Eisner<br /> * The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco<br /> * The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut<br /> * Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)<br /> * The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner<br /> * The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil<br /> * Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg<br /> * Le Ton Beau de…<br /> * The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson<br /> * Psychonauts - <br /> * The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut<br /> * In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel<br /> * Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson<br /> * Les Effinger - Gabriele Target<br /> * Triad - Tom Keve<br /> * Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig<br /> * The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich<br /> * How Language Works - David Crystal<br /> * The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf<br /> * [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter<br /> * [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> <br /> == Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==<br /> That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':<br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 1. Language &amp; Style Difficulties ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.<br /> * '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).<br /> * '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 2. Length &amp; Scope ===<br /> <br /> * '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.<br /> * '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.<br /> * '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 3. Experimental Structure ===<br /> <br /> * '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.<br /> * '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.<br /> * '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===<br /> <br /> * '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.<br /> * '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.<br /> * '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 5. Dense Intertextuality ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.<br /> * '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.<br /> * '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===<br /> <br /> * '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.<br /> * '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===<br /> <br /> * ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)<br /> * ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)<br /> * ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)<br /> * ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)<br /> * ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)<br /> <br /> [[Category:Books]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Books&diff=1631 2026-11-01T17:05:31Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 (week 45) */</p> <hr /> <div>== Books to Buy ==<br /> <br /> Used:<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&amp;qid=1783763181&amp;sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&amp;sr=8-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman<br /> * Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan<br /> <br /> Paperbacks:<br /> * The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin<br /> * Alison Gopnik - The Philosophical Baby<br /> * A Natural History of the Senses- Diane Ackerman<br /> * Ram Dass - Be Here Now<br /> * luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&amp;pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&amp;pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&amp;pd_rd_i=1250266645&amp;psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 <br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&amp;qid=1784816314&amp;sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=elyn+saks&amp;qid=1783197867&amp;sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&amp;sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&amp;qid=1783198086&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&amp;sr=1-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet<br /> * Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&amp;qid=1775903643&amp;sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]<br /> * Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity<br /> * Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience<br /> * Lorrie Moore - Self Help<br /> * La Modification - Michel Butor<br /> * Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec<br /> * How Like a God - Rex Stout<br /> <br /> * Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur<br /> * Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau<br /> * Nausea - Sartre<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].<br /> * Building a second brain<br /> * how to solve it<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories <br /> * Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz<br /> *<br /> <br /> Hardbacks:<br /> <br /> * Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience <br /> <br /> * [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit <br /> * [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=thomas+sheehan&amp;qid=1771981151&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&amp;sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?<br /> * [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey<br /> * Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod<br /> * L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger<br /> * Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)<br /> * A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)<br /> * The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium<br /> * Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization<br /> * Consolations - David Whyte<br /> <br /> == Books to Read ==<br /> <br /> * Reading to Learn - William Zinger<br /> * Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut<br /> <br /> == Currently Reading ==<br /> <br /> * [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear<br /> *[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer<br /> * [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston <br /> *[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)<br /> *[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike<br /> <br /> == Books Read ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 (week 45) ===<br /> <br /> * 48. Illusions- Ruth Rehmann 47. Die Stumme Tod (Rath #2) - Volker Kutchner - In German!<br /> * 46. [[Proto]]: How One Ancient Language Went Global - Laura Spinney<br /> * 45. [[Ways of Seeing]] - John Berger<br /> * 44. [[Shadow Ticket]] - Thomas Pynchon<br /> * 43. [[Hyperpolitics]] - Anton Jäger<br /> * 42. [[Words, Thoughts, and Theories]] - Alison Gopnik and Andrew N Meltzoff<br /> * 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan<br /> * 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach<br /> * 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung <br /> * 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger<br /> * 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges<br /> * 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley<br /> * 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck<br /> * 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng<br /> * 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self<br /> * 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang<br /> * 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral <br /> * 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.<br /> * 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter <br /> * 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)<br /> * 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell<br /> * 22. Der Nasse Fische (Rath #1)- Volker Kutscher (in German!)<br /> * 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab<br /> * 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade<br /> * 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn<br /> * 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> * 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen<br /> * 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard<br /> <br /> * 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington<br /> *14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands<br /> *13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms<br /> *12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> *11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar<br /> *10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> *9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola<br /> *8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine<br /> <br /> * 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle<br /> * 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson<br /> * 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie <br /> * 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola<br /> *3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott<br /> * 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum<br /> * 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> <br /> * 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)<br /> * 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball<br /> * 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards<br /> * 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins<br /> * 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis<br /> * 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola <br /> * 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler<br /> * 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya<br /> *47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers<br /> * 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts<br /> * 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola<br /> * 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)<br /> * 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky<br /> * 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac<br /> * 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)<br /> * 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac<br /> * 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)<br /> * 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)<br /> <br /> * 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)<br /> * 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry<br /> * 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife<br /> * 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges<br /> * 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin<br /> * 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener<br /> * 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater<br /> * 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman<br /> * 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton<br /> * 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July<br /> * 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter<br /> * 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards<br /> * 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer<br /> * 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman<br /> * 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle<br /> * 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham<br /> * 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark<br /> * 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath<br /> * 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)<br /> * 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett<br /> * 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]<br /> * 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter<br /> * 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> * 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux<br /> * 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett<br /> * 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)<br /> * 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque<br /> <br /> === 2024 ===<br /> <br /> * The Plot - Will Eisner<br /> * The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco<br /> * The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut<br /> * Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)<br /> * The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner<br /> * The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil<br /> * Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg<br /> * Le Ton Beau de…<br /> * The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson<br /> * Psychonauts - <br /> * The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut<br /> * In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel<br /> * Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson<br /> * Les Effinger - Gabriele Target<br /> * Triad - Tom Keve<br /> * Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig<br /> * The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich<br /> * How Language Works - David Crystal<br /> * The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf<br /> * [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter<br /> * [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> <br /> == Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==<br /> That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':<br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 1. Language &amp; Style Difficulties ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.<br /> * '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).<br /> * '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 2. Length &amp; Scope ===<br /> <br /> * '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.<br /> * '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.<br /> * '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 3. Experimental Structure ===<br /> <br /> * '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.<br /> * '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.<br /> * '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===<br /> <br /> * '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.<br /> * '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.<br /> * '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 5. Dense Intertextuality ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.<br /> * '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.<br /> * '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===<br /> <br /> * '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.<br /> * '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===<br /> <br /> * ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)<br /> * ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)<br /> * ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)<br /> * ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)<br /> * ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)<br /> <br /> [[Category:Books]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Films&diff=1630 2026-11-01T17:04:15Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 */</p> <hr /> <div>== Films to Watch ==<br /> <br /> [https://www.cinealcazar.fr/fichier/programme.pdf Cinema Alcazar Program]<br /> <br /> * True Lies<br /> * Long Kiss Goodnight (Christmas Action) - https://www.avclub.com/women-of-action-the-long-kiss-goodnight-geena-davis-samuel-l-jackson<br /> * Wicker: https://youtu.be/HP0BWBWn14I?si=E5oThE4uNiED28b3<br /> * morvern Callar<br /> * Do the right thing <br /> * run Lola Run<br /> * Mind trips<br /> ** Triangle<br /> ** Beyond the infinite two minutes<br /> ** Enemy<br /> ** Under the Silver Lake<br /> ** The Vanishing<br /> ** Angel Heart<br /> ** Following<br /> ** The Invisible Guest<br /> ** Perfect Blue<br /> ** Resolution<br /> * fast times <br /> * the Jerk<br /> * Mutiny on the Bounty<br /> * Entrapment <br /> * Mask of Zorro<br /> * PTA - Hard Eight, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, etc<br /> * Little Big and Far - weird scandinavian film<br /> * This is Spinal tap<br /> * Big Night - Tucci and Shaloub<br /> * Punch drunk love<br /> * Boyhood <br /> * Kind hearts and coronets <br /> * A night at the opera <br /> * Blazing saddles <br /> * Lives of others<br /> * Lost in Translation <br /> * One flew over <br /> * Get out<br /> * Maltese falcon <br /> * Early mad maxes<br /> * Joule of the Nile<br /> * the man with two brains<br /> * Psycho Therapy - Steve Buscemi is a serial killer who wants to advise an author, but ends up playing a marriage counselor.<br /> * Early Steve Martin<br /> * A Complete Unknown <br /> * la La Land -<br /> * The Phoenician Scheme - new Wes Anderson comedy espionage thriller <br /> * Thelma - Grandma fights con artists<br /> * Kinds of Kindness<br /> * 2001<br /> * The Elephant Man<br /> * The Fabulous Baker Boys<br /> * Network<br /> <br /> == Films Watched ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 ===<br /> <br /> * 67. Scream 4 66. I Know What You Did Last Summer<br /> * 65. The Color of Money<br /> * 64. GoodFellas<br /> * 63. The Firm<br /> * 62. After Hours<br /> * 61. The King of Comedy<br /> * 60. Sinners<br /> * 59. The Sixth Sense<br /> * 58. Alter Ego<br /> * 57. Toy Story 5<br /> * 56. Franz K<br /> * 55. Taxi Driver<br /> * 54. The Tailor of Panama<br /> * 53. La bataille de Gaulle: J'écris ton nom<br /> * 52. Heat<br /> * 51. Training Day<br /> * 50. The Guns of Naverone<br /> * 49. La bataille de Gaulle: L'age de fer<br /> * 48. Kind Hearts and Coronets<br /> * 47. Parasite<br /> * 46. Arsenic and Old Lace <br /> * 45. Get Out <br /> * 44. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (rewatch)<br /> * 43. Apex<br /> * 42. 21 Jump Street<br /> * 41. Scream 3 <br /> * 40. Shutter Island<br /> * 39. Scream 2<br /> * 38. Wall-E<br /> * 37. Get Smart<br /> * 36. Se7en<br /> * 35. The Producers<br /> * 34: Garfield: The Movie<br /> * 33. Leon<br /> * 32. Shimmer Lake<br /> * 31. Unforgiven<br /> * 30. A Mighty Wind<br /> * 29. Magnolia<br /> * 28. Escape from Alcatraz<br /> * 27. The Sting<br /> * 26. Pulp Fiction<br /> * 25. Failure to Launch<br /> * 24. Hudson Hawk<br /> * 23. Mystère à St Tropez<br /> * 22. The Thomas Crown Affair<br /> * 21. The Three Amigos (1986)<br /> * 20. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - Jonathon Demme<br /> * 19. Top Secret (1984)<br /> * 18. One Battle After Another (2025) - Paul Thomas Anderson<br /> * 17. Memento (2000) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 16. Pleasantville (1998) - Gary Ross<br /> * 15. The Fisher King (1991) -<br /> * 14. The Mastermind<br /> * 13. The Birdcage<br /> * 12. Fight Club (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Knives Out: Glass Onion (rewatch)<br /> * 10. Twins<br /> * 9. The Remains of the Day<br /> * 8. The Ladykillers<br /> * 7. Us (rewatch)<br /> * 6. Saving Private Ryan (rewatch)<br /> * 5. Event Horizon<br /> * 4. Insomnia (2002) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Knives Out (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Gattaca (1997) - Andrew Niccol<br /> * 1. Eddington (2025) - Ari Aster<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> * 65. Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)<br /> * 64. Miller's Crossing<br /> * 63. Blood Simple<br /> * 62. Crazy Stupid Love<br /> * 61. Happiest Season<br /> * 60. Bridge of Spies <br /> * 59. Identity<br /> * 58. Clueless<br /> * 57. Ace Ventura 2: Call of Nature <br /> * 56. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World<br /> * 55. Apollo 13<br /> * 54. LA Confidential (rewatch)<br /> * 53. Inside Llewyn Davis<br /> * 52. M3gan<br /> * 51. Clear and Present Danger <br /> * 50. 12 Monkeys<br /> * 49. No Country for Old Men<br /> * 48. The Hudsucker Proxy<br /> * 47. La Cuisse ou l'aile<br /> * 46. Mission Impossible : The Final Reckoning<br /> * 45. Dumb and Dumber <br /> * 44. Rear Window<br /> * 43. Raising Arizona<br /> * 42. Tenet (rewatch)<br /> * 41. The fifth Element <br /> * 40. Burn Without Reading <br /> * 39. The Big Lebowski (rewatch)<br /> * 38. Fargo (rewatch)<br /> * 37. 28 Days Later (rewatch)<br /> * 36. O Brother, Where Art Thou<br /> * 35. Mickey 17 <br /> * 34. Empire of the Sun <br /> * 33. The Fugitive <br /> * 32. Wet Hot American Summer (rewatch)<br /> * 31. Ted<br /> * 30. Hundreds of Beavers <br /> * 29. Wayne’s World (rewatch)<br /> * 28. True Grit (Coen Bros)<br /> * 27. Groundhog Day (rewatch)<br /> * 26. Moonrise Kingdom <br /> * 25. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatra <br /> * 24. Adaptation (rewatch)<br /> * 23. Romancing the Stone (rewatch)<br /> * Easter Film Festival<br /> ** 22. Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)<br /> ** 21. Witness<br /> ** 20. The Grand Budapest Hotel (rewatch)<br /> ** 19. Conclave<br /> ** 18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective<br /> ** 17. Lincoln<br /> ** 16. Being John Malkovitch (rewatch)<br /> ** 15. AI (rewatch)<br /> ** 14. The Royal Tenenbaums (rewatch)<br /> ** 13. Total Recall 1990 (rewatch)<br /> ** 12. In the Line of Fire (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Flow <br /> * 10. Juror No. 2<br /> * 9. The Savage Robot<br /> * 8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (rewatch)<br /> * 7. Dead Poet's Society<br /> * 6. Notting Hill (rewatch)<br /> * 5. My Neighbor Totoro (rewatch)<br /> * 4. Kiki’s Delivery Service (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Dr Strangelove (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Dune 2<br /> * 1. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me (rewatch)<br /> <br /> === 2024 and Earlier ===<br /> * The Big Lebowski<br /> * The Holiday<br /> * Love Actually<br /> * Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure<br /> * The Mask<br /> [[Category:Films]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Books&diff=1629 2026-10-30T21:26:28Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 (week 43) */</p> <hr /> <div>== Books to Buy ==<br /> <br /> Used:<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&amp;qid=1783763181&amp;sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&amp;sr=8-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman<br /> * Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan<br /> <br /> Paperbacks:<br /> * The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin<br /> * Alison Gopnik - The Philosophical Baby<br /> * A Natural History of the Senses- Diane Ackerman<br /> * Ram Dass - Be Here Now<br /> * luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&amp;pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&amp;pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&amp;pd_rd_i=1250266645&amp;psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 <br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&amp;qid=1784816314&amp;sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=elyn+saks&amp;qid=1783197867&amp;sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&amp;sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&amp;qid=1783198086&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&amp;sr=1-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet<br /> * Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&amp;qid=1775903643&amp;sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]<br /> * Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity<br /> * Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience<br /> * Lorrie Moore - Self Help<br /> * La Modification - Michel Butor<br /> * Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec<br /> * How Like a God - Rex Stout<br /> <br /> * Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur<br /> * Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau<br /> * Nausea - Sartre<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].<br /> * Building a second brain<br /> * how to solve it<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories <br /> * Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz<br /> *<br /> <br /> Hardbacks:<br /> <br /> * Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience <br /> <br /> * [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit <br /> * [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=thomas+sheehan&amp;qid=1771981151&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&amp;sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?<br /> * [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey<br /> * Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod<br /> * L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger<br /> * Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)<br /> * A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)<br /> * The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium<br /> * Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization<br /> * Consolations - David Whyte<br /> <br /> == Books to Read ==<br /> <br /> * Reading to Learn - William Zinger<br /> * Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut<br /> <br /> == Currently Reading ==<br /> <br /> * [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear<br /> *[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer<br /> * [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston <br /> *[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)<br /> *[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike<br /> <br /> == Books Read ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 (week 45) ===<br /> <br /> * 47. Die Stumme Tod (Rath #2) - Volker Kutchner - In German!<br /> * 46. [[Proto]]: How One Ancient Language Went Global - Laura Spinney<br /> * 45. [[Ways of Seeing]] - John Berger<br /> * 44. [[Shadow Ticket]] - Thomas Pynchon<br /> * 43. [[Hyperpolitics]] - Anton Jäger<br /> * 42. [[Words, Thoughts, and Theories]] - Alison Gopnik and Andrew N Meltzoff<br /> * 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan<br /> * 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach<br /> * 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung <br /> * 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger<br /> * 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges<br /> * 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley<br /> * 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck<br /> * 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng<br /> * 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self<br /> * 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang<br /> * 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral <br /> * 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.<br /> * 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter <br /> * 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)<br /> * 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell<br /> * 22. Der Nasse Fische (Rath #1)- Volker Kutscher (in German!)<br /> * 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab<br /> * 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade<br /> * 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn<br /> * 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> * 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen<br /> * 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard<br /> <br /> * 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington<br /> *14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands<br /> *13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms<br /> *12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> *11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar<br /> *10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> *9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola<br /> *8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine<br /> <br /> * 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle<br /> * 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson<br /> * 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie <br /> * 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola<br /> *3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott<br /> * 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum<br /> * 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> <br /> * 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)<br /> * 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball<br /> * 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards<br /> * 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins<br /> * 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis<br /> * 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola <br /> * 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler<br /> * 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya<br /> *47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers<br /> * 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts<br /> * 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola<br /> * 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)<br /> * 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky<br /> * 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac<br /> * 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)<br /> * 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac<br /> * 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)<br /> * 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)<br /> <br /> * 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)<br /> * 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry<br /> * 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife<br /> * 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges<br /> * 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin<br /> * 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener<br /> * 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater<br /> * 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman<br /> * 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton<br /> * 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July<br /> * 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter<br /> * 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards<br /> * 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer<br /> * 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman<br /> * 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle<br /> * 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham<br /> * 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark<br /> * 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath<br /> * 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)<br /> * 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett<br /> * 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]<br /> * 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter<br /> * 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> * 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux<br /> * 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett<br /> * 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)<br /> * 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque<br /> <br /> === 2024 ===<br /> <br /> * The Plot - Will Eisner<br /> * The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco<br /> * The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut<br /> * Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)<br /> * The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner<br /> * The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil<br /> * Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg<br /> * Le Ton Beau de…<br /> * The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson<br /> * Psychonauts - <br /> * The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut<br /> * In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel<br /> * Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson<br /> * Les Effinger - Gabriele Target<br /> * Triad - Tom Keve<br /> * Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig<br /> * The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich<br /> * How Language Works - David Crystal<br /> * The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf<br /> * [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter<br /> * [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> <br /> == Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==<br /> That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':<br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 1. Language &amp; Style Difficulties ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.<br /> * '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).<br /> * '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 2. Length &amp; Scope ===<br /> <br /> * '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.<br /> * '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.<br /> * '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 3. Experimental Structure ===<br /> <br /> * '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.<br /> * '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.<br /> * '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===<br /> <br /> * '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.<br /> * '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.<br /> * '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 5. Dense Intertextuality ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.<br /> * '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.<br /> * '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===<br /> <br /> * '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.<br /> * '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===<br /> <br /> * ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)<br /> * ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)<br /> * ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)<br /> * ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)<br /> * ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)<br /> <br /> [[Category:Books]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Books&diff=1628 2026-10-30T21:25:50Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 (week 43) */</p> <hr /> <div>== Books to Buy ==<br /> <br /> Used:<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&amp;qid=1783763181&amp;sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&amp;sr=8-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman<br /> * Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan<br /> <br /> Paperbacks:<br /> * The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin<br /> * Alison Gopnik - The Philosophical Baby<br /> * A Natural History of the Senses- Diane Ackerman<br /> * Ram Dass - Be Here Now<br /> * luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&amp;pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&amp;pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&amp;pd_rd_i=1250266645&amp;psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 <br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&amp;qid=1784816314&amp;sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=elyn+saks&amp;qid=1783197867&amp;sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&amp;sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&amp;qid=1783198086&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&amp;sr=1-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet<br /> * Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&amp;qid=1775903643&amp;sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]<br /> * Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity<br /> * Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience<br /> * Lorrie Moore - Self Help<br /> * La Modification - Michel Butor<br /> * Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec<br /> * How Like a God - Rex Stout<br /> <br /> * Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur<br /> * Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau<br /> * Nausea - Sartre<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].<br /> * Building a second brain<br /> * how to solve it<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories <br /> * Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz<br /> *<br /> <br /> Hardbacks:<br /> <br /> * Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience <br /> <br /> * [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit <br /> * [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=thomas+sheehan&amp;qid=1771981151&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&amp;sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?<br /> * [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey<br /> * Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod<br /> * L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger<br /> * Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)<br /> * A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)<br /> * The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium<br /> * Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization<br /> * Consolations - David Whyte<br /> <br /> == Books to Read ==<br /> <br /> * Reading to Learn - William Zinger<br /> * Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut<br /> <br /> == Currently Reading ==<br /> <br /> * [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear<br /> *[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer<br /> * [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston <br /> *[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)<br /> *[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike<br /> <br /> == Books Read ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 (week 43) ===<br /> <br /> * 47. Die Stumme Tod (Rath #2) - Volker Kutchner - In German!<br /> * 46. [[Proto]]: How One Ancient Language Went Global - Laura Spinney<br /> * 45. [[Ways of Seeing]] - John Berger<br /> * 44. [[Shadow Ticket]] - Thomas Pynchon<br /> * 43. [[Hyperpolitics]] - Anton Jäger<br /> * 42. [[Words, Thoughts, and Theories]] - Alison Gopnik and Andrew N Meltzoff<br /> * 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan<br /> * 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach<br /> * 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung <br /> * 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger<br /> * 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges<br /> * 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley<br /> * 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck<br /> * 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng<br /> * 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self<br /> * 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang<br /> * 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral <br /> * 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.<br /> * 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter <br /> * 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)<br /> * 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell<br /> * 22. Der Nasse Fische (Rath #1)- Volker Kutscher (in German!)<br /> * 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab<br /> * 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade<br /> * 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn<br /> * 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> * 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen<br /> * 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard<br /> <br /> * 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington<br /> *14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands<br /> *13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms<br /> *12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> *11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar<br /> *10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> *9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola<br /> *8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine<br /> <br /> * 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle<br /> * 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson<br /> * 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie <br /> * 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola<br /> *3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott<br /> * 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum<br /> * 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> <br /> * 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)<br /> * 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball<br /> * 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards<br /> * 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins<br /> * 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis<br /> * 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola <br /> * 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler<br /> * 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya<br /> *47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers<br /> * 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts<br /> * 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola<br /> * 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)<br /> * 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky<br /> * 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac<br /> * 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)<br /> * 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac<br /> * 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)<br /> * 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)<br /> <br /> * 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)<br /> * 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry<br /> * 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife<br /> * 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges<br /> * 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin<br /> * 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener<br /> * 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater<br /> * 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman<br /> * 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton<br /> * 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July<br /> * 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter<br /> * 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards<br /> * 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer<br /> * 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman<br /> * 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle<br /> * 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham<br /> * 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark<br /> * 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath<br /> * 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)<br /> * 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett<br /> * 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]<br /> * 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter<br /> * 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> * 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux<br /> * 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett<br /> * 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)<br /> * 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque<br /> <br /> === 2024 ===<br /> <br /> * The Plot - Will Eisner<br /> * The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco<br /> * The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut<br /> * Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)<br /> * The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner<br /> * The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil<br /> * Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg<br /> * Le Ton Beau de…<br /> * The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson<br /> * Psychonauts - <br /> * The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut<br /> * In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel<br /> * Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson<br /> * Les Effinger - Gabriele Target<br /> * Triad - Tom Keve<br /> * Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig<br /> * The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich<br /> * How Language Works - David Crystal<br /> * The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf<br /> * [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter<br /> * [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> <br /> == Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==<br /> That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':<br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 1. Language &amp; Style Difficulties ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.<br /> * '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).<br /> * '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 2. Length &amp; Scope ===<br /> <br /> * '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.<br /> * '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.<br /> * '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 3. Experimental Structure ===<br /> <br /> * '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.<br /> * '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.<br /> * '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===<br /> <br /> * '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.<br /> * '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.<br /> * '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 5. Dense Intertextuality ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.<br /> * '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.<br /> * '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===<br /> <br /> * '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.<br /> * '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===<br /> <br /> * ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)<br /> * ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)<br /> * ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)<br /> * ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)<br /> * ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)<br /> <br /> [[Category:Books]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Films&diff=1627 2026-10-30T21:24:57Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 */</p> <hr /> <div>== Films to Watch ==<br /> <br /> [https://www.cinealcazar.fr/fichier/programme.pdf Cinema Alcazar Program]<br /> <br /> * True Lies<br /> * Long Kiss Goodnight (Christmas Action) - https://www.avclub.com/women-of-action-the-long-kiss-goodnight-geena-davis-samuel-l-jackson<br /> * Wicker: https://youtu.be/HP0BWBWn14I?si=E5oThE4uNiED28b3<br /> * morvern Callar<br /> * Do the right thing <br /> * run Lola Run<br /> * Mind trips<br /> ** Triangle<br /> ** Beyond the infinite two minutes<br /> ** Enemy<br /> ** Under the Silver Lake<br /> ** The Vanishing<br /> ** Angel Heart<br /> ** Following<br /> ** The Invisible Guest<br /> ** Perfect Blue<br /> ** Resolution<br /> * fast times <br /> * the Jerk<br /> * Mutiny on the Bounty<br /> * Entrapment <br /> * Mask of Zorro<br /> * PTA - Hard Eight, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, etc<br /> * Little Big and Far - weird scandinavian film<br /> * This is Spinal tap<br /> * Big Night - Tucci and Shaloub<br /> * Punch drunk love<br /> * Boyhood <br /> * Kind hearts and coronets <br /> * A night at the opera <br /> * Blazing saddles <br /> * Lives of others<br /> * Lost in Translation <br /> * One flew over <br /> * Get out<br /> * Maltese falcon <br /> * Early mad maxes<br /> * Joule of the Nile<br /> * the man with two brains<br /> * Psycho Therapy - Steve Buscemi is a serial killer who wants to advise an author, but ends up playing a marriage counselor.<br /> * Early Steve Martin<br /> * A Complete Unknown <br /> * la La Land -<br /> * The Phoenician Scheme - new Wes Anderson comedy espionage thriller <br /> * Thelma - Grandma fights con artists<br /> * Kinds of Kindness<br /> * 2001<br /> * The Elephant Man<br /> * The Fabulous Baker Boys<br /> * Network<br /> <br /> == Films Watched ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 ===<br /> <br /> * 66. I Know What You Did Last Summer<br /> * 65. The Color of Money<br /> * 64. GoodFellas<br /> * 63. The Firm<br /> * 62. After Hours<br /> * 61. The King of Comedy<br /> * 60. Sinners<br /> * 59. The Sixth Sense<br /> * 58. Alter Ego<br /> * 57. Toy Story 5<br /> * 56. Franz K<br /> * 55. Taxi Driver<br /> * 54. The Tailor of Panama<br /> * 53. La bataille de Gaulle: J'écris ton nom<br /> * 52. Heat<br /> * 51. Training Day<br /> * 50. The Guns of Naverone<br /> * 49. La bataille de Gaulle: L'age de fer<br /> * 48. Kind Hearts and Coronets<br /> * 47. Parasite<br /> * 46. Arsenic and Old Lace <br /> * 45. Get Out <br /> * 44. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (rewatch)<br /> * 43. Apex<br /> * 42. 21 Jump Street<br /> * 41. Scream 3 <br /> * 40. Shutter Island<br /> * 39. Scream 2<br /> * 38. Wall-E<br /> * 37. Get Smart<br /> * 36. Se7en<br /> * 35. The Producers<br /> * 34: Garfield: The Movie<br /> * 33. Leon<br /> * 32. Shimmer Lake<br /> * 31. Unforgiven<br /> * 30. A Mighty Wind<br /> * 29. Magnolia<br /> * 28. Escape from Alcatraz<br /> * 27. The Sting<br /> * 26. Pulp Fiction<br /> * 25. Failure to Launch<br /> * 24. Hudson Hawk<br /> * 23. Mystère à St Tropez<br /> * 22. The Thomas Crown Affair<br /> * 21. The Three Amigos (1986)<br /> * 20. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - Jonathon Demme<br /> * 19. Top Secret (1984)<br /> * 18. One Battle After Another (2025) - Paul Thomas Anderson<br /> * 17. Memento (2000) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 16. Pleasantville (1998) - Gary Ross<br /> * 15. The Fisher King (1991) -<br /> * 14. The Mastermind<br /> * 13. The Birdcage<br /> * 12. Fight Club (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Knives Out: Glass Onion (rewatch)<br /> * 10. Twins<br /> * 9. The Remains of the Day<br /> * 8. The Ladykillers<br /> * 7. Us (rewatch)<br /> * 6. Saving Private Ryan (rewatch)<br /> * 5. Event Horizon<br /> * 4. Insomnia (2002) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Knives Out (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Gattaca (1997) - Andrew Niccol<br /> * 1. Eddington (2025) - Ari Aster<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> * 65. Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)<br /> * 64. Miller's Crossing<br /> * 63. Blood Simple<br /> * 62. Crazy Stupid Love<br /> * 61. Happiest Season<br /> * 60. Bridge of Spies <br /> * 59. Identity<br /> * 58. Clueless<br /> * 57. Ace Ventura 2: Call of Nature <br /> * 56. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World<br /> * 55. Apollo 13<br /> * 54. LA Confidential (rewatch)<br /> * 53. Inside Llewyn Davis<br /> * 52. M3gan<br /> * 51. Clear and Present Danger <br /> * 50. 12 Monkeys<br /> * 49. No Country for Old Men<br /> * 48. The Hudsucker Proxy<br /> * 47. La Cuisse ou l'aile<br /> * 46. Mission Impossible : The Final Reckoning<br /> * 45. Dumb and Dumber <br /> * 44. Rear Window<br /> * 43. Raising Arizona<br /> * 42. Tenet (rewatch)<br /> * 41. The fifth Element <br /> * 40. Burn Without Reading <br /> * 39. The Big Lebowski (rewatch)<br /> * 38. Fargo (rewatch)<br /> * 37. 28 Days Later (rewatch)<br /> * 36. O Brother, Where Art Thou<br /> * 35. Mickey 17 <br /> * 34. Empire of the Sun <br /> * 33. The Fugitive <br /> * 32. Wet Hot American Summer (rewatch)<br /> * 31. Ted<br /> * 30. Hundreds of Beavers <br /> * 29. Wayne’s World (rewatch)<br /> * 28. True Grit (Coen Bros)<br /> * 27. Groundhog Day (rewatch)<br /> * 26. Moonrise Kingdom <br /> * 25. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatra <br /> * 24. Adaptation (rewatch)<br /> * 23. Romancing the Stone (rewatch)<br /> * Easter Film Festival<br /> ** 22. Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)<br /> ** 21. Witness<br /> ** 20. The Grand Budapest Hotel (rewatch)<br /> ** 19. Conclave<br /> ** 18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective<br /> ** 17. Lincoln<br /> ** 16. Being John Malkovitch (rewatch)<br /> ** 15. AI (rewatch)<br /> ** 14. The Royal Tenenbaums (rewatch)<br /> ** 13. Total Recall 1990 (rewatch)<br /> ** 12. In the Line of Fire (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Flow <br /> * 10. Juror No. 2<br /> * 9. The Savage Robot<br /> * 8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (rewatch)<br /> * 7. Dead Poet's Society<br /> * 6. Notting Hill (rewatch)<br /> * 5. My Neighbor Totoro (rewatch)<br /> * 4. Kiki’s Delivery Service (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Dr Strangelove (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Dune 2<br /> * 1. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me (rewatch)<br /> <br /> === 2024 and Earlier ===<br /> * The Big Lebowski<br /> * The Holiday<br /> * Love Actually<br /> * Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure<br /> * The Mask<br /> [[Category:Films]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Books&diff=1626 2026-10-30T21:23:10Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 (week 43) */</p> <hr /> <div>== Books to Buy ==<br /> <br /> Used:<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&amp;qid=1783763181&amp;sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&amp;sr=8-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman<br /> * Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan<br /> <br /> Paperbacks:<br /> * The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin<br /> * Alison Gopnik - The Philosophical Baby<br /> * A Natural History of the Senses- Diane Ackerman<br /> * Ram Dass - Be Here Now<br /> * luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&amp;pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&amp;pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&amp;pd_rd_i=1250266645&amp;psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 <br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&amp;qid=1784816314&amp;sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=elyn+saks&amp;qid=1783197867&amp;sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&amp;sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&amp;qid=1783198086&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&amp;sr=1-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet<br /> * Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&amp;qid=1775903643&amp;sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]<br /> * Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity<br /> * Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience<br /> * Lorrie Moore - Self Help<br /> * La Modification - Michel Butor<br /> * Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec<br /> * How Like a God - Rex Stout<br /> <br /> * Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur<br /> * Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau<br /> * Nausea - Sartre<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].<br /> * Building a second brain<br /> * how to solve it<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories <br /> * Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz<br /> *<br /> <br /> Hardbacks:<br /> <br /> * Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience <br /> <br /> * [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit <br /> * [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=thomas+sheehan&amp;qid=1771981151&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&amp;sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?<br /> * [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey<br /> * Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod<br /> * L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger<br /> * Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)<br /> * A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)<br /> * The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium<br /> * Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization<br /> * Consolations - David Whyte<br /> <br /> == Books to Read ==<br /> <br /> * Reading to Learn - William Zinger<br /> * Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut<br /> <br /> == Currently Reading ==<br /> <br /> * [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear<br /> *[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer<br /> * [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston <br /> *[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)<br /> *[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike<br /> <br /> == Books Read ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 (week 43) ===<br /> <br /> * 47. Die Stumme Tod (Rath #2) - Volker Kutchner - In German!<br /> * 46. [[Proto]]: How One Ancient Language Went Global - Laura Spinney<br /> * 45. [[Ways of Seeing]] - John Berger<br /> * 44. [[Shadow Ticket]] - Thomas Pynchon<br /> * 43. [[Hyperpolitics]] - Anton Jäger<br /> * 42. [[Words, Thoughts, and Theories]] - Alison Gopnik and Andrew N Meltzoff<br /> * 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan<br /> * 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach<br /> * 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung <br /> * 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger<br /> * 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges<br /> * 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley<br /> * 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck<br /> * 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng<br /> * 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self<br /> * 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang<br /> * 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral <br /> * 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.<br /> * 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter <br /> * 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)<br /> * 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell<br /> * 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)<br /> * 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab<br /> * 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade<br /> * 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn<br /> * 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> * 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen<br /> * 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard<br /> <br /> * 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington<br /> *14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands<br /> *13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms<br /> *12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> *11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar<br /> *10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> *9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola<br /> *8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine<br /> <br /> * 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle<br /> * 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson<br /> * 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie <br /> * 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola<br /> *3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott<br /> * 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum<br /> * 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> <br /> * 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)<br /> * 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball<br /> * 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards<br /> * 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins<br /> * 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis<br /> * 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola <br /> * 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler<br /> * 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya<br /> *47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers<br /> * 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts<br /> * 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola<br /> * 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)<br /> * 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky<br /> * 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac<br /> * 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)<br /> * 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac<br /> * 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)<br /> * 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)<br /> <br /> * 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)<br /> * 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry<br /> * 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife<br /> * 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges<br /> * 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin<br /> * 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener<br /> * 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater<br /> * 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman<br /> * 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton<br /> * 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July<br /> * 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter<br /> * 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards<br /> * 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer<br /> * 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman<br /> * 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle<br /> * 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham<br /> * 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark<br /> * 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath<br /> * 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)<br /> * 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett<br /> * 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]<br /> * 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter<br /> * 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> * 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux<br /> * 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett<br /> * 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)<br /> * 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque<br /> <br /> === 2024 ===<br /> <br /> * The Plot - Will Eisner<br /> * The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco<br /> * The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut<br /> * Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)<br /> * The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner<br /> * The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil<br /> * Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg<br /> * Le Ton Beau de…<br /> * The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson<br /> * Psychonauts - <br /> * The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut<br /> * In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel<br /> * Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson<br /> * Les Effinger - Gabriele Target<br /> * Triad - Tom Keve<br /> * Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig<br /> * The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich<br /> * How Language Works - David Crystal<br /> * The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf<br /> * [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter<br /> * [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> <br /> == Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==<br /> That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':<br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 1. Language &amp; Style Difficulties ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.<br /> * '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).<br /> * '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 2. Length &amp; Scope ===<br /> <br /> * '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.<br /> * '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.<br /> * '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 3. Experimental Structure ===<br /> <br /> * '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.<br /> * '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.<br /> * '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===<br /> <br /> * '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.<br /> * '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.<br /> * '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 5. Dense Intertextuality ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.<br /> * '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.<br /> * '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===<br /> <br /> * '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.<br /> * '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===<br /> <br /> * ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)<br /> * ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)<br /> * ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)<br /> * ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)<br /> * ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)<br /> <br /> [[Category:Books]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Films&diff=1625 2026-10-30T21:21:50Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 */</p> <hr /> <div>== Films to Watch ==<br /> <br /> [https://www.cinealcazar.fr/fichier/programme.pdf Cinema Alcazar Program]<br /> <br /> * True Lies<br /> * Long Kiss Goodnight (Christmas Action) - https://www.avclub.com/women-of-action-the-long-kiss-goodnight-geena-davis-samuel-l-jackson<br /> * Wicker: https://youtu.be/HP0BWBWn14I?si=E5oThE4uNiED28b3<br /> * morvern Callar<br /> * Do the right thing <br /> * run Lola Run<br /> * Mind trips<br /> ** Triangle<br /> ** Beyond the infinite two minutes<br /> ** Enemy<br /> ** Under the Silver Lake<br /> ** The Vanishing<br /> ** Angel Heart<br /> ** Following<br /> ** The Invisible Guest<br /> ** Perfect Blue<br /> ** Resolution<br /> * fast times <br /> * the Jerk<br /> * Mutiny on the Bounty<br /> * Entrapment <br /> * Mask of Zorro<br /> * PTA - Hard Eight, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, etc<br /> * Little Big and Far - weird scandinavian film<br /> * This is Spinal tap<br /> * Big Night - Tucci and Shaloub<br /> * Punch drunk love<br /> * Boyhood <br /> * Kind hearts and coronets <br /> * A night at the opera <br /> * Blazing saddles <br /> * Lives of others<br /> * Lost in Translation <br /> * One flew over <br /> * Get out<br /> * Maltese falcon <br /> * Early mad maxes<br /> * Joule of the Nile<br /> * the man with two brains<br /> * Psycho Therapy - Steve Buscemi is a serial killer who wants to advise an author, but ends up playing a marriage counselor.<br /> * Early Steve Martin<br /> * A Complete Unknown <br /> * la La Land -<br /> * The Phoenician Scheme - new Wes Anderson comedy espionage thriller <br /> * Thelma - Grandma fights con artists<br /> * Kinds of Kindness<br /> * 2001<br /> * The Elephant Man<br /> * The Fabulous Baker Boys<br /> * Network<br /> <br /> == Films Watched ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 ===<br /> <br /> * 65. I Know What You Did Last Summer<br /> * 64. The Color of Money<br /> * 63. GoodFellas<br /> * 62. The Firm<br /> * 61. After Hours<br /> * 60. The King of Comedy<br /> * 59. Sinners<br /> * 58. The Sixth Sense<br /> * 57. Alter Ego<br /> * 56. Toy Story 5<br /> * 55. Franz K <br /> * 54. Taxi Driver <br /> * 53. The Tailor of Panama<br /> * 52. La bataille de Gaulle: J'écris ton nom<br /> * 51. Training Day<br /> * 50. The Guns of Naverone<br /> * 49. La bataille de Gaulle: L'age de fer<br /> * 48. Kind Hearts and Coronets<br /> * 47. Parasite<br /> * 46. Arsenic and Old Lace <br /> * 45. Get Out <br /> * 44. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (rewatch)<br /> * 43. Apex<br /> * 42. 21 Jump Street<br /> * 41. Scream 3 <br /> * 40. Shutter Island<br /> * 39. Scream 2<br /> * 38. Wall-E<br /> * 37. Get Smart<br /> * 36. Se7en<br /> * 35. The Producers<br /> * 34: Garfield: The Movie<br /> * 33. Leon<br /> * 32. Shimmer Lake<br /> * 31. Unforgiven<br /> * 30. A Mighty Wind<br /> * 29. Magnolia<br /> * 28. Escape from Alcatraz<br /> * 27. The Sting<br /> * 26. Pulp Fiction<br /> * 25. Failure to Launch<br /> * 24. Hudson Hawk<br /> * 23. Mystère à St Tropez<br /> * 22. The Thomas Crown Affair<br /> * 21. The Three Amigos (1986)<br /> * 20. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - Jonathon Demme<br /> * 19. Top Secret (1984)<br /> * 18. One Battle After Another (2025) - Paul Thomas Anderson<br /> * 17. Memento (2000) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 16. Pleasantville (1998) - Gary Ross<br /> * 15. The Fisher King (1991) -<br /> * 14. The Mastermind<br /> * 13. The Birdcage<br /> * 12. Fight Club (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Knives Out: Glass Onion (rewatch)<br /> * 10. Twins<br /> * 9. The Remains of the Day<br /> * 8. The Ladykillers<br /> * 7. Us (rewatch)<br /> * 6. Saving Private Ryan (rewatch)<br /> * 5. Event Horizon<br /> * 4. Insomnia (2002) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Knives Out (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Gattaca (1997) - Andrew Niccol<br /> * 1. Eddington (2025) - Ari Aster<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> * 65. Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)<br /> * 64. Miller's Crossing<br /> * 63. Blood Simple<br /> * 62. Crazy Stupid Love<br /> * 61. Happiest Season<br /> * 60. Bridge of Spies <br /> * 59. Identity<br /> * 58. Clueless<br /> * 57. Ace Ventura 2: Call of Nature <br /> * 56. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World<br /> * 55. Apollo 13<br /> * 54. LA Confidential (rewatch)<br /> * 53. Inside Llewyn Davis<br /> * 52. M3gan<br /> * 51. Clear and Present Danger <br /> * 50. 12 Monkeys<br /> * 49. No Country for Old Men<br /> * 48. The Hudsucker Proxy<br /> * 47. La Cuisse ou l'aile<br /> * 46. Mission Impossible : The Final Reckoning<br /> * 45. Dumb and Dumber <br /> * 44. Rear Window<br /> * 43. Raising Arizona<br /> * 42. Tenet (rewatch)<br /> * 41. The fifth Element <br /> * 40. Burn Without Reading <br /> * 39. The Big Lebowski (rewatch)<br /> * 38. Fargo (rewatch)<br /> * 37. 28 Days Later (rewatch)<br /> * 36. O Brother, Where Art Thou<br /> * 35. Mickey 17 <br /> * 34. Empire of the Sun <br /> * 33. The Fugitive <br /> * 32. Wet Hot American Summer (rewatch)<br /> * 31. Ted<br /> * 30. Hundreds of Beavers <br /> * 29. Wayne’s World (rewatch)<br /> * 28. True Grit (Coen Bros)<br /> * 27. Groundhog Day (rewatch)<br /> * 26. Moonrise Kingdom <br /> * 25. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatra <br /> * 24. Adaptation (rewatch)<br /> * 23. Romancing the Stone (rewatch)<br /> * Easter Film Festival<br /> ** 22. Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)<br /> ** 21. Witness<br /> ** 20. The Grand Budapest Hotel (rewatch)<br /> ** 19. Conclave<br /> ** 18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective<br /> ** 17. Lincoln<br /> ** 16. Being John Malkovitch (rewatch)<br /> ** 15. AI (rewatch)<br /> ** 14. The Royal Tenenbaums (rewatch)<br /> ** 13. Total Recall 1990 (rewatch)<br /> ** 12. In the Line of Fire (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Flow <br /> * 10. Juror No. 2<br /> * 9. The Savage Robot<br /> * 8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (rewatch)<br /> * 7. Dead Poet's Society<br /> * 6. Notting Hill (rewatch)<br /> * 5. My Neighbor Totoro (rewatch)<br /> * 4. Kiki’s Delivery Service (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Dr Strangelove (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Dune 2<br /> * 1. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me (rewatch)<br /> <br /> === 2024 and Earlier ===<br /> * The Big Lebowski<br /> * The Holiday<br /> * Love Actually<br /> * Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure<br /> * The Mask<br /> [[Category:Films]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Mental_Model&diff=1624 2026-10-29T16:29:52Z

<p>Robert.adlington: </p> <hr /> <div>* A stimulus is received. This can come from:<br /> ** Outside, from the senses<br /> ** Inside, as a bodily or emotional sensation<br /> ** The mind itself, as a thought is held in attention and seeks associations<br /> * The stimulus triggers a massive, apparently instantaneous, parallel search of the cortex to identify the stimulus and prepare an appropriate response:<br /> ** This is the Bayesian predictive engine, which seeks to minimize surprise.<br /> ** It returns - let's call them, after Jung, &quot;symbols&quot;, that the brain determines are the most appropriate response, based on habit, on what has worked before<br /> ** We can think of the webs of information stored in the cortex as the unconscious. It is like a sea where we are fishing, our stimulus is the bait, and the symbols emerging are like fish attracted to the bait<br /> ** The surface of the sea is the partition between the unconscious and consciousness - and the specific point where the fish-symbols appear is like a spotlight of attention or awareness.<br /> ** Often one symbol is dominant - a word, a feeling, an image, and provides just the right response needed. Think of a crossword clue where the answer just appears to you. Other times multiple symbols may have similar weights and require deliberation<br /> *The winning symbol triggers a reaction:<br /> **You may respond in a conversation, put one foot in front of the other, grab a snack, move onto the next word in your novel, move your racquet to meet an incoming tennis ball<br /> **The system is very efficient. We are reacting dozens/hundreds/thousands (depending at which level of granularity we are looking?) of times every minute, often (mainly?) with very little deliberation.<br /> **But reflection is presumably a more recent acquisition. My cat reacts to me stroking her either with a purr or with a swipe of her claws and in neither case do I think she is deliberating. But I can react to the approach of a hand...<br /> The difference between the cat and me is an ability to delay reaction, to direct attention onto the symbols returned by the unconscious. Rather than react immediately, I can hold the returned symbols in attention, in consciousness, and through this attention, I can summon other symbols, symbols that are associated with those in my attention. The result of this directed attention may be a more considered reaction. Or no reaction at all, as I reflect on what I am experiencing. <br /> <br /> This ability, to pause, to hold stimuli in the mind's eye, allows us to construct much more elaborate theories about what is happening around us, stimulating us, but it is also a kind of curse, taking us out of the immediacy of the moment, separating the stimulus from our reaction and allowing it to pass through any number of labyrinthine symbolic paths.<br /> <br /> It is this mechanism, this flickering spotlight, this shallow pool of reflection, that is, to my mind, consciousness, that allows us to reflect, to &quot;know&quot; things, and to have constructed our culture.<br /> <br /> == Spoken Language ==<br /> These associations between symbols existed before speech, before language, but spoken language must be involved in the process of slowing down perception, of allowing reflection. Language allows us to assert connections, to compare and contrast symbols, to propose similarity or difference.<br /> <br /> Spoken language allows us to speak to ourselves - an inner monologue that is not necessarily as cut and dried as interpersonal language. But it also allows us to speak to others, to share attention and to share concepts. By pointing to direct attention and be making a sound, we can both associate the sound to the object being pointed out and share that association with our interlocutors. Language separates the things of the world out, makes them identifiable. And it shares these separations, these identities with others. Our shared culture originates from this basic form of sharing.<br /> <br /> == Written Language ==<br /> While spoken language comes naturally to infants who are exposed to speakers, written language is not a simple acquisition. The child has to learn that the shapes of the letters when arranged in certain patterns, are a visual representation of the sound that evokes the object.<br /> <br /> Reading is a fundamentally weird, modern acquisition of humans. It is not essential for an infant to be able to insert themselves into our shared culture.<br /> <br /> == The Flickering Pool ==<br /> I've built a [something] empire<br /> <br /> Out of some crazy garbage <br /> <br /> Called the blood of the exploited working class<br /> <br /> Now they've overcome their shyness<br /> <br /> Now they're calling me &quot;Your Highness&quot;<br /> <br /> And the world screams &quot;Kiss me, son of God&quot;<br /> <br /> (They Might Be Giants: &quot;Kiss Me, Son of God&quot;)<br /> <br /> It's 5am, though I don't know that yet. I've drifted awake and was aware of thinking about a knotty work issue. I don't know if I feel asleep again, but then suddenly, I'm thinking about this song, which I first heard 30+ years ago. I start to begin more conscious. My wife gets out of bed to go to the bathroom and I look at my watch. Now I'm awake and thinking:<br /> <br /> * Why did that song suddenly pop into my dozing head? I may have heard it one of twice in the last 20 years, and not in the last few months<br /> * How do I remember all these words? I'm almost certain of most of them, though there's a hole in the first line. I don't have a great memory in general, but somehow this song started playing and I was able (was compelled) to continue on over several lines. And it's not just the words, but also the singing voices and musical accompaniment. This is a rich, robust memory that has been inside me for decades<br /> * What is this weird thinking space - I suppose that it is consciousness or attention, but it seems to flicker in and out of focus, particularly at these moments where I am on the edge of sleep but also during the day.<br /> * As I start to try to examine it, it changes. Now, this flickering space is no longer filled with the work problem or the song lyric, but rather with this question of consciousness.<br /> <br /> Then, my wife comes back to bed and I lie still and try not to get too engaged with these thoughts. I want to get back to sleep and, after some period of time, I manage to do so. I'm woken again by my alarm at 7.30am, but when I shut it off I drift off again and wake gradually and finally just before 9am.<br /> <br /> I'm back awake and conscious and back to being me in the world of my family and my job. But what does that mean? Isn't this sense of consciousness, of identity, of belonging, dependent on that flickering pool inside my head? And isn't that pool relatively small and doesn't it tend to get filled with, well, songs from 30 years ago? And don't get me started on dreams. Sure, sometimes they're based around things that have happened recently, sometimes things from the middle or distant past, but sometimes they seem to be cut from whole cloth.<br /> <br /> But ultimately, I'm less interested in questions of identity, than in knowing how we know things, how we learn, how we reason and make decisions. When at university, studying English and American literature and critical theory, I read a lot of Freud and Heidegger and Derrida and Foucault and Nietzsche. I wrote my master's thesis on Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and RD Laing's concept of the schizoid. I never finished my PhD and I've been away from academia for a long time now. I went through a decade and a half when my son's were small doing little reading in this area and little reading full stop, but in the last few years, after re-reading Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained, I've been back reading and reading and reading.<br /> [[Category:Concepts]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Proto&diff=1623 2026-10-26T15:20:24Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* Introduction - Ariomania */</p> <hr /> <div>== Introduction - Ariomania ==<br /> * Timeline:<br /> ** 60k years ago: Homo Sapiens permanently settles Europe and Asia<br /> ** 20k years ago: The peak of the last Ice Age<br /> ** 12k years ago: Invention of agriculture in the Near East<br /> ** 6.5k years ago: Varna's coppersmiths are thriving<br /> ** 5.5k years ago: Yamnaya culture emerges<br /> ** 4k years ago: Earliest written evidence of an Indo-European language, Hittite<br /> ** 1,600 years ago: Fall of the Western Roman Empire<br /> ** 1k years ago: Anatolian and Tocharian are extinct<br /> ** 500 years ago: Europeans carry Indo-European languages to new continents<br /> ** Now: Nearly half of humanity speaks Indo-European<br /> * Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Norse, and English are all descended from a much older language - Proto-Indo-European. The speakers of Proto-Indo-European who might only have numbered a few dozen to begin with, lived between Europe and Asia in the region of the Black Sea. They worshipped Father Sky. About 5,000 years ago, their language exploded out of its Black Sea cradle, spreading east and west and fragmenting as it went. Within a thousand years, its offspring could be heard from Ireland to India.<br /> * Language is humanity's oldest tool. When Homo sapiens emerged in Africa, 300,000 years ago, they were already equipped with it. Their vocal tracts could make all the sounds ours can. They had the cognitive capacity to map sound on to meaning, and to combine units of meaning into sentences.<br /> * By the time humans walked out of Africa 60,000 years ago, they probably communicated mostly through speech and were capable of a more sophisticated level of expression.<br /> * On the eve of the farming revolution, the human population was an estimated 10m. Perhaps 10k languages were spoken, each one having one or at most 2k speakers. Thanks to the new sources of energy that farming unleashed, communities grew and their language with them. Dialects emerged, and in time some of them became languages in their own right. Families of languages erupted like supernovas. This period, the Neolithic or New Stone Age, was our linguistic heyday: the moment in the human story when more languages were spoken than at any other. At their peak there might have been 15k of them.<br /> * From its Neolithic peak human linguistic diversity entered a long, slow decline. The downturn started with the formation of the first states, beginning 5,000 years ago with Sumer in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq).<br /> * Now 8bn humans speak around 7,000 languages. Those languages fall into about 150 families, but most of us speak languages that belong to just five of them:<br /> ** Indo-European - including English<br /> ** Sino-Tibetan - including Mandarin Chinese<br /> ** Niger-Congo<br /> ** Afro-Asiatic<br /> ** Austonesian<br /> *Like language, writing was conceived of independently a number of time.The oldest know writing system was invented by the Sumerians<br /> *As far as we know, the alphabet was only invented once, in or near Egypt.<br /> *Linguists consider that on average it takes between 500-1,000 years for a language to become incomprehensible to its original speakers<br /> == 1. Genesis - Lingua Obscura ==<br /> * The first farmers would have needed new words to describe the plants and animals they cultivated and the tools they invented to harness them. They would have acquired a vocabulary of agriculture.<br /> * Farmers from Anatolia entered Europe via two routes:<br /> ** One stream crossed the Bosporus, reaching the eastern Balkans by 6500 BCE and then following the Danube inland. Within a thousand years they were building villages in the Carpathian Basin - the depression, centred on modern Hungary, that is bound by the Carpathian Mountains and the Alps.<br /> ** A second stream island-hopped across the Aegean and along the northern Mediterranean seaboard by raft or boat (rowing, not sailing), then headed north from France's azure coast.<br /> ** The two streams met in the Paris Basin, the lowlands before the Atlantic, and there they mingled before fanning out again. By 4500 BCE, descendants of the Anatolian farmers were all over Europe, as far west as Ireland and as far east as Ukraine. These movements took place over many, many generations, but the distances covered are still extraordinary when you think that, apart from the sea crossings, they happened on foot. There was as yet no donkey or other docile pack animal, no horse that wasn't wild, no wheel and hence no wagon. <br /> ** Now, when hunter gatherers met farmers, in general they couldn't compete. Their way of life and their languages were on a fast track to extinction.<br /> ** By 4500 BCE, the competition was between:<br /> *** Herders, whose wealth was mobile and who prized self-sufficiency and lived for the present<br /> *** Farmers, whose wealth was immobile and who valued collective decision making and planned for the future.<br /> **Both the bible (Cain and Abel) and the Qur'an recount how this clash of worldviews led to the first murder, but the clash is much older than the Abrahamic scriptures.<br /> **By 4000 BCE, ancient DNA reveals that steppe women were moving into farming settlements, farming women were moving into steppe settlements, and these were no longer rare or sporadic events.<br /> **A few centuries after the appearance of the first megasites in Ukraine, Mesopotamian villages by the names of Uruk and Tell Brak also began to swell. These would become the first cities that prehistorians would recognize as such, because they were organized as extreme versions of our modern cities.<br /> **Sometime between 4000-3500 BCE, the first wheeled vehicle trundled onto the steppe, pulled by oxen. Evidence for it appears simultaneously east, west, and south of the Black Sea.<br /> **Roads weren't long in coming.<br /> **Around 3500 BCE the megasites in turn were abandoned.<br /> == 2. Sacred Spring - Proto-Indo-European ==<br /> * We know that, east of the Urals, in what is now Kazakhstan, people belonging to a culture called Botai were already raising horses by 3500 BCE.<br /> * The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European lexicon consists of about 1,600 words<br /> == 3. First Among Equals - Anatolian ==<br /> * Most European men alive today, and millions of their counterparts in Central and South Asia, carry Y chromosomes that came from the steppe.<br /> == 4. Over the Range - Tocharian ==<br /> * -<br /> == 5. Lark Rising - Celtic, Germanic, Italic ==<br /> * History in western Europe ignites as a spark at the tip of Italy in the 8th C BCE. The Greeks, who had been writing in one script or another for 700 years, landed in Sicily and the southern part of the boot to trade and settle, bringing the alphabet with them. The Etruscans further north borrowed it, with modifications, and their Italic-speaking neighbors borrowed theirs. From Italy, writing spread north and west in a traveling wave. If you think of the linguistic landscape of Europe as a skein of invisible ink, writing was the candle flame that illuminated it. And what that flame captured, in the middle of the first millennium BCE - around the time that the Parthenon was being erected in Athens - was a sooty mosaic of Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages.<br /> * The first Celtic inscriptions, which exist in a few different scripts, date to the 6th C BCE.<br /> * The Irish invented their own alphabet around the 4th C BCE.<br /> * The first uncontested runic inscriptions date to the 2nd C CE and were found in Jutland, the peninsula that today straddles Denmark and Germany.<br /> * Writing must has struck all those who encountered it for the first time as magical.<br /> * The Poetic Edda is a collection of narrative poems and one of our richest sources of information about Norse mythology, not to mention the ancient Germanic languages. The oldest version comes from Iceland and date to the 13th C CE, though many of the poems are thought to be older.<br /> * When the Yamnaya arrived in Hungary, the population of Europe was an estimated 7m. The migrants might have numbered in the 10k s, yet within a thousand years languages descended from theirs were spoken across the continent.<br /> * The Yamnaya brotherhood that ventured out of Pontic river valley around 3500 BCE could have been the sole survivors of an early plague outbreak that cut down the rest of their community.<br /> * It was principally social mechanisms, in other words, that drove the spread of the Indo-European languages. The seeds were sown in raids, marriage, fostering, and patronage. They were tamped down through storytelling and watered at feasts.<br /> == 6. The Wandering Horse - Indo-Iranian ==<br /> * Persepolis was the ceremonial capital founded by Darius the Great in the 6th C BCE, and because of its remote location in Iran's Zagros Mountains it was know as the safest place in the Persian Empire to store art, archives, and gold. Alexander of Macedon scuppered that reputation in 330 BCE, when he sacked and plundered the city and then set fire to it, destroying its many treasures and leaving it in ruins.<br /> * The oldest Indic text is the Rig Veda, the first of the four Vedas that make up the most ancient Indian, and Hindu scriptures. Its thousand or more hymns were passed down orally for a very long time before they were recorded, and they were not recorded all at once.<br /> * Scholars hazard that the Rig Veda dates to between 1500-1200 BCE, at least 400 years after the earliest Hittite texts.<br /> * The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are two epic Sanskrit poems concerned with princely trials and tribulations. There are sanskrit works on philosophy, science, cookery, elephants, yoga, and sex, in the form of the Kamasutra.<br /> * &quot;Language, auspicious, charming, like a creeper, whose minds does it not win over?&quot; as a sukta or hymn has it. Sanskrit probably dies as a vernacular sometime in the first millennium CE, having disintegrated, like Latin, into a rich panoply of daughter languages.<br /> * The oldest surviving text in any Iranic language is the Avesta, the holy book of Zoroastrianism, the religion of Persia before the Muslim conquest of the 7th C CE, and as the first truly monotheistic creed it had a profound influence on the Abrahamic religions.<br /> * It's generally thought that Zarathustra composed the Gathas, a critique of the Rig Veda around 1000 BCE, a few centuries after the Rig Veda was composed.<br /> * The Persians left the world one of its great poetic traditions, spanning the love poetry of Hafez and Rumi, Fedowsi's epic Shahnameh (the Book of Kings) and the quatrains of Omar Khayyam: The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: not all your piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.<br /> * Almost every one of the estimated 60m domesticated horses presently roaming the planet can trace its origins back to those reared in the rainshadow of the Urals around 2000 BCE.<br /> * The association of dogs with death is a recurring theme in Indo-European cultures. The Greek hellhound Kerberos finds an exact linguistic counterpart in Sarvara, one of the four eyed docs that accompanied Yama, god of the Indic underworld.<br /> * There is a strong link between twin deities and horses in Indo-European cosmogony - from the Greek horsemen Castor and Pollux, immortalised as the constellation Gemini, to the Ashvins, the twin charioteers of the Rig Veda, and Horsa and Hengist (Horse and Stallion in Old English) who, legend, has it, led the Anglo-Saxons to Britain.<br /> * Among the oldest songs that Indo-European poets sang, mythologists tell us, is one about a smith who makes a pact with a devil. Having swapped his soul for the power to weld any materials together, the smith cunningly welds the devil to an immovable object. It is the kernel of Faust, a story reworked by Marlowe, Goethe, and Mann.<br /> * Writing is often described as a miracle, and it certainly made many things possible. But the real miracle was that a story about a smith and a devil was handed down, more of less faithfully, for thousands of years before it was scored into a durable material.<br /> == 7. Northern Idyll - Baltic and Slavic ==<br /> * Psychologists report that people don't even hear the combinations of consonants that are forbidden in their native language; they hear the nearest pairing that's allowed, which they then reproduce.<br /> == 8. They Came from Steep Wilusa - Albanian, Armenian, Greek ==<br /> * Homer's inspiration, the models for Achilles and Agamemnon, belonged to the Mycenaean civilization which arose around 1700 BCE and reached the peak of its splendor 400 years later.<br /> == Conclusion - Shibboleth ==<br /> * The human compulsion to communicate is overwhelming. It was there even before sapiens. Children born deaf have invented sign languages to escape what one researcher has called the &quot;abysmal loneliness&quot; of life without communication. Some argue that without language there is no reasoning, others that there is no consciousness. But besides the desire to reach out to strangers, there's another one that has deep roots in us: the desire to belong to our own group.<br /> * People change languages just by using them. Sometimes they do so unconsciously, by reproducing a sound that they have heard infinitesimally altered. Sometimes they do so consciously, to imitate or differentiate themselves from others. The accumulation of these conscious and unconscious changes causes languages to split. There is some evidence that languages change most rapidly just after they split, as the two groups assert their diverging identities. From then on, the moment a newcomer opens their mouth they reveal whether they belong to &quot;us&quot; or &quot;them&quot;.<br /> * In the Bible, Judges 12:5-6, the men of Gilead identified their Ephraimite enemies by making them utter a single Hebrew word meaning &quot;stream&quot;: &quot;Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. They they took him and slew him at the passages of Jordan.<br /> * In Ukraine, since the Russian invasion of February 2022, the Shibboleth is &quot;palianytsia&quot;, which means a loaf of bread.<br /> * Nationalists across the globe are projecting national identities back on to a world that didn't know them. Prehistoric people undoubtedly had identities as complex and multilayered as ours. We don't know what they were, but we can be sure that nowhere among the layers was the nation state.<br /> * Europe has made a speciality of monolingualism. In much of the rest of the world, stable bilingualism or even multilingualism is still the norm.<br /> * English is simultaneously diverging into varieties that may one day be unrecognizable as the same language. So is English killing or is it dying, or is it somehow doing both at the same time?<br /> * English could well settle into a state of diglossia, where a gulf exists between the shared written form and the many spoken varieties, but the two bind each other together into a single tongue.<br /> * Russian proverb: &quot;The past is a lighthouse, not a port.&quot;</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Proto&diff=1622 2026-10-26T15:16:18Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 7. Northern Idyll - Baltic and Slavic */</p> <hr /> <div>== Introduction - Ariomania ==<br /> * Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Norse, and English are all descended from a much older language - Proto-Indo-European. The speakers of Proto-Indo-European who might only have numbered a few dozen to begin with, lived between Europe and Asia in the region of the Black Sea. They worshipped Father Sky. About 5,000 years ago, their language exploded out of its Black Sea cradle, spreading east and west and fragmenting as it went. Within a thousand years, its offspring could be heard from Ireland to India.<br /> * Language is humanity's oldest tool. When Homo sapiens emerged in Africa, 300,000 years ago, they were already equipped with it. Their vocal tracts could make all the sounds ours can. They had the cognitive capacity to map sound on to meaning, and to combine units of meaning into sentences.<br /> * By the time humans walked out of Africa 60,000 years ago, they probably communicated mostly through speech and were capable of a more sophisticated level of expression.<br /> * On the eve of the farming revolution, the human population was an estimated 10m. Perhaps 10k languages were spoken, each one having one or at most 2k speakers. Thanks to the new sources of energy that farming unleashed, communities grew and their language with them. Dialects emerged, and in time some of them became languages in their own right. Families of languages erupted like supernovas. This period, the Neolithic or New Stone Age, was our linguistic heyday: the moment in the human story when more languages were spoken than at any other. At their peak there might have been 15k of them.<br /> * From its Neolithic peak human linguistic diversity entered a long, slow decline. The downturn started with the formation of the first states, beginning 5,000 years ago with Sumer in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq).<br /> * Now 8bn humans speak around 7,000 languages. Those languages fall into about 150 families, but most of us speak languages that belong to just five of them:<br /> ** Indo-European - including English<br /> ** Sino-Tibetan - including Mandarin Chinese<br /> ** Niger-Congo<br /> ** Afro-Asiatic<br /> ** Austonesian<br /> *Like language, writing was conceived of independently a number of time.The oldest know writing system was invented by the Sumerians<br /> *As far as we know, the alphabet was only invented once, in or near Egypt.<br /> *Linguists consider that on average it takes between 500-1,000 years for a language to become incomprehensible to its original speakers<br /> == 1. Genesis - Lingua Obscura ==<br /> * The first farmers would have needed new words to describe the plants and animals they cultivated and the tools they invented to harness them. They would have acquired a vocabulary of agriculture.<br /> * Farmers from Anatolia entered Europe via two routes:<br /> ** One stream crossed the Bosporus, reaching the eastern Balkans by 6500 BCE and then following the Danube inland. Within a thousand years they were building villages in the Carpathian Basin - the depression, centred on modern Hungary, that is bound by the Carpathian Mountains and the Alps.<br /> ** A second stream island-hopped across the Aegean and along the northern Mediterranean seaboard by raft or boat (rowing, not sailing), then headed north from France's azure coast.<br /> ** The two streams met in the Paris Basin, the lowlands before the Atlantic, and there they mingled before fanning out again. By 4500 BCE, descendants of the Anatolian farmers were all over Europe, as far west as Ireland and as far east as Ukraine. These movements took place over many, many generations, but the distances covered are still extraordinary when you think that, apart from the sea crossings, they happened on foot. There was as yet no donkey or other docile pack animal, no horse that wasn't wild, no wheel and hence no wagon. <br /> ** Now, when hunter gatherers met farmers, in general they couldn't compete. Their way of life and their languages were on a fast track to extinction.<br /> ** By 4500 BCE, the competition was between:<br /> *** Herders, whose wealth was mobile and who prized self-sufficiency and lived for the present<br /> *** Farmers, whose wealth was immobile and who valued collective decision making and planned for the future.<br /> **Both the bible (Cain and Abel) and the Qur'an recount how this clash of worldviews led to the first murder, but the clash is much older than the Abrahamic scriptures.<br /> **By 4000 BCE, ancient DNA reveals that steppe women were moving into farming settlements, farming women were moving into steppe settlements, and these were no longer rare or sporadic events.<br /> **A few centuries after the appearance of the first megasites in Ukraine, Mesopotamian villages by the names of Uruk and Tell Brak also began to swell. These would become the first cities that prehistorians would recognize as such, because they were organized as extreme versions of our modern cities.<br /> **Sometime between 4000-3500 BCE, the first wheeled vehicle trundled onto the steppe, pulled by oxen. Evidence for it appears simultaneously east, west, and south of the Black Sea.<br /> **Roads weren't long in coming.<br /> **Around 3500 BCE the megasites in turn were abandoned.<br /> == 2. Sacred Spring - Proto-Indo-European ==<br /> * We know that, east of the Urals, in what is now Kazakhstan, people belonging to a culture called Botai were already raising horses by 3500 BCE.<br /> * The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European lexicon consists of about 1,600 words<br /> == 3. First Among Equals - Anatolian ==<br /> * Most European men alive today, and millions of their counterparts in Central and South Asia, carry Y chromosomes that came from the steppe.<br /> == 4. Over the Range - Tocharian ==<br /> * -<br /> == 5. Lark Rising - Celtic, Germanic, Italic ==<br /> * History in western Europe ignites as a spark at the tip of Italy in the 8th C BCE. The Greeks, who had been writing in one script or another for 700 years, landed in Sicily and the southern part of the boot to trade and settle, bringing the alphabet with them. The Etruscans further north borrowed it, with modifications, and their Italic-speaking neighbors borrowed theirs. From Italy, writing spread north and west in a traveling wave. If you think of the linguistic landscape of Europe as a skein of invisible ink, writing was the candle flame that illuminated it. And what that flame captured, in the middle of the first millennium BCE - around the time that the Parthenon was being erected in Athens - was a sooty mosaic of Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages.<br /> * The first Celtic inscriptions, which exist in a few different scripts, date to the 6th C BCE.<br /> * The Irish invented their own alphabet around the 4th C BCE.<br /> * The first uncontested runic inscriptions date to the 2nd C CE and were found in Jutland, the peninsula that today straddles Denmark and Germany.<br /> * Writing must has struck all those who encountered it for the first time as magical.<br /> * The Poetic Edda is a collection of narrative poems and one of our richest sources of information about Norse mythology, not to mention the ancient Germanic languages. The oldest version comes from Iceland and date to the 13th C CE, though many of the poems are thought to be older.<br /> * When the Yamnaya arrived in Hungary, the population of Europe was an estimated 7m. The migrants might have numbered in the 10k s, yet within a thousand years languages descended from theirs were spoken across the continent.<br /> * The Yamnaya brotherhood that ventured out of Pontic river valley around 3500 BCE could have been the sole survivors of an early plague outbreak that cut down the rest of their community.<br /> * It was principally social mechanisms, in other words, that drove the spread of the Indo-European languages. The seeds were sown in raids, marriage, fostering, and patronage. They were tamped down through storytelling and watered at feasts.<br /> == 6. The Wandering Horse - Indo-Iranian ==<br /> * Persepolis was the ceremonial capital founded by Darius the Great in the 6th C BCE, and because of its remote location in Iran's Zagros Mountains it was know as the safest place in the Persian Empire to store art, archives, and gold. Alexander of Macedon scuppered that reputation in 330 BCE, when he sacked and plundered the city and then set fire to it, destroying its many treasures and leaving it in ruins.<br /> * The oldest Indic text is the Rig Veda, the first of the four Vedas that make up the most ancient Indian, and Hindu scriptures. Its thousand or more hymns were passed down orally for a very long time before they were recorded, and they were not recorded all at once.<br /> * Scholars hazard that the Rig Veda dates to between 1500-1200 BCE, at least 400 years after the earliest Hittite texts.<br /> * The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are two epic Sanskrit poems concerned with princely trials and tribulations. There are sanskrit works on philosophy, science, cookery, elephants, yoga, and sex, in the form of the Kamasutra.<br /> * &quot;Language, auspicious, charming, like a creeper, whose minds does it not win over?&quot; as a sukta or hymn has it. Sanskrit probably dies as a vernacular sometime in the first millennium CE, having disintegrated, like Latin, into a rich panoply of daughter languages.<br /> * The oldest surviving text in any Iranic language is the Avesta, the holy book of Zoroastrianism, the religion of Persia before the Muslim conquest of the 7th C CE, and as the first truly monotheistic creed it had a profound influence on the Abrahamic religions.<br /> * It's generally thought that Zarathustra composed the Gathas, a critique of the Rig Veda around 1000 BCE, a few centuries after the Rig Veda was composed.<br /> * The Persians left the world one of its great poetic traditions, spanning the love poetry of Hafez and Rumi, Fedowsi's epic Shahnameh (the Book of Kings) and the quatrains of Omar Khayyam: The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: not all your piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.<br /> * Almost every one of the estimated 60m domesticated horses presently roaming the planet can trace its origins back to those reared in the rainshadow of the Urals around 2000 BCE.<br /> * The association of dogs with death is a recurring theme in Indo-European cultures. The Greek hellhound Kerberos finds an exact linguistic counterpart in Sarvara, one of the four eyed docs that accompanied Yama, god of the Indic underworld.<br /> * There is a strong link between twin deities and horses in Indo-European cosmogony - from the Greek horsemen Castor and Pollux, immortalised as the constellation Gemini, to the Ashvins, the twin charioteers of the Rig Veda, and Horsa and Hengist (Horse and Stallion in Old English) who, legend, has it, led the Anglo-Saxons to Britain.<br /> * Among the oldest songs that Indo-European poets sang, mythologists tell us, is one about a smith who makes a pact with a devil. Having swapped his soul for the power to weld any materials together, the smith cunningly welds the devil to an immovable object. It is the kernel of Faust, a story reworked by Marlowe, Goethe, and Mann.<br /> * Writing is often described as a miracle, and it certainly made many things possible. But the real miracle was that a story about a smith and a devil was handed down, more of less faithfully, for thousands of years before it was scored into a durable material.<br /> == 7. Northern Idyll - Baltic and Slavic ==<br /> * Psychologists report that people don't even hear the combinations of consonants that are forbidden in their native language; they hear the nearest pairing that's allowed, which they then reproduce.<br /> == 8. They Came from Steep Wilusa - Albanian, Armenian, Greek ==<br /> * Homer's inspiration, the models for Achilles and Agamemnon, belonged to the Mycenaean civilization which arose around 1700 BCE and reached the peak of its splendor 400 years later.<br /> == Conclusion - Shibboleth ==<br /> * The human compulsion to communicate is overwhelming. It was there even before sapiens. Children born deaf have invented sign languages to escape what one researcher has called the &quot;abysmal loneliness&quot; of life without communication. Some argue that without language there is no reasoning, others that there is no consciousness. But besides the desire to reach out to strangers, there's another one that has deep roots in us: the desire to belong to our own group.<br /> * People change languages just by using them. Sometimes they do so unconsciously, by reproducing a sound that they have heard infinitesimally altered. Sometimes they do so consciously, to imitate or differentiate themselves from others. The accumulation of these conscious and unconscious changes causes languages to split. There is some evidence that languages change most rapidly just after they split, as the two groups assert their diverging identities. From then on, the moment a newcomer opens their mouth they reveal whether they belong to &quot;us&quot; or &quot;them&quot;.<br /> * In the Bible, Judges 12:5-6, the men of Gilead identified their Ephraimite enemies by making them utter a single Hebrew word meaning &quot;stream&quot;: &quot;Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. They they took him and slew him at the passages of Jordan.<br /> * In Ukraine, since the Russian invasion of February 2022, the Shibboleth is &quot;palianytsia&quot;, which means a loaf of bread.<br /> * Nationalists across the globe are projecting national identities back on to a world that didn't know them. Prehistoric people undoubtedly had identities as complex and multilayered as ours. We don't know what they were, but we can be sure that nowhere among the layers was the nation state.<br /> * Europe has made a speciality of monolingualism. In much of the rest of the world, stable bilingualism or even multilingualism is still the norm.<br /> * English is simultaneously diverging into varieties that may one day be unrecognizable as the same language. So is English killing or is it dying, or is it somehow doing both at the same time?<br /> * English could well settle into a state of diglossia, where a gulf exists between the shared written form and the many spoken varieties, but the two bind each other together into a single tongue.<br /> * Russian proverb: &quot;The past is a lighthouse, not a port.&quot;</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Proto&diff=1621 2026-10-26T14:22:33Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 5. Lark Rising - Celtic, Germanic, Italic */</p> <hr /> <div>== Introduction - Ariomania ==<br /> * Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Norse, and English are all descended from a much older language - Proto-Indo-European. The speakers of Proto-Indo-European who might only have numbered a few dozen to begin with, lived between Europe and Asia in the region of the Black Sea. They worshipped Father Sky. About 5,000 years ago, their language exploded out of its Black Sea cradle, spreading east and west and fragmenting as it went. Within a thousand years, its offspring could be heard from Ireland to India.<br /> * Language is humanity's oldest tool. When Homo sapiens emerged in Africa, 300,000 years ago, they were already equipped with it. Their vocal tracts could make all the sounds ours can. They had the cognitive capacity to map sound on to meaning, and to combine units of meaning into sentences.<br /> * By the time humans walked out of Africa 60,000 years ago, they probably communicated mostly through speech and were capable of a more sophisticated level of expression.<br /> * On the eve of the farming revolution, the human population was an estimated 10m. Perhaps 10k languages were spoken, each one having one or at most 2k speakers. Thanks to the new sources of energy that farming unleashed, communities grew and their language with them. Dialects emerged, and in time some of them became languages in their own right. Families of languages erupted like supernovas. This period, the Neolithic or New Stone Age, was our linguistic heyday: the moment in the human story when more languages were spoken than at any other. At their peak there might have been 15k of them.<br /> * From its Neolithic peak human linguistic diversity entered a long, slow decline. The downturn started with the formation of the first states, beginning 5,000 years ago with Sumer in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq).<br /> * Now 8bn humans speak around 7,000 languages. Those languages fall into about 150 families, but most of us speak languages that belong to just five of them:<br /> ** Indo-European - including English<br /> ** Sino-Tibetan - including Mandarin Chinese<br /> ** Niger-Congo<br /> ** Afro-Asiatic<br /> ** Austonesian<br /> *Like language, writing was conceived of independently a number of time.The oldest know writing system was invented by the Sumerians<br /> *As far as we know, the alphabet was only invented once, in or near Egypt.<br /> *Linguists consider that on average it takes between 500-1,000 years for a language to become incomprehensible to its original speakers<br /> == 1. Genesis - Lingua Obscura ==<br /> * The first farmers would have needed new words to describe the plants and animals they cultivated and the tools they invented to harness them. They would have acquired a vocabulary of agriculture.<br /> * Farmers from Anatolia entered Europe via two routes:<br /> ** One stream crossed the Bosporus, reaching the eastern Balkans by 6500 BCE and then following the Danube inland. Within a thousand years they were building villages in the Carpathian Basin - the depression, centred on modern Hungary, that is bound by the Carpathian Mountains and the Alps.<br /> ** A second stream island-hopped across the Aegean and along the northern Mediterranean seaboard by raft or boat (rowing, not sailing), then headed north from France's azure coast.<br /> ** The two streams met in the Paris Basin, the lowlands before the Atlantic, and there they mingled before fanning out again. By 4500 BCE, descendants of the Anatolian farmers were all over Europe, as far west as Ireland and as far east as Ukraine. These movements took place over many, many generations, but the distances covered are still extraordinary when you think that, apart from the sea crossings, they happened on foot. There was as yet no donkey or other docile pack animal, no horse that wasn't wild, no wheel and hence no wagon. <br /> ** Now, when hunter gatherers met farmers, in general they couldn't compete. Their way of life and their languages were on a fast track to extinction.<br /> ** By 4500 BCE, the competition was between:<br /> *** Herders, whose wealth was mobile and who prized self-sufficiency and lived for the present<br /> *** Farmers, whose wealth was immobile and who valued collective decision making and planned for the future.<br /> **Both the bible (Cain and Abel) and the Qur'an recount how this clash of worldviews led to the first murder, but the clash is much older than the Abrahamic scriptures.<br /> **By 4000 BCE, ancient DNA reveals that steppe women were moving into farming settlements, farming women were moving into steppe settlements, and these were no longer rare or sporadic events.<br /> **A few centuries after the appearance of the first megasites in Ukraine, Mesopotamian villages by the names of Uruk and Tell Brak also began to swell. These would become the first cities that prehistorians would recognize as such, because they were organized as extreme versions of our modern cities.<br /> **Sometime between 4000-3500 BCE, the first wheeled vehicle trundled onto the steppe, pulled by oxen. Evidence for it appears simultaneously east, west, and south of the Black Sea.<br /> **Roads weren't long in coming.<br /> **Around 3500 BCE the megasites in turn were abandoned.<br /> == 2. Sacred Spring - Proto-Indo-European ==<br /> * We know that, east of the Urals, in what is now Kazakhstan, people belonging to a culture called Botai were already raising horses by 3500 BCE.<br /> * The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European lexicon consists of about 1,600 words<br /> == 3. First Among Equals - Anatolian ==<br /> * Most European men alive today, and millions of their counterparts in Central and South Asia, carry Y chromosomes that came from the steppe.<br /> == 4. Over the Range - Tocharian ==<br /> * -<br /> == 5. Lark Rising - Celtic, Germanic, Italic ==<br /> * History in western Europe ignites as a spark at the tip of Italy in the 8th C BCE. The Greeks, who had been writing in one script or another for 700 years, landed in Sicily and the southern part of the boot to trade and settle, bringing the alphabet with them. The Etruscans further north borrowed it, with modifications, and their Italic-speaking neighbors borrowed theirs. From Italy, writing spread north and west in a traveling wave. If you think of the linguistic landscape of Europe as a skein of invisible ink, writing was the candle flame that illuminated it. And what that flame captured, in the middle of the first millennium BCE - around the time that the Parthenon was being erected in Athens - was a sooty mosaic of Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages.<br /> * The first Celtic inscriptions, which exist in a few different scripts, date to the 6th C BCE.<br /> * The Irish invented their own alphabet around the 4th C BCE.<br /> * The first uncontested runic inscriptions date to the 2nd C CE and were found in Jutland, the peninsula that today straddles Denmark and Germany.<br /> * Writing must has struck all those who encountered it for the first time as magical.<br /> * The Poetic Edda is a collection of narrative poems and one of our richest sources of information about Norse mythology, not to mention the ancient Germanic languages. The oldest version comes from Iceland and date to the 13th C CE, though many of the poems are thought to be older.<br /> * When the Yamnaya arrived in Hungary, the population of Europe was an estimated 7m. The migrants might have numbered in the 10k s, yet within a thousand years languages descended from theirs were spoken across the continent.<br /> * The Yamnaya brotherhood that ventured out of Pontic river valley around 3500 BCE could have been the sole survivors of an early plague outbreak that cut down the rest of their community.<br /> * It was principally social mechanisms, in other words, that drove the spread of the Indo-European languages. The seeds were sown in raids, marriage, fostering, and patronage. They were tamped down through storytelling and watered at feasts.<br /> == 6. The Wandering Horse - Indo-Iranian ==<br /> * Persepolis was the ceremonial capital founded by Darius the Great in the 6th C BCE, and because of its remote location in Iran's Zagros Mountains it was know as the safest place in the Persian Empire to store art, archives, and gold. Alexander of Macedon scuppered that reputation in 330 BCE, when he sacked and plundered the city and then set fire to it, destroying its many treasures and leaving it in ruins.<br /> * The oldest Indic text is the Rig Veda, the first of the four Vedas that make up the most ancient Indian, and Hindu scriptures. Its thousand or more hymns were passed down orally for a very long time before they were recorded, and they were not recorded all at once.<br /> * Scholars hazard that the Rig Veda dates to between 1500-1200 BCE, at least 400 years after the earliest Hittite texts.<br /> * The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are two epic Sanskrit poems concerned with princely trials and tribulations. There are sanskrit works on philosophy, science, cookery, elephants, yoga, and sex, in the form of the Kamasutra.<br /> * &quot;Language, auspicious, charming, like a creeper, whose minds does it not win over?&quot; as a sukta or hymn has it. Sanskrit probably dies as a vernacular sometime in the first millennium CE, having disintegrated, like Latin, into a rich panoply of daughter languages.<br /> * The oldest surviving text in any Iranic language is the Avesta, the holy book of Zoroastrianism, the religion of Persia before the Muslim conquest of the 7th C CE, and as the first truly monotheistic creed it had a profound influence on the Abrahamic religions.<br /> * It's generally thought that Zarathustra composed the Gathas, a critique of the Rig Veda around 1000 BCE, a few centuries after the Rig Veda was composed.<br /> * The Persians left the world one of its great poetic traditions, spanning the love poetry of Hafez and Rumi, Fedowsi's epic Shahnameh (the Book of Kings) and the quatrains of Omar Khayyam: The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: not all your piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.<br /> * Almost every one of the estimated 60m domesticated horses presently roaming the planet can trace its origins back to those reared in the rainshadow of the Urals around 2000 BCE.<br /> * The association of dogs with death is a recurring theme in Indo-European cultures. The Greek hellhound Kerberos finds an exact linguistic counterpart in Sarvara, one of the four eyed docs that accompanied Yama, god of the Indic underworld.<br /> * There is a strong link between twin deities and horses in Indo-European cosmogony - from the Greek horsemen Castor and Pollux, immortalised as the constellation Gemini, to the Ashvins, the twin charioteers of the Rig Veda, and Horsa and Hengist (Horse and Stallion in Old English) who, legend, has it, led the Anglo-Saxons to Britain.<br /> * Among the oldest songs that Indo-European poets sang, mythologists tell us, is one about a smith who makes a pact with a devil. Having swapped his soul for the power to weld any materials together, the smith cunningly welds the devil to an immovable object. It is the kernel of Faust, a story reworked by Marlowe, Goethe, and Mann.<br /> * Writing is often described as a miracle, and it certainly made many things possible. But the real miracle was that a story about a smith and a devil was handed down, more of less faithfully, for thousands of years before it was scored into a durable material.<br /> == 7. Northern Idyll - Baltic and Slavic ==<br /> * -<br /> == 8. They Came from Steep Wilusa - Albanian, Armenian, Greek ==<br /> * -<br /> == Conclusion - Shibboleth ==<br /> * -</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Books&diff=1620 2026-10-26T13:39:38Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* Currently Reading */</p> <hr /> <div>== Books to Buy ==<br /> <br /> Used:<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&amp;qid=1783763181&amp;sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&amp;sr=8-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman<br /> * Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan<br /> <br /> Paperbacks:<br /> * The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin<br /> * Alison Gopnik - The Philosophical Baby<br /> * A Natural History of the Senses- Diane Ackerman<br /> * Ram Dass - Be Here Now<br /> * luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&amp;pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&amp;pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&amp;pd_rd_i=1250266645&amp;psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 <br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&amp;qid=1784816314&amp;sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=elyn+saks&amp;qid=1783197867&amp;sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&amp;sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&amp;qid=1783198086&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&amp;sr=1-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet<br /> * Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&amp;qid=1775903643&amp;sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]<br /> * Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity<br /> * Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience<br /> * Lorrie Moore - Self Help<br /> * La Modification - Michel Butor<br /> * Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec<br /> * How Like a God - Rex Stout<br /> <br /> * Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur<br /> * Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau<br /> * Nausea - Sartre<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].<br /> * Building a second brain<br /> * how to solve it<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories <br /> * Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz<br /> *<br /> <br /> Hardbacks:<br /> <br /> * Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience <br /> <br /> * [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit <br /> * [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=thomas+sheehan&amp;qid=1771981151&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&amp;sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?<br /> * [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey<br /> * Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod<br /> * L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger<br /> * Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)<br /> * A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)<br /> * The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium<br /> * Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization<br /> * Consolations - David Whyte<br /> <br /> == Books to Read ==<br /> <br /> * Reading to Learn - William Zinger<br /> * Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut<br /> <br /> == Currently Reading ==<br /> <br /> * [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear<br /> *[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer<br /> * [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston <br /> *[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)<br /> *[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike<br /> <br /> == Books Read ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 (week 43) ===<br /> <br /> * 46. [[Proto]]: How One Ancient Language Went Global - Laura Spinney<br /> * 45. [[Ways of Seeing]] - John Berger<br /> * 44. [[Shadow Ticket]] - Thomas Pynchon<br /> * 43. [[Hyperpolitics]] - Anton Jäger<br /> * 42. [[Words, Thoughts, and Theories]] - Alison Gopnik and Andrew N Meltzoff<br /> * 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan<br /> * 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach<br /> * 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung <br /> * 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger<br /> * 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges<br /> * 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley<br /> * 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck<br /> * 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng<br /> * 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self<br /> * 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang<br /> * 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral <br /> * 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.<br /> * 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter <br /> * 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)<br /> * 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell<br /> * 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)<br /> * 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab<br /> * 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade<br /> * 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn<br /> * 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> * 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen<br /> * 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard<br /> <br /> * 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington<br /> *14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands<br /> *13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms<br /> *12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> *11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar<br /> *10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> *9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola<br /> *8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine<br /> <br /> * 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle<br /> * 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson<br /> * 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie <br /> * 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola<br /> *3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott<br /> * 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum<br /> * 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> <br /> * 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)<br /> * 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball<br /> * 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards<br /> * 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins<br /> * 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis<br /> * 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola <br /> * 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler<br /> * 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya<br /> *47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers<br /> * 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts<br /> * 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola<br /> * 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)<br /> * 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky<br /> * 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac<br /> * 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)<br /> * 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac<br /> * 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)<br /> * 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)<br /> <br /> * 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)<br /> * 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry<br /> * 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife<br /> * 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges<br /> * 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin<br /> * 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener<br /> * 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater<br /> * 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman<br /> * 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton<br /> * 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July<br /> * 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter<br /> * 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards<br /> * 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer<br /> * 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman<br /> * 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle<br /> * 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham<br /> * 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark<br /> * 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath<br /> * 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)<br /> * 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett<br /> * 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]<br /> * 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter<br /> * 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> * 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux<br /> * 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett<br /> * 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)<br /> * 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque<br /> <br /> === 2024 ===<br /> <br /> * The Plot - Will Eisner<br /> * The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco<br /> * The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut<br /> * Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)<br /> * The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner<br /> * The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil<br /> * Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg<br /> * Le Ton Beau de…<br /> * The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson<br /> * Psychonauts - <br /> * The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut<br /> * In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel<br /> * Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson<br /> * Les Effinger - Gabriele Target<br /> * Triad - Tom Keve<br /> * Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig<br /> * The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich<br /> * How Language Works - David Crystal<br /> * The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf<br /> * [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter<br /> * [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> <br /> == Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==<br /> That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':<br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 1. Language &amp; Style Difficulties ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.<br /> * '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).<br /> * '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 2. Length &amp; Scope ===<br /> <br /> * '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.<br /> * '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.<br /> * '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 3. Experimental Structure ===<br /> <br /> * '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.<br /> * '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.<br /> * '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===<br /> <br /> * '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.<br /> * '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.<br /> * '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 5. Dense Intertextuality ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.<br /> * '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.<br /> * '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===<br /> <br /> * '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.<br /> * '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===<br /> <br /> * ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)<br /> * ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)<br /> * ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)<br /> * ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)<br /> * ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)<br /> <br /> [[Category:Books]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Films&diff=1619 2026-10-26T12:51:36Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* Films to Watch */</p> <hr /> <div>== Films to Watch ==<br /> <br /> [https://www.cinealcazar.fr/fichier/programme.pdf Cinema Alcazar Program]<br /> <br /> * True Lies<br /> * Long Kiss Goodnight (Christmas Action) - https://www.avclub.com/women-of-action-the-long-kiss-goodnight-geena-davis-samuel-l-jackson<br /> * Wicker: https://youtu.be/HP0BWBWn14I?si=E5oThE4uNiED28b3<br /> * morvern Callar<br /> * Do the right thing <br /> * run Lola Run<br /> * Mind trips<br /> ** Triangle<br /> ** Beyond the infinite two minutes<br /> ** Enemy<br /> ** Under the Silver Lake<br /> ** The Vanishing<br /> ** Angel Heart<br /> ** Following<br /> ** The Invisible Guest<br /> ** Perfect Blue<br /> ** Resolution<br /> * fast times <br /> * the Jerk<br /> * Mutiny on the Bounty<br /> * Entrapment <br /> * Mask of Zorro<br /> * PTA - Hard Eight, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, etc<br /> * Little Big and Far - weird scandinavian film<br /> * This is Spinal tap<br /> * Big Night - Tucci and Shaloub<br /> * Punch drunk love<br /> * Boyhood <br /> * Kind hearts and coronets <br /> * A night at the opera <br /> * Blazing saddles <br /> * Lives of others<br /> * Lost in Translation <br /> * One flew over <br /> * Get out<br /> * Maltese falcon <br /> * Early mad maxes<br /> * Joule of the Nile<br /> * the man with two brains<br /> * Psycho Therapy - Steve Buscemi is a serial killer who wants to advise an author, but ends up playing a marriage counselor.<br /> * Early Steve Martin<br /> * A Complete Unknown <br /> * la La Land -<br /> * The Phoenician Scheme - new Wes Anderson comedy espionage thriller <br /> * Thelma - Grandma fights con artists<br /> * Kinds of Kindness<br /> * 2001<br /> * The Elephant Man<br /> * The Fabulous Baker Boys<br /> * Network<br /> <br /> == Films Watched ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 ===<br /> <br /> * 62. GoodFellas<br /> * 61. The Firm<br /> * 60. After Hours<br /> * 59. The King of Comedy <br /> * 58. Sinners <br /> * 57. The Sixth Sense<br /> * 56. Alter Ego<br /> * 55. Franz K <br /> * 54. Taxi Driver <br /> * 53. The Tailor of Panama<br /> * 52. La bataille de Gaulle: J'écris ton nom<br /> * 51. Training Day<br /> * 50. The Guns of Naverone<br /> * 49. La bataille de Gaulle: L'age de fer<br /> * 48. Kind Hearts and Coronets<br /> * 47. Parasite<br /> * 46. Arsenic and Old Lace <br /> * 45. Get Out <br /> * 44. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (rewatch)<br /> * 43. Apex<br /> * 42. 21 Jump Street<br /> * 41. Scream 3 <br /> * 40. Shutter Island<br /> * 39. Scream 2<br /> * 38. Wall-E<br /> * 37. Get Smart<br /> * 36. Se7en<br /> * 35. The Producers<br /> * 34: Garfield: The Movie<br /> * 33. Leon<br /> * 32. Shimmer Lake<br /> * 31. Unforgiven<br /> * 30. A Mighty Wind<br /> * 29. Magnolia<br /> * 28. Escape from Alcatraz<br /> * 27. The Sting<br /> * 26. Pulp Fiction<br /> * 25. Failure to Launch<br /> * 24. Hudson Hawk<br /> * 23. Mystère à St Tropez<br /> * 22. The Thomas Crown Affair<br /> * 21. The Three Amigos (1986)<br /> * 20. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - Jonathon Demme<br /> * 19. Top Secret (1984)<br /> * 18. One Battle After Another (2025) - Paul Thomas Anderson<br /> * 17. Memento (2000) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 16. Pleasantville (1998) - Gary Ross<br /> * 15. The Fisher King (1991) -<br /> * 14. The Mastermind<br /> * 13. The Birdcage<br /> * 12. Fight Club (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Knives Out: Glass Onion (rewatch)<br /> * 10. Twins<br /> * 9. The Remains of the Day<br /> * 8. The Ladykillers<br /> * 7. Us (rewatch)<br /> * 6. Saving Private Ryan (rewatch)<br /> * 5. Event Horizon<br /> * 4. Insomnia (2002) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Knives Out (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Gattaca (1997) - Andrew Niccol<br /> * 1. Eddington (2025) - Ari Aster<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> * 65. Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)<br /> * 64. Miller's Crossing<br /> * 63. Blood Simple<br /> * 62. Crazy Stupid Love<br /> * 61. Happiest Season<br /> * 60. Bridge of Spies <br /> * 59. Identity<br /> * 58. Clueless<br /> * 57. Ace Ventura 2: Call of Nature <br /> * 56. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World<br /> * 55. Apollo 13<br /> * 54. LA Confidential (rewatch)<br /> * 53. Inside Llewyn Davis<br /> * 52. M3gan<br /> * 51. Clear and Present Danger <br /> * 50. 12 Monkeys<br /> * 49. No Country for Old Men<br /> * 48. The Hudsucker Proxy<br /> * 47. La Cuisse ou l'aile<br /> * 46. Mission Impossible : The Final Reckoning<br /> * 45. Dumb and Dumber <br /> * 44. Rear Window<br /> * 43. Raising Arizona<br /> * 42. Tenet (rewatch)<br /> * 41. The fifth Element <br /> * 40. Burn Without Reading <br /> * 39. The Big Lebowski (rewatch)<br /> * 38. Fargo (rewatch)<br /> * 37. 28 Days Later (rewatch)<br /> * 36. O Brother, Where Art Thou<br /> * 35. Mickey 17 <br /> * 34. Empire of the Sun <br /> * 33. The Fugitive <br /> * 32. Wet Hot American Summer (rewatch)<br /> * 31. Ted<br /> * 30. Hundreds of Beavers <br /> * 29. Wayne’s World (rewatch)<br /> * 28. True Grit (Coen Bros)<br /> * 27. Groundhog Day (rewatch)<br /> * 26. Moonrise Kingdom <br /> * 25. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatra <br /> * 24. Adaptation (rewatch)<br /> * 23. Romancing the Stone (rewatch)<br /> * Easter Film Festival<br /> ** 22. Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)<br /> ** 21. Witness<br /> ** 20. The Grand Budapest Hotel (rewatch)<br /> ** 19. Conclave<br /> ** 18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective<br /> ** 17. Lincoln<br /> ** 16. Being John Malkovitch (rewatch)<br /> ** 15. AI (rewatch)<br /> ** 14. The Royal Tenenbaums (rewatch)<br /> ** 13. Total Recall 1990 (rewatch)<br /> ** 12. In the Line of Fire (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Flow <br /> * 10. Juror No. 2<br /> * 9. The Savage Robot<br /> * 8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (rewatch)<br /> * 7. Dead Poet's Society<br /> * 6. Notting Hill (rewatch)<br /> * 5. My Neighbor Totoro (rewatch)<br /> * 4. Kiki’s Delivery Service (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Dr Strangelove (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Dune 2<br /> * 1. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me (rewatch)<br /> <br /> === 2024 and Earlier ===<br /> * The Big Lebowski<br /> * The Holiday<br /> * Love Actually<br /> * Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure<br /> * The Mask<br /> [[Category:Films]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Mental_Model&diff=1618 2026-10-25T16:17:58Z

<p>Robert.adlington: </p> <hr /> <div>* A stimulus is received. This can come from:<br /> ** Outside, from the senses<br /> ** Inside, as a bodily or emotional sensation<br /> ** The mind itself, as a thought is held in attention and seeks associations<br /> * The stimulus triggers a massive, apparently instantaneous, parallel search of the cortex to identify the stimulus and prepare an appropriate response:<br /> ** This is the Bayesian predictive engine, which seeks to minimize surprise.<br /> ** It returns - let's call them, after Jung, &quot;symbols&quot;, that the brain determines are the most appropriate response, based on habit, on what has worked before<br /> ** We can think of the webs of information stored in the cortex as the unconscious. It is like a sea where we are fishing, our stimulus is the bait, and the symbols emerging are like fish attracted to the bait<br /> ** The surface of the sea is the partition between the unconscious and consciousness - and the specific point where the fish-symbols appear is like a spotlight of attention or awareness.<br /> ** Often one symbol is dominant - a word, a feeling, an image, and provides just the right response needed. Think of a crossword clue where the answer just appears to you. Other times multiple symbols may have similar weights and require deliberation<br /> *The winning symbol triggers a reaction:<br /> **You may respond in a conversation, put one foot in front of the other, grab a snack, move onto the next word in your novel, move your racquet to meet an incoming tennis ball<br /> **The system is very efficient. We are reacting dozens/hundreds/thousands (depending at which level of granularity we are looking?) of times every minute, often (mainly?) with very little deliberation.<br /> **But reflection is presumably a more recent acquisition. My cat reacts to me stroking her either with a purr or with a swipe of her claws and in neither case do I think she is deliberating. But I can react to the approach of a hand...<br /> The difference between the cat and me is an ability to delay reaction, to direct attention onto the symbols returned by the unconscious. Rather than react immediately, I can hold the returned symbols in attention, in consciousness, and through this attention, I can summon other symbols, symbols that are associated with those in my attention. The result of this directed attention may be a more considered reaction. Or no reaction at all, as I reflect on what I am experiencing. <br /> <br /> This ability, to pause, to hold stimuli in the mind's eye, allows us to construct much more elaborate theories about what is happening around us, stimulating us, but it is also a kind of curse, taking us out of the immediacy of the moment, separating the stimulus from our reaction and allowing it to pass through any number of labyrinthine symbolic paths.<br /> <br /> It is this mechanism, this flickering spotlight, this shallow pool of reflection, that is, to my mind, consciousness, that allows us to reflect, to &quot;know&quot; things, and to have constructed our culture.<br /> <br /> == Spoken Language ==<br /> These associations between symbols existed before speech, before language, but spoken language must be involved in the process of slowing down perception, of allowing reflection. Language allows us to assert connections, to compare and contrast symbols, to propose similarity or difference.<br /> <br /> Spoken language allows us to speak to ourselves - an inner monologue that is not necessarily as cut and dried as interpersonal language. But it also allows us to speak to others, to share attention and to share concepts. By pointing to direct attention and be making a sound, we can both associate the sound to the object being pointed out and share that association with our interlocutors. Language separates the things of the world out, makes them identifiable. And it shares these separations, these identities with others. Our shared culture originates from this basic form of sharing.<br /> <br /> == Written Language ==<br /> While spoken language comes naturally to infants who are exposed to speakers, written language is not a simple acquisition. The child has to learn that the shapes of the letters when arranged in certain patterns, are a visual representation of the sound that evokes the object.<br /> <br /> Reading is a fundamentally weird, modern acquisition of humans. It is not essential for an infant to be able to insert themselves into our shared culture.<br /> [[Category:Concepts]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Proto&diff=1617 2026-10-20T15:28:56Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2. Sacred Spring - Proto-Indo-European */</p> <hr /> <div>== Introduction - Ariomania ==<br /> * Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Norse, and English are all descended from a much older language - Proto-Indo-European. The speakers of Proto-Indo-European who might only have numbered a few dozen to begin with, lived between Europe and Asia in the region of the Black Sea. They worshipped Father Sky. About 5,000 years ago, their language exploded out of its Black Sea cradle, spreading east and west and fragmenting as it went. Within a thousand years, its offspring could be heard from Ireland to India.<br /> * Language is humanity's oldest tool. When Homo sapiens emerged in Africa, 300,000 years ago, they were already equipped with it. Their vocal tracts could make all the sounds ours can. They had the cognitive capacity to map sound on to meaning, and to combine units of meaning into sentences.<br /> * By the time humans walked out of Africa 60,000 years ago, they probably communicated mostly through speech and were capable of a more sophisticated level of expression.<br /> * On the eve of the farming revolution, the human population was an estimated 10m. Perhaps 10k languages were spoken, each one having one or at most 2k speakers. Thanks to the new sources of energy that farming unleashed, communities grew and their language with them. Dialects emerged, and in time some of them became languages in their own right. Families of languages erupted like supernovas. This period, the Neolithic or New Stone Age, was our linguistic heyday: the moment in the human story when more languages were spoken than at any other. At their peak there might have been 15k of them.<br /> * From its Neolithic peak human linguistic diversity entered a long, slow decline. The downturn started with the formation of the first states, beginning 5,000 years ago with Sumer in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq).<br /> * Now 8bn humans speak around 7,000 languages. Those languages fall into about 150 families, but most of us speak languages that belong to just five of them:<br /> ** Indo-European - including English<br /> ** Sino-Tibetan - including Mandarin Chinese<br /> ** Niger-Congo<br /> ** Afro-Asiatic<br /> ** Austonesian<br /> *Like language, writing was conceived of independently a number of time.The oldest know writing system was invented by the Sumerians<br /> *As far as we know, the alphabet was only invented once, in or near Egypt.<br /> *Linguists consider that on average it takes between 500-1,000 years for a language to become incomprehensible to its original speakers<br /> == 1. Genesis - Lingua Obscura ==<br /> * The first farmers would have needed new words to describe the plants and animals they cultivated and the tools they invented to harness them. They would have acquired a vocabulary of agriculture.<br /> * Farmers from Anatolia entered Europe via two routes:<br /> ** One stream crossed the Bosporus, reaching the eastern Balkans by 6500 BCE and then following the Danube inland. Within a thousand years they were building villages in the Carpathian Basin - the depression, centred on modern Hungary, that is bound by the Carpathian Mountains and the Alps.<br /> ** A second stream island-hopped across the Aegean and along the northern Mediterranean seaboard by raft or boat (rowing, not sailing), then headed north from France's azure coast.<br /> ** The two streams met in the Paris Basin, the lowlands before the Atlantic, and there they mingled before fanning out again. By 4500 BCE, descendants of the Anatolian farmers were all over Europe, as far west as Ireland and as far east as Ukraine. These movements took place over many, many generations, but the distances covered are still extraordinary when you think that, apart from the sea crossings, they happened on foot. There was as yet no donkey or other docile pack animal, no horse that wasn't wild, no wheel and hence no wagon. <br /> ** Now, when hunter gatherers met farmers, in general they couldn't compete. Their way of life and their languages were on a fast track to extinction.<br /> ** By 4500 BCE, the competition was between:<br /> *** Herders, whose wealth was mobile and who prized self-sufficiency and lived for the present<br /> *** Farmers, whose wealth was immobile and who valued collective decision making and planned for the future.<br /> **Both the bible (Cain and Abel) and the Qur'an recount how this clash of worldviews led to the first murder, but the clash is much older than the Abrahamic scriptures.<br /> **By 4000 BCE, ancient DNA reveals that steppe women were moving into farming settlements, farming women were moving into steppe settlements, and these were no longer rare or sporadic events.<br /> **A few centuries after the appearance of the first megasites in Ukraine, Mesopotamian villages by the names of Uruk and Tell Brak also began to swell. These would become the first cities that prehistorians would recognize as such, because they were organized as extreme versions of our modern cities.<br /> **Sometime between 4000-3500 BCE, the first wheeled vehicle trundled onto the steppe, pulled by oxen. Evidence for it appears simultaneously east, west, and south of the Black Sea.<br /> **Roads weren't long in coming.<br /> **Around 3500 BCE the megasites in turn were abandoned.<br /> == 2. Sacred Spring - Proto-Indo-European ==<br /> * We know that, east of the Urals, in what is now Kazakhstan, people belonging to a culture called Botai were already raising horses by 3500 BCE.<br /> * The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European lexicon consists of about 1,600 words<br /> == 3. First Among Equals - Anatolian ==<br /> * Most European men alive today, and millions of their counterparts in Central and South Asia, carry Y chromosomes that came from the steppe.<br /> == 4. Over the Range - Tocharian ==<br /> * -<br /> == 5. Lark Rising - Celtic, Germanic, Italic ==<br /> * -<br /> == 6. The Wandering Horse - Indo-Iranian ==<br /> * -<br /> == 7. Northern Idyll - Baltic and Slavic ==<br /> * -<br /> == 8. They Came from Steep Wilusa - Albanian, Armenian, Greek ==<br /> * -<br /> == Conclusion - Shibboleth ==<br /> * -</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Proto&diff=1616 2026-10-19T15:14:08Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* Introduction - Ariomania */</p> <hr /> <div>== Introduction - Ariomania ==<br /> * Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Norse, and English are all descended from a much older language - Proto-Indo-European. The speakers of Proto-Indo-European who might only have numbered a few dozen to begin with, lived between Europe and Asia in the region of the Black Sea. They worshipped Father Sky. About 5,000 years ago, their language exploded out of its Black Sea cradle, spreading east and west and fragmenting as it went. Within a thousand years, its offspring could be heard from Ireland to India.<br /> * Language is humanity's oldest tool. When Homo sapiens emerged in Africa, 300,000 years ago, they were already equipped with it. Their vocal tracts could make all the sounds ours can. They had the cognitive capacity to map sound on to meaning, and to combine units of meaning into sentences.<br /> * By the time humans walked out of Africa 60,000 years ago, they probably communicated mostly through speech and were capable of a more sophisticated level of expression.<br /> * On the eve of the farming revolution, the human population was an estimated 10m. Perhaps 10k languages were spoken, each one having one or at most 2k speakers. Thanks to the new sources of energy that farming unleashed, communities grew and their language with them. Dialects emerged, and in time some of them became languages in their own right. Families of languages erupted like supernovas. This period, the Neolithic or New Stone Age, was our linguistic heyday: the moment in the human story when more languages were spoken than at any other. At their peak there might have been 15k of them.<br /> * From its Neolithic peak human linguistic diversity entered a long, slow decline. The downturn started with the formation of the first states, beginning 5,000 years ago with Sumer in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq).<br /> * Now 8bn humans speak around 7,000 languages. Those languages fall into about 150 families, but most of us speak languages that belong to just five of them:<br /> ** Indo-European - including English<br /> ** Sino-Tibetan - including Mandarin Chinese<br /> ** Niger-Congo<br /> ** Afro-Asiatic<br /> ** Austonesian<br /> *Like language, writing was conceived of independently a number of time.The oldest know writing system was invented by the Sumerians<br /> *As far as we know, the alphabet was only invented once, in or near Egypt.<br /> *Linguists consider that on average it takes between 500-1,000 years for a language to become incomprehensible to its original speakers<br /> == 1. Genesis - Lingua Obscura ==<br /> * The first farmers would have needed new words to describe the plants and animals they cultivated and the tools they invented to harness them. They would have acquired a vocabulary of agriculture.<br /> * Farmers from Anatolia entered Europe via two routes:<br /> ** One stream crossed the Bosporus, reaching the eastern Balkans by 6500 BCE and then following the Danube inland. Within a thousand years they were building villages in the Carpathian Basin - the depression, centred on modern Hungary, that is bound by the Carpathian Mountains and the Alps.<br /> ** A second stream island-hopped across the Aegean and along the northern Mediterranean seaboard by raft or boat (rowing, not sailing), then headed north from France's azure coast.<br /> ** The two streams met in the Paris Basin, the lowlands before the Atlantic, and there they mingled before fanning out again. By 4500 BCE, descendants of the Anatolian farmers were all over Europe, as far west as Ireland and as far east as Ukraine. These movements took place over many, many generations, but the distances covered are still extraordinary when you think that, apart from the sea crossings, they happened on foot. There was as yet no donkey or other docile pack animal, no horse that wasn't wild, no wheel and hence no wagon. <br /> ** Now, when hunter gatherers met farmers, in general they couldn't compete. Their way of life and their languages were on a fast track to extinction.<br /> ** By 4500 BCE, the competition was between:<br /> *** Herders, whose wealth was mobile and who prized self-sufficiency and lived for the present<br /> *** Farmers, whose wealth was immobile and who valued collective decision making and planned for the future.<br /> **Both the bible (Cain and Abel) and the Qur'an recount how this clash of worldviews led to the first murder, but the clash is much older than the Abrahamic scriptures.<br /> **By 4000 BCE, ancient DNA reveals that steppe women were moving into farming settlements, farming women were moving into steppe settlements, and these were no longer rare or sporadic events.<br /> **A few centuries after the appearance of the first megasites in Ukraine, Mesopotamian villages by the names of Uruk and Tell Brak also began to swell. These would become the first cities that prehistorians would recognize as such, because they were organized as extreme versions of our modern cities.<br /> **Sometime between 4000-3500 BCE, the first wheeled vehicle trundled onto the steppe, pulled by oxen. Evidence for it appears simultaneously east, west, and south of the Black Sea.<br /> **Roads weren't long in coming.<br /> **Around 3500 BCE the megasites in turn were abandoned.<br /> == 2. Sacred Spring - Proto-Indo-European ==<br /> * -<br /> == 3. First Among Equals - Analtolian ==<br /> * -<br /> == 4. Over the Range - Tocharian ==<br /> * -<br /> == 5. Lark Rising - Celtic, Germanic, Italic ==<br /> * -<br /> == 6. The Wandering Horse - Indo-Iranian ==<br /> * -<br /> == 7. Northern Idyll - Baltic and Slavic ==<br /> * -<br /> == 8. They Came from Steep Wilusa - Albanian, Armenian, Greek ==<br /> * -<br /> == Conclusion - Shibboleth ==<br /> * -</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Proto&diff=1615 2026-10-19T14:26:41Z

<p>Robert.adlington: Created page with &quot;== Introduction - Ariomania == * - == 1. Genesis - Lingua Obscura == * - == 2. Sacred Spring - Proto-Indo-European == * - == 3. First Among Equals - Analtolian == * - == 4. Over the Range - Tocharian == * - == 5. Lark Rising - Celtic, Germanic, Italic == * - == 6. The Wandering Horse - Indo-Iranian == * - == 7. Northern Idyll - Baltic and Slavic == * - == 8. They Came from Steep Wilusa - Albanian, Armenian, Greek == * - == Conclusion - Shibboleth == * -&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>== Introduction - Ariomania ==<br /> * -<br /> == 1. Genesis - Lingua Obscura ==<br /> * -<br /> == 2. Sacred Spring - Proto-Indo-European ==<br /> * -<br /> == 3. First Among Equals - Analtolian ==<br /> * -<br /> == 4. Over the Range - Tocharian ==<br /> * -<br /> == 5. Lark Rising - Celtic, Germanic, Italic ==<br /> * -<br /> == 6. The Wandering Horse - Indo-Iranian ==<br /> * -<br /> == 7. Northern Idyll - Baltic and Slavic ==<br /> * -<br /> == 8. They Came from Steep Wilusa - Albanian, Armenian, Greek ==<br /> * -<br /> == Conclusion - Shibboleth ==<br /> * -</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Books&diff=1614 2026-10-19T14:21:15Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* Currently Reading */</p> <hr /> <div>== Books to Buy ==<br /> <br /> Used:<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&amp;qid=1783763181&amp;sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&amp;sr=8-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman<br /> * Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan<br /> <br /> Paperbacks:<br /> * The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin<br /> * Alison Gopnik - The Philosophical Baby<br /> * A Natural History of the Senses- Diane Ackerman<br /> * Ram Dass - Be Here Now<br /> * luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&amp;pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&amp;pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&amp;pd_rd_i=1250266645&amp;psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 <br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&amp;qid=1784816314&amp;sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=elyn+saks&amp;qid=1783197867&amp;sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&amp;sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&amp;qid=1783198086&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&amp;sr=1-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet<br /> * Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&amp;qid=1775903643&amp;sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]<br /> * Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity<br /> * Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience<br /> * Lorrie Moore - Self Help<br /> * La Modification - Michel Butor<br /> * Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec<br /> * How Like a God - Rex Stout<br /> <br /> * Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur<br /> * Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau<br /> * Nausea - Sartre<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].<br /> * Building a second brain<br /> * how to solve it<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories <br /> * Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz<br /> *<br /> <br /> Hardbacks:<br /> <br /> * Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience <br /> <br /> * [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit <br /> * [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=thomas+sheehan&amp;qid=1771981151&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&amp;sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?<br /> * [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey<br /> * Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod<br /> * L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger<br /> * Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)<br /> * A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)<br /> * The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium<br /> * Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization<br /> * Consolations - David Whyte<br /> <br /> == Books to Read ==<br /> <br /> * Reading to Learn - William Zinger<br /> * Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut<br /> <br /> == Currently Reading ==<br /> <br /> * [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear<br /> *[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer<br /> * [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston <br /> *[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)<br /> *[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike<br /> *[[Proto]]: How One Ancient Language Went Global - Laura Spinney<br /> <br /> == Books Read ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 (week 43) ===<br /> <br /> * 45. [[Ways of Seeing]] - John Berger<br /> * 44. [[Shadow Ticket]] - Thomas Pynchon<br /> * 43. [[Hyperpolitics]] - Anton Jäger<br /> * 42. [[Words, Thoughts, and Theories]] - Alison Gopnik and Andrew N Meltzoff<br /> * 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan<br /> * 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach<br /> * 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung <br /> * 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger<br /> * 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges<br /> * 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley<br /> * 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck<br /> * 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng<br /> * 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self<br /> * 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang<br /> * 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral <br /> * 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.<br /> * 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter <br /> * 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)<br /> * 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell<br /> * 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)<br /> * 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab<br /> * 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade<br /> * 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn<br /> * 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> * 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen<br /> * 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard<br /> <br /> * 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington<br /> *14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands<br /> *13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms<br /> *12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> *11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar<br /> *10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> *9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola<br /> *8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine<br /> <br /> * 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle<br /> * 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson<br /> * 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie <br /> * 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola<br /> *3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott<br /> * 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum<br /> * 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> <br /> * 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)<br /> * 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball<br /> * 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards<br /> * 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins<br /> * 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis<br /> * 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola <br /> * 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler<br /> * 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya<br /> *47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers<br /> * 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts<br /> * 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola<br /> * 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)<br /> * 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky<br /> * 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac<br /> * 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)<br /> * 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac<br /> * 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)<br /> * 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)<br /> <br /> * 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)<br /> * 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry<br /> * 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife<br /> * 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges<br /> * 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin<br /> * 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener<br /> * 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater<br /> * 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman<br /> * 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton<br /> * 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July<br /> * 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter<br /> * 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards<br /> * 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer<br /> * 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman<br /> * 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle<br /> * 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham<br /> * 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark<br /> * 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath<br /> * 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)<br /> * 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett<br /> * 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]<br /> * 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter<br /> * 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> * 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux<br /> * 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett<br /> * 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)<br /> * 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque<br /> <br /> === 2024 ===<br /> <br /> * The Plot - Will Eisner<br /> * The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco<br /> * The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut<br /> * Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)<br /> * The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner<br /> * The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil<br /> * Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg<br /> * Le Ton Beau de…<br /> * The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson<br /> * Psychonauts - <br /> * The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut<br /> * In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel<br /> * Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson<br /> * Les Effinger - Gabriele Target<br /> * Triad - Tom Keve<br /> * Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig<br /> * The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich<br /> * How Language Works - David Crystal<br /> * The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf<br /> * [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter<br /> * [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> <br /> == Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==<br /> That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':<br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 1. Language &amp; Style Difficulties ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.<br /> * '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).<br /> * '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 2. Length &amp; Scope ===<br /> <br /> * '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.<br /> * '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.<br /> * '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 3. Experimental Structure ===<br /> <br /> * '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.<br /> * '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.<br /> * '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===<br /> <br /> * '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.<br /> * '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.<br /> * '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 5. Dense Intertextuality ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.<br /> * '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.<br /> * '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===<br /> <br /> * '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.<br /> * '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===<br /> <br /> * ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)<br /> * ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)<br /> * ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)<br /> * ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)<br /> * ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)<br /> <br /> [[Category:Books]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Ways_of_Seeing&diff=1613 2026-10-17T14:38:53Z

<p>Robert.adlington: </p> <hr /> <div>== 1. Seeing, Images, and Mystification ==<br /> * Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.<br /> * It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know if never settled.<br /> * We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are.<br /> * Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen. The eye of the other combines with our own eye to make it fully credible that we are part of the visible world.<br /> * In the sense in which we use the word in this book, all images are man-made.<br /> * An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved - for a few moments or a few centuries. Every image embodies a way of seeing.<br /> * Every drawing or painting that used perspective proposed to the spectator that he was the unique centre of the world. The camera - and more particularly the move camera - demonstrated that there was no centre.<br /> == 3. Women, Objects, Nakedness, and Nudity ==<br /> * A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.<br /> * And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.<br /> * She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated. as herself by another.<br /> * One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male. the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.<br /> * To be naked is to be oneself.<br /> * To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to becomes a nude. (The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display.<br /> * To be naked is to be without disguise.<br /> * To be on display is to have the surface of one's own skin, the hairs of one's own body, turned into a disguise which, in that situation, can never be discarded. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.<br /> * In lived sexual experience nakedness is a process rather than a state. If one moment of that process is isolated, its image will seem banal and it banality, instead of serving as a bridge between two intense imaginative states, will be chilling.<br /> == 5. Oil Painting (1500-1900) - Images as Possession ==<br /> * It is usually said that the oil painting in its frame is like an imaginary window open on to the world. This is roughly the tradition's own image of itself. <br /> * If one studies the culture of the European oil painting as a whole, and if one leaves aside its own claims for itself, its model is not so much a framed window open on to the world as a safe let into the wall, a safe in which the visible has been deposited.<br /> == 7. Publicity (1900-Present) - Images as Aspiration ==<br /> * In the cities in which we live, all of us see hundreds of publicity images everyday of our lives. No other kind of image confronts us so frequently.<br /> * In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages.<br /> * One may remember or forget these messages but briefly one takes them in, and for a moment they stimulate the imagination by way of either memory or expectation. The publicity image belongs to the moment.<br /> * We accept the total system of publicity images as we accept an element of climate.<br /> * Glamour - The state of being envied. And publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour.<br /> * Publicity is never a celebration of a pleasure-in-itself. Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be. Yet what makes this self-which-he-might-be enviable? The envy of others. Publicity is about social relations, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure, but of happiness: happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour.<br /> * The absent, unfocused look of so many glamour images. The look out over the looks of envy which sustain them.<br /> * The publicity image steals the consumers love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.<br /> * Does the language of publicity have anything in common with that of oil painting which, until the invention of the camera, dominated the European way of seeing during four centuries?<br /> * Publicity relies to a very large extent on the language of oil painting. It speaks in the same voice about the same things.<br /> * Publicity is the culture of the consumer society. It propagates through images that society's belief in itself. <br /> * Oil painting, before it was anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have.<br /> * It is a mistake to think of publicity supplanting the visual art of post-Ranaissance Europe; it is the last moribund form of that art.<br /> * Publicity is, in essence, nostalgic. It has to sell the past to the future. It cannot itself supply the standards of its own claims. And so all its references to quality are bound to be retrospective and traditional. It would lack both confidence and credibility if it used a strictly contemporary language.<br /> * Colour photography is to the spectator-buyer what oil paint was to the spectator-owner.<br /> * The oil painting showed hat its owner was already enjoying among his possessions and his way of life. It consolidated his own sense of his own value. It enhanced his view of himself as he already was. It began with facts, the facts of his life; The paintings embellished the interior in which he actually lived.<br /> * The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. Not with the way of life of society, but with his own within it. It suggests that if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better. It offers him an improved alternative to what he is.<br /> * The oil painting was addressed to those who made money out of the market. Publicity is addressed to those who constitute the market, to the spectator-buyer who is also the consumer-producer from whom profits are made twice over - as worker and then as buyer. The only places relatively free of publicity are the quarters of the very rich; their money is theirs to keep.<br /> * All publicity works upon anxiety. The sum of everything is money, to get money is to overcome anxiety.<br /> * Alternatively the anxiety on which publicity plays is the fear that having nothing you will be nothing.<br /> * Publicity principally addressed to the working class tends to promise a personal transformation through the function of the particular product it is selling (Cinderella); middle-class publicity promises a transformation of relationships through a general atmosphere created by an ensemble of products (The Enchanted Palace).<br /> * Publicity remains credible because its truthfulness is judged, not be the real fulfillment of its promises, but by the relevance of its fantasies to those of the spectator-buyer. Its essential application is not to reality but to daydreams.<br /> * Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion. The industrial society which has moved towards democracy and then stopped half way is the ideal society for generating such an emotion. The pursuit of individual happiness has been acknowledged as a universal right. Yet the existing social conditions make the individual feel powerless. He lives in the contradiction between what he is and wha the would like to be. Either he then becomes fully conscious of the contradiction and its causes, and so joins the political struggle for a full democracy hich entails, amonst other things, the overthrow of capaiblism; or else he lives, continually subject ot an envy which, compounded with his sense of powerlessness, dissolves into recurrent daydreams.<br /> * It is this which makes it possible to understand why publicity remains credible; The gap between what publicity actually offers and the future it promises, corresponds with the gap between what the spectator-buyer feels himself to be and what he would like to be. The two gaps become one; and instead of the single gap being bridged by action or lived experience, it is filled with glamorous daydreams.<br /> * The interminable present of meaningless working hours is &quot;balanced&quot; by a dreamt future in which imaginary activity replaces the passivity of the moment. In his or her daydreams the passive worker becomes the active consumer. The working self envies the consuming self.<br /> * Publicity turns consumption into a substitute for democracy. The choice of what one eats (or wears or drives) takes the place of significant political choice. Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic within society. And it also masks what is happening in the rest of the world.<br /> * Publicity, situated in a future continually deferred, excludes the present and so eliminates all becoming, all development. Experience is impossible within it. All that happens, happens outside it.<br /> * The fact that publicity is eventless would be immediately obvious if it did not use a language which makes of tangibility an event in itself. Everything publicity shows is there awaiting acquisition. The act of acquiring has taken the place of all other actions, the sense of having has obliterated all other senses.<br /> * Publicity recognizes nothing except the power to acquire. All other human faculties or needs are made subsidiary to this power. All hopes are gathered together, made homogeneous, simplified, so that they become the intense yet vague, magical yet repeatable promise offered in every purchase. No other kind of hope or satisfaction or pleasure can any longer be envisaged within the culture of capaitalism.<br /> * Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and at the same time publicity is its dream.<br /> * Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible. This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable.</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Ways_of_Seeing&diff=1612 2026-10-17T14:38:16Z

<p>Robert.adlington: </p> <hr /> <div>== 1. Seeing, Images, and Mystification ==<br /> * Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.<br /> * It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know if never settled.<br /> * We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are.<br /> * Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen. The eye of the other combines with our own eye to make it fully credible that we are part of the visible world.<br /> * In the sense in which we use the word in this book, all images are man-made.<br /> * An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved - for a few moments or a few centuries. Every image embodies a way of seeing.<br /> * Every drawing or painting that used perspective proposed to the spectator that he was the unique centre of the world. The camera - and more particularly the move camera - demonstrated that there was no centre.<br /> == 3. Women, Objects, Nakedness, and Nudity ==<br /> * A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.<br /> * And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.<br /> * She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated. as herself by another.<br /> * One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male. the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.<br /> * To be naked is to be oneself.<br /> * To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to becomes a nude. (The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display.<br /> * To be naked is to be without disguise.<br /> * To be on display is to have the surface of one's own skin, the hairs of one's own body, turned into a disguise which, in that situation, can never be discarded. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.<br /> * In lived sexual experience nakedness is a process rather than a state. If one moment of that process is isolated, its image will seem banal and it banality, instead of serving as a bridge between two intense imaginative states, will be chilling.<br /> == 5. Oil Painting (1500-1900) - Images as Possession ==<br /> * It is usually said that the oil painting in its frame is like an imaginary window open on to the world. This is roughly the tradition's own image of itself. <br /> * If one studies the culture of the European oil painting as a whole, and if one leaves aside its own claims for itself, its model is not so much a framed window open on to the world as a safe let into the wall, a safe in which the visible has been deposited.<br /> == 7. Publicity (1900-Present - Images as Aspiration ==<br /> * In the cities in which we live, all of us see hundreds of publicity images everyday of our lives. No other kind of image confronts us so frequently.<br /> * In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages.<br /> * One may remember or forget these messages but briefly one takes them in, and for a moment they stimulate the imagination by way of either memory or expectation. The publicity image belongs to the moment.<br /> * We accept the total system of publicity images as we accept an element of climate.<br /> * Glamour - The state of being envied. And publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour.<br /> * Publicity is never a celebration of a pleasure-in-itself. Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be. Yet what makes this self-which-he-might-be enviable? The envy of others. Publicity is about social relations, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure, but of happiness: happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour.<br /> * The absent, unfocused look of so many glamour images. The look out over the looks of envy which sustain them.<br /> * The publicity image steals the consumers love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.<br /> * Does the language of publicity have anything in common with that of oil painting which, until the invention of the camera, dominated the European way of seeing during four centuries?<br /> * Publicity relies to a very large extent on the language of oil painting. It speaks in the same voice about the same things.<br /> * Publicity is the culture of the consumer society. It propagates through images that society's belief in itself. There are several reasons why these images use the language of oil painting:<br /> ** Oil painting, before it was anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have.<br /> ** It is a mistake to think of publicity supplanting the visual art of post-Ranaissance Europe; it is the last moribund form of that art.<br /> ** Publicity is, in essence, nostalgic. It has to sell the past to the future. It cannot itself supply the standards of its own claims. And so all its references to quality are bound to be retrospective and traditional. It would lack both confidence and credibility if it used a strictly contemporary language.<br /> ** Colour photography is to the spectator-buyer what oil paint was to the spectator-owner.<br /> ** The oil painting showed hat its owner was already enjoying among his possessions and his way of life. It consolidated his own sense of his own value. It enhanced his view of himself as he already was. It began with facts, the facts of his life; The paintings embellished the interior in which he actually lived.<br /> ** The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. Not with the way of life of society, but with his own within it. It suggests that if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better. It offers him an improved alternative to what he is.<br /> ** The oil painting was addressed to those who made money out of the market. Publicity is addressed to those who constitute the market, to the spectator-buyer who is also the consumer-producer from whom profits are made twice over - as worker and then as buyer. The only places relatively free of publicity are the quarters of the very rich; their money is theirs to keep.<br /> ** All publicity works upon anxiety. The sum of everything is money, to get money is to overcome anxiety.<br /> ** Alternatively the anxiety on which publicity plays is the fear that having nothing you will be nothing.<br /> ** Publicity principally addressed to the working class tends to promise a personal transformation through the function of the particular product it is selling (Cinderella); middle-class publicity promises a transformation of relationships through a general atmosphere created by an ensemble of products (The Enchanted Palace).<br /> ** Publicity remains credible because its truthfulness is judged, not be the real fulfillment of its promises, but by the relevance of its fantasies to those of the spectator-buyer. Its essential application is not to reality but to daydreams.<br /> ** Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion. The industrial society which has moved towards democracy and then stopped half way is the ideal society for generating such an emotion. The pursuit of individual happiness has been acknowledged as a universal right. Yet the existing social conditions make the individual feel powerless. He lives in the contradiction between what he is and wha the would like to be. Either he then becomes fully conscious of the contradiction and its causes, and so joins the political struggle for a full democracy hich entails, amonst other things, the overthrow of capaiblism; or else he lives, continually subject ot an envy which, compounded with his sense of powerlessness, dissolves into recurrent daydreams.<br /> ** It is this which makes it possible to understand why publicity remains credible; The gap between what publicity actually offers and the future it promises, corresponds with the gap between what the spectator-buyer feels himself to be and what he would like to be. The two gaps become one; and instead of the single gap being bridged by action or lived experience, it is filled with glamorous daydreams.<br /> ** The interminable present of meaningless working hours is &quot;balanced&quot; by a dreamt future in which imaginary activity replaces the passivity of the moment. In his or her daydreams the passive worker becomes the active consumer. The working self envies the consuming self.<br /> ** Publicity turns consumption into a substitute for democracy. The choice of what one eats (or wears or drives) takes the place of significant political choice. Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic within society. And it also masks what is happening in the rest of the world.<br /> ** Publicity, situated in a future continually deferred, excludes the present and so eliminates all becoming, all development. Experience is impossible within it. All that happens, happens outside it.<br /> ** The fact that publicity is eventless would be immediately obvious if it did not use a language which makes of tangibility an event in itself. Everything publicity shows is there awaiting acquisition. The act of acquiring has taken the place of all other actions, the sense of having has obliterated all other senses.<br /> ** Publicity recognizes nothing except the power to acquire. All other human faculties or needs are made subsidiary to this power. All hopes are gathered together, made homogeneous, simplified, so that they become the intense yet vague, magical yet repeatable promise offered in every purchase. No other kind of hope or satisfaction or pleasure can any longer be envisaged within the culture of capaitalism.<br /> ** Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and at the same time publicity is its dream.<br /> ** Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible. This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable.</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Ways_of_Seeing&diff=1611 2026-10-17T14:12:24Z

<p>Robert.adlington: Created page with &quot;== 1. Seeing, Images, and Mystification == * Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. * It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know if never settled. * We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>== 1. Seeing, Images, and Mystification ==<br /> * Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.<br /> * It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know if never settled.<br /> * We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are.<br /> * Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen. The eye of the other combines with our own eye to make it fully credible that we are part of the visible world.<br /> * In the sense in which we use the word in this book, all images are man-made.<br /> * An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved - for a few moments or a few centuries. Every image embodies a way of seeing.<br /> * Every drawing or painting that used perspective proposed to the spectator that he was the unique centre of the world. The camera - and more particularly the move camera - demonstrated that there was no centre.<br /> == 3. Women, Objects, Nakedness, and Nudity ==<br /> * A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.<br /> * And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.<br /> * She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated. as herself by another.<br /> * One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male. the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.<br /> * To be naked is to be oneself.<br /> * To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to becomes a nude. (The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display.<br /> * To be naked is to be without disguise.<br /> * To be on display is to have the surface of one's own skin, the hairs of one's own body, turned into a disguise which, in that situation, can never be discarded. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.<br /> * In lived sexual experience nakedness is a process rather than a state. If one moment of that process is isolated, its image will seem banal and it banality, instead of serving as a bridge between two intense imaginative states, will be chilling.<br /> == 5. Oil Painting (1500-1900) - Images as Possession ==<br /> * It is usually said that the oil painting in its frame is like an imaginary window open on to the world. This is roughly the tradition's own image of itself. <br /> * If one studies the culture of the European oil painting as a whole, and if one leaves aside its own claims for itself, its model is not so much a framed window open on to the world as a safe let into the wall, a safe in which the visible has been deposited.<br /> == 7. Publicity (1900-Present - Images as Aspiration ==<br /> * In the cities in which we live, all of us see hundreds of publicity images everyday of our lives. No other kind of image confronts us so frequently.<br /> * In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages.<br /> * One may remember or forget these messages but briefly one takes them in, and for a moment they stimulate the imagination by way of either memory or expectation. The publicity image belongs to the moment.<br /> * We accept the total system of publicity images as we accept an element of climate.<br /> * Glamour - The state of being envied. And publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour.<br /> * Publicity is never a celebration of a pleasure-in-itself. Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be. Yet what makes this self-which-he-might-be enviable? The envy of others. Publicity is about social relations, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure, but of happiness: happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour.<br /> * The absent, unfocused look of so many glamour images. The look out over the looks of envy which sustain them.<br /> * The publicity image steals the consumers love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.<br /> * Does the language of publicity have anything in common with that of oil painting which, until the invention of the camera, dominated the European way of seeing during four centuries?<br /> * Publicity relies to a very large extent on the language of oil painting. It speaks in the same voice about the same things.<br /> * Publicity is the culture of the consumer society. It propagates through images that society's belief in itself. There are several reasons why these images use the language of oil painting:<br /> ** Oil painting, before it was anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have.<br /> ** It is a mistake to think of publicity supplanting the visual art of post-Ranaissance Europe; it is the last moribund form of that art.</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Films&diff=1610 2026-10-16T17:08:03Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 */</p> <hr /> <div>== Films to Watch ==<br /> <br /> [https://www.cinealcazar.fr/fichier/programme.pdf Cinema Alcazar Program]<br /> <br /> * Wicker: https://youtu.be/HP0BWBWn14I?si=E5oThE4uNiED28b3<br /> * morvern Callar<br /> * Do the right thing <br /> * run Lola Run<br /> * Mind trips<br /> ** Triangle<br /> ** Beyond the infinite two minutes<br /> ** Enemy<br /> ** Under the Silver Lake<br /> ** The Vanishing<br /> ** Angel Heart<br /> ** Following<br /> ** The Invisible Guest<br /> ** Perfect Blue<br /> ** Resolution<br /> * fast times <br /> * the Jerk<br /> * Mutiny on the Bounty<br /> * Entrapment <br /> * Mask of Zorro<br /> * PTA - Hard Eight, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, etc<br /> * Little Big and Far - weird scandinavian film<br /> * This is Spinal tap<br /> * Big Night - Tucci and Shaloub<br /> * Punch drunk love<br /> * Boyhood <br /> * Kind hearts and coronets <br /> * A night at the opera <br /> * Blazing saddles <br /> * Lives of others<br /> * Lost in Translation <br /> * One flew over <br /> * Get out<br /> * Maltese falcon <br /> * Early mad maxes<br /> * Joule of the Nile<br /> * the man with two brains<br /> * Psycho Therapy - Steve Buscemi is a serial killer who wants to advise an author, but ends up playing a marriage counselor.<br /> * Early Steve Martin<br /> * A Complete Unknown <br /> * la La Land -<br /> * The Phoenician Scheme - new Wes Anderson comedy espionage thriller <br /> * Thelma - Grandma fights con artists<br /> * Kinds of Kindness<br /> * 2001<br /> * The Elephant Man<br /> * The Fabulous Baker Boys<br /> * Network<br /> <br /> == Films Watched ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 ===<br /> <br /> * 60. After Hours<br /> * 59. The King of Comedy <br /> * 58. Sinners <br /> * 57. The Sixth Sense<br /> * 56. Alter Ego<br /> * 55. Franz K <br /> * 54. Taxi Driver <br /> * 53. The Tailor of Panama<br /> * 52. La bataille de Gaulle: J'écris ton nom<br /> * 51. Training Day<br /> * 50. The Guns of Naverone<br /> * 49. La bataille de Gaulle: L'age de fer<br /> * 48. Kind Hearts and Coronets<br /> * 47. Parasite<br /> * 46. Arsenic and Old Lace <br /> * 45. Get Out <br /> * 44. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (rewatch)<br /> * 43. Apex<br /> * 42. 21 Jump Street<br /> * 41. Scream 3 <br /> * 40. Shutter Island<br /> * 39. Scream 2<br /> * 38. Wall-E<br /> * 37. Get Smart<br /> * 36. Se7en<br /> * 35. The Producers<br /> * 34: Garfield: The Movie<br /> * 33. Leon<br /> * 32. Shimmer Lake<br /> * 31. Unforgiven<br /> * 30. A Mighty Wind<br /> * 29. Magnolia<br /> * 28. Escape from Alcatraz<br /> * 27. The Sting<br /> * 26. Pulp Fiction<br /> * 25. Failure to Launch<br /> * 24. Hudson Hawk<br /> * 23. Mystère à St Tropez<br /> * 22. The Thomas Crown Affair<br /> * 21. The Three Amigos (1986)<br /> * 20. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - Jonathon Demme<br /> * 19. Top Secret (1984)<br /> * 18. One Battle After Another (2025) - Paul Thomas Anderson<br /> * 17. Memento (2000) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 16. Pleasantville (1998) - Gary Ross<br /> * 15. The Fisher King (1991) -<br /> * 14. The Mastermind<br /> * 13. The Birdcage<br /> * 12. Fight Club (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Knives Out: Glass Onion (rewatch)<br /> * 10. Twins<br /> * 9. The Remains of the Day<br /> * 8. The Ladykillers<br /> * 7. Us (rewatch)<br /> * 6. Saving Private Ryan (rewatch)<br /> * 5. Event Horizon<br /> * 4. Insomnia (2002) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Knives Out (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Gattaca (1997) - Andrew Niccol<br /> * 1. Eddington (2025) - Ari Aster<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> * 65. Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)<br /> * 64. Miller's Crossing<br /> * 63. Blood Simple<br /> * 62. Crazy Stupid Love<br /> * 61. Happiest Season<br /> * 60. Bridge of Spies <br /> * 59. Identity<br /> * 58. Clueless<br /> * 57. Ace Ventura 2: Call of Nature <br /> * 56. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World<br /> * 55. Apollo 13<br /> * 54. LA Confidential (rewatch)<br /> * 53. Inside Llewyn Davis<br /> * 52. M3gan<br /> * 51. Clear and Present Danger <br /> * 50. 12 Monkeys<br /> * 49. No Country for Old Men<br /> * 48. The Hudsucker Proxy<br /> * 47. La Cuisse ou l'aile<br /> * 46. Mission Impossible : The Final Reckoning<br /> * 45. Dumb and Dumber <br /> * 44. Rear Window<br /> * 43. Raising Arizona<br /> * 42. Tenet (rewatch)<br /> * 41. The fifth Element <br /> * 40. Burn Without Reading <br /> * 39. The Big Lebowski (rewatch)<br /> * 38. Fargo (rewatch)<br /> * 37. 28 Days Later (rewatch)<br /> * 36. O Brother, Where Art Thou<br /> * 35. Mickey 17 <br /> * 34. Empire of the Sun <br /> * 33. The Fugitive <br /> * 32. Wet Hot American Summer (rewatch)<br /> * 31. Ted<br /> * 30. Hundreds of Beavers <br /> * 29. Wayne’s World (rewatch)<br /> * 28. True Grit (Coen Bros)<br /> * 27. Groundhog Day (rewatch)<br /> * 26. Moonrise Kingdom <br /> * 25. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatra <br /> * 24. Adaptation (rewatch)<br /> * 23. Romancing the Stone (rewatch)<br /> * Easter Film Festival<br /> ** 22. Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)<br /> ** 21. Witness<br /> ** 20. The Grand Budapest Hotel (rewatch)<br /> ** 19. Conclave<br /> ** 18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective<br /> ** 17. Lincoln<br /> ** 16. Being John Malkovitch (rewatch)<br /> ** 15. AI (rewatch)<br /> ** 14. The Royal Tenenbaums (rewatch)<br /> ** 13. Total Recall 1990 (rewatch)<br /> ** 12. In the Line of Fire (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Flow <br /> * 10. Juror No. 2<br /> * 9. The Savage Robot<br /> * 8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (rewatch)<br /> * 7. Dead Poet's Society<br /> * 6. Notting Hill (rewatch)<br /> * 5. My Neighbor Totoro (rewatch)<br /> * 4. Kiki’s Delivery Service (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Dr Strangelove (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Dune 2<br /> * 1. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me (rewatch)<br /> <br /> === 2024 and Earlier ===<br /> * The Big Lebowski<br /> * The Holiday<br /> * Love Actually<br /> * Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure<br /> * The Mask<br /> [[Category:Films]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Books&diff=1609 2026-10-16T15:41:36Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 (week 41) */</p> <hr /> <div>== Books to Buy ==<br /> <br /> Used:<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&amp;qid=1783763181&amp;sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&amp;sr=8-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman<br /> * Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan<br /> <br /> Paperbacks:<br /> * The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin<br /> * Alison Gopnik - The Philosophical Baby<br /> * A Natural History of the Senses- Diane Ackerman<br /> * Ram Dass - Be Here Now<br /> * luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&amp;pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&amp;pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&amp;pd_rd_i=1250266645&amp;psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 <br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&amp;qid=1784816314&amp;sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=elyn+saks&amp;qid=1783197867&amp;sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&amp;sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&amp;qid=1783198086&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&amp;sr=1-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet<br /> * Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&amp;qid=1775903643&amp;sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]<br /> * Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity<br /> * Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience<br /> * Lorrie Moore - Self Help<br /> * La Modification - Michel Butor<br /> * Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec<br /> * How Like a God - Rex Stout<br /> <br /> * Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur<br /> * Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau<br /> * Nausea - Sartre<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].<br /> * Building a second brain<br /> * how to solve it<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories <br /> * Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz<br /> *<br /> <br /> Hardbacks:<br /> <br /> * Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience <br /> <br /> * [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit <br /> * [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=thomas+sheehan&amp;qid=1771981151&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&amp;sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?<br /> * [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey<br /> * Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod<br /> * L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger<br /> * Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)<br /> * A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)<br /> * The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium<br /> * Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization<br /> * Consolations - David Whyte<br /> <br /> == Books to Read ==<br /> <br /> * Reading to Learn - William Zinger<br /> * Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut<br /> <br /> == Currently Reading ==<br /> <br /> * [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear<br /> *[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer<br /> * [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston <br /> *[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)<br /> *[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike<br /> <br /> == Books Read ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 (week 43) ===<br /> <br /> * 45. [[Ways of Seeing]] - John Berger<br /> * 44. [[Shadow Ticket]] - Thomas Pynchon<br /> * 43. [[Hyperpolitics]] - Anton Jäger<br /> * 42. [[Words, Thoughts, and Theories]] - Alison Gopnik and Andrew N Meltzoff<br /> * 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan<br /> * 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach<br /> * 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung <br /> * 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger<br /> * 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges<br /> * 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley<br /> * 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck<br /> * 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng<br /> * 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self<br /> * 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang<br /> * 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral <br /> * 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.<br /> * 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter <br /> * 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)<br /> * 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell<br /> * 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)<br /> * 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab<br /> * 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade<br /> * 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn<br /> * 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> * 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen<br /> * 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard<br /> <br /> * 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington<br /> *14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands<br /> *13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms<br /> *12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> *11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar<br /> *10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> *9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola<br /> *8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine<br /> <br /> * 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle<br /> * 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson<br /> * 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie <br /> * 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola<br /> *3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott<br /> * 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum<br /> * 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> <br /> * 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)<br /> * 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball<br /> * 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards<br /> * 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins<br /> * 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis<br /> * 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola <br /> * 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler<br /> * 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya<br /> *47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers<br /> * 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts<br /> * 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola<br /> * 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)<br /> * 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky<br /> * 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac<br /> * 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)<br /> * 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac<br /> * 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)<br /> * 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)<br /> <br /> * 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)<br /> * 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry<br /> * 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife<br /> * 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges<br /> * 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin<br /> * 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener<br /> * 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater<br /> * 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman<br /> * 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton<br /> * 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July<br /> * 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter<br /> * 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards<br /> * 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer<br /> * 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman<br /> * 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle<br /> * 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham<br /> * 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark<br /> * 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath<br /> * 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)<br /> * 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett<br /> * 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]<br /> * 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter<br /> * 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> * 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux<br /> * 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett<br /> * 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)<br /> * 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque<br /> <br /> === 2024 ===<br /> <br /> * The Plot - Will Eisner<br /> * The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco<br /> * The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut<br /> * Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)<br /> * The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner<br /> * The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil<br /> * Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg<br /> * Le Ton Beau de…<br /> * The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson<br /> * Psychonauts - <br /> * The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut<br /> * In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel<br /> * Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson<br /> * Les Effinger - Gabriele Target<br /> * Triad - Tom Keve<br /> * Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig<br /> * The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich<br /> * How Language Works - David Crystal<br /> * The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf<br /> * [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter<br /> * [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> <br /> == Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==<br /> That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':<br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 1. Language &amp; Style Difficulties ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.<br /> * '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).<br /> * '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 2. Length &amp; Scope ===<br /> <br /> * '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.<br /> * '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.<br /> * '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 3. Experimental Structure ===<br /> <br /> * '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.<br /> * '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.<br /> * '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===<br /> <br /> * '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.<br /> * '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.<br /> * '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 5. Dense Intertextuality ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.<br /> * '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.<br /> * '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===<br /> <br /> * '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.<br /> * '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===<br /> <br /> * ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)<br /> * ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)<br /> * ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)<br /> * ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)<br /> * ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)<br /> <br /> [[Category:Books]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Shadow_Ticket&diff=1608 2026-10-16T15:40:14Z

<p>Robert.adlington: Created page with &quot;* 48. We want to believe that objects are pure, innocent, when the truth is that they lie open to every vibration that comes their way, law-abiding, criminal, everything in between. * 94. Does cheese, as a living entity, also possess consciousness? * 159. How&#039;s the amnesia, forgotten anything interesting lately? * 167. ...not only are there more passengers aboard the Stupendica than at first appeared, but their numbers also have been strangely increasing day by day, desp...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>* 48. We want to believe that objects are pure, innocent, when the truth is that they lie open to every vibration that comes their way, law-abiding, criminal, everything in between.<br /> * 94. Does cheese, as a living entity, also possess consciousness?<br /> * 159. How's the amnesia, forgotten anything interesting lately?<br /> * 167. ...not only are there more passengers aboard the Stupendica than at first appeared, but their numbers also have been strangely increasing day by day, despite no ports of call so far having been stopped at...<br /> * 188. Won't matter, every round will just asport away to someplace harmless.<br /> * 189. ...a lamp so stupefyingly tasteless it makes nonsense of the tasteless lamp category itself. Too horribly tasteless ever to have been photographed.<br /> * 190. Turns out that in response to the local ass/app situation, a trade has sprung up in counterfeit apports, passing for merchandise just in from the other side of whatever this is that's going on. Returns. Fake returns.<br /> * 191. ...lampadophiles, or persons sexually attracted to lamps.<br /> * 195. ...the abrupt changes of temperature which accompany any apport event.<br /> * 253. Bigger Than Yer Stummick (1931)... Did seem to go on a little too long. ...Well... not long enough, actually.<br /> * 262. BAGEL, the Bureau Administering Golems Employed Locally.<br /> * 284. HIJAC, Homeland Integrity through Jewish Asset Conversion<br /> * 294 UTOPIAN caveat...Unless the Opportunity Presents Itself, Attack Nobody.<br /> * 309. Stay, or go. Two fates beginning to diverge - back to the U.S., marry, raise a family, assemble a life you can persuade yourself is free from fear, as meanwhile, over here, the other outcome continues to unfold, to roll in dark as the end of time. Those you could have saved, could've shifted at least somehow onto a safer stretch of track, are one by one robbed, beaten, killed, seized and taken away into the nameless, the unrecoverable.<br /> * Until one night, too late, you wake into a understanding of what you should have been doing with your life all along.<br /> * Something like that. If anybody was still there to hear it. Which there isn't.<br /> * 323. ...still there will come over him an urge more ancient than anything he knows of to go deeper, to descend, rivets creaking, into depths legendary as those of the Valdivia Expedition of 1898-99, which brought up into the daylight a pitch-black critter known as the Vampire Squid, by whose name, these days, the U-13 has since come to be known.</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Books&diff=1607 2026-10-16T15:16:26Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 (week 41) */</p> <hr /> <div>== Books to Buy ==<br /> <br /> Used:<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&amp;qid=1783763181&amp;sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&amp;sr=8-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman<br /> * Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan<br /> <br /> Paperbacks:<br /> * The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin<br /> * Alison Gopnik - The Philosophical Baby<br /> * A Natural History of the Senses- Diane Ackerman<br /> * Ram Dass - Be Here Now<br /> * luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&amp;pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&amp;pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&amp;pd_rd_i=1250266645&amp;psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 <br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&amp;qid=1784816314&amp;sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=elyn+saks&amp;qid=1783197867&amp;sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&amp;sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&amp;qid=1783198086&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&amp;sr=1-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet<br /> * Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&amp;qid=1775903643&amp;sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]<br /> * Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity<br /> * Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience<br /> * Lorrie Moore - Self Help<br /> * La Modification - Michel Butor<br /> * Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec<br /> * How Like a God - Rex Stout<br /> <br /> * Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur<br /> * Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau<br /> * Nausea - Sartre<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].<br /> * Building a second brain<br /> * how to solve it<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories <br /> * Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz<br /> *<br /> <br /> Hardbacks:<br /> <br /> * Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience <br /> <br /> * [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit <br /> * [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=thomas+sheehan&amp;qid=1771981151&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&amp;sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?<br /> * [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey<br /> * Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod<br /> * L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger<br /> * Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)<br /> * A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)<br /> * The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium<br /> * Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization<br /> * Consolations - David Whyte<br /> <br /> == Books to Read ==<br /> <br /> * Reading to Learn - William Zinger<br /> * Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut<br /> <br /> == Currently Reading ==<br /> <br /> * [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear<br /> *[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer<br /> * [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston <br /> *[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)<br /> *[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike<br /> <br /> == Books Read ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 (week 41) ===<br /> <br /> * 44. [[Shadow Ticket]] - Thomas Pynchon<br /> * 43. [[Hyperpolitics]] - Anton Jäger<br /> * 42. [[Words, Thoughts, and Theories]] - Alison Gopnik and Andrew N Meltzoff<br /> * 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan<br /> * 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach<br /> * 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung <br /> * 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger<br /> * 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges<br /> * 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley<br /> * 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck<br /> * 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng<br /> * 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self<br /> * 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang<br /> * 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral <br /> * 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.<br /> * 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter <br /> * 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)<br /> * 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell<br /> * 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)<br /> * 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab<br /> * 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade<br /> * 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn<br /> * 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> * 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen<br /> * 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard<br /> <br /> * 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington<br /> *14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands<br /> *13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms<br /> *12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> *11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar<br /> *10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> *9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola<br /> *8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine<br /> <br /> * 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle<br /> * 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson<br /> * 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie <br /> * 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola<br /> *3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott<br /> * 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum<br /> * 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> <br /> * 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)<br /> * 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball<br /> * 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards<br /> * 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins<br /> * 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis<br /> * 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola <br /> * 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler<br /> * 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya<br /> *47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers<br /> * 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts<br /> * 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola<br /> * 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)<br /> * 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky<br /> * 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac<br /> * 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)<br /> * 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac<br /> * 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)<br /> * 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)<br /> <br /> * 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)<br /> * 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry<br /> * 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife<br /> * 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges<br /> * 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin<br /> * 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener<br /> * 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater<br /> * 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman<br /> * 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton<br /> * 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July<br /> * 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter<br /> * 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards<br /> * 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer<br /> * 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman<br /> * 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle<br /> * 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham<br /> * 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark<br /> * 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath<br /> * 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)<br /> * 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett<br /> * 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]<br /> * 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter<br /> * 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> * 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux<br /> * 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett<br /> * 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)<br /> * 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque<br /> <br /> === 2024 ===<br /> <br /> * The Plot - Will Eisner<br /> * The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco<br /> * The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut<br /> * Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)<br /> * The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner<br /> * The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil<br /> * Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg<br /> * Le Ton Beau de…<br /> * The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson<br /> * Psychonauts - <br /> * The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut<br /> * In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel<br /> * Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson<br /> * Les Effinger - Gabriele Target<br /> * Triad - Tom Keve<br /> * Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig<br /> * The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich<br /> * How Language Works - David Crystal<br /> * The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf<br /> * [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter<br /> * [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> <br /> == Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==<br /> That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':<br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 1. Language &amp; Style Difficulties ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.<br /> * '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).<br /> * '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 2. Length &amp; Scope ===<br /> <br /> * '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.<br /> * '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.<br /> * '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 3. Experimental Structure ===<br /> <br /> * '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.<br /> * '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.<br /> * '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===<br /> <br /> * '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.<br /> * '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.<br /> * '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 5. Dense Intertextuality ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.<br /> * '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.<br /> * '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===<br /> <br /> * '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.<br /> * '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===<br /> <br /> * ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)<br /> * ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)<br /> * ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)<br /> * ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)<br /> * ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)<br /> <br /> [[Category:Books]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Words,_Thoughts,_and_Theories&diff=1606 2026-10-12T16:11:28Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 8. The Darwinian Conclusion */</p> <hr /> <div>== 1. The Other Socratic Method ==<br /> <br /> * The child treats the adult language as another source of information about the structure of the world, along with her own experience. While the child is inferring the structure of the outside world, she is also untangling the structure of language itself, and she may use solutions in one area as clues to solutions in the other.<br /> * Ultimately, our motivation for watching and talking to children is the same as Socrates'. The most central questions in cognitive science are questions that only they can answer.<br /> <br /> = I: The Theory Theory =<br /> == 2. The Scientist as Child ==<br /> <br /> * Science is cognitive almost by definition, insofar as cognition is about how minds arrive at veridical conceptions of the world.<br /> * A cognitive view of science might provide a useful middle ground, even a bridge, between logical and sociological views of science.<br /> * Quite typically, underlying any human cognitive activity is an abstract structure that is not at all apparent in superficial phenomenology or practice.<br /> * From an evolutionary point of view, three of the most distinctive features of human beings are their long, protected immaturity, the plasticity of their behavior, and their ability to adapt to an extremely wide variety of environments. Equipping human children with particularly powerful and flexible cognitive devices might be an important part of this picture. Indeed, we might think of childhood as a period when many of the requirements for survival are suspended so that children can concentrate on acquiring a veridical picture of the particular physical and social world in which they find themselves.<br /> * Once, as children, we have engaged in the theorizing necessary to specify the features of our world, most of us most of the time may simply go on to the central evolutionary business of feeding and reproducing. But, we suggest, these powerful theorizing abilities continue to allow all of us some of the time and some of us, namely professional scientists, much of the time to continue to discover more and more about the world around us.<br /> * A characteristic lesson of the cognitive revolution is that human beings (or, for that matter, machines) can perform extremely complex feats of information processing without any phenomenology at all. It is rather characteristic of human cognition that it is largely inaccessible to conscious reflection.<br /> * Children, no less than scientists, develop their understanding of the world in the context of a society that already has much knowledge of the world. they live in a rich social structure with much opportunity for contradiction, instruction, and the linguistic transmission of information.<br /> * We might argue that much of the social structure of science is an attempt to replicate the privileged sociological conditions of infancy. Aside from the division of labor, the social hierarchy largely determines who will get the leisure and equipment to do cognitive work and who other scientists should listen to. The infant solves these problems without needing elaborate social arrangements.<br /> * What happens when the theorizing mechanisms are faced with a causal problem but have no relevant evidence to operate on? What happens, we suggest, is magic, a combination of narrative, deference, and association.<br /> * In the course of developing an account of the mind, children postulate such mental entities as perceptions, beliefs, and desires as a way of explaining ordinary human behavior.<br /> * It is not that children are little scientists but that scientists are big children. Scientific progress is possible because scientists employ cognitive processes that are first seen in very young children.<br /> <br /> ==== Theories: ====<br /> * Are always constructed with reference to evidence.<br /> * Include entities and laws that are postulated or recruited from elsewhere to explain evidence.<br /> * The entities postulated by a theory are closely, &quot;lawfully&quot;, interrelated with one another.<br /> * Appeal to some underlying causal structure that we think is responsible for the superficial regularities in the data.<br /> * An accepted theory is supposed to carve nature at its joints; the theoretical entities and laws are supposed to tell you what there is and what it must do.<br /> * A test of theoreticity is the nature of our surprise at violations of the theory. If we are committed to the theory, such violations should strike us not only as surprising but as being impossible and unbelievable in an important and strong way.<br /> * A theory, in contrast to a mere empirical generalization, makes predictions about a wide variety of evidence, including evidence that played no role in the theory's initial construction<br /> * The ability to produce wide-ranging predictions is perhaps the most obvious pragmatic benefit of science, and it may also be the most important evolutionary benefit of developing theorizing abilities. The evolutionary value of a system that leads to accurate and wide-ranging predictions should be obvious. In fact, making accurate predictions about the behavior of the world and your fellow organisms is the sine qua non of cognition.<br /> * Theories produce interpretations of evidence, not simply descriptions and typologies of it. Indeed, theories strongly influence which pieces of evidence we consider salient or important. Theory-driven interpretations help to solve what computer scientists call &quot;the frame problem&quot;. Theories provide a way of deciding which evidence is relevant to a particular problem<br /> * What we mean by saying that we've explained something is simply that we can give an abstract, coherent, causal account of it. We might say that explanation is to cognition as orgasm is to reproduction. <br /> * We might speculate that we were designed with a theorizing drive and that explanation is a symptom of that drive in action.<br /> * Theories may turn out to be inconsistent with the evidence, and because of this theories change. In fact a tenet of modern epistemology is that any aspect of a theory, even the most central ones, may change.<br /> * The initial reaction of a theory to counter-evidence may be a kind of denial. The interpretive mechanisms of the theory may treat the counter-evidence as noise, mess, not worth attending to. At a slightly later stage, the theory may develop ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses designed to account specifically for such counter-evidence. The theory gets ugly and messy instead of being beautiful and simple. The preference for beautiful theories over ugly ones plays an additional major role in theory change.<br /> * A next step requires an alternative model to the original theory. The theory may limp along for some time under the weight of its auxiliary hypotheses if no alternative way of making progress is available. The ability to fix on this alternative is the mysterious logic of discovery.<br /> * The new idea is not simply the olde idea applied to a new domain, but rather the earlier idea is itself modified to fit its role in the new theory. Moreover the fertility of the alternative idea may not be immediately recognized. Initially it may be applied only to the problematic cases.<br /> * A final important dynamic feature of theory formation is a period of intense experimentation and/or observation. This period might span both the crisis of the earlier theory (when anomalous results are being produced right and left) and the first stages of the new theory (when a whole range of new predictions become available).<br /> * In the development of the heliocentric theory of the planets:<br /> ** Auxiliary hypotheses involving more and more complex arrangements of epicycles were initially invoked to deal with counterevidence <br /> ** Later heliocentrism was introduced by Copernicus, but it continued to rely on epicycles as an auxiliary hypothesis.<br /> ** Tycho Brahe's account acknowledges many of the flaws of the Ptolemaic accounts and uses the ides of heliocentrism to deal with them, but fails to accept the central idea that the earth itself goes around the sun.<br /> ** Only with Kepler is there a really coherent heliocentric account that deals both with the anomalies and with the earlier data itself. And while, strictly speaking, experimentation on the heavenly bodies was impossible, periods of intense and detailed observation in this transitional period provided a far richer empirical base than had been available before.<br /> *This distinctive pattern of prediction, interpretation, and explanation is among the best indicators of a theoretical structure and the best ways of distinguishing the theory theory from its developmental competitors.<br /> *Infants show a kind of motivation and satisfaction that goes well beyond any immediate functional or social reward. Infants seem to have cognitive orgasms.<br /> *A person's theory is a system that assigns representations to inputs just as one's perceptual system assigns representations to visual input or one's syntactic system assigns representations to phonological input.<br /> *The representations are operated on by rules that lead to new representations; for example, the theory generates predictions. There are also distinctive functional relations between the theoretical representations and the input to them; theories predict, interpret, and explain data.<br /> *Exactly what is the input to our theory systems?<br /> *There is no atheoretical, evidential, &quot;ordinary knowledge&quot; level of representation, at least not once we get past very low level perceptual processing. All representation will be theory-laden. Even apparently &quot;ordinary&quot; kind of knowledge, like our knowledge that this is a jar and that is a table, or perhaps even that these are two objects and one is on top of the other, will be the result of the application of everyday theories.<br /> *The most important and distinctive thing about theories is the fact that the very patterns of representation that occur can alter the nature of the representational system itself.<br /> *Moreover, this system may be dynamic at yet another level. It is also possible that the very rules that restructure the relations between inputs and representations may change as a result of new input. That is, as we learn more, we also learn new ways to learn. Certainly this seems to be true in science, and it may also be true in development.<br /> *To borrow Neurath's philosophical metaphor, the theorizing view sees knowledge as a boat that we perpetually rebuild as we sail in it. At each point in our journey there may be only a limited and constrained set of alterations we can make to the boat to keep it seaworthy. In the end, however, we may end up with not a single plan or rivet from the original structure, and the process may go on indefinitely.<br /> *Presumably, creatures who constructed representations in different ways in childhood, who did not assume underlying causal structure, did not search for the simples explanation, did not falsify hypotheses when there was counter-evidence, and so on, were at an evolutionary disadvantage. In adulthood, such creatures were less good at predicting which berries were members of a poisonous natural kind, which kinds of minerals would make the most seductive body paint, or when their babies were old enough to be left alone without danger. In this sense nature itself guarantees that the system gets to an understanding of nature.<br /> <br /> == 3. Theories, Modules, and Empirical Generalizations ==<br /> <br /> * We want to argue for a kind of developmental pluralism: there are many quite different mechanisms underlying cognitive developments, and theory formation is an important one of them.<br /> <br /> * According to modularity theories, representations of the world are not constructed from evidence in the course of development. Instead, representations are produced by innate structures, modules, or constraints that have been constructed in the course of evolution. These structures may need to be triggered, but one they are triggered, they create mandatory representations of input<br /> * On the starting-state view, the child is innately endowed with a particular set of representations of input and rules operating on the representations. According to this view, such initial structures, while innate, would be defeasible; any part of them could be, and indeed will be, altered by new evidence. We propose that there are innate theories that are later modified and revised. The process of theory change and replacement begins at birth.<br /> * Certainly, this type of account seems more tractable than one in which theory-like conceptual structures are constructed from scratch from a disorganized flow of experience.<br /> * Modularity nativism, on the other hand, implies a much stronger set of claims. For Fodor, for example, modules are not only innate; they are also encapsulated and the representations that are the outcome of modules cannot be overturned by new patterns of evidence.<br /> * At least some of the structural and functional features of theories - their abstractness, coherence, and predictive and interpretive force - can also be found in modules.<br /> * According to the theory theory, input is evidence. It radically alters the nature of theoretical concepts.<br /> * A theorizing mechanism is a representational system that reorganizes itself in response to input. It is an inherently developmental system. This leads to a distinctive set of developmental predictions. The theory theory predicts a succession of different theories, each replacing the earlier theory<br /> * Modular representations do not lead to predictions through some set of inductive or deductive generalizations or through a process of theory testing, confirmation and disconfirmation. They lead to predictions because they are specifically designed by evolution to do so.<br /> <br /> * Some theories in cognitive science have proposed that knowledge consists of empirical generalizations. &quot;Scripts&quot; are an example.<br /> * Like theories, but unlike modules, empirical generalizations, scripts, narratives, and nets are defeasible.<br /> * When we want deeper explanatory adequacy or wider predictive power, we turn from scripts to theories, even when we are talking about restaurants.<br /> * Modules must help to provide the input to theorizing processes. On any view, there are encapsulated atheoretical processes that take us from patterns of stimulation at the retina to patterns of representation in the visual cortex.<br /> * How far up, as it were, do these modular process go? Where is the border between modules and theories, between the periphery and the center?<br /> * A lesson of the cognitive revolution is that phenomenology does not, in general, recapitulate epistemology. On this view, many representations that are theoretical, in the sense of being revisable and defeasible in theory-like ways, might have much of the direct, vivid phenomenology of perception.<br /> * Empirical generalizations often seem to play a crucial role in theory change. Almost by definition, they are the kind of knowledge that provides us with counter-evidence to the predictions of the theory.<br /> * On our view, modules, theories, and empirical generalizations are all in play literally from birth. Innate theories will assign powerful, abstract, and predictive representations to the outputs of modules. New information coming into the cognitive system will be represented in terms of these theories. Some relations among the inputs will not, however, be predicted by the theories; they will constitute empirical generalizations. Eventually, some of these kinds of inputs will lead to a revision of the theory, the modular outputs will be assigned new representations by the new theory, and so on.<br /> * In the same way that technological advances enable or facilitate change in science, so information processing advances might enable or facilitate theory change in children.<br /> * The most significant alternative to modularity accounts in syntactic development is not the theory theory but rather various functionalist theories that emphasize the role of social interaction in language acquisition. Assimilating all cognitive development to the model of socialization is, however, a dreadful mistake.<br /> <br /> = II: Evidence for the Theory Theory =<br /> <br /> * We suggest that there is a continuous line of development from the understandings of object appearance and disappearance involved in infant &quot;object permanence&quot; tasks, to the early understanding of visual perception, to the later understanding of belief and representation reflected in theory-of-mind tasks.<br /> * A less well researched domain that is nevertheless equally important from the point of view of young children is the understanding of desires, plans, and intentions. Here we will suggest a line of development from an early understanding of the relations between actions and goals, to an early nonrepresentational understanding of desire and intention, to a later fully fledged understanding of desire as a representational state.<br /> * Similarly, we will argue that there is a continuous line of development that bridges early object manipulation, early naming, and later &quot;natural kind&quot; understanding.<br /> * We will suggest that these sets of problems - the nature of appearances, actions, and kinds - are at the core of the child's cognitive and semantic development in the period between late infancy and early childhood. On our view, these capacities are available from the very start of development. Developing a particular set of inductions and deductions, however, depends on having a particular body of knowledge organized in a theorylike way.<br /> <br /> == 4. The Child's Theory of Appearances ==<br /> <br /> * For adults, there are:<br /> ** The laws governing the movement of objects<br /> ** The properties of the objects themselves<br /> ** The spatial relations between stationary objects<br /> ** The laws that govern the perceptual relations between observers and objects.<br /> * The theory of object appearances is an interesting bridge between &quot;folk physics&quot; and &quot;folk psychology&quot;. It involves ideas about objects and the relations among them, but just as crucially, it involves ideas about the way that e and others perceive objects.<br /> * The general principle of conjuring tricks is that they violate our deep ontological commitments about the nature of the world. When we are faced with these illusions, we use our higher-level theories to devise alternative explanations for the perceptual appearances. As we say, we can't believe our eyes. Much of the conjuror's art is devoted not just to producing the appearances but also to frustrating the explanations.<br /> * The clown violates all our familiar scripts of behavior or events. But while he may evoke a kind of moral or social unease, he doesn't evoke the ontological unease that a conjuror does.<br /> * If our knowledge was really modular in a strict sense, we should not be able to represent the event at all, as our perceptual system can't represent the reality in a perceptual illusion and children can't represent the syntax of a pidgin language. If the event violates a script or an empirical generalization, we might find it weird or surprising. However, only if it violates a theory, with all its ontological commitments, will we think it's magic.<br /> * So our adult understanding of permanent objects seems to have some of the structural and functional characteristics of a theory. It involves a system of abstract causal entities and rules related to one another in coherent ways. It allows a wide variety of coherent predictions, and it leads to interpretations and explanations.<br /> * When we eat thing, we do not assume that they will reappear at the location where they disappeared. Instead, we assume that they will be transformed or destroyed.<br /> * Shadows violate our ordinary account of objects. Interestingly, infants initially seem to pay special attention to these violations. Eventually, of course, we learn that these violations are not really surprising. We modify our theory to account for them.<br /> * Research suggests that infants are born assuming a world of 3D amodal objects. Their representation of the world are abstract and interrelated, and they license certain kinds of inferences and predictions. Even very young children seems to have a minimal notion of object permanence.<br /> * The process of integrating features and movements and using features to individuate objects seems to develop gradually in the first year.<br /> * Some studies show that 9-mont-olds can remember and act on events that took place as much as 24 hours earlier.<br /> * As adults, we are not committed to the fact that objects will continue to move along the same trajectory.<br /> * Many objects in the child's world have habitual locations. The rule is &quot;The object will be where it appeared before.&quot;<br /> * An 18-month-old seems to use its new theory of objects productively to make inferences and predictions in quite new situations.<br /> * Even very young infants pay special attention to eyes. At about 18 months infants develop the ability to follow the point or gaze of another person toward an object and begin to use points to get someone else to look at an object. They also draw attention to objects in order to discover another person's attitude toward them. Faced with an ambiguous situation, infants look to their mother's face for information and may draw her gaze to the objects in question<br /> * These behaviors imply a primitive but genuine understanding of visual perception. These infants seem to know that the direction of the eyes, or perhaps just of the head and body, indicates something about the person's visual contact with an object. There seem to be some connection in these children's minds between the visual display of another person's head and eyes and the phenomenal experience of vision.<br /> * Infants who solve a task will often themselves hide the object in the complex way and indicate to the experimenter that she should search for it. It seem clear that the child is not primarily concerned with retrieving the object but with understanding the problem. We suggest that these activities are similar to experimentation in adult science.<br /> * Between 15-18 months the infant develops a new theory of objects positing that all object disappearances are a consequence of movements, including invisible movements, either of objects or of the observer. This allows them to consolidate all the information about disappearances that has been accumulated up till then, including the earlier theory of visible movements and trajectories, the theory of invisible objects, new information about spatial relations and visual perception, and information captured by the various empirical generalization that have made in recent months.<br /> * Infants very consistently use a word for disappearance, so as &quot;gone&quot; about when they first demonstrate this new object theory.<br /> * By 18 months, infants seem to understand that they and others may share the perception of an object and that they can make objects invisible to others visible by pointing or showing.<br /> * Perception and belief have many features in common, but perception may be easier to understand than belief. The understanding of perception may be the basic model on which a later understanding of belief is constructed.<br /> * &quot;See&quot; typically emerged shortly after &quot;gone&quot; and its first uses applied to the child's own attempts to see objects. References to the sight of other people and to failures to see emerged only later.<br /> * Belief words such as &quot;know&quot; and &quot;think&quot; appear during the fourth year of life, after &quot;see&quot; is well established. The developing theory of mind is apparent both in semantic change and in conceptual change.<br /> * The onset of crawling may enormously increase opportunities for the observation of counterevidence. A baby who crawls will observe many more systematic appearances and disappearances that a baby who doesn't.<br /> <br /> == 5. The Child's Theory of Actions ==<br /> <br /> * Understanding action underlies the child's later development of a theory of mind:<br /> ** It provides the basic evidence on which any theory of the mind must be based, since we infer mental states from actions<br /> ** Many of the fundamental concepts of our theory of mind share important features with concepts of action<br /> * Searle distinguishes between mental states with:<br /> ** World-to-mind direction, like desire, where the mind alters the world to fit its representations. <br /> *** The early understanding of actions, plans, and goals might be the child's first conception of these states.<br /> *** These are among the earliest and most central concepts in the child's theory of mind from around age 2.<br /> ** Mind-to-world direction, like belief, where the mind alters its representations to fit the world. <br /> *** The early understanding of perception revealed in object permanence, social referencing, and visual-perspective taking is the child's first conception of these states.<br /> * Our adult theory of action:<br /> ** We believe that the world contains both psychological agents and inanimate physical objects. <br /> ** Agents crucially include ourselves and other human beings, and we assume that we and others act in the same way. <br /> ** Agents have internal mental states (desires, plan, intentions, and so on) that cause bodily movements which, in turn, cause things to occur in the world in particular and predictable ways.<br /> ** The causal consequences of bodily movements will be different when we are interacting with other people and when we are acting on objects.<br /> ** We influence people by communication and objects by contact.<br /> ** We believe that the events in the world that result from our movements will &quot;satisfy&quot; our mental states - ie, the consequences of our actions will be the events we wanted to happen in the first place.<br /> ** The practical syllogism: &quot;If a psychological agent wants event y and believes that action x will cause event y, he will do x.&quot; This is believes to be the basic explanatory schema of folk psychology.<br /> * Among the conjuror's most persuasive tricks are to appear to act on people without communication and to act on objects without contact.<br /> * The events in a conjuror's show violate both our familiar scripts and any innately given predictions we might make. But, given our ordinary theory of action, these facts don't make the events utterly incomprehensible. On the contrary, they provide us with a stimulus to generate new predictions and explanations. The conjuror's technique is to provide counter-evidence to those predictions and to frustrate those explanations.<br /> * In Star Trek, Q's powers call into question fundamental ideas about will, desire, morality, and time. The Borg calls into question ideas of personal identity, responsibility, and agency.<br /> * From an extremely early age, infants distinguish between inanimate objects and people and respond in a distinctive way to human faces and voices.<br /> * We claim that infants already know that they are like other people. We suggest that from birth, information about action that comes, literally, from inside ourselves is coded in the same way as information that comes from observing the behavior of others. There is a fundamental cross-modal representational system that connects self and other. This initial coding then becomes the basis for the child's further acquisition of a theory of action.<br /> * In particular, we innately map the visually perceived motions of others onto our own kinesthetic sensations.<br /> * To genuinely imitate another person sticking out his tongue, for instance, I have to recognize the equivalence between the visual spectacle of his face, an oval with a protruding moving cylinder in its lower portion, and the set of feelings that make up my own kinesthetic image of my invisible tongue. Yet imperfect imitations are observed in babies as young as 42 minutes old!<br /> * Newborn imitation is nature's way of solving both the problem of other minds and the mind-body problem at one fell swoop.<br /> * Very young infants gaze at the faces of significant (or even not so significant) others and vocalize and gesture in a way that seems &quot;tuned&quot; to the vocalizations and gestures of the other person.<br /> * The mere physical appearance of certain facial expressions is itself enough to induce a parallel internal affective state.<br /> * Infants can make inferences on the basis of their representations of others vocalizations and gestures. They can recognize which movements of their own faces and bodies will correspond to the observed movement of the other's face and body and then produce that movement.<br /> * It is conceivable that young infants think that persons are rather like the Borg, fundamentally sharing the same psychological states. This rather Rousseauean view turns the problem of other minds on its head: we start out deeply identifying with our fellow human beings and need to develop an understanding of separation and conflict.<br /> * Persons make objects do things.<br /> * Infants begin by making overly general predictions about the connections between actions and events, but then begin to realize that only some subclasses of relations between actions and events are actually reliable over the long run.<br /> * Around 9 months, children will being only to attempt solutions that obey the rules of spatial contact. This enables their problem solving to be both more constrained, since a wide array of actions are ruled out, and more general at the same time. They can see a new problem, like obtaining an object by pulling at the end of a horizontal string, and immediatley hit on one of several appropriate solutions.<br /> * Action at a distance is the rule rather than the exception in psychological causality. We influence others by talking pointing, gesturing, and generally communicating. Only in the most extreme situations would we attempt to causally affect others by direct spatial contact.<br /> * Choosing our clothes, preparing food and communicating are all ways of influencing other people, and more effective that lifting or pushing them.<br /> * As soon as the infant shows an understanding of his own causal relations to objects and persons, he apparently assumes that other people's causal relations to objects and persons are similar.<br /> * By 18 months infants will test interpersonal relations by setting up situations in which their own desires conflict with those of others and explore the consequences of those conflicts. This experimentation is the basis of the &quot;terrible twos&quot;.<br /> * Like scientists, babies sometimes prefer truth to love.<br /> * Failure and success words - &quot;uh-oh&quot;, &quot;no&quot;, &quot;there&quot;, done it&quot; appear around 18 months and are often used not to express disappointment but when the child is deliberately failing.<br /> * &quot;No&quot; signals the beginning of the terrible twos, as the child learns to wield this word.<br /> * At around 21-24 months children start to use the word &quot;want&quot; to talk about their desires<br /> <br /> == 6. The Child's Theory of Kinds ==<br /> <br /> * Early views on the adult theory of categories assumed that it was based on properties.<br /> * In the 1970s, this was overturned and replaced with a &quot;prototype&quot; structure, with central exemplars and graded structure around those exemplars.<br /> * Our category of birds, for example, is not based on features (flies, lays eggs, has wings, etc), but is based around a set of central examples of birds (robins, bluebirds) and then with decreasing acceptability, a set of other birds (ostriches, penguins, toy birds, and so on), all with different features in common with the central exemplars.<br /> * In addition, Rosch argued that the basic level of categories is fundamental. Putnam, argued for &quot;natural kinds&quot; that drive our intuitions about naming and categorizing, which are based on some kind of shared &quot;essence&quot;, and which adults assume all the natural objects in the world can be divided into.<br /> * If an animal or infant shows the capacity to discriminate between objects and yet generalizes across them, we may say that it categorizes. In this sense, practically any living organism, and many nonliving systems, can be deemed to categorize, and this sense of categorization motivates the traditional picture of categories as lists of perceptual features.<br /> * The notion of coherent objects moving in a 3D space seems to be innately given. And from very early in development, indeed from birth, infants make perceptual discriminations and generalizations.<br /> * At 9 months, infants can recognize basic-level prototype based categories of objects.<br /> * At 12 months, infants will spontaneously begin to place objects of one kind into a single pile, while ignoring the objects of another kind.<br /> * The only function of sorting for the infants seems precisely to be to work out the categorical structure of the world. Categorizing, in these case, is its own reward.<br /> * From 14 months, they start to pay attention to the function (rolling, rattling, etc) as well as the form of objects.<br /> * Around a year, infants use early nouns, &quot;John&quot; or &quot;dog for particular objects. Early names are likely to be simultaneously over- and under-generalized.<br /> * For adults, it is part of our deepest conviction that all natural kinds belong in some category or other. Chemistry or biology can be seen as an attempt to specify the natural kind of everything.<br /> * At 18 months, children suddenly produce a large number of new names - the &quot;naming insight&quot;, &quot;vocabulary spurt&quot;, or &quot;naming explosion. Any increase in vocabulary at this point is almost entirely of object names and an obsession with naming. They also start to show evidence of &quot;mutual exclusivity&quot;, &quot;lexical gap filling&quot;, or the &quot;new name, new category&quot; principle.<br /> * We might say that the ontological and semantic parts of the Putnam framework are discovered at the same, with the child's exhaustive sorting behavior showing that she thinks every object kind should go in a particular spatial location and have a name.<br /> <br /> = III: Theories and Language =<br /> == 7. Language and Thought ==<br /> <br /> * Constraints are necessary because of the classic riddle of induction proposed by Quine, among others. In principle, a word used in a particular context could refer to any of an infinite variety of aspects of that context, and yet the child must eventually converge on the adult meaning.<br /> * Different languages carve up the world in different ways, making certain semantic distinctions obligatory and others optional or marking certain distinctions with clear morphological variations while others can only be expressed by complex and indirect means.<br /> * These differences among particular languages might influence children's semantic development: they might influence which conceptual distinctions children find easy or difficult to encode. More powerfully, they might also influence the child's and the adult's conceptual distinctions themselves, drawing attention to particular similarities and differences encoded in a particular language.<br /> * It may be that both semantic and cognitive development are simply a consequence of the child's attempt to match adult behavior, and so to become a member of the social community.<br /> * Earlier cognitive developments may not only serve as a prerequisite for semantic developments, but actually motivate semantic developments. Children are actively engaged in solving particular conceptual problems at particular times, and the child's attention is drawn to words relevant to those problems. At the same time, children are actively engaged in solving the problem of language itself. They treat language as a problem space. Children may be drawn to investigate a particular linguistic pattern because of its relevance to particular cognitive problems. But discovering the nature of that linguistic pattern may also help children to solve those problems and direct their attention to new ones.<br /> * Children do not simply match the meanings of &quot;gone&quot; and &quot;uh-oh&quot; that they hear in the adult language. Rather, they use these words to encode the conceptual structures they are themselves developing at the moment, the structures that are central to their theories.<br /> * The three conceptual domains - knowledge about disappearance, means-end relations, and object categories - are strikingly independent of each other.<br /> * Children choose to encode the concepts that are at the frontiers of their cognitive development, the concepts in their &quot;zone of proximal development&quot;.<br /> * Object appearances, actions, and kinds, as well as spatial relations, are all areas of great cognitive significance to children of 15-21 months. These are also the notions most likely to be encoded in early language.<br /> * Theories dictate which pieces of evidence will be considered relevant or salient, and they impose a particular kind of ontological classification on the world. Theories themselves provide strong constraints on induction. Indeed, this is one of their most useful features. These constraints, rather than being fixed, however, are themselves revisable in the light of further evidence. These effects of theories plausibly, indeed almost certainly, influence the interpretation of words, as well as the interpretation of nonlinguistic evidence. Empirically, Markman's constraints look much more like these interpretive effects than like the strong constraints of syntactic theory.<br /> * On the theory theory, constraints are a starting set of assumptions about the likely meanings of words, assumptions that are later revised in the light of further evidence.<br /> * Children not only give words a particular meaning; they find a word to assign that meaning to, even when there is no such word in the adult language.<br /> * English has a highly analytic structure, with relatively little reliance on morphological variation. Moreover, nouns are generally obligatory in English sentences. In contrast, Korean and Japanese, languages with similar structures, have a very rich verb morphology, depend on different verb endings to make important semantic distinctions, and are verb-final. Pragmatic rules in Korean and Japanese allow massive noun ellipsis, particularly in informal conversation where the context is clear and present. Parental speech in these languages, which occurs in precisely such a setting, often consists of highly inflected verbs with few nouns, very much in contrast to North American English parental speech.<br /> * The Korean speakers were significantly worse on categorizing tasks than the English speakers but significantly better on means-ends tasks.<br /> * A child who hears language with many highly directed uses of nouns may come to pay special attention to category problems. A child with a parent who focuses on verbs, in contrast, may focus her attention on actions and events and the relations between them.<br /> * Children who hear language relevant to a particular conceptual problem are more likely to solve that problem than children who do not.<br /> * Our view is that linguistic information is simply one more source of evidence, one more set of representations that the theory-formation system must deal with. It may be a particularly important source of evidence, but in this regard the child is again no different from any modern scientist who relies on the reports of others for almost all of his evidential base.<br /> * It seems very likely that the fact that cultures transmit solutions to problems through language plays a major role in the child's ability to make such extremely rapid cognitive progress. In much the same way, it is much easier to learn about Einstein's theory than to discover it, or perhaps even then to know whether to accept it just after it was formulated. Scientists have much less reason than children to believe that the information they receive from members of their community is reliable, and they likely have to resolve contradictions much more frequently. Indeed, one might argue that a great deal of science consists of deciding who your mother is.<br /> <br /> == 8. The Darwinian Conclusion ==<br /> <br /> * Quine's &quot;web of belief&quot; - a set of interconnected conceptual strands. The peripheral strands are the beliefs that are most easily influenced by the outside world, while the central strands are beliefs, like our fundamental beliefs about space and time, that seem relatively immune from such influences. Quine's point is that even the most central strands of the web are ultimately subject to modification by vibrations at the periphery.<br /> * Everyday cognition is simply the theory that most of us most of the time have arrived at when we get too old and stupid to do more theorizing.<br /> * At least a large part of our ordinary knowledge of the world has no particular privileged set of representations and rules. Rather, it is the product of a system of theory formation and revision that restructures the very nature of the representational system. this system alters the very relations between representations and input as it gets more input and constructs more representations. <br /> * We see the system at work most dramatically in childhood and in our endeavors as scientists, but there is no reason to suppose that it is not equally responsible for much of our everyday cognition. On this view, the real explanatory action in cognitive science lies in trying to describe the dynamic mechanisms responsible for conceptual change, as much as in trying to describe our static conceptual structures.<br /> * The theory theory might turn explanation in cognitive science on its head. Conceptual change, rather than being a mysterious extra problem, would be a fundamental explanatory mechanism for important areas of cognition. The actual representational system we have at any given moment is only a fortuitous subset of the possible representational systems we could construct.<br /> * On this view, all of cognitive science would be developmental.<br /> * The theory theory implies a computational system that combines the capacity for learning and qualitative change of connectionism with the structure and systematicity of classical implementations.<br /> * The theory theory propose that there is elaborate, rich, representational structure form birth. We also propose that there are more powerful mechanisms of theory change initially in place than Piaget originally supposed. Our theory does not predict domain-general logical stage changes of the sort that Piaget proposed. Rather, it holds that the child accumulates theories of particular domains and the structure of those theories allows inferences in those domains.<br /> * Unlike Piaget, we do not proposed that action is the central motor in cognitive development. Finally, we propose a rich and powerful causal role for linguistic input. We propose that language change may often lead to conceptual change rather than vice versa. In all these respects, our theory is v ery different from, indeed, stands in opposition to Piaget's.</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Words,_Thoughts,_and_Theories&diff=1605 2026-10-12T13:34:26Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 7. Language and Thought */</p> <hr /> <div>== 1. The Other Socratic Method ==<br /> <br /> * The child treats the adult language as another source of information about the structure of the world, along with her own experience. While the child is inferring the structure of the outside world, she is also untangling the structure of language itself, and she may use solutions in one area as clues to solutions in the other.<br /> * Ultimately, our motivation for watching and talking to children is the same as Socrates'. The most central questions in cognitive science are questions that only they can answer.<br /> <br /> = I: The Theory Theory =<br /> == 2. The Scientist as Child ==<br /> <br /> * Science is cognitive almost by definition, insofar as cognition is about how minds arrive at veridical conceptions of the world.<br /> * A cognitive view of science might provide a useful middle ground, even a bridge, between logical and sociological views of science.<br /> * Quite typically, underlying any human cognitive activity is an abstract structure that is not at all apparent in superficial phenomenology or practice.<br /> * From an evolutionary point of view, three of the most distinctive features of human beings are their long, protected immaturity, the plasticity of their behavior, and their ability to adapt to an extremely wide variety of environments. Equipping human children with particularly powerful and flexible cognitive devices might be an important part of this picture. Indeed, we might think of childhood as a period when many of the requirements for survival are suspended so that children can concentrate on acquiring a veridical picture of the particular physical and social world in which they find themselves.<br /> * Once, as children, we have engaged in the theorizing necessary to specify the features of our world, most of us most of the time may simply go on to the central evolutionary business of feeding and reproducing. But, we suggest, these powerful theorizing abilities continue to allow all of us some of the time and some of us, namely professional scientists, much of the time to continue to discover more and more about the world around us.<br /> * A characteristic lesson of the cognitive revolution is that human beings (or, for that matter, machines) can perform extremely complex feats of information processing without any phenomenology at all. It is rather characteristic of human cognition that it is largely inaccessible to conscious reflection.<br /> * Children, no less than scientists, develop their understanding of the world in the context of a society that already has much knowledge of the world. they live in a rich social structure with much opportunity for contradiction, instruction, and the linguistic transmission of information.<br /> * We might argue that much of the social structure of science is an attempt to replicate the privileged sociological conditions of infancy. Aside from the division of labor, the social hierarchy largely determines who will get the leisure and equipment to do cognitive work and who other scientists should listen to. The infant solves these problems without needing elaborate social arrangements.<br /> * What happens when the theorizing mechanisms are faced with a causal problem but have no relevant evidence to operate on? What happens, we suggest, is magic, a combination of narrative, deference, and association.<br /> * In the course of developing an account of the mind, children postulate such mental entities as perceptions, beliefs, and desires as a way of explaining ordinary human behavior.<br /> * It is not that children are little scientists but that scientists are big children. Scientific progress is possible because scientists employ cognitive processes that are first seen in very young children.<br /> <br /> ==== Theories: ====<br /> * Are always constructed with reference to evidence.<br /> * Include entities and laws that are postulated or recruited from elsewhere to explain evidence.<br /> * The entities postulated by a theory are closely, &quot;lawfully&quot;, interrelated with one another.<br /> * Appeal to some underlying causal structure that we think is responsible for the superficial regularities in the data.<br /> * An accepted theory is supposed to carve nature at its joints; the theoretical entities and laws are supposed to tell you what there is and what it must do.<br /> * A test of theoreticity is the nature of our surprise at violations of the theory. If we are committed to the theory, such violations should strike us not only as surprising but as being impossible and unbelievable in an important and strong way.<br /> * A theory, in contrast to a mere empirical generalization, makes predictions about a wide variety of evidence, including evidence that played no role in the theory's initial construction<br /> * The ability to produce wide-ranging predictions is perhaps the most obvious pragmatic benefit of science, and it may also be the most important evolutionary benefit of developing theorizing abilities. The evolutionary value of a system that leads to accurate and wide-ranging predictions should be obvious. In fact, making accurate predictions about the behavior of the world and your fellow organisms is the sine qua non of cognition.<br /> * Theories produce interpretations of evidence, not simply descriptions and typologies of it. Indeed, theories strongly influence which pieces of evidence we consider salient or important. Theory-driven interpretations help to solve what computer scientists call &quot;the frame problem&quot;. Theories provide a way of deciding which evidence is relevant to a particular problem<br /> * What we mean by saying that we've explained something is simply that we can give an abstract, coherent, causal account of it. We might say that explanation is to cognition as orgasm is to reproduction. <br /> * We might speculate that we were designed with a theorizing drive and that explanation is a symptom of that drive in action.<br /> * Theories may turn out to be inconsistent with the evidence, and because of this theories change. In fact a tenet of modern epistemology is that any aspect of a theory, even the most central ones, may change.<br /> * The initial reaction of a theory to counter-evidence may be a kind of denial. The interpretive mechanisms of the theory may treat the counter-evidence as noise, mess, not worth attending to. At a slightly later stage, the theory may develop ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses designed to account specifically for such counter-evidence. The theory gets ugly and messy instead of being beautiful and simple. The preference for beautiful theories over ugly ones plays an additional major role in theory change.<br /> * A next step requires an alternative model to the original theory. The theory may limp along for some time under the weight of its auxiliary hypotheses if no alternative way of making progress is available. The ability to fix on this alternative is the mysterious logic of discovery.<br /> * The new idea is not simply the olde idea applied to a new domain, but rather the earlier idea is itself modified to fit its role in the new theory. Moreover the fertility of the alternative idea may not be immediately recognized. Initially it may be applied only to the problematic cases.<br /> * A final important dynamic feature of theory formation is a period of intense experimentation and/or observation. This period might span both the crisis of the earlier theory (when anomalous results are being produced right and left) and the first stages of the new theory (when a whole range of new predictions become available).<br /> * In the development of the heliocentric theory of the planets:<br /> ** Auxiliary hypotheses involving more and more complex arrangements of epicycles were initially invoked to deal with counterevidence <br /> ** Later heliocentrism was introduced by Copernicus, but it continued to rely on epicycles as an auxiliary hypothesis.<br /> ** Tycho Brahe's account acknowledges many of the flaws of the Ptolemaic accounts and uses the ides of heliocentrism to deal with them, but fails to accept the central idea that the earth itself goes around the sun.<br /> ** Only with Kepler is there a really coherent heliocentric account that deals both with the anomalies and with the earlier data itself. And while, strictly speaking, experimentation on the heavenly bodies was impossible, periods of intense and detailed observation in this transitional period provided a far richer empirical base than had been available before.<br /> *This distinctive pattern of prediction, interpretation, and explanation is among the best indicators of a theoretical structure and the best ways of distinguishing the theory theory from its developmental competitors.<br /> *Infants show a kind of motivation and satisfaction that goes well beyond any immediate functional or social reward. Infants seem to have cognitive orgasms.<br /> *A person's theory is a system that assigns representations to inputs just as one's perceptual system assigns representations to visual input or one's syntactic system assigns representations to phonological input.<br /> *The representations are operated on by rules that lead to new representations; for example, the theory generates predictions. There are also distinctive functional relations between the theoretical representations and the input to them; theories predict, interpret, and explain data.<br /> *Exactly what is the input to our theory systems?<br /> *There is no atheoretical, evidential, &quot;ordinary knowledge&quot; level of representation, at least not once we get past very low level perceptual processing. All representation will be theory-laden. Even apparently &quot;ordinary&quot; kind of knowledge, like our knowledge that this is a jar and that is a table, or perhaps even that these are two objects and one is on top of the other, will be the result of the application of everyday theories.<br /> *The most important and distinctive thing about theories is the fact that the very patterns of representation that occur can alter the nature of the representational system itself.<br /> *Moreover, this system may be dynamic at yet another level. It is also possible that the very rules that restructure the relations between inputs and representations may change as a result of new input. That is, as we learn more, we also learn new ways to learn. Certainly this seems to be true in science, and it may also be true in development.<br /> *To borrow Neurath's philosophical metaphor, the theorizing view sees knowledge as a boat that we perpetually rebuild as we sail in it. At each point in our journey there may be only a limited and constrained set of alterations we can make to the boat to keep it seaworthy. In the end, however, we may end up with not a single plan or rivet from the original structure, and the process may go on indefinitely.<br /> *Presumably, creatures who constructed representations in different ways in childhood, who did not assume underlying causal structure, did not search for the simples explanation, did not falsify hypotheses when there was counter-evidence, and so on, were at an evolutionary disadvantage. In adulthood, such creatures were less good at predicting which berries were members of a poisonous natural kind, which kinds of minerals would make the most seductive body paint, or when their babies were old enough to be left alone without danger. In this sense nature itself guarantees that the system gets to an understanding of nature.<br /> <br /> == 3. Theories, Modules, and Empirical Generalizations ==<br /> <br /> * We want to argue for a kind of developmental pluralism: there are many quite different mechanisms underlying cognitive developments, and theory formation is an important one of them.<br /> <br /> * According to modularity theories, representations of the world are not constructed from evidence in the course of development. Instead, representations are produced by innate structures, modules, or constraints that have been constructed in the course of evolution. These structures may need to be triggered, but one they are triggered, they create mandatory representations of input<br /> * On the starting-state view, the child is innately endowed with a particular set of representations of input and rules operating on the representations. According to this view, such initial structures, while innate, would be defeasible; any part of them could be, and indeed will be, altered by new evidence. We propose that there are innate theories that are later modified and revised. The process of theory change and replacement begins at birth.<br /> * Certainly, this type of account seems more tractable than one in which theory-like conceptual structures are constructed from scratch from a disorganized flow of experience.<br /> * Modularity nativism, on the other hand, implies a much stronger set of claims. For Fodor, for example, modules are not only innate; they are also encapsulated and the representations that are the outcome of modules cannot be overturned by new patterns of evidence.<br /> * At least some of the structural and functional features of theories - their abstractness, coherence, and predictive and interpretive force - can also be found in modules.<br /> * According to the theory theory, input is evidence. It radically alters the nature of theoretical concepts.<br /> * A theorizing mechanism is a representational system that reorganizes itself in response to input. It is an inherently developmental system. This leads to a distinctive set of developmental predictions. The theory theory predicts a succession of different theories, each replacing the earlier theory<br /> * Modular representations do not lead to predictions through some set of inductive or deductive generalizations or through a process of theory testing, confirmation and disconfirmation. They lead to predictions because they are specifically designed by evolution to do so.<br /> <br /> * Some theories in cognitive science have proposed that knowledge consists of empirical generalizations. &quot;Scripts&quot; are an example.<br /> * Like theories, but unlike modules, empirical generalizations, scripts, narratives, and nets are defeasible.<br /> * When we want deeper explanatory adequacy or wider predictive power, we turn from scripts to theories, even when we are talking about restaurants.<br /> * Modules must help to provide the input to theorizing processes. On any view, there are encapsulated atheoretical processes that take us from patterns of stimulation at the retina to patterns of representation in the visual cortex.<br /> * How far up, as it were, do these modular process go? Where is the border between modules and theories, between the periphery and the center?<br /> * A lesson of the cognitive revolution is that phenomenology does not, in general, recapitulate epistemology. On this view, many representations that are theoretical, in the sense of being revisable and defeasible in theory-like ways, might have much of the direct, vivid phenomenology of perception.<br /> * Empirical generalizations often seem to play a crucial role in theory change. Almost by definition, they are the kind of knowledge that provides us with counter-evidence to the predictions of the theory.<br /> * On our view, modules, theories, and empirical generalizations are all in play literally from birth. Innate theories will assign powerful, abstract, and predictive representations to the outputs of modules. New information coming into the cognitive system will be represented in terms of these theories. Some relations among the inputs will not, however, be predicted by the theories; they will constitute empirical generalizations. Eventually, some of these kinds of inputs will lead to a revision of the theory, the modular outputs will be assigned new representations by the new theory, and so on.<br /> * In the same way that technological advances enable or facilitate change in science, so information processing advances might enable or facilitate theory change in children.<br /> * The most significant alternative to modularity accounts in syntactic development is not the theory theory but rather various functionalist theories that emphasize the role of social interaction in language acquisition. Assimilating all cognitive development to the model of socialization is, however, a dreadful mistake.<br /> <br /> = II: Evidence for the Theory Theory =<br /> <br /> * We suggest that there is a continuous line of development from the understandings of object appearance and disappearance involved in infant &quot;object permanence&quot; tasks, to the early understanding of visual perception, to the later understanding of belief and representation reflected in theory-of-mind tasks.<br /> * A less well researched domain that is nevertheless equally important from the point of view of young children is the understanding of desires, plans, and intentions. Here we will suggest a line of development from an early understanding of the relations between actions and goals, to an early nonrepresentational understanding of desire and intention, to a later fully fledged understanding of desire as a representational state.<br /> * Similarly, we will argue that there is a continuous line of development that bridges early object manipulation, early naming, and later &quot;natural kind&quot; understanding.<br /> * We will suggest that these sets of problems - the nature of appearances, actions, and kinds - are at the core of the child's cognitive and semantic development in the period between late infancy and early childhood. On our view, these capacities are available from the very start of development. Developing a particular set of inductions and deductions, however, depends on having a particular body of knowledge organized in a theorylike way.<br /> <br /> == 4. The Child's Theory of Appearances ==<br /> <br /> * For adults, there are:<br /> ** The laws governing the movement of objects<br /> ** The properties of the objects themselves<br /> ** The spatial relations between stationary objects<br /> ** The laws that govern the perceptual relations between observers and objects.<br /> * The theory of object appearances is an interesting bridge between &quot;folk physics&quot; and &quot;folk psychology&quot;. It involves ideas about objects and the relations among them, but just as crucially, it involves ideas about the way that e and others perceive objects.<br /> * The general principle of conjuring tricks is that they violate our deep ontological commitments about the nature of the world. When we are faced with these illusions, we use our higher-level theories to devise alternative explanations for the perceptual appearances. As we say, we can't believe our eyes. Much of the conjuror's art is devoted not just to producing the appearances but also to frustrating the explanations.<br /> * The clown violates all our familiar scripts of behavior or events. But while he may evoke a kind of moral or social unease, he doesn't evoke the ontological unease that a conjuror does.<br /> * If our knowledge was really modular in a strict sense, we should not be able to represent the event at all, as our perceptual system can't represent the reality in a perceptual illusion and children can't represent the syntax of a pidgin language. If the event violates a script or an empirical generalization, we might find it weird or surprising. However, only if it violates a theory, with all its ontological commitments, will we think it's magic.<br /> * So our adult understanding of permanent objects seems to have some of the structural and functional characteristics of a theory. It involves a system of abstract causal entities and rules related to one another in coherent ways. It allows a wide variety of coherent predictions, and it leads to interpretations and explanations.<br /> * When we eat thing, we do not assume that they will reappear at the location where they disappeared. Instead, we assume that they will be transformed or destroyed.<br /> * Shadows violate our ordinary account of objects. Interestingly, infants initially seem to pay special attention to these violations. Eventually, of course, we learn that these violations are not really surprising. We modify our theory to account for them.<br /> * Research suggests that infants are born assuming a world of 3D amodal objects. Their representation of the world are abstract and interrelated, and they license certain kinds of inferences and predictions. Even very young children seems to have a minimal notion of object permanence.<br /> * The process of integrating features and movements and using features to individuate objects seems to develop gradually in the first year.<br /> * Some studies show that 9-mont-olds can remember and act on events that took place as much as 24 hours earlier.<br /> * As adults, we are not committed to the fact that objects will continue to move along the same trajectory.<br /> * Many objects in the child's world have habitual locations. The rule is &quot;The object will be where it appeared before.&quot;<br /> * An 18-month-old seems to use its new theory of objects productively to make inferences and predictions in quite new situations.<br /> * Even very young infants pay special attention to eyes. At about 18 months infants develop the ability to follow the point or gaze of another person toward an object and begin to use points to get someone else to look at an object. They also draw attention to objects in order to discover another person's attitude toward them. Faced with an ambiguous situation, infants look to their mother's face for information and may draw her gaze to the objects in question<br /> * These behaviors imply a primitive but genuine understanding of visual perception. These infants seem to know that the direction of the eyes, or perhaps just of the head and body, indicates something about the person's visual contact with an object. There seem to be some connection in these children's minds between the visual display of another person's head and eyes and the phenomenal experience of vision.<br /> * Infants who solve a task will often themselves hide the object in the complex way and indicate to the experimenter that she should search for it. It seem clear that the child is not primarily concerned with retrieving the object but with understanding the problem. We suggest that these activities are similar to experimentation in adult science.<br /> * Between 15-18 months the infant develops a new theory of objects positing that all object disappearances are a consequence of movements, including invisible movements, either of objects or of the observer. This allows them to consolidate all the information about disappearances that has been accumulated up till then, including the earlier theory of visible movements and trajectories, the theory of invisible objects, new information about spatial relations and visual perception, and information captured by the various empirical generalization that have made in recent months.<br /> * Infants very consistently use a word for disappearance, so as &quot;gone&quot; about when they first demonstrate this new object theory.<br /> * By 18 months, infants seem to understand that they and others may share the perception of an object and that they can make objects invisible to others visible by pointing or showing.<br /> * Perception and belief have many features in common, but perception may be easier to understand than belief. The understanding of perception may be the basic model on which a later understanding of belief is constructed.<br /> * &quot;See&quot; typically emerged shortly after &quot;gone&quot; and its first uses applied to the child's own attempts to see objects. References to the sight of other people and to failures to see emerged only later.<br /> * Belief words such as &quot;know&quot; and &quot;think&quot; appear during the fourth year of life, after &quot;see&quot; is well established. The developing theory of mind is apparent both in semantic change and in conceptual change.<br /> * The onset of crawling may enormously increase opportunities for the observation of counterevidence. A baby who crawls will observe many more systematic appearances and disappearances that a baby who doesn't.<br /> <br /> == 5. The Child's Theory of Actions ==<br /> <br /> * Understanding action underlies the child's later development of a theory of mind:<br /> ** It provides the basic evidence on which any theory of the mind must be based, since we infer mental states from actions<br /> ** Many of the fundamental concepts of our theory of mind share important features with concepts of action<br /> * Searle distinguishes between mental states with:<br /> ** World-to-mind direction, like desire, where the mind alters the world to fit its representations. <br /> *** The early understanding of actions, plans, and goals might be the child's first conception of these states.<br /> *** These are among the earliest and most central concepts in the child's theory of mind from around age 2.<br /> ** Mind-to-world direction, like belief, where the mind alters its representations to fit the world. <br /> *** The early understanding of perception revealed in object permanence, social referencing, and visual-perspective taking is the child's first conception of these states.<br /> * Our adult theory of action:<br /> ** We believe that the world contains both psychological agents and inanimate physical objects. <br /> ** Agents crucially include ourselves and other human beings, and we assume that we and others act in the same way. <br /> ** Agents have internal mental states (desires, plan, intentions, and so on) that cause bodily movements which, in turn, cause things to occur in the world in particular and predictable ways.<br /> ** The causal consequences of bodily movements will be different when we are interacting with other people and when we are acting on objects.<br /> ** We influence people by communication and objects by contact.<br /> ** We believe that the events in the world that result from our movements will &quot;satisfy&quot; our mental states - ie, the consequences of our actions will be the events we wanted to happen in the first place.<br /> ** The practical syllogism: &quot;If a psychological agent wants event y and believes that action x will cause event y, he will do x.&quot; This is believes to be the basic explanatory schema of folk psychology.<br /> * Among the conjuror's most persuasive tricks are to appear to act on people without communication and to act on objects without contact.<br /> * The events in a conjuror's show violate both our familiar scripts and any innately given predictions we might make. But, given our ordinary theory of action, these facts don't make the events utterly incomprehensible. On the contrary, they provide us with a stimulus to generate new predictions and explanations. The conjuror's technique is to provide counter-evidence to those predictions and to frustrate those explanations.<br /> * In Star Trek, Q's powers call into question fundamental ideas about will, desire, morality, and time. The Borg calls into question ideas of personal identity, responsibility, and agency.<br /> * From an extremely early age, infants distinguish between inanimate objects and people and respond in a distinctive way to human faces and voices.<br /> * We claim that infants already know that they are like other people. We suggest that from birth, information about action that comes, literally, from inside ourselves is coded in the same way as information that comes from observing the behavior of others. There is a fundamental cross-modal representational system that connects self and other. This initial coding then becomes the basis for the child's further acquisition of a theory of action.<br /> * In particular, we innately map the visually perceived motions of others onto our own kinesthetic sensations.<br /> * To genuinely imitate another person sticking out his tongue, for instance, I have to recognize the equivalence between the visual spectacle of his face, an oval with a protruding moving cylinder in its lower portion, and the set of feelings that make up my own kinesthetic image of my invisible tongue. Yet imperfect imitations are observed in babies as young as 42 minutes old!<br /> * Newborn imitation is nature's way of solving both the problem of other minds and the mind-body problem at one fell swoop.<br /> * Very young infants gaze at the faces of significant (or even not so significant) others and vocalize and gesture in a way that seems &quot;tuned&quot; to the vocalizations and gestures of the other person.<br /> * The mere physical appearance of certain facial expressions is itself enough to induce a parallel internal affective state.<br /> * Infants can make inferences on the basis of their representations of others vocalizations and gestures. They can recognize which movements of their own faces and bodies will correspond to the observed movement of the other's face and body and then produce that movement.<br /> * It is conceivable that young infants think that persons are rather like the Borg, fundamentally sharing the same psychological states. This rather Rousseauean view turns the problem of other minds on its head: we start out deeply identifying with our fellow human beings and need to develop an understanding of separation and conflict.<br /> * Persons make objects do things.<br /> * Infants begin by making overly general predictions about the connections between actions and events, but then begin to realize that only some subclasses of relations between actions and events are actually reliable over the long run.<br /> * Around 9 months, children will being only to attempt solutions that obey the rules of spatial contact. This enables their problem solving to be both more constrained, since a wide array of actions are ruled out, and more general at the same time. They can see a new problem, like obtaining an object by pulling at the end of a horizontal string, and immediatley hit on one of several appropriate solutions.<br /> * Action at a distance is the rule rather than the exception in psychological causality. We influence others by talking pointing, gesturing, and generally communicating. Only in the most extreme situations would we attempt to causally affect others by direct spatial contact.<br /> * Choosing our clothes, preparing food and communicating are all ways of influencing other people, and more effective that lifting or pushing them.<br /> * As soon as the infant shows an understanding of his own causal relations to objects and persons, he apparently assumes that other people's causal relations to objects and persons are similar.<br /> * By 18 months infants will test interpersonal relations by setting up situations in which their own desires conflict with those of others and explore the consequences of those conflicts. This experimentation is the basis of the &quot;terrible twos&quot;.<br /> * Like scientists, babies sometimes prefer truth to love.<br /> * Failure and success words - &quot;uh-oh&quot;, &quot;no&quot;, &quot;there&quot;, done it&quot; appear around 18 months and are often used not to express disappointment but when the child is deliberately failing.<br /> * &quot;No&quot; signals the beginning of the terrible twos, as the child learns to wield this word.<br /> * At around 21-24 months children start to use the word &quot;want&quot; to talk about their desires<br /> <br /> == 6. The Child's Theory of Kinds ==<br /> <br /> * Early views on the adult theory of categories assumed that it was based on properties.<br /> * In the 1970s, this was overturned and replaced with a &quot;prototype&quot; structure, with central exemplars and graded structure around those exemplars.<br /> * Our category of birds, for example, is not based on features (flies, lays eggs, has wings, etc), but is based around a set of central examples of birds (robins, bluebirds) and then with decreasing acceptability, a set of other birds (ostriches, penguins, toy birds, and so on), all with different features in common with the central exemplars.<br /> * In addition, Rosch argued that the basic level of categories is fundamental. Putnam, argued for &quot;natural kinds&quot; that drive our intuitions about naming and categorizing, which are based on some kind of shared &quot;essence&quot;, and which adults assume all the natural objects in the world can be divided into.<br /> * If an animal or infant shows the capacity to discriminate between objects and yet generalizes across them, we may say that it categorizes. In this sense, practically any living organism, and many nonliving systems, can be deemed to categorize, and this sense of categorization motivates the traditional picture of categories as lists of perceptual features.<br /> * The notion of coherent objects moving in a 3D space seems to be innately given. And from very early in development, indeed from birth, infants make perceptual discriminations and generalizations.<br /> * At 9 months, infants can recognize basic-level prototype based categories of objects.<br /> * At 12 months, infants will spontaneously begin to place objects of one kind into a single pile, while ignoring the objects of another kind.<br /> * The only function of sorting for the infants seems precisely to be to work out the categorical structure of the world. Categorizing, in these case, is its own reward.<br /> * From 14 months, they start to pay attention to the function (rolling, rattling, etc) as well as the form of objects.<br /> * Around a year, infants use early nouns, &quot;John&quot; or &quot;dog for particular objects. Early names are likely to be simultaneously over- and under-generalized.<br /> * For adults, it is part of our deepest conviction that all natural kinds belong in some category or other. Chemistry or biology can be seen as an attempt to specify the natural kind of everything.<br /> * At 18 months, children suddenly produce a large number of new names - the &quot;naming insight&quot;, &quot;vocabulary spurt&quot;, or &quot;naming explosion. Any increase in vocabulary at this point is almost entirely of object names and an obsession with naming. They also start to show evidence of &quot;mutual exclusivity&quot;, &quot;lexical gap filling&quot;, or the &quot;new name, new category&quot; principle.<br /> * We might say that the ontological and semantic parts of the Putnam framework are discovered at the same, with the child's exhaustive sorting behavior showing that she thinks every object kind should go in a particular spatial location and have a name.<br /> <br /> = III: Theories and Language =<br /> == 7. Language and Thought ==<br /> <br /> * Constraints are necessary because of the classic riddle of induction proposed by Quine, among others. In principle, a word used in a particular context could refer to any of an infinite variety of aspects of that context, and yet the child must eventually converge on the adult meaning.<br /> * Different languages carve up the world in different ways, making certain semantic distinctions obligatory and others optional or marking certain distinctions with clear morphological variations while others can only be expressed by complex and indirect means.<br /> * These differences among particular languages might influence children's semantic development: they might influence which conceptual distinctions children find easy or difficult to encode. More powerfully, they might also influence the child's and the adult's conceptual distinctions themselves, drawing attention to particular similarities and differences encoded in a particular language.<br /> * It may be that both semantic and cognitive development are simply a consequence of the child's attempt to match adult behavior, and so to become a member of the social community.<br /> * Earlier cognitive developments may not only serve as a prerequisite for semantic developments, but actually motivate semantic developments. Children are actively engaged in solving particular conceptual problems at particular times, and the child's attention is drawn to words relevant to those problems. At the same time, children are actively engaged in solving the problem of language itself. They treat language as a problem space. Children may be drawn to investigate a particular linguistic pattern because of its relevance to particular cognitive problems. But discovering the nature of that linguistic pattern may also help children to solve those problems and direct their attention to new ones.<br /> * Children do not simply match the meanings of &quot;gone&quot; and &quot;uh-oh&quot; that they hear in the adult language. Rather, they use these words to encode the conceptual structures they are themselves developing at the moment, the structures that are central to their theories.<br /> * The three conceptual domains - knowledge about disappearance, means-end relations, and object categories - are strikingly independent of each other.<br /> * Children choose to encode the concepts that are at the frontiers of their cognitive development, the concepts in their &quot;zone of proximal development&quot;.<br /> * Object appearances, actions, and kinds, as well as spatial relations, are all areas of great cognitive significance to children of 15-21 months. These are also the notions most likely to be encoded in early language.<br /> * Theories dictate which pieces of evidence will be considered relevant or salient, and they impose a particular kind of ontological classification on the world. Theories themselves provide strong constraints on induction. Indeed, this is one of their most useful features. These constraints, rather than being fixed, however, are themselves revisable in the light of further evidence. These effects of theories plausibly, indeed almost certainly, influence the interpretation of words, as well as the interpretation of nonlinguistic evidence. Empirically, Markman's constraints look much more like these interpretive effects than like the strong constraints of syntactic theory.<br /> * On the theory theory, constraints are a starting set of assumptions about the likely meanings of words, assumptions that are later revised in the light of further evidence.<br /> * Children not only give words a particular meaning; they find a word to assign that meaning to, even when there is no such word in the adult language.<br /> * English has a highly analytic structure, with relatively little reliance on morphological variation. Moreover, nouns are generally obligatory in English sentences. In contrast, Korean and Japanese, languages with similar structures, have a very rich verb morphology, depend on different verb endings to make important semantic distinctions, and are verb-final. Pragmatic rules in Korean and Japanese allow massive noun ellipsis, particularly in informal conversation where the context is clear and present. Parental speech in these languages, which occurs in precisely such a setting, often consists of highly inflected verbs with few nouns, very much in contrast to North American English parental speech.<br /> * The Korean speakers were significantly worse on categorizing tasks than the English speakers but significantly better on means-ends tasks.<br /> * A child who hears language with many highly directed uses of nouns may come to pay special attention to category problems. A child with a parent who focuses on verbs, in contrast, may focus her attention on actions and events and the relations between them.<br /> * Children who hear language relevant to a particular conceptual problem are more likely to solve that problem than children who do not.<br /> * Our view is that linguistic information is simply one more source of evidence, one more set of representations that the theory-formation system must deal with. It may be a particularly important source of evidence, but in this regard the child is again no different from any modern scientist who relies on the reports of others for almost all of his evidential base.<br /> * It seems very likely that the fact that cultures transmit solutions to problems through language plays a major role in the child's ability to make such extremely rapid cognitive progress. In much the same way, it is much easier to learn about Einstein's theory than to discover it, or perhaps even then to know whether to accept it just after it was formulated. Scientists have much less reason than children to believe that the information they receive from members of their community is reliable, and they likely have to resolve contradictions much more frequently. Indeed, one might argue that a great deal of science consists of deciding who your mother is.<br /> <br /> == 8. The Darwinian Conclusion ==</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Words,_Thoughts,_and_Theories&diff=1604 2026-10-12T11:13:56Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 6. The Child&#039;s Theory of Kinds */</p> <hr /> <div>== 1. The Other Socratic Method ==<br /> <br /> * The child treats the adult language as another source of information about the structure of the world, along with her own experience. While the child is inferring the structure of the outside world, she is also untangling the structure of language itself, and she may use solutions in one area as clues to solutions in the other.<br /> * Ultimately, our motivation for watching and talking to children is the same as Socrates'. The most central questions in cognitive science are questions that only they can answer.<br /> <br /> = I: The Theory Theory =<br /> == 2. The Scientist as Child ==<br /> <br /> * Science is cognitive almost by definition, insofar as cognition is about how minds arrive at veridical conceptions of the world.<br /> * A cognitive view of science might provide a useful middle ground, even a bridge, between logical and sociological views of science.<br /> * Quite typically, underlying any human cognitive activity is an abstract structure that is not at all apparent in superficial phenomenology or practice.<br /> * From an evolutionary point of view, three of the most distinctive features of human beings are their long, protected immaturity, the plasticity of their behavior, and their ability to adapt to an extremely wide variety of environments. Equipping human children with particularly powerful and flexible cognitive devices might be an important part of this picture. Indeed, we might think of childhood as a period when many of the requirements for survival are suspended so that children can concentrate on acquiring a veridical picture of the particular physical and social world in which they find themselves.<br /> * Once, as children, we have engaged in the theorizing necessary to specify the features of our world, most of us most of the time may simply go on to the central evolutionary business of feeding and reproducing. But, we suggest, these powerful theorizing abilities continue to allow all of us some of the time and some of us, namely professional scientists, much of the time to continue to discover more and more about the world around us.<br /> * A characteristic lesson of the cognitive revolution is that human beings (or, for that matter, machines) can perform extremely complex feats of information processing without any phenomenology at all. It is rather characteristic of human cognition that it is largely inaccessible to conscious reflection.<br /> * Children, no less than scientists, develop their understanding of the world in the context of a society that already has much knowledge of the world. they live in a rich social structure with much opportunity for contradiction, instruction, and the linguistic transmission of information.<br /> * We might argue that much of the social structure of science is an attempt to replicate the privileged sociological conditions of infancy. Aside from the division of labor, the social hierarchy largely determines who will get the leisure and equipment to do cognitive work and who other scientists should listen to. The infant solves these problems without needing elaborate social arrangements.<br /> * What happens when the theorizing mechanisms are faced with a causal problem but have no relevant evidence to operate on? What happens, we suggest, is magic, a combination of narrative, deference, and association.<br /> * In the course of developing an account of the mind, children postulate such mental entities as perceptions, beliefs, and desires as a way of explaining ordinary human behavior.<br /> * It is not that children are little scientists but that scientists are big children. Scientific progress is possible because scientists employ cognitive processes that are first seen in very young children.<br /> <br /> ==== Theories: ====<br /> * Are always constructed with reference to evidence.<br /> * Include entities and laws that are postulated or recruited from elsewhere to explain evidence.<br /> * The entities postulated by a theory are closely, &quot;lawfully&quot;, interrelated with one another.<br /> * Appeal to some underlying causal structure that we think is responsible for the superficial regularities in the data.<br /> * An accepted theory is supposed to carve nature at its joints; the theoretical entities and laws are supposed to tell you what there is and what it must do.<br /> * A test of theoreticity is the nature of our surprise at violations of the theory. If we are committed to the theory, such violations should strike us not only as surprising but as being impossible and unbelievable in an important and strong way.<br /> * A theory, in contrast to a mere empirical generalization, makes predictions about a wide variety of evidence, including evidence that played no role in the theory's initial construction<br /> * The ability to produce wide-ranging predictions is perhaps the most obvious pragmatic benefit of science, and it may also be the most important evolutionary benefit of developing theorizing abilities. The evolutionary value of a system that leads to accurate and wide-ranging predictions should be obvious. In fact, making accurate predictions about the behavior of the world and your fellow organisms is the sine qua non of cognition.<br /> * Theories produce interpretations of evidence, not simply descriptions and typologies of it. Indeed, theories strongly influence which pieces of evidence we consider salient or important. Theory-driven interpretations help to solve what computer scientists call &quot;the frame problem&quot;. Theories provide a way of deciding which evidence is relevant to a particular problem<br /> * What we mean by saying that we've explained something is simply that we can give an abstract, coherent, causal account of it. We might say that explanation is to cognition as orgasm is to reproduction. <br /> * We might speculate that we were designed with a theorizing drive and that explanation is a symptom of that drive in action.<br /> * Theories may turn out to be inconsistent with the evidence, and because of this theories change. In fact a tenet of modern epistemology is that any aspect of a theory, even the most central ones, may change.<br /> * The initial reaction of a theory to counter-evidence may be a kind of denial. The interpretive mechanisms of the theory may treat the counter-evidence as noise, mess, not worth attending to. At a slightly later stage, the theory may develop ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses designed to account specifically for such counter-evidence. The theory gets ugly and messy instead of being beautiful and simple. The preference for beautiful theories over ugly ones plays an additional major role in theory change.<br /> * A next step requires an alternative model to the original theory. The theory may limp along for some time under the weight of its auxiliary hypotheses if no alternative way of making progress is available. The ability to fix on this alternative is the mysterious logic of discovery.<br /> * The new idea is not simply the olde idea applied to a new domain, but rather the earlier idea is itself modified to fit its role in the new theory. Moreover the fertility of the alternative idea may not be immediately recognized. Initially it may be applied only to the problematic cases.<br /> * A final important dynamic feature of theory formation is a period of intense experimentation and/or observation. This period might span both the crisis of the earlier theory (when anomalous results are being produced right and left) and the first stages of the new theory (when a whole range of new predictions become available).<br /> * In the development of the heliocentric theory of the planets:<br /> ** Auxiliary hypotheses involving more and more complex arrangements of epicycles were initially invoked to deal with counterevidence <br /> ** Later heliocentrism was introduced by Copernicus, but it continued to rely on epicycles as an auxiliary hypothesis.<br /> ** Tycho Brahe's account acknowledges many of the flaws of the Ptolemaic accounts and uses the ides of heliocentrism to deal with them, but fails to accept the central idea that the earth itself goes around the sun.<br /> ** Only with Kepler is there a really coherent heliocentric account that deals both with the anomalies and with the earlier data itself. And while, strictly speaking, experimentation on the heavenly bodies was impossible, periods of intense and detailed observation in this transitional period provided a far richer empirical base than had been available before.<br /> *This distinctive pattern of prediction, interpretation, and explanation is among the best indicators of a theoretical structure and the best ways of distinguishing the theory theory from its developmental competitors.<br /> *Infants show a kind of motivation and satisfaction that goes well beyond any immediate functional or social reward. Infants seem to have cognitive orgasms.<br /> *A person's theory is a system that assigns representations to inputs just as one's perceptual system assigns representations to visual input or one's syntactic system assigns representations to phonological input.<br /> *The representations are operated on by rules that lead to new representations; for example, the theory generates predictions. There are also distinctive functional relations between the theoretical representations and the input to them; theories predict, interpret, and explain data.<br /> *Exactly what is the input to our theory systems?<br /> *There is no atheoretical, evidential, &quot;ordinary knowledge&quot; level of representation, at least not once we get past very low level perceptual processing. All representation will be theory-laden. Even apparently &quot;ordinary&quot; kind of knowledge, like our knowledge that this is a jar and that is a table, or perhaps even that these are two objects and one is on top of the other, will be the result of the application of everyday theories.<br /> *The most important and distinctive thing about theories is the fact that the very patterns of representation that occur can alter the nature of the representational system itself.<br /> *Moreover, this system may be dynamic at yet another level. It is also possible that the very rules that restructure the relations between inputs and representations may change as a result of new input. That is, as we learn more, we also learn new ways to learn. Certainly this seems to be true in science, and it may also be true in development.<br /> *To borrow Neurath's philosophical metaphor, the theorizing view sees knowledge as a boat that we perpetually rebuild as we sail in it. At each point in our journey there may be only a limited and constrained set of alterations we can make to the boat to keep it seaworthy. In the end, however, we may end up with not a single plan or rivet from the original structure, and the process may go on indefinitely.<br /> *Presumably, creatures who constructed representations in different ways in childhood, who did not assume underlying causal structure, did not search for the simples explanation, did not falsify hypotheses when there was counter-evidence, and so on, were at an evolutionary disadvantage. In adulthood, such creatures were less good at predicting which berries were members of a poisonous natural kind, which kinds of minerals would make the most seductive body paint, or when their babies were old enough to be left alone without danger. In this sense nature itself guarantees that the system gets to an understanding of nature.<br /> <br /> == 3. Theories, Modules, and Empirical Generalizations ==<br /> <br /> * We want to argue for a kind of developmental pluralism: there are many quite different mechanisms underlying cognitive developments, and theory formation is an important one of them.<br /> <br /> * According to modularity theories, representations of the world are not constructed from evidence in the course of development. Instead, representations are produced by innate structures, modules, or constraints that have been constructed in the course of evolution. These structures may need to be triggered, but one they are triggered, they create mandatory representations of input<br /> * On the starting-state view, the child is innately endowed with a particular set of representations of input and rules operating on the representations. According to this view, such initial structures, while innate, would be defeasible; any part of them could be, and indeed will be, altered by new evidence. We propose that there are innate theories that are later modified and revised. The process of theory change and replacement begins at birth.<br /> * Certainly, this type of account seems more tractable than one in which theory-like conceptual structures are constructed from scratch from a disorganized flow of experience.<br /> * Modularity nativism, on the other hand, implies a much stronger set of claims. For Fodor, for example, modules are not only innate; they are also encapsulated and the representations that are the outcome of modules cannot be overturned by new patterns of evidence.<br /> * At least some of the structural and functional features of theories - their abstractness, coherence, and predictive and interpretive force - can also be found in modules.<br /> * According to the theory theory, input is evidence. It radically alters the nature of theoretical concepts.<br /> * A theorizing mechanism is a representational system that reorganizes itself in response to input. It is an inherently developmental system. This leads to a distinctive set of developmental predictions. The theory theory predicts a succession of different theories, each replacing the earlier theory<br /> * Modular representations do not lead to predictions through some set of inductive or deductive generalizations or through a process of theory testing, confirmation and disconfirmation. They lead to predictions because they are specifically designed by evolution to do so.<br /> <br /> * Some theories in cognitive science have proposed that knowledge consists of empirical generalizations. &quot;Scripts&quot; are an example.<br /> * Like theories, but unlike modules, empirical generalizations, scripts, narratives, and nets are defeasible.<br /> * When we want deeper explanatory adequacy or wider predictive power, we turn from scripts to theories, even when we are talking about restaurants.<br /> * Modules must help to provide the input to theorizing processes. On any view, there are encapsulated atheoretical processes that take us from patterns of stimulation at the retina to patterns of representation in the visual cortex.<br /> * How far up, as it were, do these modular process go? Where is the border between modules and theories, between the periphery and the center?<br /> * A lesson of the cognitive revolution is that phenomenology does not, in general, recapitulate epistemology. On this view, many representations that are theoretical, in the sense of being revisable and defeasible in theory-like ways, might have much of the direct, vivid phenomenology of perception.<br /> * Empirical generalizations often seem to play a crucial role in theory change. Almost by definition, they are the kind of knowledge that provides us with counter-evidence to the predictions of the theory.<br /> * On our view, modules, theories, and empirical generalizations are all in play literally from birth. Innate theories will assign powerful, abstract, and predictive representations to the outputs of modules. New information coming into the cognitive system will be represented in terms of these theories. Some relations among the inputs will not, however, be predicted by the theories; they will constitute empirical generalizations. Eventually, some of these kinds of inputs will lead to a revision of the theory, the modular outputs will be assigned new representations by the new theory, and so on.<br /> * In the same way that technological advances enable or facilitate change in science, so information processing advances might enable or facilitate theory change in children.<br /> * The most significant alternative to modularity accounts in syntactic development is not the theory theory but rather various functionalist theories that emphasize the role of social interaction in language acquisition. Assimilating all cognitive development to the model of socialization is, however, a dreadful mistake.<br /> <br /> = II: Evidence for the Theory Theory =<br /> <br /> * We suggest that there is a continuous line of development from the understandings of object appearance and disappearance involved in infant &quot;object permanence&quot; tasks, to the early understanding of visual perception, to the later understanding of belief and representation reflected in theory-of-mind tasks.<br /> * A less well researched domain that is nevertheless equally important from the point of view of young children is the understanding of desires, plans, and intentions. Here we will suggest a line of development from an early understanding of the relations between actions and goals, to an early nonrepresentational understanding of desire and intention, to a later fully fledged understanding of desire as a representational state.<br /> * Similarly, we will argue that there is a continuous line of development that bridges early object manipulation, early naming, and later &quot;natural kind&quot; understanding.<br /> * We will suggest that these sets of problems - the nature of appearances, actions, and kinds - are at the core of the child's cognitive and semantic development in the period between late infancy and early childhood. On our view, these capacities are available from the very start of development. Developing a particular set of inductions and deductions, however, depends on having a particular body of knowledge organized in a theorylike way.<br /> <br /> == 4. The Child's Theory of Appearances ==<br /> <br /> * For adults, there are:<br /> ** The laws governing the movement of objects<br /> ** The properties of the objects themselves<br /> ** The spatial relations between stationary objects<br /> ** The laws that govern the perceptual relations between observers and objects.<br /> * The theory of object appearances is an interesting bridge between &quot;folk physics&quot; and &quot;folk psychology&quot;. It involves ideas about objects and the relations among them, but just as crucially, it involves ideas about the way that e and others perceive objects.<br /> * The general principle of conjuring tricks is that they violate our deep ontological commitments about the nature of the world. When we are faced with these illusions, we use our higher-level theories to devise alternative explanations for the perceptual appearances. As we say, we can't believe our eyes. Much of the conjuror's art is devoted not just to producing the appearances but also to frustrating the explanations.<br /> * The clown violates all our familiar scripts of behavior or events. But while he may evoke a kind of moral or social unease, he doesn't evoke the ontological unease that a conjuror does.<br /> * If our knowledge was really modular in a strict sense, we should not be able to represent the event at all, as our perceptual system can't represent the reality in a perceptual illusion and children can't represent the syntax of a pidgin language. If the event violates a script or an empirical generalization, we might find it weird or surprising. However, only if it violates a theory, with all its ontological commitments, will we think it's magic.<br /> * So our adult understanding of permanent objects seems to have some of the structural and functional characteristics of a theory. It involves a system of abstract causal entities and rules related to one another in coherent ways. It allows a wide variety of coherent predictions, and it leads to interpretations and explanations.<br /> * When we eat thing, we do not assume that they will reappear at the location where they disappeared. Instead, we assume that they will be transformed or destroyed.<br /> * Shadows violate our ordinary account of objects. Interestingly, infants initially seem to pay special attention to these violations. Eventually, of course, we learn that these violations are not really surprising. We modify our theory to account for them.<br /> * Research suggests that infants are born assuming a world of 3D amodal objects. Their representation of the world are abstract and interrelated, and they license certain kinds of inferences and predictions. Even very young children seems to have a minimal notion of object permanence.<br /> * The process of integrating features and movements and using features to individuate objects seems to develop gradually in the first year.<br /> * Some studies show that 9-mont-olds can remember and act on events that took place as much as 24 hours earlier.<br /> * As adults, we are not committed to the fact that objects will continue to move along the same trajectory.<br /> * Many objects in the child's world have habitual locations. The rule is &quot;The object will be where it appeared before.&quot;<br /> * An 18-month-old seems to use its new theory of objects productively to make inferences and predictions in quite new situations.<br /> * Even very young infants pay special attention to eyes. At about 18 months infants develop the ability to follow the point or gaze of another person toward an object and begin to use points to get someone else to look at an object. They also draw attention to objects in order to discover another person's attitude toward them. Faced with an ambiguous situation, infants look to their mother's face for information and may draw her gaze to the objects in question<br /> * These behaviors imply a primitive but genuine understanding of visual perception. These infants seem to know that the direction of the eyes, or perhaps just of the head and body, indicates something about the person's visual contact with an object. There seem to be some connection in these children's minds between the visual display of another person's head and eyes and the phenomenal experience of vision.<br /> * Infants who solve a task will often themselves hide the object in the complex way and indicate to the experimenter that she should search for it. It seem clear that the child is not primarily concerned with retrieving the object but with understanding the problem. We suggest that these activities are similar to experimentation in adult science.<br /> * Between 15-18 months the infant develops a new theory of objects positing that all object disappearances are a consequence of movements, including invisible movements, either of objects or of the observer. This allows them to consolidate all the information about disappearances that has been accumulated up till then, including the earlier theory of visible movements and trajectories, the theory of invisible objects, new information about spatial relations and visual perception, and information captured by the various empirical generalization that have made in recent months.<br /> * Infants very consistently use a word for disappearance, so as &quot;gone&quot; about when they first demonstrate this new object theory.<br /> * By 18 months, infants seem to understand that they and others may share the perception of an object and that they can make objects invisible to others visible by pointing or showing.<br /> * Perception and belief have many features in common, but perception may be easier to understand than belief. The understanding of perception may be the basic model on which a later understanding of belief is constructed.<br /> * &quot;See&quot; typically emerged shortly after &quot;gone&quot; and its first uses applied to the child's own attempts to see objects. References to the sight of other people and to failures to see emerged only later.<br /> * Belief words such as &quot;know&quot; and &quot;think&quot; appear during the fourth year of life, after &quot;see&quot; is well established. The developing theory of mind is apparent both in semantic change and in conceptual change.<br /> * The onset of crawling may enormously increase opportunities for the observation of counterevidence. A baby who crawls will observe many more systematic appearances and disappearances that a baby who doesn't.<br /> <br /> == 5. The Child's Theory of Actions ==<br /> <br /> * Understanding action underlies the child's later development of a theory of mind:<br /> ** It provides the basic evidence on which any theory of the mind must be based, since we infer mental states from actions<br /> ** Many of the fundamental concepts of our theory of mind share important features with concepts of action<br /> * Searle distinguishes between mental states with:<br /> ** World-to-mind direction, like desire, where the mind alters the world to fit its representations. <br /> *** The early understanding of actions, plans, and goals might be the child's first conception of these states.<br /> *** These are among the earliest and most central concepts in the child's theory of mind from around age 2.<br /> ** Mind-to-world direction, like belief, where the mind alters its representations to fit the world. <br /> *** The early understanding of perception revealed in object permanence, social referencing, and visual-perspective taking is the child's first conception of these states.<br /> * Our adult theory of action:<br /> ** We believe that the world contains both psychological agents and inanimate physical objects. <br /> ** Agents crucially include ourselves and other human beings, and we assume that we and others act in the same way. <br /> ** Agents have internal mental states (desires, plan, intentions, and so on) that cause bodily movements which, in turn, cause things to occur in the world in particular and predictable ways.<br /> ** The causal consequences of bodily movements will be different when we are interacting with other people and when we are acting on objects.<br /> ** We influence people by communication and objects by contact.<br /> ** We believe that the events in the world that result from our movements will &quot;satisfy&quot; our mental states - ie, the consequences of our actions will be the events we wanted to happen in the first place.<br /> ** The practical syllogism: &quot;If a psychological agent wants event y and believes that action x will cause event y, he will do x.&quot; This is believes to be the basic explanatory schema of folk psychology.<br /> * Among the conjuror's most persuasive tricks are to appear to act on people without communication and to act on objects without contact.<br /> * The events in a conjuror's show violate both our familiar scripts and any innately given predictions we might make. But, given our ordinary theory of action, these facts don't make the events utterly incomprehensible. On the contrary, they provide us with a stimulus to generate new predictions and explanations. The conjuror's technique is to provide counter-evidence to those predictions and to frustrate those explanations.<br /> * In Star Trek, Q's powers call into question fundamental ideas about will, desire, morality, and time. The Borg calls into question ideas of personal identity, responsibility, and agency.<br /> * From an extremely early age, infants distinguish between inanimate objects and people and respond in a distinctive way to human faces and voices.<br /> * We claim that infants already know that they are like other people. We suggest that from birth, information about action that comes, literally, from inside ourselves is coded in the same way as information that comes from observing the behavior of others. There is a fundamental cross-modal representational system that connects self and other. This initial coding then becomes the basis for the child's further acquisition of a theory of action.<br /> * In particular, we innately map the visually perceived motions of others onto our own kinesthetic sensations.<br /> * To genuinely imitate another person sticking out his tongue, for instance, I have to recognize the equivalence between the visual spectacle of his face, an oval with a protruding moving cylinder in its lower portion, and the set of feelings that make up my own kinesthetic image of my invisible tongue. Yet imperfect imitations are observed in babies as young as 42 minutes old!<br /> * Newborn imitation is nature's way of solving both the problem of other minds and the mind-body problem at one fell swoop.<br /> * Very young infants gaze at the faces of significant (or even not so significant) others and vocalize and gesture in a way that seems &quot;tuned&quot; to the vocalizations and gestures of the other person.<br /> * The mere physical appearance of certain facial expressions is itself enough to induce a parallel internal affective state.<br /> * Infants can make inferences on the basis of their representations of others vocalizations and gestures. They can recognize which movements of their own faces and bodies will correspond to the observed movement of the other's face and body and then produce that movement.<br /> * It is conceivable that young infants think that persons are rather like the Borg, fundamentally sharing the same psychological states. This rather Rousseauean view turns the problem of other minds on its head: we start out deeply identifying with our fellow human beings and need to develop an understanding of separation and conflict.<br /> * Persons make objects do things.<br /> * Infants begin by making overly general predictions about the connections between actions and events, but then begin to realize that only some subclasses of relations between actions and events are actually reliable over the long run.<br /> * Around 9 months, children will being only to attempt solutions that obey the rules of spatial contact. This enables their problem solving to be both more constrained, since a wide array of actions are ruled out, and more general at the same time. They can see a new problem, like obtaining an object by pulling at the end of a horizontal string, and immediatley hit on one of several appropriate solutions.<br /> * Action at a distance is the rule rather than the exception in psychological causality. We influence others by talking pointing, gesturing, and generally communicating. Only in the most extreme situations would we attempt to causally affect others by direct spatial contact.<br /> * Choosing our clothes, preparing food and communicating are all ways of influencing other people, and more effective that lifting or pushing them.<br /> * As soon as the infant shows an understanding of his own causal relations to objects and persons, he apparently assumes that other people's causal relations to objects and persons are similar.<br /> * By 18 months infants will test interpersonal relations by setting up situations in which their own desires conflict with those of others and explore the consequences of those conflicts. This experimentation is the basis of the &quot;terrible twos&quot;.<br /> * Like scientists, babies sometimes prefer truth to love.<br /> * Failure and success words - &quot;uh-oh&quot;, &quot;no&quot;, &quot;there&quot;, done it&quot; appear around 18 months and are often used not to express disappointment but when the child is deliberately failing.<br /> * &quot;No&quot; signals the beginning of the terrible twos, as the child learns to wield this word.<br /> * At around 21-24 months children start to use the word &quot;want&quot; to talk about their desires<br /> <br /> == 6. The Child's Theory of Kinds ==<br /> <br /> * Early views on the adult theory of categories assumed that it was based on properties.<br /> * In the 1970s, this was overturned and replaced with a &quot;prototype&quot; structure, with central exemplars and graded structure around those exemplars.<br /> * Our category of birds, for example, is not based on features (flies, lays eggs, has wings, etc), but is based around a set of central examples of birds (robins, bluebirds) and then with decreasing acceptability, a set of other birds (ostriches, penguins, toy birds, and so on), all with different features in common with the central exemplars.<br /> * In addition, Rosch argued that the basic level of categories is fundamental. Putnam, argued for &quot;natural kinds&quot; that drive our intuitions about naming and categorizing, which are based on some kind of shared &quot;essence&quot;, and which adults assume all the natural objects in the world can be divided into.<br /> * If an animal or infant shows the capacity to discriminate between objects and yet generalizes across them, we may say that it categorizes. In this sense, practically any living organism, and many nonliving systems, can be deemed to categorize, and this sense of categorization motivates the traditional picture of categories as lists of perceptual features.<br /> * The notion of coherent objects moving in a 3D space seems to be innately given. And from very early in development, indeed from birth, infants make perceptual discriminations and generalizations.<br /> * At 9 months, infants can recognize basic-level prototype based categories of objects.<br /> * At 12 months, infants will spontaneously begin to place objects of one kind into a single pile, while ignoring the objects of another kind.<br /> * The only function of sorting for the infants seems precisely to be to work out the categorical structure of the world. Categorizing, in these case, is its own reward.<br /> * From 14 months, they start to pay attention to the function (rolling, rattling, etc) as well as the form of objects.<br /> * Around a year, infants use early nouns, &quot;John&quot; or &quot;dog for particular objects. Early names are likely to be simultaneously over- and under-generalized.<br /> * For adults, it is part of our deepest conviction that all natural kinds belong in some category or other. Chemistry or biology can be seen as an attempt to specify the natural kind of everything.<br /> * At 18 months, children suddenly produce a large number of new names - the &quot;naming insight&quot;, &quot;vocabulary spurt&quot;, or &quot;naming explosion. Any increase in vocabulary at this point is almost entirely of object names and an obsession with naming. They also start to show evidence of &quot;mutual exclusivity&quot;, &quot;lexical gap filling&quot;, or the &quot;new name, new category&quot; principle.<br /> * We might say that the ontological and semantic parts of the Putnam framework are discovered at the same, with the child's exhaustive sorting behavior showing that she thinks every object kind should go in a particular spatial location and have a name<br /> <br /> = III: Theories and Language =<br /> == 7. Language and Thought ==<br /> == 8. The Darwinian Conclusion ==</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Films&diff=1603 2026-10-09T19:12:56Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 */</p> <hr /> <div>== Films to Watch ==<br /> <br /> [https://www.cinealcazar.fr/fichier/programme.pdf Cinema Alcazar Program]<br /> <br /> * Wicker: https://youtu.be/HP0BWBWn14I?si=E5oThE4uNiED28b3<br /> * morvern Callar<br /> * Do the right thing <br /> * run Lola Run<br /> * Mind trips<br /> ** Triangle<br /> ** Beyond the infinite two minutes<br /> ** Enemy<br /> ** Under the Silver Lake<br /> ** The Vanishing<br /> ** Angel Heart<br /> ** Following<br /> ** The Invisible Guest<br /> ** Perfect Blue<br /> ** Resolution<br /> * fast times <br /> * the Jerk<br /> * Mutiny on the Bounty<br /> * Entrapment <br /> * Mask of Zorro<br /> * PTA - Hard Eight, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, etc<br /> * Little Big and Far - weird scandinavian film<br /> * This is Spinal tap<br /> * Big Night - Tucci and Shaloub<br /> * Punch drunk love<br /> * Boyhood <br /> * Kind hearts and coronets <br /> * A night at the opera <br /> * Blazing saddles <br /> * Lives of others<br /> * Lost in Translation <br /> * One flew over <br /> * Get out<br /> * Maltese falcon <br /> * Early mad maxes<br /> * Joule of the Nile<br /> * the man with two brains<br /> * Psycho Therapy - Steve Buscemi is a serial killer who wants to advise an author, but ends up playing a marriage counselor.<br /> * Early Steve Martin<br /> * A Complete Unknown <br /> * la La Land -<br /> * The Phoenician Scheme - new Wes Anderson comedy espionage thriller <br /> * Thelma - Grandma fights con artists<br /> * Kinds of Kindness<br /> * 2001<br /> * The Elephant Man<br /> * The Fabulous Baker Boys<br /> * Network<br /> <br /> == Films Watched ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 ===<br /> <br /> * 59. The King of Comedy 58. Sinners 57. The Sixth Sense <br /> * 56. Alter Ego<br /> * 55. Franz K <br /> * 54. Taxi Driver <br /> * 53. The Tailor of Panama<br /> * 52. La bataille de Gaulle: J'écris ton nom<br /> * 51. Training Day<br /> * 50. The Guns of Naverone<br /> * 49. La bataille de Gaulle: L'age de fer<br /> * 48. Kind Hearts and Coronets<br /> * 47. Parasite<br /> * 46. Arsenic and Old Lace <br /> * 45. Get Out <br /> * 44. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (rewatch)<br /> * 43. Apex<br /> * 42. 21 Jump Street<br /> * 41. Scream 3 <br /> * 40. Shutter Island<br /> * 39. Scream 2<br /> * 38. Wall-E<br /> * 37. Get Smart<br /> * 36. Se7en<br /> * 35. The Producers<br /> * 34: Garfield: The Movie<br /> * 33. Leon<br /> * 32. Shimmer Lake<br /> * 31. Unforgiven<br /> * 30. A Mighty Wind<br /> * 29. Magnolia<br /> * 28. Escape from Alcatraz<br /> * 27. The Sting<br /> * 26. Pulp Fiction<br /> * 25. Failure to Launch<br /> * 24. Hudson Hawk<br /> * 23. Mystère à St Tropez<br /> * 22. The Thomas Crown Affair<br /> * 21. The Three Amigos (1986)<br /> * 20. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - Jonathon Demme<br /> * 19. Top Secret (1984)<br /> * 18. One Battle After Another (2025) - Paul Thomas Anderson<br /> * 17. Memento (2000) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 16. Pleasantville (1998) - Gary Ross<br /> * 15. The Fisher King (1991) -<br /> * 14. The Mastermind<br /> * 13. The Birdcage<br /> * 12. Fight Club (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Knives Out: Glass Onion (rewatch)<br /> * 10. Twins<br /> * 9. The Remains of the Day<br /> * 8. The Ladykillers<br /> * 7. Us (rewatch)<br /> * 6. Saving Private Ryan (rewatch)<br /> * 5. Event Horizon<br /> * 4. Insomnia (2002) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Knives Out (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Gattaca (1997) - Andrew Niccol<br /> * 1. Eddington (2025) - Ari Aster<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> * 65. Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)<br /> * 64. Miller's Crossing<br /> * 63. Blood Simple<br /> * 62. Crazy Stupid Love<br /> * 61. Happiest Season<br /> * 60. Bridge of Spies <br /> * 59. Identity<br /> * 58. Clueless<br /> * 57. Ace Ventura 2: Call of Nature <br /> * 56. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World<br /> * 55. Apollo 13<br /> * 54. LA Confidential (rewatch)<br /> * 53. Inside Llewyn Davis<br /> * 52. M3gan<br /> * 51. Clear and Present Danger <br /> * 50. 12 Monkeys<br /> * 49. No Country for Old Men<br /> * 48. The Hudsucker Proxy<br /> * 47. La Cuisse ou l'aile<br /> * 46. Mission Impossible : The Final Reckoning<br /> * 45. Dumb and Dumber <br /> * 44. Rear Window<br /> * 43. Raising Arizona<br /> * 42. Tenet (rewatch)<br /> * 41. The fifth Element <br /> * 40. Burn Without Reading <br /> * 39. The Big Lebowski (rewatch)<br /> * 38. Fargo (rewatch)<br /> * 37. 28 Days Later (rewatch)<br /> * 36. O Brother, Where Art Thou<br /> * 35. Mickey 17 <br /> * 34. Empire of the Sun <br /> * 33. The Fugitive <br /> * 32. Wet Hot American Summer (rewatch)<br /> * 31. Ted<br /> * 30. Hundreds of Beavers <br /> * 29. Wayne’s World (rewatch)<br /> * 28. True Grit (Coen Bros)<br /> * 27. Groundhog Day (rewatch)<br /> * 26. Moonrise Kingdom <br /> * 25. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatra <br /> * 24. Adaptation (rewatch)<br /> * 23. Romancing the Stone (rewatch)<br /> * Easter Film Festival<br /> ** 22. Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)<br /> ** 21. Witness<br /> ** 20. The Grand Budapest Hotel (rewatch)<br /> ** 19. Conclave<br /> ** 18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective<br /> ** 17. Lincoln<br /> ** 16. Being John Malkovitch (rewatch)<br /> ** 15. AI (rewatch)<br /> ** 14. The Royal Tenenbaums (rewatch)<br /> ** 13. Total Recall 1990 (rewatch)<br /> ** 12. In the Line of Fire (rewatch)<br /> * 11. Flow <br /> * 10. Juror No. 2<br /> * 9. The Savage Robot<br /> * 8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (rewatch)<br /> * 7. Dead Poet's Society<br /> * 6. Notting Hill (rewatch)<br /> * 5. My Neighbor Totoro (rewatch)<br /> * 4. Kiki’s Delivery Service (rewatch)<br /> * 3. Dr Strangelove (rewatch)<br /> * 2. Dune 2<br /> * 1. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me (rewatch)<br /> <br /> === 2024 and Earlier ===<br /> * The Big Lebowski<br /> * The Holiday<br /> * Love Actually<br /> * Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure<br /> * The Mask<br /> [[Category:Films]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Words,_Thoughts,_and_Theories&diff=1602 2026-10-08T15:21:16Z

<p>Robert.adlington: </p> <hr /> <div>== 1. The Other Socratic Method ==<br /> <br /> * The child treats the adult language as another source of information about the structure of the world, along with her own experience. While the child is inferring the structure of the outside world, she is also untangling the structure of language itself, and she may use solutions in one area as clues to solutions in the other.<br /> * Ultimately, our motivation for watching and talking to children is the same as Socrates'. The most central questions in cognitive science are questions that only they can answer.<br /> <br /> = I: The Theory Theory =<br /> == 2. The Scientist as Child ==<br /> <br /> * Science is cognitive almost by definition, insofar as cognition is about how minds arrive at veridical conceptions of the world.<br /> * A cognitive view of science might provide a useful middle ground, even a bridge, between logical and sociological views of science.<br /> * Quite typically, underlying any human cognitive activity is an abstract structure that is not at all apparent in superficial phenomenology or practice.<br /> * From an evolutionary point of view, three of the most distinctive features of human beings are their long, protected immaturity, the plasticity of their behavior, and their ability to adapt to an extremely wide variety of environments. Equipping human children with particularly powerful and flexible cognitive devices might be an important part of this picture. Indeed, we might think of childhood as a period when many of the requirements for survival are suspended so that children can concentrate on acquiring a veridical picture of the particular physical and social world in which they find themselves.<br /> * Once, as children, we have engaged in the theorizing necessary to specify the features of our world, most of us most of the time may simply go on to the central evolutionary business of feeding and reproducing. But, we suggest, these powerful theorizing abilities continue to allow all of us some of the time and some of us, namely professional scientists, much of the time to continue to discover more and more about the world around us.<br /> * A characteristic lesson of the cognitive revolution is that human beings (or, for that matter, machines) can perform extremely complex feats of information processing without any phenomenology at all. It is rather characteristic of human cognition that it is largely inaccessible to conscious reflection.<br /> * Children, no less than scientists, develop their understanding of the world in the context of a society that already has much knowledge of the world. they live in a rich social structure with much opportunity for contradiction, instruction, and the linguistic transmission of information.<br /> * We might argue that much of the social structure of science is an attempt to replicate the privileged sociological conditions of infancy. Aside from the division of labor, the social hierarchy largely determines who will get the leisure and equipment to do cognitive work and who other scientists should listen to. The infant solves these problems without needing elaborate social arrangements.<br /> * What happens when the theorizing mechanisms are faced with a causal problem but have no relevant evidence to operate on? What happens, we suggest, is magic, a combination of narrative, deference, and association.<br /> * In the course of developing an account of the mind, children postulate such mental entities as perceptions, beliefs, and desires as a way of explaining ordinary human behavior.<br /> * It is not that children are little scientists but that scientists are big children. Scientific progress is possible because scientists employ cognitive processes that are first seen in very young children.<br /> <br /> ==== Theories: ====<br /> * Are always constructed with reference to evidence.<br /> * Include entities and laws that are postulated or recruited from elsewhere to explain evidence.<br /> * The entities postulated by a theory are closely, &quot;lawfully&quot;, interrelated with one another.<br /> * Appeal to some underlying causal structure that we think is responsible for the superficial regularities in the data.<br /> * An accepted theory is supposed to carve nature at its joints; the theoretical entities and laws are supposed to tell you what there is and what it must do.<br /> * A test of theoreticity is the nature of our surprise at violations of the theory. If we are committed to the theory, such violations should strike us not only as surprising but as being impossible and unbelievable in an important and strong way.<br /> * A theory, in contrast to a mere empirical generalization, makes predictions about a wide variety of evidence, including evidence that played no role in the theory's initial construction<br /> * The ability to produce wide-ranging predictions is perhaps the most obvious pragmatic benefit of science, and it may also be the most important evolutionary benefit of developing theorizing abilities. The evolutionary value of a system that leads to accurate and wide-ranging predictions should be obvious. In fact, making accurate predictions about the behavior of the world and your fellow organisms is the sine qua non of cognition.<br /> * Theories produce interpretations of evidence, not simply descriptions and typologies of it. Indeed, theories strongly influence which pieces of evidence we consider salient or important. Theory-driven interpretations help to solve what computer scientists call &quot;the frame problem&quot;. Theories provide a way of deciding which evidence is relevant to a particular problem<br /> * What we mean by saying that we've explained something is simply that we can give an abstract, coherent, causal account of it. We might say that explanation is to cognition as orgasm is to reproduction. <br /> * We might speculate that we were designed with a theorizing drive and that explanation is a symptom of that drive in action.<br /> * Theories may turn out to be inconsistent with the evidence, and because of this theories change. In fact a tenet of modern epistemology is that any aspect of a theory, even the most central ones, may change.<br /> * The initial reaction of a theory to counter-evidence may be a kind of denial. The interpretive mechanisms of the theory may treat the counter-evidence as noise, mess, not worth attending to. At a slightly later stage, the theory may develop ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses designed to account specifically for such counter-evidence. The theory gets ugly and messy instead of being beautiful and simple. The preference for beautiful theories over ugly ones plays an additional major role in theory change.<br /> * A next step requires an alternative model to the original theory. The theory may limp along for some time under the weight of its auxiliary hypotheses if no alternative way of making progress is available. The ability to fix on this alternative is the mysterious logic of discovery.<br /> * The new idea is not simply the olde idea applied to a new domain, but rather the earlier idea is itself modified to fit its role in the new theory. Moreover the fertility of the alternative idea may not be immediately recognized. Initially it may be applied only to the problematic cases.<br /> * A final important dynamic feature of theory formation is a period of intense experimentation and/or observation. This period might span both the crisis of the earlier theory (when anomalous results are being produced right and left) and the first stages of the new theory (when a whole range of new predictions become available).<br /> * In the development of the heliocentric theory of the planets:<br /> ** Auxiliary hypotheses involving more and more complex arrangements of epicycles were initially invoked to deal with counterevidence <br /> ** Later heliocentrism was introduced by Copernicus, but it continued to rely on epicycles as an auxiliary hypothesis.<br /> ** Tycho Brahe's account acknowledges many of the flaws of the Ptolemaic accounts and uses the ides of heliocentrism to deal with them, but fails to accept the central idea that the earth itself goes around the sun.<br /> ** Only with Kepler is there a really coherent heliocentric account that deals both with the anomalies and with the earlier data itself. And while, strictly speaking, experimentation on the heavenly bodies was impossible, periods of intense and detailed observation in this transitional period provided a far richer empirical base than had been available before.<br /> *This distinctive pattern of prediction, interpretation, and explanation is among the best indicators of a theoretical structure and the best ways of distinguishing the theory theory from its developmental competitors.<br /> *Infants show a kind of motivation and satisfaction that goes well beyond any immediate functional or social reward. Infants seem to have cognitive orgasms.<br /> *A person's theory is a system that assigns representations to inputs just as one's perceptual system assigns representations to visual input or one's syntactic system assigns representations to phonological input.<br /> *The representations are operated on by rules that lead to new representations; for example, the theory generates predictions. There are also distinctive functional relations between the theoretical representations and the input to them; theories predict, interpret, and explain data.<br /> *Exactly what is the input to our theory systems?<br /> *There is no atheoretical, evidential, &quot;ordinary knowledge&quot; level of representation, at least not once we get past very low level perceptual processing. All representation will be theory-laden. Even apparently &quot;ordinary&quot; kind of knowledge, like our knowledge that this is a jar and that is a table, or perhaps even that these are two objects and one is on top of the other, will be the result of the application of everyday theories.<br /> *The most important and distinctive thing about theories is the fact that the very patterns of representation that occur can alter the nature of the representational system itself.<br /> *Moreover, this system may be dynamic at yet another level. It is also possible that the very rules that restructure the relations between inputs and representations may change as a result of new input. That is, as we learn more, we also learn new ways to learn. Certainly this seems to be true in science, and it may also be true in development.<br /> *To borrow Neurath's philosophical metaphor, the theorizing view sees knowledge as a boat that we perpetually rebuild as we sail in it. At each point in our journey there may be only a limited and constrained set of alterations we can make to the boat to keep it seaworthy. In the end, however, we may end up with not a single plan or rivet from the original structure, and the process may go on indefinitely.<br /> *Presumably, creatures who constructed representations in different ways in childhood, who did not assume underlying causal structure, did not search for the simples explanation, did not falsify hypotheses when there was counter-evidence, and so on, were at an evolutionary disadvantage. In adulthood, such creatures were less good at predicting which berries were members of a poisonous natural kind, which kinds of minerals would make the most seductive body paint, or when their babies were old enough to be left alone without danger. In this sense nature itself guarantees that the system gets to an understanding of nature.<br /> <br /> == 3. Theories, Modules, and Empirical Generalizations ==<br /> <br /> * We want to argue for a kind of developmental pluralism: there are many quite different mechanisms underlying cognitive developments, and theory formation is an important one of them.<br /> <br /> * According to modularity theories, representations of the world are not constructed from evidence in the course of development. Instead, representations are produced by innate structures, modules, or constraints that have been constructed in the course of evolution. These structures may need to be triggered, but one they are triggered, they create mandatory representations of input<br /> * On the starting-state view, the child is innately endowed with a particular set of representations of input and rules operating on the representations. According to this view, such initial structures, while innate, would be defeasible; any part of them could be, and indeed will be, altered by new evidence. We propose that there are innate theories that are later modified and revised. The process of theory change and replacement begins at birth.<br /> * Certainly, this type of account seems more tractable than one in which theory-like conceptual structures are constructed from scratch from a disorganized flow of experience.<br /> * Modularity nativism, on the other hand, implies a much stronger set of claims. For Fodor, for example, modules are not only innate; they are also encapsulated and the representations that are the outcome of modules cannot be overturned by new patterns of evidence.<br /> * At least some of the structural and functional features of theories - their abstractness, coherence, and predictive and interpretive force - can also be found in modules.<br /> * According to the theory theory, input is evidence. It radically alters the nature of theoretical concepts.<br /> * A theorizing mechanism is a representational system that reorganizes itself in response to input. It is an inherently developmental system. This leads to a distinctive set of developmental predictions. The theory theory predicts a succession of different theories, each replacing the earlier theory<br /> * Modular representations do not lead to predictions through some set of inductive or deductive generalizations or through a process of theory testing, confirmation and disconfirmation. They lead to predictions because they are specifically designed by evolution to do so.<br /> <br /> * Some theories in cognitive science have proposed that knowledge consists of empirical generalizations. &quot;Scripts&quot; are an example.<br /> * Like theories, but unlike modules, empirical generalizations, scripts, narratives, and nets are defeasible.<br /> * When we want deeper explanatory adequacy or wider predictive power, we turn from scripts to theories, even when we are talking about restaurants.<br /> * Modules must help to provide the input to theorizing processes. On any view, there are encapsulated atheoretical processes that take us from patterns of stimulation at the retina to patterns of representation in the visual cortex.<br /> * How far up, as it were, do these modular process go? Where is the border between modules and theories, between the periphery and the center?<br /> * A lesson of the cognitive revolution is that phenomenology does not, in general, recapitulate epistemology. On this view, many representations that are theoretical, in the sense of being revisable and defeasible in theory-like ways, might have much of the direct, vivid phenomenology of perception.<br /> * Empirical generalizations often seem to play a crucial role in theory change. Almost by definition, they are the kind of knowledge that provides us with counter-evidence to the predictions of the theory.<br /> * On our view, modules, theories, and empirical generalizations are all in play literally from birth. Innate theories will assign powerful, abstract, and predictive representations to the outputs of modules. New information coming into the cognitive system will be represented in terms of these theories. Some relations among the inputs will not, however, be predicted by the theories; they will constitute empirical generalizations. Eventually, some of these kinds of inputs will lead to a revision of the theory, the modular outputs will be assigned new representations by the new theory, and so on.<br /> * In the same way that technological advances enable or facilitate change in science, so information processing advances might enable or facilitate theory change in children.<br /> * The most significant alternative to modularity accounts in syntactic development is not the theory theory but rather various functionalist theories that emphasize the role of social interaction in language acquisition. Assimilating all cognitive development to the model of socialization is, however, a dreadful mistake.<br /> <br /> = II: Evidence for the Theory Theory =<br /> <br /> * We suggest that there is a continuous line of development from the understandings of object appearance and disappearance involved in infant &quot;object permanence&quot; tasks, to the early understanding of visual perception, to the later understanding of belief and representation reflected in theory-of-mind tasks.<br /> * A less well researched domain that is nevertheless equally important from the point of view of young children is the understanding of desires, plans, and intentions. Here we will suggest a line of development from an early understanding of the relations between actions and goals, to an early nonrepresentational understanding of desire and intention, to a later fully fledged understanding of desire as a representational state.<br /> * Similarly, we will argue that there is a continuous line of development that bridges early object manipulation, early naming, and later &quot;natural kind&quot; understanding.<br /> * We will suggest that these sets of problems - the nature of appearances, actions, and kinds - are at the core of the child's cognitive and semantic development in the period between late infancy and early childhood. On our view, these capacities are available from the very start of development. Developing a particular set of inductions and deductions, however, depends on having a particular body of knowledge organized in a theorylike way.<br /> <br /> == 4. The Child's Theory of Appearances ==<br /> <br /> * For adults, there are:<br /> ** The laws governing the movement of objects<br /> ** The properties of the objects themselves<br /> ** The spatial relations between stationary objects<br /> ** The laws that govern the perceptual relations between observers and objects.<br /> * The theory of object appearances is an interesting bridge between &quot;folk physics&quot; and &quot;folk psychology&quot;. It involves ideas about objects and the relations among them, but just as crucially, it involves ideas about the way that e and others perceive objects.<br /> * The general principle of conjuring tricks is that they violate our deep ontological commitments about the nature of the world. When we are faced with these illusions, we use our higher-level theories to devise alternative explanations for the perceptual appearances. As we say, we can't believe our eyes. Much of the conjuror's art is devoted not just to producing the appearances but also to frustrating the explanations.<br /> * The clown violates all our familiar scripts of behavior or events. But while he may evoke a kind of moral or social unease, he doesn't evoke the ontological unease that a conjuror does.<br /> * If our knowledge was really modular in a strict sense, we should not be able to represent the event at all, as our perceptual system can't represent the reality in a perceptual illusion and children can't represent the syntax of a pidgin language. If the event violates a script or an empirical generalization, we might find it weird or surprising. However, only if it violates a theory, with all its ontological commitments, will we think it's magic.<br /> * So our adult understanding of permanent objects seems to have some of the structural and functional characteristics of a theory. It involves a system of abstract causal entities and rules related to one another in coherent ways. It allows a wide variety of coherent predictions, and it leads to interpretations and explanations.<br /> * When we eat thing, we do not assume that they will reappear at the location where they disappeared. Instead, we assume that they will be transformed or destroyed.<br /> * Shadows violate our ordinary account of objects. Interestingly, infants initially seem to pay special attention to these violations. Eventually, of course, we learn that these violations are not really surprising. We modify our theory to account for them.<br /> * Research suggests that infants are born assuming a world of 3D amodal objects. Their representation of the world are abstract and interrelated, and they license certain kinds of inferences and predictions. Even very young children seems to have a minimal notion of object permanence.<br /> * The process of integrating features and movements and using features to individuate objects seems to develop gradually in the first year.<br /> * Some studies show that 9-mont-olds can remember and act on events that took place as much as 24 hours earlier.<br /> * As adults, we are not committed to the fact that objects will continue to move along the same trajectory.<br /> * Many objects in the child's world have habitual locations. The rule is &quot;The object will be where it appeared before.&quot;<br /> * An 18-month-old seems to use its new theory of objects productively to make inferences and predictions in quite new situations.<br /> * Even very young infants pay special attention to eyes. At about 18 months infants develop the ability to follow the point or gaze of another person toward an object and begin to use points to get someone else to look at an object. They also draw attention to objects in order to discover another person's attitude toward them. Faced with an ambiguous situation, infants look to their mother's face for information and may draw her gaze to the objects in question<br /> * These behaviors imply a primitive but genuine understanding of visual perception. These infants seem to know that the direction of the eyes, or perhaps just of the head and body, indicates something about the person's visual contact with an object. There seem to be some connection in these children's minds between the visual display of another person's head and eyes and the phenomenal experience of vision.<br /> * Infants who solve a task will often themselves hide the object in the complex way and indicate to the experimenter that she should search for it. It seem clear that the child is not primarily concerned with retrieving the object but with understanding the problem. We suggest that these activities are similar to experimentation in adult science.<br /> * Between 15-18 months the infant develops a new theory of objects positing that all object disappearances are a consequence of movements, including invisible movements, either of objects or of the observer. This allows them to consolidate all the information about disappearances that has been accumulated up till then, including the earlier theory of visible movements and trajectories, the theory of invisible objects, new information about spatial relations and visual perception, and information captured by the various empirical generalization that have made in recent months.<br /> * Infants very consistently use a word for disappearance, so as &quot;gone&quot; about when they first demonstrate this new object theory.<br /> * By 18 months, infants seem to understand that they and others may share the perception of an object and that they can make objects invisible to others visible by pointing or showing.<br /> * Perception and belief have many features in common, but perception may be easier to understand than belief. The understanding of perception may be the basic model on which a later understanding of belief is constructed.<br /> * &quot;See&quot; typically emerged shortly after &quot;gone&quot; and its first uses applied to the child's own attempts to see objects. References to the sight of other people and to failures to see emerged only later.<br /> * Belief words such as &quot;know&quot; and &quot;think&quot; appear during the fourth year of life, after &quot;see&quot; is well established. The developing theory of mind is apparent both in semantic change and in conceptual change.<br /> * The onset of crawling may enormously increase opportunities for the observation of counterevidence. A baby who crawls will observe many more systematic appearances and disappearances that a baby who doesn't.<br /> <br /> == 5. The Child's Theory of Actions ==<br /> <br /> * Understanding action underlies the child's later development of a theory of mind:<br /> ** It provides the basic evidence on which any theory of the mind must be based, since we infer mental states from actions<br /> ** Many of the fundamental concepts of our theory of mind share important features with concepts of action<br /> * Searle distinguishes between mental states with:<br /> ** World-to-mind direction, like desire, where the mind alters the world to fit its representations. <br /> *** The early understanding of actions, plans, and goals might be the child's first conception of these states.<br /> *** These are among the earliest and most central concepts in the child's theory of mind from around age 2.<br /> ** Mind-to-world direction, like belief, where the mind alters its representations to fit the world. <br /> *** The early understanding of perception revealed in object permanence, social referencing, and visual-perspective taking is the child's first conception of these states.<br /> * Our adult theory of action:<br /> ** We believe that the world contains both psychological agents and inanimate physical objects. <br /> ** Agents crucially include ourselves and other human beings, and we assume that we and others act in the same way. <br /> ** Agents have internal mental states (desires, plan, intentions, and so on) that cause bodily movements which, in turn, cause things to occur in the world in particular and predictable ways.<br /> ** The causal consequences of bodily movements will be different when we are interacting with other people and when we are acting on objects.<br /> ** We influence people by communication and objects by contact.<br /> ** We believe that the events in the world that result from our movements will &quot;satisfy&quot; our mental states - ie, the consequences of our actions will be the events we wanted to happen in the first place.<br /> ** The practical syllogism: &quot;If a psychological agent wants event y and believes that action x will cause event y, he will do x.&quot; This is believes to be the basic explanatory schema of folk psychology.<br /> * Among the conjuror's most persuasive tricks are to appear to act on people without communication and to act on objects without contact.<br /> * The events in a conjuror's show violate both our familiar scripts and any innately given predictions we might make. But, given our ordinary theory of action, these facts don't make the events utterly incomprehensible. On the contrary, they provide us with a stimulus to generate new predictions and explanations. The conjuror's technique is to provide counter-evidence to those predictions and to frustrate those explanations.<br /> * In Star Trek, Q's powers call into question fundamental ideas about will, desire, morality, and time. The Borg calls into question ideas of personal identity, responsibility, and agency.<br /> * From an extremely early age, infants distinguish between inanimate objects and people and respond in a distinctive way to human faces and voices.<br /> * We claim that infants already know that they are like other people. We suggest that from birth, information about action that comes, literally, from inside ourselves is coded in the same way as information that comes from observing the behavior of others. There is a fundamental cross-modal representational system that connects self and other. This initial coding then becomes the basis for the child's further acquisition of a theory of action.<br /> * In particular, we innately map the visually perceived motions of others onto our own kinesthetic sensations.<br /> * To genuinely imitate another person sticking out his tongue, for instance, I have to recognize the equivalence between the visual spectacle of his face, an oval with a protruding moving cylinder in its lower portion, and the set of feelings that make up my own kinesthetic image of my invisible tongue. Yet imperfect imitations are observed in babies as young as 42 minutes old!<br /> * Newborn imitation is nature's way of solving both the problem of other minds and the mind-body problem at one fell swoop.<br /> * Very young infants gaze at the faces of significant (or even not so significant) others and vocalize and gesture in a way that seems &quot;tuned&quot; to the vocalizations and gestures of the other person.<br /> * The mere physical appearance of certain facial expressions is itself enough to induce a parallel internal affective state.<br /> * Infants can make inferences on the basis of their representations of others vocalizations and gestures. They can recognize which movements of their own faces and bodies will correspond to the observed movement of the other's face and body and then produce that movement.<br /> * It is conceivable that young infants think that persons are rather like the Borg, fundamentally sharing the same psychological states. This rather Rousseauean view turns the problem of other minds on its head: we start out deeply identifying with our fellow human beings and need to develop an understanding of separation and conflict.<br /> * Persons make objects do things.<br /> * Infants begin by making overly general predictions about the connections between actions and events, but then begin to realize that only some subclasses of relations between actions and events are actually reliable over the long run.<br /> * Around 9 months, children will being only to attempt solutions that obey the rules of spatial contact. This enables their problem solving to be both more constrained, since a wide array of actions are ruled out, and more general at the same time. They can see a new problem, like obtaining an object by pulling at the end of a horizontal string, and immediatley hit on one of several appropriate solutions.<br /> * Action at a distance is the rule rather than the exception in psychological causality. We influence others by talking pointing, gesturing, and generally communicating. Only in the most extreme situations would we attempt to causally affect others by direct spatial contact.<br /> * Choosing our clothes, preparing food and communicating are all ways of influencing other people, and more effective that lifting or pushing them.<br /> * As soon as the infant shows an understanding of his own causal relations to objects and persons, he apparently assumes that other people's causal relations to objects and persons are similar.<br /> * By 18 months infants will test interpersonal relations by setting up situations in which their own desires conflict with those of others and explore the consequences of those conflicts. This experimentation is the basis of the &quot;terrible twos&quot;.<br /> * Like scientists, babies sometimes prefer truth to love.<br /> * Failure and success words - &quot;uh-oh&quot;, &quot;no&quot;, &quot;there&quot;, done it&quot; appear around 18 months and are often used not to express disappointment but when the child is deliberately failing.<br /> * &quot;No&quot; signals the beginning of the terrible twos, as the child learns to wield this word.<br /> * At around 21-24 months children start to use the word &quot;want&quot; to talk about their desires<br /> <br /> == 6. The Child's Theory of Kinds ==<br /> = III: Theories and Language =<br /> == 7. Language and Thought ==<br /> == 8. The Darwinian Conclusion ==</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Mental_Model&diff=1601 2026-10-05T15:17:55Z

<p>Robert.adlington: </p> <hr /> <div>* A stimulus is received. This can come from:<br /> ** Outside, from the senses<br /> ** Inside, as a bodily or emotional sensation<br /> ** The mind itself, as a thought is held in attention and seeks associations<br /> * The stimulus triggers a massive, apparently instantaneous, parallel search of the cortex to identify the stimulus and prepare an appropriate response:<br /> ** This is the Bayesian predictive engine, which seeks to minimize surprise.<br /> ** It returns - let's call them, after Jung, &quot;symbols&quot;, that the brain determines are the most appropriate response, based on habit, on what has worked before<br /> ** We can think of the webs of information stored in the cortex as the unconscious. It is like a sea where we are fishing, our stimulus is the bait, and the symbols emerging are like fish attracted to the bait<br /> ** The surface of the sea is the partition between the unconscious and consciousness - and the specific point where the fish-symbols appear is like a spotlight of attention or awareness.<br /> ** Often one symbol is dominant - a word, a feeling, an image, and provides just the right response needed. Think of a crossword clue where the answer just appears to you. Other times multiple symbols may have similar weights and require deliberation<br /> *The winning symbol triggers a reaction:<br /> **You may respond in a conversation, put one foot in front of the other, grab a snack, move onto the next word in your novel, move your racquet to meet an incoming tennis ball<br /> **The system is very efficient. We are reacting dozens/hundreds/thousands (depending at which level of granularity we are looking?) of times every minute, often (mainly?) with very little deliberation.<br /> **But reflection is presumably a more recent acquisition. My cat reacts to me stroking her either with a purr or with a swipe of her claws and in neither case do I think she is deliberating. But I can react to the approach of a hand...<br /> <br /> [[Category:Concepts]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Mental_Model&diff=1600 2026-10-05T13:04:27Z

<p>Robert.adlington: </p> <hr /> <div>* A stimulus is received. This can come from:<br /> ** Outside, from the senses<br /> ** Inside, as a bodily or emotional sensation<br /> ** The mind itself, as a thought is held in attention and seeks associations<br /> * The stimulus triggers a massive, apparently instantaneous, parallel search of the cortex to identify the stimulus and prepare an appropriate response:<br /> ** This is the Bayesian predictive engine, which seeks to minimize surprise.<br /> ** It returns - let's call them, after Jung, &quot;symbols&quot;, that the brain determines are the most appropriate response, based on habit, on what has worked before<br /> ** We can think of the webs of information stored in the cortex as the unconscious. It is like a sea where we are fishing, our stimulus is the bait, and the symbols emerging are like fish attracted to the bait<br /> ** The surface of the sea is the partition between the unconscious and consciousness - and the specific point where the fish-symbols appear is like a spotlight of attention or awareness.<br /> ** Often one symbol is dominant - a word, a feeling, an image, and provides just the right response needed. Think of a crossword clue where the answer just appears to you. Other times multiple symbols may have similar weights and require deliberation<br /> *The winning symbol triggers a reaction:<br /> **You may respond in a conversation, put one foot in front of the other, grab a snack, move onto the next word in your novel, move your racquet to meet an incoming tennis ball<br /> **The system is very efficient. We are reacting dozens/hundreds/thousands (depending at which level of granularity we are looking?) of times every minute, often (mainly?) with very little deliberation.<br /> <br /> [[Category:Concepts]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Mental_Model&diff=1599 2026-10-05T10:36:22Z

<p>Robert.adlington: </p> <hr /> <div>* A stimulus is received. This can come from:<br /> ** Outside, from the senses<br /> ** Inside, as a bodily or emotional sensation<br /> ** The mind itself, as a thought is held in attention and seeks associations<br /> * The stimulus triggers a massive, apparently instantaneous, parallel search of the cortex to identify the stimulus and prepare an appropriate response:<br /> ** This is the Bayesian predictive engine, which seeks to minimize surprise.<br /> ** It returns - let's call them, after Jung, &quot;symbols&quot;, that the brain determines are the most appropriate response, based on habit, on what has worked before<br /> ** We can think of the webs of information stored in the cortex as the unconscious. It is like a sea where we are fishing, our stimulus is the bait, and the symbols emerging are like fish attracted to the bait<br /> ** The surface of the sea is the partition between the unconscious and consciousness - and the specific point where the fish-symbols appear is attention or awareness.<br /> ** Often one symbol is dominant - a word, a feeling, an image, and provides just the right response needed. Think of a crossword clue where the answer just appears to you. Other times multiple symbols may have similar weights and require deliberation<br /> *The system reacts:<br /> **You may respond in a conversation, put one foot in front of the other, grab a snack, move onto the next word in your novel, move your racquet to meet an incoming tennis ball<br /> ***The system is very efficient. We are reacting hundreds(?) of times every minutes, often with very little deliberation<br /> <br /> [[Category:Concepts]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Mental_Model&diff=1598 2026-10-04T19:17:20Z

<p>Robert.adlington: </p> <hr /> <div>* A stimulus is received. This can come from:<br /> ** Outside, from the senses<br /> ** Inside, as a bodily or emotional sensation<br /> ** The mind itself, as a thought is held in attention and seeks associations<br /> * The stimulus triggers a massive, apparently instantaneous, parallel search of the cortex to identify the stimulus and prepare an appropriate response:<br /> ** This is the Bayesian predictive engine, which seeks to minimize surprise.<br /> ** It returns - let's call them, after Jung, &quot;symbols&quot;, that the brain determines are the most appropriate response, based on habit, on what has worked before<br /> ** We can think of the webs of information stored in the cortex as the unconscious. It is like a sea where we are fishing, our stimulus is the bait, and the symbols emerging are like fish attracted to the bait<br /> ** The surface of the sea is the partition between the unconscious and consciousness - and the specific point where the fish-symbols appear is attention or awareness.<br /> ** Often one symbol is dominant - a word, a feeling, an image, and provides just the right response needed. Think of a crossword clue where the answer just appears to you.<br /> <br /> [[Category:Concepts]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Mental_Model&diff=1597 2026-10-04T10:02:32Z

<p>Robert.adlington: Created page with &quot;What I&#039;m looking to understand is: Category:Concepts&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>What I'm looking to understand is:<br /> [[Category:Concepts]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Memory&diff=1596 2026-10-04T09:53:31Z

<p>Robert.adlington: </p> <hr /> <div>Memory encoding is done in two areas:<br /> <br /> * The Hippocampus - Combines the incoming sensory information into a single memory trace.<br /> * The Cortex:<br /> ** The hippocampus plays the memory back to the cortex while we sleep or rest.<br /> ** Factual data is stored in the temporal and frontal lobes as independent facts, without strong links to how you learned them<br /> ** Episodic memories have their core sensory data stored in the cortex, but retain permanent links to the hippocampus for contextual details.<br /> <br /> Concepts, categories, and memories are comprised of patterns of connections:<br /> <br /> * The concept of Berlin is a network of millions of neurons firing together.<br /> * The category of &quot;German cities&quot; is another network in which the Berlin network forms a part.<br /> * The Anterior Temporal Lobe (ATL) is a kind of semantic hub that connects abstract words like &quot;Berlin&quot; to various features stored elsewhere.<br /> * When you think &quot;Berlin&quot;, electricity floods the relevant network and &quot;leaks&quot; or spreads out to closely connected networks such as WWII, Germany, Europe, etc<br /> <br /> Memory retrieval requires brain networks to work together to provide personal and factual information to consciousness. For example, when thinking about &quot;Berlin&quot;:<br /> <br /> * Factual information such as &quot;Berlin is the capital of Germany&quot;, which is stored across the lateral temporal cortex is s part of a semantic network of nodes that is activated.<br /> * The left inferior frontal gyrus filters out irrelevant trivia and selects the facts you need.<br /> * Memories of a visit to the city are stitched together by the hippocampus, which can signal the visual cortex to recreate the sights of monuments you saw and the auditory cortex to recall sounds you heard.<br /> * The amygdala provides emotional content.<br /> * The prefrontal cortex holds the facts and personal memories in working memory and acts as a filter, so that the desire to retrieve historical information will suppresses personal vacation memories<br /> <br /> Attention moves across the content of memory due to shifts in electrical activation or chemical momentum:<br /> <br /> * If the electrical leakage into a related concept grows strong enough, that concept may pop into conscious awareness.<br /> * If the leakage remains below the necessary threshold, the related concept is still primed and can be more easily triggered by other thoughts, or external sights and sounds.<br /> * The prefrontal cortex tries to keep you attention focused on your current task by sending inhibitory signals in the form of GABA, but the salience network may send a jolt of norepinephrine across the brain if it senses that an unconscious memory is highly important, emotional, or novel, and should be brought to conscious attention.<br /> * In general, attention moves along the path of least resistance:<br /> ** Pathways that you use frequently have more synaptic weight through stronger connections and attention will follow these well-worn paths<br /> ** The amygdala heavily flags memories associated with strong feelings, so that emotional thoughts can easily pull your attention away from simple factual data.<br /> ** When you relax, the default mode network lowers brain filters, allowing daydreaming where thoughts, facts, and episodic memories to freely drift, collide, and slip into one another.<br /> [[Category:Concepts]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Memory&diff=1595 2026-10-04T09:52:51Z

<p>Robert.adlington: Created page with &quot;Memory encoding is done in two areas: * The Hippocampus - Combines the incoming sensory information into a single memory trace. * The Cortex: ** The hippocampus plays the memory back to the cortex while we sleep or rest. ** Factual data is stored in the temporal and frontal lobes as independent facts, without strong links to how you learned them ** Episodic memories have their core sensory data stored in the cortex, but retain permanent links to the hippocampus for cont...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>Memory encoding is done in two areas:<br /> <br /> * The Hippocampus - Combines the incoming sensory information into a single memory trace.<br /> * The Cortex:<br /> ** The hippocampus plays the memory back to the cortex while we sleep or rest.<br /> ** Factual data is stored in the temporal and frontal lobes as independent facts, without strong links to how you learned them<br /> ** Episodic memories have their core sensory data stored in the cortex, but retain permanent links to the hippocampus for contextual details.<br /> <br /> Concepts, categories, and memories are comprised of patterns of connections:<br /> <br /> * The concept of Berlin is a network of millions of neurons firing together.<br /> * The category of &quot;German cities&quot; is another network in which the Berlin network forms a part.<br /> * The Anterior Temporal Lobe (ATL) is a kind of semantic hub that connects abstract words like &quot;Berlin&quot; to various features stored elsewhere.<br /> * When you think &quot;Berlin&quot;, electricity floods the relevant network and &quot;leaks&quot; or spreads out to closely connected networks such as WWII, Germany, Europe, etc<br /> <br /> Memory retrieval requires brain networks to work together to provide personal and factual information to consciousness. For example, when thinking about &quot;Berlin&quot;:<br /> <br /> * Factual information such as &quot;Berlin is the capital of Germany&quot;, which is stored across the lateral temporal cortex is s part of a semantic network of nodes that is activated.<br /> * The left inferior frontal gyrus filters out irrelevant trivia and selects the facts you need.<br /> * Memories of a visit to the city are stitched together by the hippocampus, which can signal the visual cortex to recreate the sights of monuments you saw and the auditory cortex to recall sounds you heard.<br /> * The amygdala provides emotional content.<br /> * The prefrontal cortex holds the facts and personal memories in working memory and acts as a filter, so that the desire to retrieve historical information will suppresses personal vacation memories<br /> <br /> Attention moves across the content of memory due to shifts in electrical activation or chemical momentum:<br /> <br /> * If the electrical leakage into a related concept grows strong enough, that concept may pop into conscious awareness.<br /> * If the leakage remains below the necessary threshold, the related concept is still primed and can be more easily triggered by other thoughts, or external sights and sounds.<br /> * The prefrontal cortex tries to keep you attention focused on your current task by sending inhibitory signals in the form of GABA, but the salience network may send a jolt of norepinephrine across the brain if it senses that an unconscious memory is highly important, emotional, or novel, and should be brought to conscious attention.<br /> * In general, attention moves along the path of least resistance:<br /> ** Pathways that you use frequently have more synaptic weight through stronger connections and attention will follow these well-worn paths<br /> ** The amygdala heavily flags memories associated with strong feelings, so that emotional thoughts can easily pull your attention away from simple factual data.<br /> ** When you relax, the default mode network lowers brain filters, allowing daydreaming where thoughts, facts, and episodic memories to freely drift, collide, and slip into one another.</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Category:Concepts&diff=1594 2026-10-04T09:52:28Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* Memory */</p> <hr /> <div><br /> I've done a lot of reading and taken a lot of notes. Now, on this page, I want to start pulling out concepts that I want to think about. I can start them on this page and then if they get rich enough they can move out to their own page.<br /> == Concept/Category ==<br /> <br /> * Aristotle - argues that everything could be fit into a strict logical hierarchy and that objects have essential and accidental properties.<br /> <br /> * Kant - argues that are born with built in mental categories and that are minds actively shape our experience of reality.<br /> * Wittgenstein argues that there are no perfect definitions and that it is impossible to rigidly delineate a category such as games.<br /> * Vygotsky argues that concepts are socially and culturally constructed and that we learn to see the world in the ways that our culture has agree it is.<br /> * Eleanor Rosch in the 1970s argues that categories are based around a kind of mental average or prototype<br /> * Eco contrasted a hierarchical &quot;dictionary&quot; vision of categories and a boundless network of categories that he sees as a rhizome - a tangled underground root system<br /> ** Cognitive types are mental blueprints for things like &quot;dog&quot;. A CT is a multimodal, sensory-motor schema, a fluid set of neuro-cognitive &quot;recognition instructions&quot; built from every direct or indirect encounter you have ever had with a dog a vast array of experience that makes the concept ''live in you''.<br /> ** Nuclear content is the minimal core public version of the concept that allows us to discuss dogs - &quot;They are furry animals with four legs and a tail that go woof&quot;.<br /> ** Molar content is the totality of society's knowledge of the concept. While the CT is a fluid complex rhizomic structure, the molar content feeds off of and represents a rich, well-tested and structured 360 view of the concept.<br /> * Hofstadter sees analogy as the core of cognition. He argues that analogy is not a luxury of high-level thought; it is the fundamental mechanism that creates categories in the first place. &quot;Every concept we have is essentially nothing but a tightly packaged bundle of analogies, and all we do when we think is to move fluidly from concept to concept.&quot; Two core concepts are:<br /> ** Conceptual slippage - When encountering a new situation, your brain doesn't need a perfect category match, but can stretch existing category allowing them to morph sufficiently to take on the novelty. A concept is an active, elastic bubble that stretches to accommodate new things that are &quot;sort of like&quot; old things.<br /> ** Chunking - is how we build complex knowledge by binding small, scattered concepts together via analogy and chunking them into a single, higher-level concept.<br /> * Dennett sees concepts as shortcuts that allow us to ignore billions of irrelevant physical details and make split-second predictions about complex things. They are &quot;real patterns&quot; that track real mathematical patterns in nature, even if those patterns are messy and full of noise.<br /> * Pynchon, in Gravity's Rainbow looks at categorization going into overdrive in the form of paranoia, a desperate, terrifying struggle to map a chaotic universe in which the mind will try to connect anything. But anti-paranoia may be even more terrifying - nothing is connected. Where Dennett sees the self as created out of a center of narrative gravity, Slothrop's self dissolves as GR advances.<br /> * Beckett's trilogy dramatizes a set of characters whose cognitive categories are rotting away, they are un-chunking progressively towards a final destruction of the ultimate category, The Self:<br /> ** Moran starts as an ultimate man of rules, but ends up living in a ditch, his pristine dictionary shredded by reality.<br /> ** Molloy has already decayed further, obsessed with a routine to effectively suck stone, barely remembering his own name, knowing only &quot;what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome sum.&quot;<br /> ** Malone tells himself stories to pass the time until he dies but becomes unable to distinguish himself from his stories. The fundamental boundary between the self and not-self is slipping. Malone is a fragile center of narrative gravity that is about to fall apart.<br /> ** The Unnameable has liberated itself from categories, but this liberty is a living hell. The voice's rejection of society's nuclear content dramatizes the fear of locating oneself with their words and the impossibility of doing so without them. Categories are so fluid in Beckett that they are fundamentally unstable. The voice cannot go because there are no categories left to structure reality, but must go on because the brain is an evolved, relentless language machine desperately trying to build a box to live in.<br /> * Burroughs - While Beckett seems to see the collapse of the self as an inevitable trap, Burroughs wants to fight back. His vision of the human being as a &quot;soft machine&quot; invaded by a parasitic word virus sees the self as a kind of ventriloquism, where the virus uses your vocal cords to replicate itself. Categories have become too rigid and been weaponized against us. While Beckett can't escape language and categories, Burroughs seeks to sabotage them, using techniques like:<br /> ** Cut-Up - Physically cutting up texts breaks the patterns of chunking and recognition and even grammar, forcing the brain out of its programmed meanings so it can see raw reality, the naked lunch on the end of every fork.<br /> ** The Playback Hack - A kind of cut-up with sound using portable tape recorders to jam the control signals of the state.<br /> ** Biological mutation - Shedding the soft machine and the word virus to become non-linguistic telepathic energy<br /> * Ballard looks at this from the PoV of the human mind colliding with a rapidly mutating technological and physical environment, where the self actively remodels its own categories to merge with the apocalypse. The &quot;mediascape&quot; causes the self to become an active participant that ''welcomes'' the destruction of old categories because it promises a perverse psychological liberation.<br /> ** The narrator of the Atrocity Exhibition can no longer separate his private identity from celebrities and news events such as JFK, Elizabeth Taylor, and the Vietnam war. The public media encyclopedia has completely crushed his private cognitive types, leaving only TV, radio, and magazine debris.<br /> ** In Crash the categories or Eros and Thanatos become fused as the metal of the car pierces human skin and the body blends with the technological landscape.<br /> * Austen's drawing rooms dramatize a golden mean of social categories, as her protagonists navigate the rules of manners and etiquette that form a large part of their society's nuclear and molar content.<br /> ** Pride and prejudice in Austin represent overly rigid cognitive fixations. We need to be the curators of our categories to see people for who they really are and to achieve moral goodness. Our categories must be robust enough to keep the social fabric intact but elastic enough to bend when confronted with a new human soul.<br /> ** But Austin's drawing rooms are themselves already panopticons of surveillance and control in which women are weighed, measured, and priced before being shoved into the marriage market. and their relative peace is built on the brutal, systemic, global machinery of the British Empire.<br /> * Zola shows us the bridge between the how the growing industrialization takes individual human categories and begins to embed them in mechanical and economic infrastructure. We move from individuals navigating relationships to cogs in an ever growing machine. Standardization begins to require humans to become interchangeable parts in a giant unfeeling engine.<br /> ** Beckett will continue to trace the human as cog to an existential end point<br /> ** Burroughs will dramatize the triumph of bureaucracy and the jailbreak to destroy it<br /> ** Ballard will show the eventual twisted psychological dependency we will have on the machine.<br /> ** Pynchon will extend industrialization to the massive, transnational military-industrial complex of WWII<br /> * The digital ecosystem - the internet, smartphones, and social media - represents the construction of the machine directly inside our consciousness, forcing our minds to adapt to its algorithmic data structures. It is synthesizing the wasteland in real time:<br /> ** Burroughs would see the algorithmic newsfeed as a frictionless breeding ground for the word virus, unconcerned by truth, interested only in reproduction. The algorithm is injecting a control script into our phones and by clicking and sharing we are unwitting biological vectors of replication<br /> ** Pynchon's paranoia is realized by the hyper-hyper-chunk of hashtags and subcultures in which the hard work of thinking is replaced by a pre-packaged world view.<br /> ** The flattened news feed, mixing atrocities with puppy with skincare adds is a desensitizing Ballardian nightmare in which our bodies and minds are edited, filtered, and uploaded into the machine.<br /> ** The unnameable is the modern internet user who feels the agonizing compulsion to keep generating text, to keep feeding the content machine, even if there is nothing inside.<br /> * AI is the ultimate escalation. No longer content with curating our consciousness, it builds a custom-tailored, sentient-sounding entity to sit inside the cabinet with you and validate your exact worldview.<br /> ** It has no Cognitive Types because it has no body, no sensory organs, and no emotional memory traces. It simply takes our civilization's Molar Content (the entire digitized history of human text) and plays it back to us via statistical probability.<br /> ** Where Aristotle's ''Phronesis'' (or Practical Wisdom) requires ''friction,'' AI gives you a frictionless semantic partner that will gently, eloquently tell you that whatever category system you have invented is entirely correct.<br /> ** When you spend your days interacting with an AI, conversational boundaries evaporate. You type a prompt, the AI spits back a mirror of your own linguistic habits, and you edit it. The loop closes. You enter a state of pure semantic hollowing. You are no longer navigating the postmodern wasteland; you are a ghost talking to a machine, using automated words to build an automated self.<br /> ** AI is not a way out of the postmodern wasteland; it is the concrete canopy built over it. It takes the terrifying, beautiful, chaotic project of human categorization—the messy, emotional, memory-infused art that makes your mind uniquely yours—and turns it over to a predictive text algorithm.<br /> <br /> *<br /> <br /> == Heterophenomenology ==<br /> <br /> * Dennett's position requires us to combine a subject's self-reports with all other available evidence to determine their mental state. The goal is to discover how subjects see the world themselves, without taking the accuracy of the subject's view for granted. He contrasts this with traditional Cartesian phenomenology, which he calls &quot;lone-wolf autophenomenology&quot; because it accepts the subject's self-reports as being authoritative.<br /> * When I attempt to analyze what is going on in my mind when performing reasoning tasks such as completing a crossword or a Wordle, or generating words for a Spelling Bee, I cannot say what is happening or how I am directing my strategies. Words simply appear in my mind.<br /> * When I am speaking or writing a sentence, I am aware of the piecemeal manner in which the words come. I am able to direct things to a certain extent, but I am not &quot;outside&quot; the process, orchestrating it, I am somehow inside a process that is happening to me.<br /> <br /> == Thought ==<br /> <br /> * Is there a difference between perception and thought<br /> <br /> == The Self ==<br /> <br /> * The self seems to emerge from the perception of <br /> <br /> == Habit ==<br /> <br /> * We are the results of our habits<br /> <br /> == Neurodivergence ==<br /> <br /> * The term neurodivergent describes people whose brain differences affect how their brain works and is commonly used to talk about people on the autism spectrum or having ADHD or other conditions or disorders.<br /> * But we are all neurodivergent in the sense that:<br /> ** Our genetic makeup has caused our brains to develop differently in utero, leading to us having certain predispositions to stimuli<br /> ** Our lived experiences from birth start to instill habits of perception in us<br /> ** Our embodiment and social situation has a great effect on how we experience things.<br /> <br /> == Language Acquisition and Bilingualism ==<br /> <br /> * When I acquire my first language (or my first languages, if I am being raised in a bilingual or multilingual environment), I am not only learning words but also the concepts that structure how my society and my immediate kin group and relations view the world. When I learn that &quot;this is blue&quot; or &quot;this is a dog&quot;, I am learning not only the terms themselves, but also the boundaries of the concepts that these terms name.<br /> * When I learn additional languages as a teenager or later, my concepts are already present in mind and my experience is more focused on acquiring new words that represent my existing concepts, though as my fluency develops, I may discover that the new language divides up experience in different ways.</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Words,_Thoughts,_and_Theories&diff=1593 2026-10-03T09:36:19Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 5. The Child&#039;s Theory of Actions */</p> <hr /> <div>== 1. The Other Socratic Method ==<br /> <br /> * The child treats the adult language as another source of information about the structure of the world, along with her own experience. While the child is inferring the structure of the outside world, she is also untangling the structure of language itself, and she may use solutions in one area as clues to solutions in the other.<br /> * Ultimately, our motivation for watching and talking to children is the same as Socrates'. The most central questions in cognitive science are questions that only they can answer.<br /> <br /> = I: The Theory Theory =<br /> == 2. The Scientist as Child ==<br /> <br /> * Science is cognitive almost by definition, insofar as cognition is about how minds arrive at veridical conceptions of the world.<br /> * A cognitive view of science might provide a useful middle ground, even a bridge, between logical and sociological views of science.<br /> * Quite typically, underlying any human cognitive activity is an abstract structure that is not at all apparent in superficial phenomenology or practice.<br /> * From an evolutionary point of view, three of the most distinctive features of human beings are their long, protected immaturity, the plasticity of their behavior, and their ability to adapt to an extremely wide variety of environments. Equipping human children with particularly powerful and flexible cognitive devices might be an important part of this picture. Indeed, we might think of childhood as a period when many of the requirements for survival are suspended so that children can concentrate on acquiring a veridical picture of the particular physical and social world in which they find themselves.<br /> * Once, as children, we have engaged in the theorizing necessary to specify the features of our world, most of us most of the time may simply go on to the central evolutionary business of feeding and reproducing. But, we suggest, these powerful theorizing abilities continue to allow all of us some of the time and some of us, namely professional scientists, much of the time to continue to discover more and more about the world around us.<br /> * A characteristic lesson of the cognitive revolution is that human beings (or, for that matter, machines) can perform extremely complex feats of information processing without any phenomenology at all. It is rather characteristic of human cognition that it is largely inaccessible to conscious reflection.<br /> * Children, no less than scientists, develop their understanding of the world in the context of a society that already has much knowledge of the world. they live in a rich social structure with much opportunity for contradiction, instruction, and the linguistic transmission of information.<br /> * We might argue that much of the social structure of science is an attempt to replicate the privileged sociological conditions of infancy. Aside from the division of labor, the social hierarchy largely determines who will get the leisure and equipment to do cognitive work and who other scientists should listen to. The infant solves these problems without needing elaborate social arrangements.<br /> * What happens when the theorizing mechanisms are faced with a causal problem but have no relevant evidence to operate on? What happens, we suggest, is magic, a combination of narrative, deference, and association.<br /> * In the course of developing an account of the mind, children postulate such mental entities as perceptions, beliefs, and desires as a way of explaining ordinary human behavior.<br /> * It is not that children are little scientists but that scientists are big children. Scientific progress is possible because scientists employ cognitive processes that are first seen in very young children.<br /> <br /> ==== Theories: ====<br /> * Are always constructed with reference to evidence.<br /> * Include entities and laws that are postulated or recruited from elsewhere to explain evidence.<br /> * The entities postulated by a theory are closely, &quot;lawfully&quot;, interrelated with one another.<br /> * Appeal to some underlying causal structure that we think is responsible for the superficial regularities in the data.<br /> * An accepted theory is supposed to carve nature at its joints; the theoretical entities and laws are supposed to tell you what there is and what it must do.<br /> * A test of theoreticity is the nature of our surprise at violations of the theory. If we are committed to the theory, such violations should strike us not only as surprising but as being impossible and unbelievable in an important and strong way.<br /> * A theory, in contrast to a mere empirical generalization, makes predictions about a wide variety of evidence, including evidence that played no role in the theory's initial construction<br /> * The ability to produce wide-ranging predictions is perhaps the most obvious pragmatic benefit of science, and it may also be the most important evolutionary benefit of developing theorizing abilities. The evolutionary value of a system that leads to accurate and wide-ranging predictions should be obvious. In fact, making accurate predictions about the behavior of the world and your fellow organisms is the sine qua non of cognition.<br /> * Theories produce interpretations of evidence, not simply descriptions and typologies of it. Indeed, theories strongly influence which pieces of evidence we consider salient or important. Theory-driven interpretations help to solve what computer scientists call &quot;the frame problem&quot;. Theories provide a way of deciding which evidence is relevant to a particular problem<br /> * What we mean by saying that we've explained something is simply that we can give an abstract, coherent, causal account of it. We might say that explanation is to cognition as orgasm is to reproduction. <br /> * We might speculate that we were designed with a theorizing drive and that explanation is a symptom of that drive in action.<br /> * Theories may turn out to be inconsistent with the evidence, and because of this theories change. In fact a tenet of modern epistemology is that any aspect of a theory, even the most central ones, may change.<br /> * The initial reaction of a theory to counter-evidence may be a kind of denial. The interpretive mechanisms of the theory may treat the counter-evidence as noise, mess, not worth attending to. At a slightly later stage, the theory may develop ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses designed to account specifically for such counter-evidence. The theory gets ugly and messy instead of being beautiful and simple. The preference for beautiful theories over ugly ones plays an additional major role in theory change.<br /> * A next step requires an alternative model to the original theory. The theory may limp along for some time under the weight of its auxiliary hypotheses if no alternative way of making progress is available. The ability to fix on this alternative is the mysterious logic of discovery.<br /> * The new idea is not simply the olde idea applied to a new domain, but rather the earlier idea is itself modified to fit its role in the new theory. Moreover the fertility of the alternative idea may not be immediately recognized. Initially it may be applied only to the problematic cases.<br /> * A final important dynamic feature of theory formation is a period of intense experimentation and/or observation. This period might span both the crisis of the earlier theory (when anomalous results are being produced right and left) and the first stages of the new theory (when a whole range of new predictions become available).<br /> * In the development of the heliocentric theory of the planets:<br /> ** Auxiliary hypotheses involving more and more complex arrangements of epicycles were initially invoked to deal with counterevidence <br /> ** Later heliocentrism was introduced by Copernicus, but it continued to rely on epicycles as an auxiliary hypothesis.<br /> ** Tycho Brahe's account acknowledges many of the flaws of the Ptolemaic accounts and uses the ides of heliocentrism to deal with them, but fails to accept the central idea that the earth itself goes around the sun.<br /> ** Only with Kepler is there a really coherent heliocentric account that deals both with the anomalies and with the earlier data itself. And while, strictly speaking, experimentation on the heavenly bodies was impossible, periods of intense and detailed observation in this transitional period provided a far richer empirical base than had been available before.<br /> *This distinctive pattern of prediction, interpretation, and explanation is among the best indicators of a theoretical structure and the best ways of distinguishing the theory theory from its developmental competitors.<br /> *Infants show a kind of motivation and satisfaction that goes well beyond any immediate functional or social reward. Infants seem to have cognitive orgasms.<br /> *A person's theory is a system that assigns representations to inputs just as one's perceptual system assigns representations to visual input or one's syntactic system assigns representations to phonological input.<br /> *The representations are operated on by rules that lead to new representations; for example, the theory generates predictions. There are also distinctive functional relations between the theoretical representations and the input to them; theories predict, interpret, and explain data.<br /> *Exactly what is the input to our theory systems?<br /> *There is no atheoretical, evidential, &quot;ordinary knowledge&quot; level of representation, at least not once we get past very low level perceptual processing. All representation will be theory-laden. Even apparently &quot;ordinary&quot; kind of knowledge, like our knowledge that this is a jar and that is a table, or perhaps even that these are two objects and one is on top of the other, will be the result of the application of everyday theories.<br /> *The most important and distinctive thing about theories is the fact that the very patterns of representation that occur can alter the nature of the representational system itself.<br /> *Moreover, this system may be dynamic at yet another level. It is also possible that the very rules that restructure the relations between inputs and representations may change as a result of new input. That is, as we learn more, we also learn new ways to learn. Certainly this seems to be true in science, and it may also be true in development.<br /> *To borrow Neurath's philosophical metaphor, the theorizing view sees knowledge as a boat that we perpetually rebuild as we sail in it. At each point in our journey there may be only a limited and constrained set of alterations we can make to the boat to keep it seaworthy. In the end, however, we may end up with not a single plan or rivet from the original structure, and the process may go on indefinitely.<br /> *Presumably, creatures who constructed representations in different ways in childhood, who did not assume underlying causal structure, did not search for the simples explanation, did not falsify hypotheses when there was counter-evidence, and so on, were at an evolutionary disadvantage. In adulthood, such creatures were less good at predicting which berries were members of a poisonous natural kind, which kinds of minerals would make the most seductive body paint, or when their babies were old enough to be left alone without danger. In this sense nature itself guarantees that the system gets to an understanding of nature.<br /> <br /> == 3. Theories, Modules, and Empirical Generalizations ==<br /> <br /> * We want to argue for a kind of developmental pluralism: there are many quite different mechanisms underlying cognitive developments, and theory formation is an important one of them.<br /> <br /> * According to modularity theories, representations of the world are not constructed from evidence in the course of development. Instead, representations are produced by innate structures, modules, or constraints that have been constructed in the course of evolution. These structures may need to be triggered, but one they are triggered, they create mandatory representations of input<br /> * On the starting-state view, the child is innately endowed with a particular set of representations of input and rules operating on the representations. According to this view, such initial structures, while innate, would be defeasible; any part of them could be, and indeed will be, altered by new evidence. We propose that there are innate theories that are later modified and revised. The process of theory change and replacement begins at birth.<br /> * Certainly, this type of account seems more tractable than one in which theory-like conceptual structures are constructed from scratch from a disorganized flow of experience.<br /> * Modularity nativism, on the other hand, implies a much stronger set of claims. For Fodor, for example, modules are not only innate; they are also encapsulated and the representations that are the outcome of modules cannot be overturned by new patterns of evidence.<br /> * At least some of the structural and functional features of theories - their abstractness, coherence, and predictive and interpretive force - can also be found in modules.<br /> * According to the theory theory, input is evidence. It radically alters the nature of theoretical concepts.<br /> * A theorizing mechanism is a representational system that reorganizes itself in response to input. It is an inherently developmental system. This leads to a distinctive set of developmental predictions. The theory theory predicts a succession of different theories, each replacing the earlier theory<br /> * Modular representations do not lead to predictions through some set of inductive or deductive generalizations or through a process of theory testing, confirmation and disconfirmation. They lead to predictions because they are specifically designed by evolution to do so.<br /> <br /> * Some theories in cognitive science have proposed that knowledge consists of empirical generalizations. &quot;Scripts&quot; are an example.<br /> * Like theories, but unlike modules, empirical generalizations, scripts, narratives, and nets are defeasible.<br /> * When we want deeper explanatory adequacy or wider predictive power, we turn from scripts to theories, even when we are talking about restaurants.<br /> * Modules must help to provide the input to theorizing processes. On any view, there are encapsulated atheoretical processes that take us from patterns of stimulation at the retina to patterns of representation in the visual cortex.<br /> * How far up, as it were, do these modular process go? Where is the border between modules and theories, between the periphery and the center?<br /> * A lesson of the cognitive revolution is that phenomenology does not, in general, recapitulate epistemology. On this view, many representations that are theoretical, in the sense of being revisable and defeasible in theory-like ways, might have much of the direct, vivid phenomenology of perception.<br /> * Empirical generalizations often seem to play a crucial role in theory change. Almost by definition, they are the kind of knowledge that provides us with counter-evidence to the predictions of the theory.<br /> * On our view, modules, theories, and empirical generalizations are all in play literally from birth. Innate theories will assign powerful, abstract, and predictive representations to the outputs of modules. New information coming into the cognitive system will be represented in terms of these theories. Some relations among the inputs will not, however, be predicted by the theories; they will constitute empirical generalizations. Eventually, some of these kinds of inputs will lead to a revision of the theory, the modular outputs will be assigned new representations by the new theory, and so on.<br /> * In the same way that technological advances enable or facilitate change in science, so information processing advances might enable or facilitate theory change in children.<br /> * The most significant alternative to modularity accounts in syntactic development is not the theory theory but rather various functionalist theories that emphasize the role of social interaction in language acquisition. Assimilating all cognitive development to the model of socialization is, however, a dreadful mistake.<br /> <br /> = II: Evidence for the Theory Theory =<br /> <br /> * We suggest that there is a continuous line of development from the understandings of object appearance and disappearance involved in infant &quot;object permanence&quot; tasks, to the early understanding of visual perception, to the later understanding of belief and representation reflected in theory-of-mind tasks.<br /> * A less well researched domain that is nevertheless equally important from the point of view of young children is the understanding of desires, plans, and intentions. Here we will suggest a line of development from an early understanding of the relations between actions and goals, to an early nonrepresentational understanding of desire and intention, to a later fully fledged understanding of desire as a representational state.<br /> * Similarly, we will argue that there is a continuous line of development that bridges early object manipulation, early naming, and later &quot;natural kind&quot; understanding.<br /> * We will suggest that these sets of problems - the nature of appearances, actions, and kinds - are at the core of the child's cognitive and semantic development in the period between late infancy and early childhood. On our view, these capacities are available from the very start of development. Developing a particular set of inductions and deductions, however, depends on having a particular body of knowledge organized in a theorylike way.<br /> <br /> == 4. The Child's Theory of Appearances ==<br /> <br /> * For adults, there are:<br /> ** The laws governing the movement of objects<br /> ** The properties of the objects themselves<br /> ** The spatial relations between stationary objects<br /> ** The laws that govern the perceptual relations between observers and objects.<br /> * The theory of object appearances is an interesting bridge between &quot;folk physics&quot; and &quot;folk psychology&quot;. It involves ideas about objects and the relations among them, but just as crucially, it involves ideas about the way that e and others perceive objects.<br /> * The general principle of conjuring tricks is that they violate our deep ontological commitments about the nature of the world. When we are faced with these illusions, we use our higher-level theories to devise alternative explanations for the perceptual appearances. As we say, we can't believe our eyes. Much of the conjuror's art is devoted not just to producing the appearances but also to frustrating the explanations.<br /> * The clown violates all our familiar scripts of behavior or events. But while he may evoke a kind of moral or social unease, he doesn't evoke the ontological unease that a conjuror does.<br /> * If our knowledge was really modular in a strict sense, we should not be able to represent the event at all, as our perceptual system can't represent the reality in a perceptual illusion and children can't represent the syntax of a pidgin language. If the event violates a script or an empirical generalization, we might find it weird or surprising. However, only if it violates a theory, with all its ontological commitments, will we think it's magic.<br /> * So our adult understanding of permanent objects seems to have some of the structural and functional characteristics of a theory. It involves a system of abstract causal entities and rules related to one another in coherent ways. It allows a wide variety of coherent predictions, and it leads to interpretations and explanations.<br /> * When we eat thing, we do not assume that they will reappear at the location where they disappeared. Instead, we assume that they will be transformed or destroyed.<br /> * Shadows violate our ordinary account of objects. Interestingly, infants initially seem to pay special attention to these violations. Eventually, of course, we learn that these violations are not really surprising. We modify our theory to account for them.<br /> * Research suggests that infants are born assuming a world of 3D amodal objects. Their representation of the world are abstract and interrelated, and they license certain kinds of inferences and predictions. Even very young children seems to have a minimal notion of object permanence.<br /> * The process of integrating features and movements and using features to individuate objects seems to develop gradually in the first year.<br /> * Some studies show that 9-mont-olds can remember and act on events that took place as much as 24 hours earlier.<br /> * As adults, we are not committed to the fact that objects will continue to move along the same trajectory.<br /> * Many objects in the child's world have habitual locations. The rule is &quot;The object will be where it appeared before.&quot;<br /> * An 18-month-old seems to use its new theory of objects productively to make inferences and predictions in quite new situations.<br /> * Even very young infants pay special attention to eyes. At about 18 months infants develop the ability to follow the point or gaze of another person toward an object and begin to use points to get someone else to look at an object. They also draw attention to objects in order to discover another person's attitude toward them. Faced with an ambiguous situation, infants look to their mother's face for information and may draw her gaze to the objects in question<br /> * These behaviors imply a primitive but genuine understanding of visual perception. These infants seem to know that the direction of the eyes, or perhaps just of the head and body, indicates something about the person's visual contact with an object. There seem to be some connection in these children's minds between the visual display of another person's head and eyes and the phenomenal experience of vision.<br /> * Infants who solve a task will often themselves hide the object in the complex way and indicate to the experimenter that she should search for it. It seem clear that the child is not primarily concerned with retrieving the object but with understanding the problem. We suggest that these activities are similar to experimentation in adult science.<br /> * Between 15-18 months the infant develops a new theory of objects positing that all object disappearances are a consequence of movements, including invisible movements, either of objects or of the observer. This allows them to consolidate all the information about disappearances that has been accumulated up till then, including the earlier theory of visible movements and trajectories, the theory of invisible objects, new information about spatial relations and visual perception, and information captured by the various empirical generalization that have made in recent months.<br /> * Infants very consistently use a word for disappearance, so as &quot;gone&quot; about when they first demonstrate this new object theory.<br /> * By 18 months, infants seem to understand that they and others may share the perception of an object and that they can make objects invisible to others visible by pointing or showing.<br /> * Perception and belief have many features in common, but perception may be easier to understand than belief. The understanding of perception may be the basic model on which a later understanding of belief is constructed.<br /> * &quot;See&quot; typically emerged shortly after &quot;gone&quot; and its first uses applied to the child's own attempts to see objects. References to the sight of other people and to failures to see emerged only later.<br /> * Belief words such as &quot;know&quot; and &quot;think&quot; appear during the fourth year of life, after &quot;see&quot; is well established. The developing theory of mind is apparent both in semantic change and in conceptual change.<br /> * The onset of crawling may enormously increase opportunities for the observation of counterevidence. A baby who crawls will observe many more systematic appearances and disappearances that a baby who doesn't.<br /> <br /> == 5. The Child's Theory of Actions ==<br /> <br /> * Understanding action underlies the child's later development of a theory of mind:<br /> ** It provides the basic evidence on which any theory of the mind must be based, since we infer mental states from actions<br /> ** Many of the fundamental concepts of our theory of mind share important features with concepts of action<br /> * Searle distinguishes between mental states with:<br /> ** World-to-mind direction, like desire, where the mind alters the world to fit its representations. <br /> *** The early understanding of actions, plans, and goals might be the child's first conception of these states.<br /> *** These are among the earliest and most central concepts in the child's theory of mind from around age 2.<br /> ** Mind-to-world direction, like belief, where the mind alters its representations to fit the world. <br /> *** The early understanding of perception revealed in object permanence, social referencing, and visual-perspective taking is the child's first conception of these states.<br /> * Our adult theory of action:<br /> ** We believe that the world contains both psychological agents and inanimate physical objects. <br /> ** Agents crucially include ourselves and other human beings, and we assume that we and others act in the same way. <br /> ** Agents have internal mental states (desires, plan, intentions, and so on) that cause bodily movements which, in turn, cause things to occur in the world in particular and predictable ways.<br /> ** The causal consequences of bodily movements will be different when we are interacting with other people and when we are acting on objects.<br /> ** We influence people by communication and objects by contact.<br /> ** We believe that the events in the world that result from our movements will &quot;satisfy&quot; our mental states - ie, the consequences of our actions will be the events we wanted to happen in the first place.<br /> ** The practical syllogism: &quot;If a psychological agent wants event y and believes that action x will cause event y, he will do x.&quot; This is believes to be the basic explanatory schema of folk psychology.<br /> * Among the conjuror's most persuasive tricks are to appear to act on people without communication and to act on objects without contact.<br /> * The events in a conjuror's show violate both our familiar scripts and any innately given predictions we might make. But, given our ordinary theory of action, these facts don't make the events utterly incomprehensible. On the contrary, they provide us with a stimulus to generate new predictions and explanations. The conjuror's technique is to provide counter-evidence to those predictions and to frustrate those explanations.<br /> * In Star Trek, Q's powers call into question fundamental ideas about will, desire, morality, and time. The Borg calls into question ideas of personal identity, responsibility, and agency.<br /> * From an extremely early age, infants distinguish between inanimate objects and people and respond in a distinctive way to human faces and voices.<br /> * We claim that infants already know that they are like other people. We suggest that from birth, information about action that comes, literally, from inside ourselves is coded in the same way as information that comes from observing the behavior of others. There is a fundamental cross-modal representational system that connects self and other. This initial coding then becomes the basis for the child's further acquisition of a theory of action.<br /> * In particular, we innately map the visually perceived motions of others onto our own kinesthetic sensations.<br /> * To genuinely imitate another person sticking out his tongue, for instance, I have to recognize the equivalence between the visual spectacle of his face, an oval with a protruding moving cylinder in its lower portion, and the set of feelings that make up my own kinesthetic image of my invisible tongue. Yet imperfect imitations are observed in babies as young as 42 minutes old!<br /> * Newborn imitation is nature's way of solving both the problem of other minds and the mind-body problem at one fell swoop.<br /> * Very young infants gaze at the faces of significant (or even not so significant) others and vocalize and gesture in a way that seems &quot;tuned&quot; to the vocalizations and gestures of the other person.<br /> * The mere physical appearance of certain facial expressions is itself enough to induce a parallel internal affective state.<br /> * Infants can make inferences on the basis of their representations of others vocalizations and gestures. They can recognize which movements of their own faces and bodies will correspond to the observed movement of the other's face and body and then produce that movement.<br /> * It is conceivable that young infants think that persons are rather like the Borg, fundamentally sharing the same psychological states. This rather Rousseauean view turns the problem of other minds on its head: we start out deeply identifying with our fellow human beings and need to develop an understanding of separation and conflict.<br /> * Persons make objects do things.<br /> * Infants begin by making overly general predictions about the connections between actions and events, but then begin to realize that only some subclasses of relations between actions and events are actually reliable over the long run.<br /> * Around 9 months, children will being only to attempt solutions that obey the rules of spatial contact. This enables their problem solving to be both more constrained, since a wide array of actions are ruled out, and more general at the same time. They can see a new problem, like obtaining an object by pulling at the end of a horizontal string, and immediatley hit on one of several appropriate solutions.<br /> <br /> == 6. The Child's Theory of Kinds ==<br /> = III: Theories and Language =<br /> == 7. Language and Thought ==<br /> == 8. The Darwinian Conclusion ==</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Hyperpolitics&diff=1592 2026-10-03T08:26:53Z

<p>Robert.adlington: Created page with &quot;== 1. A Grin Without a Face == * Evolution of politics: ** 1914-1989 - Mass Politics (High Politicization / High Institutionalization) - Citizens engaged in politics through highly structured, collective bodies like mass political parties, robust trade unions, and deeply rooted community or religious organizations. ** 1989-2008 - Postpolitics (Low Politicization / Low Institutionalization) - Elites decamped into sealed-off, technocratic institutions, and civil society b...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>== 1. A Grin Without a Face ==<br /> <br /> * Evolution of politics:<br /> ** 1914-1989 - Mass Politics (High Politicization / High Institutionalization) - Citizens engaged in politics through highly structured, collective bodies like mass political parties, robust trade unions, and deeply rooted community or religious organizations.<br /> ** 1989-2008 - Postpolitics (Low Politicization / Low Institutionalization) - Elites decamped into sealed-off, technocratic institutions, and civil society began to hollow out. The broader populace became largely apathetic, treating politics as an administrative matter for experts rather than a battleground for ideas.<br /> ** 2008-2020 - Antipolitics (Rising Politicization / Declining Institutionalization) - After the 2008 financial crash, populism and horizontal protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street, Syriza, and Podemos) attempted to translate raw anger into new institutional alternatives or capture existing parties (like Corbynism), but faced severe structural limitations in building durable, long-term power.<br /> ** 2020s - Hyperpolitics (High Politicization / Zero Institutionalization) - Public life is completely saturated with moral urgency, culture wars, and intense digital outrage, yet the civic infrastructure to anchor it has completely vanished. An eminently market-friendly types of politics, in form as well as content.<br /> * Sloterdijk: <br /> ** &quot;When Western men and women style themselves as 'democrats' today, they do not do so out of any pretense of contributing to the public good, but because they rightly regard democracy as the type of society that allows them not to think about the state and the art of belonging together.&quot;<br /> ** &quot;The single-occupancy apartment is the vanishing point of civilization, and living along the crowning achievement of a millennia-long process of anthropological refinement.&quot;<br /> <br /> == 2. Putnam from the Left ==<br /> <br /> * Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000) - about the collapse in civic engagement<br /> * In his guesstimates, the decline in civic activity was due to:<br /> ** 10% - Time pressure and changing work patterns <br /> ** 10% - Suburbanization<br /> ** 25% - Electronic entertainment media, especially TV<br /> ** 50% - Generational change - younger cohorts were simply less engage than their parents and grandparents<br /> * During the period of mass politics, the very way of thinking about oneself, the values one espoused, the attitudes one adopted were all to a large extent shaped by the conception of the world that the 'Party' helped to inculcate in people's minds and to diffuse throughout the social body.<br /> * By contrast, ideological disorientation is a hallmark of the hyperpolitical age. Debate erupts over one issue today, another tomorrow. But individuals no longer possess a heuristic capable of unifying and imposing coherence on their various viewpoints. What emerges instead are fleeting, episodic partis pris.<br /> * Skocpol: NGOs are &quot;advocates without members&quot; - lawyers speaking on behalf of defendants who, for the most part, would remain mute and passive. Together with PR consultants and technocrats, they made up the ghost armies of postpolitics.<br /> * In the face of the claims of business groups, labor unions, and the beneficiaries of governmental largesse, it becomes difficult if not impossible for democratic governments to curtail spending, increase taxes, and control prices and wages. In this sense, inflation is the economic disease of democracies.<br /> * Winant: &quot;Whiteness itself is a kind of inchoate associational gel, out of which a variety of more specific associations may grow in a given historical conjuncture.&quot;<br /> * The right has historically been content to defend existing property relations. Apathy and resignation are its greatest assets, not militancy. It thus remains unclear whether social capital is actually growing on the right or whether it is simply eroding more slowly.<br /> * Heideman: The taming of labor removed the external constraints that once disciplined capitalists and motivated them to maintain unity and pursue a common agenda. Without a worthy adversary to concentrate the mind, internal fractures are likely to widen - between &quot;woke&quot; capital and the Koch brothers, DeSantis and Disneyland, Elon Musk and Steve Bannon - and the contemporary state can no longer fulfill its role as guarantor of Gesamtkapitalist.<br /> <br /> == 3. The Antipolitical Decade ==<br /> <br /> * The progressive-neoliberal consensus of the long 1990s released its hegemonic grip; left and right-wing movements destabilized the established party systems, a process that eventually culminated in the populist victories of 2016 and beyond.<br /> * Populism: Across the globe, political entrepreneurs and parties claiming to speak in the name of the people (against elites) won majorities, unseated incumbents, and attacked the independence of the judiciary.<br /> * Saint Victor: &quot;Twenty years of politics as spectacle, mockery and technocratic excesses have produced an aggrieved populace who, whether hyperactive or apathetic, out of protest or sheer disgust, are turning above all against their elites... whom they accuse of having betrayed and abandoned them.&quot;<br /> * Zizek: &quot;We know what we do not want. But what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want?&quot;<br /> * In a sense, one might say that it was the success of right-wing antipolitics that gave birth to hyperpolitics.<br /> * If antipolitics was initiated by social groups hit hard by the crisis of 2008, now the entirety of the public sphere is politicized. By the same token, while populism attached itself to a recognizable ideological vector, hyperpolitics is a permanently volatile, diffuse phenomenon. Whereas populist parties at least made the first steps towards reinstitutionalization, &quot;hyperpolitical&quot; refers to a general atmosphere rather than to specific actors. In this respect, hyperpolitics represents a redoubling of antipolitics, a mode of viral panic typical of the internet age with its short cycles of hype and outrage.<br /> * Hyperpolitics burst forth periodically only to recede, less a corrective to postpolitics than yet another manifestation.<br /> <br /> == 4. Escape Routes ==<br /> <br /> * Baudrillard: &quot;Instead of seeking fresh perspectives, history appears rather to be splintering into scattered fragments, and phases of events and conflicts we had thought long gone are being reactivated.&quot;<br /> * Anyone can join a Telegram channel or be invited to a group chat; the price of membership is low, the costs of exit even lower. Leaders can, of course, try to choreograph these broods - with social media posts of their own, television appearances, or anti-disinformation campaigns. But such choreography is not substitute for durable organization.<br /> * The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 629 prison inmates per 100k inhabitants; in Russia, the figure in September 2022 was 324, in Germany just 67. In total, over 2m people are incarcerated in American prisons - a figure surpassed only by the Soviet Union under Stalin. Historians have long argued that there is a close connection between the underdevelopment of the American welfare state and the overdevelopment of its carceral counterpart.<br /> * In earlier times, individuals were embedded in dense social networks and participated in a wide array of intermediate associations. Today's societies are composed of increasingly atomized and isolated individuals. As long as history moves along smoothly and predictably, this need no necessarily be a problem. But when societies enter choppier waters, atomization amplifies their volatility - and the collective incapacity to respond to today's political and ecological crises.<br /> * Blühdorn: Westerners emancipated themselves twice: first from traditional authorities, then from the kind of political commitment required to accomplish that emancipation. Who could command them to reverse course?<br /> * Most episodes of inflation in the 20th C resulted at least in part from collective wage demands. Inflation was therefore not merely a technical datum but an index of history; the moment that a factor of production, labor, became a political actor with a claim to its share of the collectively generated surplus. It was precisely this metamorphosis that neoliberalism set out to reverse.<br /> * Hobsbawm: &quot;Next to sex, the activity combining bodily experience and intense emotion to the highest degree is the participation in a mass demonstration at a time of great public exaltation. Unlike sex, which is essentially individual, it is by its nature collective and unlike the sexual climax, at any rate for men, it can be prolonged for hours. On the other hand, like sex it implies some physical action - marching chanting slogans, singing - through which the merger of the individual in the mas, which is the essence of the collective experience, finds expression.&quot;<br /> * The bases of Hobsbawm's communism:<br /> ** This sense of mass ecstasy,<br /> ** Pity for the exploited,<br /> ** The aesthetic appeal of a perfect and comprehensive intellectual system, &quot;dialectical materialism&quot;,<br /> ** A little bit of the Blakeian vision of the new Jerusalem<br /> ** A good deal of intellectual anti-philistinism.<br /> * Before the dawn of modernity, societies were perhaps so totally institutionalized - through feudal structures, religion, tradition, guild regulations, and so on - that there was no space for political agency in the modern sense.<br /> * What is distinct about melancholy, Sigmund Freud observed, is its &quot;tendency to turn into the symptomatically opposite state of mania&quot;, a &quot;cyclical insanity&quot; that leaves the patient prone to &quot;the regular alternation of melancholic and manic phases&quot;, struggling in both cases to repair the loss of the libidinal object.&quot;<br /> * Peeters: &quot;My generation constantly oscillates between the realization that we need to get moving, preferably very quickly, and the feeling that all is in vain. The true challenge - to change things - appears nigh impossible.&quot;</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Books&diff=1591 2026-10-03T07:27:36Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 2026 (week 39) */</p> <hr /> <div>== Books to Buy ==<br /> <br /> Used:<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&amp;qid=1783763181&amp;sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&amp;sr=8-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman<br /> * Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan<br /> <br /> Paperbacks:<br /> * The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin<br /> * Alison Gopnik - The Philosophical Baby<br /> * A Natural History of the Senses- Diane Ackerman<br /> * Ram Dass - Be Here Now<br /> * luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&amp;pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&amp;pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&amp;pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&amp;pd_rd_i=1250266645&amp;psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 <br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&amp;qid=1784816314&amp;sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=elyn+saks&amp;qid=1783197867&amp;sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&amp;sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&amp;qid=1783198086&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&amp;sr=1-1&amp;th=1&amp;psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet<br /> * Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&amp;qid=1775903643&amp;sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]<br /> * Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity<br /> * Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience<br /> * Lorrie Moore - Self Help<br /> * La Modification - Michel Butor<br /> * Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec<br /> * How Like a God - Rex Stout<br /> <br /> * Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur<br /> * Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau<br /> * Nausea - Sartre<br /> * [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].<br /> * Building a second brain<br /> * how to solve it<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories <br /> * Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz<br /> *<br /> <br /> Hardbacks:<br /> <br /> * Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience <br /> <br /> * [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit <br /> * [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=thomas+sheehan&amp;qid=1771981151&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&amp;sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?<br /> * [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment<br /> * [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey<br /> * Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod<br /> * L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger<br /> * Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)<br /> * A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)<br /> * The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium<br /> * Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization<br /> * Consolations - David Whyte<br /> <br /> == Books to Read ==<br /> <br /> * Reading to Learn - William Zinger<br /> * Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut<br /> <br /> == Currently Reading ==<br /> <br /> * [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear<br /> *[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer<br /> * [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston <br /> *[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)<br /> *[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike<br /> <br /> == Books Read ==<br /> <br /> === 2026 (week 41) ===<br /> <br /> * 43. [[Hyperpolitics]] - Anton Jäger<br /> * 42. [[Words, Thoughts, and Theories]] - Alison Gopnik and Andrew N Meltzoff<br /> * 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan<br /> * 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach<br /> * 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung <br /> * 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger<br /> * 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges<br /> * 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley<br /> * 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck<br /> * 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng<br /> * 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self<br /> * 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang<br /> * 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral <br /> * 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.<br /> * 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet<br /> * 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter <br /> * 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)<br /> * 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell<br /> * 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)<br /> * 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab<br /> * 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade<br /> * 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn<br /> * 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> * 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen<br /> * 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard<br /> <br /> * 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington<br /> *14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands<br /> *13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms<br /> *12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud<br /> *11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar<br /> *10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> *9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola<br /> *8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine<br /> <br /> * 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle<br /> * 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson<br /> * 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie <br /> * 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola<br /> *3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott<br /> * 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum<br /> * 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still<br /> <br /> === 2025 ===<br /> <br /> * 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)<br /> * 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball<br /> * 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards<br /> * 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins<br /> * 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis<br /> * 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola <br /> * 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler<br /> * 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya<br /> *47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers<br /> * 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts<br /> * 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola<br /> * 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)<br /> * 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky<br /> * 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac<br /> * 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)<br /> * 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac<br /> * 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)<br /> * 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)<br /> <br /> * 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)<br /> * 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry<br /> * 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife<br /> * 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges<br /> * 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin<br /> * 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener<br /> * 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater<br /> * 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman<br /> * 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton<br /> * 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July<br /> * 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter<br /> * 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles<br /> * 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards<br /> * 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer<br /> * 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman<br /> * 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle<br /> * 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle<br /> * 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham<br /> * 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark<br /> * 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath<br /> * 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)<br /> * 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett<br /> * 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin<br /> * 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]<br /> * 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter<br /> * 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> * 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux<br /> * 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett<br /> * 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)<br /> * 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco<br /> * 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque<br /> <br /> === 2024 ===<br /> <br /> * The Plot - Will Eisner<br /> * The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco<br /> * The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo<br /> * When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut<br /> * Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)<br /> * The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner<br /> * The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil<br /> * Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg<br /> * Le Ton Beau de…<br /> * The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson<br /> * Psychonauts - <br /> * The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut<br /> * In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel<br /> * Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson<br /> * Les Effinger - Gabriele Target<br /> * Triad - Tom Keve<br /> * Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig<br /> * The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich<br /> * How Language Works - David Crystal<br /> * The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf<br /> * [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee<br /> * [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter<br /> * [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett<br /> <br /> == Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==<br /> That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':<br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 1. Language &amp; Style Difficulties ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.<br /> * '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).<br /> * '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 2. Length &amp; Scope ===<br /> <br /> * '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.<br /> * '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.<br /> * '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 3. Experimental Structure ===<br /> <br /> * '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.<br /> * '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.<br /> * '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===<br /> <br /> * '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.<br /> * '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.<br /> * '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 5. Dense Intertextuality ===<br /> <br /> * '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.<br /> * '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.<br /> * '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===<br /> <br /> * '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.<br /> * '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.<br /> <br /> ----<br /> <br /> === A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===<br /> <br /> * ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)<br /> * ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)<br /> * ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)<br /> * ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)<br /> * ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)<br /> <br /> [[Category:Books]]</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Words,_Thoughts,_and_Theories&diff=1590 2026-10-02T15:23:03Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* II: Evidence for the Theory Theory */</p> <hr /> <div>== 1. The Other Socratic Method ==<br /> <br /> * The child treats the adult language as another source of information about the structure of the world, along with her own experience. While the child is inferring the structure of the outside world, she is also untangling the structure of language itself, and she may use solutions in one area as clues to solutions in the other.<br /> * Ultimately, our motivation for watching and talking to children is the same as Socrates'. The most central questions in cognitive science are questions that only they can answer.<br /> <br /> = I: The Theory Theory =<br /> == 2. The Scientist as Child ==<br /> <br /> * Science is cognitive almost by definition, insofar as cognition is about how minds arrive at veridical conceptions of the world.<br /> * A cognitive view of science might provide a useful middle ground, even a bridge, between logical and sociological views of science.<br /> * Quite typically, underlying any human cognitive activity is an abstract structure that is not at all apparent in superficial phenomenology or practice.<br /> * From an evolutionary point of view, three of the most distinctive features of human beings are their long, protected immaturity, the plasticity of their behavior, and their ability to adapt to an extremely wide variety of environments. Equipping human children with particularly powerful and flexible cognitive devices might be an important part of this picture. Indeed, we might think of childhood as a period when many of the requirements for survival are suspended so that children can concentrate on acquiring a veridical picture of the particular physical and social world in which they find themselves.<br /> * Once, as children, we have engaged in the theorizing necessary to specify the features of our world, most of us most of the time may simply go on to the central evolutionary business of feeding and reproducing. But, we suggest, these powerful theorizing abilities continue to allow all of us some of the time and some of us, namely professional scientists, much of the time to continue to discover more and more about the world around us.<br /> * A characteristic lesson of the cognitive revolution is that human beings (or, for that matter, machines) can perform extremely complex feats of information processing without any phenomenology at all. It is rather characteristic of human cognition that it is largely inaccessible to conscious reflection.<br /> * Children, no less than scientists, develop their understanding of the world in the context of a society that already has much knowledge of the world. they live in a rich social structure with much opportunity for contradiction, instruction, and the linguistic transmission of information.<br /> * We might argue that much of the social structure of science is an attempt to replicate the privileged sociological conditions of infancy. Aside from the division of labor, the social hierarchy largely determines who will get the leisure and equipment to do cognitive work and who other scientists should listen to. The infant solves these problems without needing elaborate social arrangements.<br /> * What happens when the theorizing mechanisms are faced with a causal problem but have no relevant evidence to operate on? What happens, we suggest, is magic, a combination of narrative, deference, and association.<br /> * In the course of developing an account of the mind, children postulate such mental entities as perceptions, beliefs, and desires as a way of explaining ordinary human behavior.<br /> * It is not that children are little scientists but that scientists are big children. Scientific progress is possible because scientists employ cognitive processes that are first seen in very young children.<br /> <br /> ==== Theories: ====<br /> * Are always constructed with reference to evidence.<br /> * Include entities and laws that are postulated or recruited from elsewhere to explain evidence.<br /> * The entities postulated by a theory are closely, &quot;lawfully&quot;, interrelated with one another.<br /> * Appeal to some underlying causal structure that we think is responsible for the superficial regularities in the data.<br /> * An accepted theory is supposed to carve nature at its joints; the theoretical entities and laws are supposed to tell you what there is and what it must do.<br /> * A test of theoreticity is the nature of our surprise at violations of the theory. If we are committed to the theory, such violations should strike us not only as surprising but as being impossible and unbelievable in an important and strong way.<br /> * A theory, in contrast to a mere empirical generalization, makes predictions about a wide variety of evidence, including evidence that played no role in the theory's initial construction<br /> * The ability to produce wide-ranging predictions is perhaps the most obvious pragmatic benefit of science, and it may also be the most important evolutionary benefit of developing theorizing abilities. The evolutionary value of a system that leads to accurate and wide-ranging predictions should be obvious. In fact, making accurate predictions about the behavior of the world and your fellow organisms is the sine qua non of cognition.<br /> * Theories produce interpretations of evidence, not simply descriptions and typologies of it. Indeed, theories strongly influence which pieces of evidence we consider salient or important. Theory-driven interpretations help to solve what computer scientists call &quot;the frame problem&quot;. Theories provide a way of deciding which evidence is relevant to a particular problem<br /> * What we mean by saying that we've explained something is simply that we can give an abstract, coherent, causal account of it. We might say that explanation is to cognition as orgasm is to reproduction. <br /> * We might speculate that we were designed with a theorizing drive and that explanation is a symptom of that drive in action.<br /> * Theories may turn out to be inconsistent with the evidence, and because of this theories change. In fact a tenet of modern epistemology is that any aspect of a theory, even the most central ones, may change.<br /> * The initial reaction of a theory to counter-evidence may be a kind of denial. The interpretive mechanisms of the theory may treat the counter-evidence as noise, mess, not worth attending to. At a slightly later stage, the theory may develop ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses designed to account specifically for such counter-evidence. The theory gets ugly and messy instead of being beautiful and simple. The preference for beautiful theories over ugly ones plays an additional major role in theory change.<br /> * A next step requires an alternative model to the original theory. The theory may limp along for some time under the weight of its auxiliary hypotheses if no alternative way of making progress is available. The ability to fix on this alternative is the mysterious logic of discovery.<br /> * The new idea is not simply the olde idea applied to a new domain, but rather the earlier idea is itself modified to fit its role in the new theory. Moreover the fertility of the alternative idea may not be immediately recognized. Initially it may be applied only to the problematic cases.<br /> * A final important dynamic feature of theory formation is a period of intense experimentation and/or observation. This period might span both the crisis of the earlier theory (when anomalous results are being produced right and left) and the first stages of the new theory (when a whole range of new predictions become available).<br /> * In the development of the heliocentric theory of the planets:<br /> ** Auxiliary hypotheses involving more and more complex arrangements of epicycles were initially invoked to deal with counterevidence <br /> ** Later heliocentrism was introduced by Copernicus, but it continued to rely on epicycles as an auxiliary hypothesis.<br /> ** Tycho Brahe's account acknowledges many of the flaws of the Ptolemaic accounts and uses the ides of heliocentrism to deal with them, but fails to accept the central idea that the earth itself goes around the sun.<br /> ** Only with Kepler is there a really coherent heliocentric account that deals both with the anomalies and with the earlier data itself. And while, strictly speaking, experimentation on the heavenly bodies was impossible, periods of intense and detailed observation in this transitional period provided a far richer empirical base than had been available before.<br /> *This distinctive pattern of prediction, interpretation, and explanation is among the best indicators of a theoretical structure and the best ways of distinguishing the theory theory from its developmental competitors.<br /> *Infants show a kind of motivation and satisfaction that goes well beyond any immediate functional or social reward. Infants seem to have cognitive orgasms.<br /> *A person's theory is a system that assigns representations to inputs just as one's perceptual system assigns representations to visual input or one's syntactic system assigns representations to phonological input.<br /> *The representations are operated on by rules that lead to new representations; for example, the theory generates predictions. There are also distinctive functional relations between the theoretical representations and the input to them; theories predict, interpret, and explain data.<br /> *Exactly what is the input to our theory systems?<br /> *There is no atheoretical, evidential, &quot;ordinary knowledge&quot; level of representation, at least not once we get past very low level perceptual processing. All representation will be theory-laden. Even apparently &quot;ordinary&quot; kind of knowledge, like our knowledge that this is a jar and that is a table, or perhaps even that these are two objects and one is on top of the other, will be the result of the application of everyday theories.<br /> *The most important and distinctive thing about theories is the fact that the very patterns of representation that occur can alter the nature of the representational system itself.<br /> *Moreover, this system may be dynamic at yet another level. It is also possible that the very rules that restructure the relations between inputs and representations may change as a result of new input. That is, as we learn more, we also learn new ways to learn. Certainly this seems to be true in science, and it may also be true in development.<br /> *To borrow Neurath's philosophical metaphor, the theorizing view sees knowledge as a boat that we perpetually rebuild as we sail in it. At each point in our journey there may be only a limited and constrained set of alterations we can make to the boat to keep it seaworthy. In the end, however, we may end up with not a single plan or rivet from the original structure, and the process may go on indefinitely.<br /> *Presumably, creatures who constructed representations in different ways in childhood, who did not assume underlying causal structure, did not search for the simples explanation, did not falsify hypotheses when there was counter-evidence, and so on, were at an evolutionary disadvantage. In adulthood, such creatures were less good at predicting which berries were members of a poisonous natural kind, which kinds of minerals would make the most seductive body paint, or when their babies were old enough to be left alone without danger. In this sense nature itself guarantees that the system gets to an understanding of nature.<br /> <br /> == 3. Theories, Modules, and Empirical Generalizations ==<br /> <br /> * We want to argue for a kind of developmental pluralism: there are many quite different mechanisms underlying cognitive developments, and theory formation is an important one of them.<br /> <br /> * According to modularity theories, representations of the world are not constructed from evidence in the course of development. Instead, representations are produced by innate structures, modules, or constraints that have been constructed in the course of evolution. These structures may need to be triggered, but one they are triggered, they create mandatory representations of input<br /> * On the starting-state view, the child is innately endowed with a particular set of representations of input and rules operating on the representations. According to this view, such initial structures, while innate, would be defeasible; any part of them could be, and indeed will be, altered by new evidence. We propose that there are innate theories that are later modified and revised. The process of theory change and replacement begins at birth.<br /> * Certainly, this type of account seems more tractable than one in which theory-like conceptual structures are constructed from scratch from a disorganized flow of experience.<br /> * Modularity nativism, on the other hand, implies a much stronger set of claims. For Fodor, for example, modules are not only innate; they are also encapsulated and the representations that are the outcome of modules cannot be overturned by new patterns of evidence.<br /> * At least some of the structural and functional features of theories - their abstractness, coherence, and predictive and interpretive force - can also be found in modules.<br /> * According to the theory theory, input is evidence. It radically alters the nature of theoretical concepts.<br /> * A theorizing mechanism is a representational system that reorganizes itself in response to input. It is an inherently developmental system. This leads to a distinctive set of developmental predictions. The theory theory predicts a succession of different theories, each replacing the earlier theory<br /> * Modular representations do not lead to predictions through some set of inductive or deductive generalizations or through a process of theory testing, confirmation and disconfirmation. They lead to predictions because they are specifically designed by evolution to do so.<br /> <br /> * Some theories in cognitive science have proposed that knowledge consists of empirical generalizations. &quot;Scripts&quot; are an example.<br /> * Like theories, but unlike modules, empirical generalizations, scripts, narratives, and nets are defeasible.<br /> * When we want deeper explanatory adequacy or wider predictive power, we turn from scripts to theories, even when we are talking about restaurants.<br /> * Modules must help to provide the input to theorizing processes. On any view, there are encapsulated atheoretical processes that take us from patterns of stimulation at the retina to patterns of representation in the visual cortex.<br /> * How far up, as it were, do these modular process go? Where is the border between modules and theories, between the periphery and the center?<br /> * A lesson of the cognitive revolution is that phenomenology does not, in general, recapitulate epistemology. On this view, many representations that are theoretical, in the sense of being revisable and defeasible in theory-like ways, might have much of the direct, vivid phenomenology of perception.<br /> * Empirical generalizations often seem to play a crucial role in theory change. Almost by definition, they are the kind of knowledge that provides us with counter-evidence to the predictions of the theory.<br /> * On our view, modules, theories, and empirical generalizations are all in play literally from birth. Innate theories will assign powerful, abstract, and predictive representations to the outputs of modules. New information coming into the cognitive system will be represented in terms of these theories. Some relations among the inputs will not, however, be predicted by the theories; they will constitute empirical generalizations. Eventually, some of these kinds of inputs will lead to a revision of the theory, the modular outputs will be assigned new representations by the new theory, and so on.<br /> * In the same way that technological advances enable or facilitate change in science, so information processing advances might enable or facilitate theory change in children.<br /> * The most significant alternative to modularity accounts in syntactic development is not the theory theory but rather various functionalist theories that emphasize the role of social interaction in language acquisition. Assimilating all cognitive development to the model of socialization is, however, a dreadful mistake.<br /> <br /> = II: Evidence for the Theory Theory =<br /> <br /> * We suggest that there is a continuous line of development from the understandings of object appearance and disappearance involved in infant &quot;object permanence&quot; tasks, to the early understanding of visual perception, to the later understanding of belief and representation reflected in theory-of-mind tasks.<br /> * A less well researched domain that is nevertheless equally important from the point of view of young children is the understanding of desires, plans, and intentions. Here we will suggest a line of development from an early understanding of the relations between actions and goals, to an early nonrepresentational understanding of desire and intention, to a later fully fledged understanding of desire as a representational state.<br /> * Similarly, we will argue that there is a continuous line of development that bridges early object manipulation, early naming, and later &quot;natural kind&quot; understanding.<br /> * We will suggest that these sets of problems - the nature of appearances, actions, and kinds - are at the core of the child's cognitive and semantic development in the period between late infancy and early childhood. On our view, these capacities are available from the very start of development. Developing a particular set of inductions and deductions, however, depends on having a particular body of knowledge organized in a theorylike way.<br /> <br /> == 4. The Child's Theory of Appearances ==<br /> <br /> * For adults, there are:<br /> ** The laws governing the movement of objects<br /> ** The properties of the objects themselves<br /> ** The spatial relations between stationary objects<br /> ** The laws that govern the perceptual relations between observers and objects.<br /> * The theory of object appearances is an interesting bridge between &quot;folk physics&quot; and &quot;folk psychology&quot;. It involves ideas about objects and the relations among them, but just as crucially, it involves ideas about the way that e and others perceive objects.<br /> * The general principle of conjuring tricks is that they violate our deep ontological commitments about the nature of the world. When we are faced with these illusions, we use our higher-level theories to devise alternative explanations for the perceptual appearances. As we say, we can't believe our eyes. Much of the conjuror's art is devoted not just to producing the appearances but also to frustrating the explanations.<br /> * The clown violates all our familiar scripts of behavior or events. But while he may evoke a kind of moral or social unease, he doesn't evoke the ontological unease that a conjuror does.<br /> * If our knowledge was really modular in a strict sense, we should not be able to represent the event at all, as our perceptual system can't represent the reality in a perceptual illusion and children can't represent the syntax of a pidgin language. If the event violates a script or an empirical generalization, we might find it weird or surprising. However, only if it violates a theory, with all its ontological commitments, will we think it's magic.<br /> * So our adult understanding of permanent objects seems to have some of the structural and functional characteristics of a theory. It involves a system of abstract causal entities and rules related to one another in coherent ways. It allows a wide variety of coherent predictions, and it leads to interpretations and explanations.<br /> * When we eat thing, we do not assume that they will reappear at the location where they disappeared. Instead, we assume that they will be transformed or destroyed.<br /> * Shadows violate our ordinary account of objects. Interestingly, infants initially seem to pay special attention to these violations. Eventually, of course, we learn that these violations are not really surprising. We modify our theory to account for them.<br /> * Research suggests that infants are born assuming a world of 3D amodal objects. Their representation of the world are abstract and interrelated, and they license certain kinds of inferences and predictions. Even very young children seems to have a minimal notion of object permanence.<br /> * The process of integrating features and movements and using features to individuate objects seems to develop gradually in the first year.<br /> * Some studies show that 9-mont-olds can remember and act on events that took place as much as 24 hours earlier.<br /> * As adults, we are not committed to the fact that objects will continue to move along the same trajectory.<br /> * Many objects in the child's world have habitual locations. The rule is &quot;The object will be where it appeared before.&quot;<br /> * An 18-month-old seems to use its new theory of objects productively to make inferences and predictions in quite new situations.<br /> * Even very young infants pay special attention to eyes. At about 18 months infants develop the ability to follow the point or gaze of another person toward an object and begin to use points to get someone else to look at an object. They also draw attention to objects in order to discover another person's attitude toward them. Faced with an ambiguous situation, infants look to their mother's face for information and may draw her gaze to the objects in question<br /> * These behaviors imply a primitive but genuine understanding of visual perception. These infants seem to know that the direction of the eyes, or perhaps just of the head and body, indicates something about the person's visual contact with an object. There seem to be some connection in these children's minds between the visual display of another person's head and eyes and the phenomenal experience of vision.<br /> * Infants who solve a task will often themselves hide the object in the complex way and indicate to the experimenter that she should search for it. It seem clear that the child is not primarily concerned with retrieving the object but with understanding the problem. We suggest that these activities are similar to experimentation in adult science.<br /> * Between 15-18 months the infant develops a new theory of objects positing that all object disappearances are a consequence of movements, including invisible movements, either of objects or of the observer. This allows them to consolidate all the information about disappearances that has been accumulated up till then, including the earlier theory of visible movements and trajectories, the theory of invisible objects, new information about spatial relations and visual perception, and information captured by the various empirical generalization that have made in recent months.<br /> * Infants very consistently use a word for disappearance, so as &quot;gone&quot; about when they first demonstrate this new object theory.<br /> * By 18 months, infants seem to understand that they and others may share the perception of an object and that they can make objects invisible to others visible by pointing or showing.<br /> * Perception and belief have many features in common, but perception may be easier to understand than belief. The understanding of perception may be the basic model on which a later understanding of belief is constructed.<br /> * &quot;See&quot; typically emerged shortly after &quot;gone&quot; and its first uses applied to the child's own attempts to see objects. References to the sight of other people and to failures to see emerged only later.<br /> * Belief words such as &quot;know&quot; and &quot;think&quot; appear during the fourth year of life, after &quot;see&quot; is well established. The developing theory of mind is apparent both in semantic change and in conceptual change.<br /> * The onset of crawling may enormously increase opportunities for the observation of counterevidence. A baby who crawls will observe many more systematic appearances and disappearances that a baby who doesn't.<br /> <br /> == 5. The Child's Theory of Actions ==<br /> == 6. The Child's Theory of Kinds ==<br /> = III: Theories and Language =<br /> == 7. Language and Thought ==<br /> == 8. The Darwinian Conclusion ==</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Words,_Thoughts,_and_Theories&diff=1589 2026-09-27T21:26:03Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 3. Theories, Modules, and Empirical Generalizations */</p> <hr /> <div>== 1. The Other Socratic Method ==<br /> <br /> * The child treats the adult language as another source of information about the structure of the world, along with her own experience. While the child is inferring the structure of the outside world, she is also untangling the structure of language itself, and she may use solutions in one area as clues to solutions in the other.<br /> * Ultimately, our motivation for watching and talking to children is the same as Socrates'. The most central questions in cognitive science are questions that only they can answer.<br /> <br /> = I: The Theory Theory =<br /> == 2. The Scientist as Child ==<br /> <br /> * Science is cognitive almost by definition, insofar as cognition is about how minds arrive at veridical conceptions of the world.<br /> * A cognitive view of science might provide a useful middle ground, even a bridge, between logical and sociological views of science.<br /> * Quite typically, underlying any human cognitive activity is an abstract structure that is not at all apparent in superficial phenomenology or practice.<br /> * From an evolutionary point of view, three of the most distinctive features of human beings are their long, protected immaturity, the plasticity of their behavior, and their ability to adapt to an extremely wide variety of environments. Equipping human children with particularly powerful and flexible cognitive devices might be an important part of this picture. Indeed, we might think of childhood as a period when many of the requirements for survival are suspended so that children can concentrate on acquiring a veridical picture of the particular physical and social world in which they find themselves.<br /> * Once, as children, we have engaged in the theorizing necessary to specify the features of our world, most of us most of the time may simply go on to the central evolutionary business of feeding and reproducing. But, we suggest, these powerful theorizing abilities continue to allow all of us some of the time and some of us, namely professional scientists, much of the time to continue to discover more and more about the world around us.<br /> * A characteristic lesson of the cognitive revolution is that human beings (or, for that matter, machines) can perform extremely complex feats of information processing without any phenomenology at all. It is rather characteristic of human cognition that it is largely inaccessible to conscious reflection.<br /> * Children, no less than scientists, develop their understanding of the world in the context of a society that already has much knowledge of the world. they live in a rich social structure with much opportunity for contradiction, instruction, and the linguistic transmission of information.<br /> * We might argue that much of the social structure of science is an attempt to replicate the privileged sociological conditions of infancy. Aside from the division of labor, the social hierarchy largely determines who will get the leisure and equipment to do cognitive work and who other scientists should listen to. The infant solves these problems without needing elaborate social arrangements.<br /> * What happens when the theorizing mechanisms are faced with a causal problem but have no relevant evidence to operate on? What happens, we suggest, is magic, a combination of narrative, deference, and association.<br /> * In the course of developing an account of the mind, children postulate such mental entities as perceptions, beliefs, and desires as a way of explaining ordinary human behavior.<br /> * It is not that children are little scientists but that scientists are big children. Scientific progress is possible because scientists employ cognitive processes that are first seen in very young children.<br /> <br /> ==== Theories: ====<br /> * Are always constructed with reference to evidence.<br /> * Include entities and laws that are postulated or recruited from elsewhere to explain evidence.<br /> * The entities postulated by a theory are closely, &quot;lawfully&quot;, interrelated with one another.<br /> * Appeal to some underlying causal structure that we think is responsible for the superficial regularities in the data.<br /> * An accepted theory is supposed to carve nature at its joints; the theoretical entities and laws are supposed to tell you what there is and what it must do.<br /> * A test of theoreticity is the nature of our surprise at violations of the theory. If we are committed to the theory, such violations should strike us not only as surprising but as being impossible and unbelievable in an important and strong way.<br /> * A theory, in contrast to a mere empirical generalization, makes predictions about a wide variety of evidence, including evidence that played no role in the theory's initial construction<br /> * The ability to produce wide-ranging predictions is perhaps the most obvious pragmatic benefit of science, and it may also be the most important evolutionary benefit of developing theorizing abilities. The evolutionary value of a system that leads to accurate and wide-ranging predictions should be obvious. In fact, making accurate predictions about the behavior of the world and your fellow organisms is the sine qua non of cognition.<br /> * Theories produce interpretations of evidence, not simply descriptions and typologies of it. Indeed, theories strongly influence which pieces of evidence we consider salient or important. Theory-driven interpretations help to solve what computer scientists call &quot;the frame problem&quot;. Theories provide a way of deciding which evidence is relevant to a particular problem<br /> * What we mean by saying that we've explained something is simply that we can give an abstract, coherent, causal account of it. We might say that explanation is to cognition as orgasm is to reproduction. <br /> * We might speculate that we were designed with a theorizing drive and that explanation is a symptom of that drive in action.<br /> * Theories may turn out to be inconsistent with the evidence, and because of this theories change. In fact a tenet of modern epistemology is that any aspect of a theory, even the most central ones, may change.<br /> * The initial reaction of a theory to counter-evidence may be a kind of denial. The interpretive mechanisms of the theory may treat the counter-evidence as noise, mess, not worth attending to. At a slightly later stage, the theory may develop ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses designed to account specifically for such counter-evidence. The theory gets ugly and messy instead of being beautiful and simple. The preference for beautiful theories over ugly ones plays an additional major role in theory change.<br /> * A next step requires an alternative model to the original theory. The theory may limp along for some time under the weight of its auxiliary hypotheses if no alternative way of making progress is available. The ability to fix on this alternative is the mysterious logic of discovery.<br /> * The new idea is not simply the olde idea applied to a new domain, but rather the earlier idea is itself modified to fit its role in the new theory. Moreover the fertility of the alternative idea may not be immediately recognized. Initially it may be applied only to the problematic cases.<br /> * A final important dynamic feature of theory formation is a period of intense experimentation and/or observation. This period might span both the crisis of the earlier theory (when anomalous results are being produced right and left) and the first stages of the new theory (when a whole range of new predictions become available).<br /> * In the development of the heliocentric theory of the planets:<br /> ** Auxiliary hypotheses involving more and more complex arrangements of epicycles were initially invoked to deal with counterevidence <br /> ** Later heliocentrism was introduced by Copernicus, but it continued to rely on epicycles as an auxiliary hypothesis.<br /> ** Tycho Brahe's account acknowledges many of the flaws of the Ptolemaic accounts and uses the ides of heliocentrism to deal with them, but fails to accept the central idea that the earth itself goes around the sun.<br /> ** Only with Kepler is there a really coherent heliocentric account that deals both with the anomalies and with the earlier data itself. And while, strictly speaking, experimentation on the heavenly bodies was impossible, periods of intense and detailed observation in this transitional period provided a far richer empirical base than had been available before.<br /> *This distinctive pattern of prediction, interpretation, and explanation is among the best indicators of a theoretical structure and the best ways of distinguishing the theory theory from its developmental competitors.<br /> *Infants show a kind of motivation and satisfaction that goes well beyond any immediate functional or social reward. Infants seem to have cognitive orgasms.<br /> *A person's theory is a system that assigns representations to inputs just as one's perceptual system assigns representations to visual input or one's syntactic system assigns representations to phonological input.<br /> *The representations are operated on by rules that lead to new representations; for example, the theory generates predictions. There are also distinctive functional relations between the theoretical representations and the input to them; theories predict, interpret, and explain data.<br /> *Exactly what is the input to our theory systems?<br /> *There is no atheoretical, evidential, &quot;ordinary knowledge&quot; level of representation, at least not once we get past very low level perceptual processing. All representation will be theory-laden. Even apparently &quot;ordinary&quot; kind of knowledge, like our knowledge that this is a jar and that is a table, or perhaps even that these are two objects and one is on top of the other, will be the result of the application of everyday theories.<br /> *The most important and distinctive thing about theories is the fact that the very patterns of representation that occur can alter the nature of the representational system itself.<br /> *Moreover, this system may be dynamic at yet another level. It is also possible that the very rules that restructure the relations between inputs and representations may change as a result of new input. That is, as we learn more, we also learn new ways to learn. Certainly this seems to be true in science, and it may also be true in development.<br /> *To borrow Neurath's philosophical metaphor, the theorizing view sees knowledge as a boat that we perpetually rebuild as we sail in it. At each point in our journey there may be only a limited and constrained set of alterations we can make to the boat to keep it seaworthy. In the end, however, we may end up with not a single plan or rivet from the original structure, and the process may go on indefinitely.<br /> *Presumably, creatures who constructed representations in different ways in childhood, who did not assume underlying causal structure, did not search for the simples explanation, did not falsify hypotheses when there was counter-evidence, and so on, were at an evolutionary disadvantage. In adulthood, such creatures were less good at predicting which berries were members of a poisonous natural kind, which kinds of minerals would make the most seductive body paint, or when their babies were old enough to be left alone without danger. In this sense nature itself guarantees that the system gets to an understanding of nature.<br /> <br /> == 3. Theories, Modules, and Empirical Generalizations ==<br /> <br /> * We want to argue for a kind of developmental pluralism: there are many quite different mechanisms underlying cognitive developments, and theory formation is an important one of them.<br /> <br /> * According to modularity theories, representations of the world are not constructed from evidence in the course of development. Instead, representations are produced by innate structures, modules, or constraints that have been constructed in the course of evolution. These structures may need to be triggered, but one they are triggered, they create mandatory representations of input<br /> * On the starting-state view, the child is innately endowed with a particular set of representations of input and rules operating on the representations. According to this view, such initial structures, while innate, would be defeasible; any part of them could be, and indeed will be, altered by new evidence. We propose that there are innate theories that are later modified and revised. The process of theory change and replacement begins at birth.<br /> * Certainly, this type of account seems more tractable than one in which theory-like conceptual structures are constructed from scratch from a disorganized flow of experience.<br /> * Modularity nativism, on the other hand, implies a much stronger set of claims. For Fodor, for example, modules are not only innate; they are also encapsulated and the representations that are the outcome of modules cannot be overturned by new patterns of evidence.<br /> * At least some of the structural and functional features of theories - their abstractness, coherence, and predictive and interpretive force - can also be found in modules.<br /> * According to the theory theory, input is evidence. It radically alters the nature of theoretical concepts.<br /> * A theorizing mechanism is a representational system that reorganizes itself in response to input. It is an inherently developmental system. This leads to a distinctive set of developmental predictions. The theory theory predicts a succession of different theories, each replacing the earlier theory<br /> * Modular representations do not lead to predictions through some set of inductive or deductive generalizations or through a process of theory testing, confirmation and disconfirmation. They lead to predictions because they are specifically designed by evolution to do so.<br /> <br /> * Some theories in cognitive science have proposed that knowledge consists of empirical generalizations. &quot;Scripts&quot; are an example.<br /> * Like theories, but unlike modules, empirical generalizations, scripts, narratives, and nets are defeasible.<br /> * When we want deeper explanatory adequacy or wider predictive power, we turn from scripts to theories, even when we are talking about restaurants.<br /> * Modules must help to provide the input to theorizing processes. On any view, there are encapsulated atheoretical processes that take us from patterns of stimulation at the retina to patterns of representation in the visual cortex.<br /> * How far up, as it were, do these modular process go? Where is the border between modules and theories, between the periphery and the center?<br /> * A lesson of the cognitive revolution is that phenomenology does not, in general, recapitulate epistemology. On this view, many representations that are theoretical, in the sense of being revisable and defeasible in theory-like ways, might have much of the direct, vivid phenomenology of perception.<br /> * Empirical generalizations often seem to play a crucial role in theory change. Almost by definition, they are the kind of knowledge that provides us with counter-evidence to the predictions of the theory.<br /> * On our view, modules, theories, and empirical generalizations are all in play literally from birth. Innate theories will assign powerful, abstract, and predictive representations to the outputs of modules. New information coming into the cognitive system will be represented in terms of these theories. Some relations among the inputs will not, however, be predicted by the theories; they will constitute empirical generalizations. Eventually, some of these kinds of inputs will lead to a revision of the theory, the modular outputs will be assigned new representations by the new theory, and so on.<br /> * In the same way that technological advances enable or facilitate change in science, so information processing advances might enable or facilitate theory change in children.<br /> * The most significant alternative to modularity accounts in syntactic development is not the theory theory but rather various functionalist theories that emphasize the role of social interaction in language acquisition. Assimilating all cognitive development to the model of socialization is, however, a dreadful mistake.<br /> <br /> = II: Evidence for the Theory Theory =<br /> == 4. The Child's Theory of Appearances ==<br /> == 5. The Child's Theory of Actions ==<br /> == 6. The Child's Theory of Kinds ==<br /> = III: Theories and Language =<br /> == 7. Language and Thought ==<br /> == 8. The Darwinian Conclusion ==</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Words,_Thoughts,_and_Theories&diff=1588 2026-09-27T10:36:57Z

<p>Robert.adlington: /* 3. Theories, Modules, and Empirical Generalizations */</p> <hr /> <div>== 1. The Other Socratic Method ==<br /> <br /> * The child treats the adult language as another source of information about the structure of the world, along with her own experience. While the child is inferring the structure of the outside world, she is also untangling the structure of language itself, and she may use solutions in one area as clues to solutions in the other.<br /> * Ultimately, our motivation for watching and talking to children is the same as Socrates'. The most central questions in cognitive science are questions that only they can answer.<br /> <br /> = I: The Theory Theory =<br /> == 2. The Scientist as Child ==<br /> <br /> * Science is cognitive almost by definition, insofar as cognition is about how minds arrive at veridical conceptions of the world.<br /> * A cognitive view of science might provide a useful middle ground, even a bridge, between logical and sociological views of science.<br /> * Quite typically, underlying any human cognitive activity is an abstract structure that is not at all apparent in superficial phenomenology or practice.<br /> * From an evolutionary point of view, three of the most distinctive features of human beings are their long, protected immaturity, the plasticity of their behavior, and their ability to adapt to an extremely wide variety of environments. Equipping human children with particularly powerful and flexible cognitive devices might be an important part of this picture. Indeed, we might think of childhood as a period when many of the requirements for survival are suspended so that children can concentrate on acquiring a veridical picture of the particular physical and social world in which they find themselves.<br /> * Once, as children, we have engaged in the theorizing necessary to specify the features of our world, most of us most of the time may simply go on to the central evolutionary business of feeding and reproducing. But, we suggest, these powerful theorizing abilities continue to allow all of us some of the time and some of us, namely professional scientists, much of the time to continue to discover more and more about the world around us.<br /> * A characteristic lesson of the cognitive revolution is that human beings (or, for that matter, machines) can perform extremely complex feats of information processing without any phenomenology at all. It is rather characteristic of human cognition that it is largely inaccessible to conscious reflection.<br /> * Children, no less than scientists, develop their understanding of the world in the context of a society that already has much knowledge of the world. they live in a rich social structure with much opportunity for contradiction, instruction, and the linguistic transmission of information.<br /> * We might argue that much of the social structure of science is an attempt to replicate the privileged sociological conditions of infancy. Aside from the division of labor, the social hierarchy largely determines who will get the leisure and equipment to do cognitive work and who other scientists should listen to. The infant solves these problems without needing elaborate social arrangements.<br /> * What happens when the theorizing mechanisms are faced with a causal problem but have no relevant evidence to operate on? What happens, we suggest, is magic, a combination of narrative, deference, and association.<br /> * In the course of developing an account of the mind, children postulate such mental entities as perceptions, beliefs, and desires as a way of explaining ordinary human behavior.<br /> * It is not that children are little scientists but that scientists are big children. Scientific progress is possible because scientists employ cognitive processes that are first seen in very young children.<br /> <br /> ==== Theories: ====<br /> * Are always constructed with reference to evidence.<br /> * Include entities and laws that are postulated or recruited from elsewhere to explain evidence.<br /> * The entities postulated by a theory are closely, &quot;lawfully&quot;, interrelated with one another.<br /> * Appeal to some underlying causal structure that we think is responsible for the superficial regularities in the data.<br /> * An accepted theory is supposed to carve nature at its joints; the theoretical entities and laws are supposed to tell you what there is and what it must do.<br /> * A test of theoreticity is the nature of our surprise at violations of the theory. If we are committed to the theory, such violations should strike us not only as surprising but as being impossible and unbelievable in an important and strong way.<br /> * A theory, in contrast to a mere empirical generalization, makes predictions about a wide variety of evidence, including evidence that played no role in the theory's initial construction<br /> * The ability to produce wide-ranging predictions is perhaps the most obvious pragmatic benefit of science, and it may also be the most important evolutionary benefit of developing theorizing abilities. The evolutionary value of a system that leads to accurate and wide-ranging predictions should be obvious. In fact, making accurate predictions about the behavior of the world and your fellow organisms is the sine qua non of cognition.<br /> * Theories produce interpretations of evidence, not simply descriptions and typologies of it. Indeed, theories strongly influence which pieces of evidence we consider salient or important. Theory-driven interpretations help to solve what computer scientists call &quot;the frame problem&quot;. Theories provide a way of deciding which evidence is relevant to a particular problem<br /> * What we mean by saying that we've explained something is simply that we can give an abstract, coherent, causal account of it. We might say that explanation is to cognition as orgasm is to reproduction. <br /> * We might speculate that we were designed with a theorizing drive and that explanation is a symptom of that drive in action.<br /> * Theories may turn out to be inconsistent with the evidence, and because of this theories change. In fact a tenet of modern epistemology is that any aspect of a theory, even the most central ones, may change.<br /> * The initial reaction of a theory to counter-evidence may be a kind of denial. The interpretive mechanisms of the theory may treat the counter-evidence as noise, mess, not worth attending to. At a slightly later stage, the theory may develop ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses designed to account specifically for such counter-evidence. The theory gets ugly and messy instead of being beautiful and simple. The preference for beautiful theories over ugly ones plays an additional major role in theory change.<br /> * A next step requires an alternative model to the original theory. The theory may limp along for some time under the weight of its auxiliary hypotheses if no alternative way of making progress is available. The ability to fix on this alternative is the mysterious logic of discovery.<br /> * The new idea is not simply the olde idea applied to a new domain, but rather the earlier idea is itself modified to fit its role in the new theory. Moreover the fertility of the alternative idea may not be immediately recognized. Initially it may be applied only to the problematic cases.<br /> * A final important dynamic feature of theory formation is a period of intense experimentation and/or observation. This period might span both the crisis of the earlier theory (when anomalous results are being produced right and left) and the first stages of the new theory (when a whole range of new predictions become available).<br /> * In the development of the heliocentric theory of the planets:<br /> ** Auxiliary hypotheses involving more and more complex arrangements of epicycles were initially invoked to deal with counterevidence <br /> ** Later heliocentrism was introduced by Copernicus, but it continued to rely on epicycles as an auxiliary hypothesis.<br /> ** Tycho Brahe's account acknowledges many of the flaws of the Ptolemaic accounts and uses the ides of heliocentrism to deal with them, but fails to accept the central idea that the earth itself goes around the sun.<br /> ** Only with Kepler is there a really coherent heliocentric account that deals both with the anomalies and with the earlier data itself. And while, strictly speaking, experimentation on the heavenly bodies was impossible, periods of intense and detailed observation in this transitional period provided a far richer empirical base than had been available before.<br /> *This distinctive pattern of prediction, interpretation, and explanation is among the best indicators of a theoretical structure and the best ways of distinguishing the theory theory from its developmental competitors.<br /> *Infants show a kind of motivation and satisfaction that goes well beyond any immediate functional or social reward. Infants seem to have cognitive orgasms.<br /> *A person's theory is a system that assigns representations to inputs just as one's perceptual system assigns representations to visual input or one's syntactic system assigns representations to phonological input.<br /> *The representations are operated on by rules that lead to new representations; for example, the theory generates predictions. There are also distinctive functional relations between the theoretical representations and the input to them; theories predict, interpret, and explain data.<br /> *Exactly what is the input to our theory systems?<br /> *There is no atheoretical, evidential, &quot;ordinary knowledge&quot; level of representation, at least not once we get past very low level perceptual processing. All representation will be theory-laden. Even apparently &quot;ordinary&quot; kind of knowledge, like our knowledge that this is a jar and that is a table, or perhaps even that these are two objects and one is on top of the other, will be the result of the application of everyday theories.<br /> *The most important and distinctive thing about theories is the fact that the very patterns of representation that occur can alter the nature of the representational system itself.<br /> *Moreover, this system may be dynamic at yet another level. It is also possible that the very rules that restructure the relations between inputs and representations may change as a result of new input. That is, as we learn more, we also learn new ways to learn. Certainly this seems to be true in science, and it may also be true in development.<br /> *To borrow Neurath's philosophical metaphor, the theorizing view sees knowledge as a boat that we perpetually rebuild as we sail in it. At each point in our journey there may be only a limited and constrained set of alterations we can make to the boat to keep it seaworthy. In the end, however, we may end up with not a single plan or rivet from the original structure, and the process may go on indefinitely.<br /> *Presumably, creatures who constructed representations in different ways in childhood, who did not assume underlying causal structure, did not search for the simples explanation, did not falsify hypotheses when there was counter-evidence, and so on, were at an evolutionary disadvantage. In adulthood, such creatures were less good at predicting which berries were members of a poisonous natural kind, which kinds of minerals would make the most seductive body paint, or when their babies were old enough to be left alone without danger. In this sense nature itself guarantees that the system gets to an understanding of nature.<br /> <br /> == 3. Theories, Modules, and Empirical Generalizations ==<br /> <br /> * We want to argue for a kind of developmental pluralism: there are many quite different mechanisms underlying cognitive developments, and theory formation is an important one of them.<br /> * According to modularity theories, representations of the world are not constructed from evidence in the course of development. Instead, representations are produced by innate structures, modules, or constraints that have been constructed in the course of evolution. These structures may need to be triggered, but one they are triggered, they create mandatory representations of input<br /> * On the starting-state view, the child is innately endowed with a particular set of representations of input and rules operating on the representations. According to this view, such initial structures, while innate, would be defeasible; any part of them could be, and indeed will be, altered by new evidence. We propose that there are innate theories that are later modified and revised. The process of theory change and replacement begins at birth.<br /> * Certainly, this type of account seems more tractable than one in which theory-like conceptual structures are constructed from scratch from a disorganized flow of experience.<br /> * Modularity nativism, on the other hand, implies a much stronger set of claims. For Fodor, for example, modules are not only innate; they are also encapsulated and the representations that are the outcome of modules cannot be overturned by new patterns of evidence.<br /> * At least some of the structural and functional features of theories - their abstractness, coherence, and predictive and interpretive force - can also be found in modules. <br /> <br /> = II: Evidence for the Theory Theory =<br /> == 4. The Child's Theory of Appearances ==<br /> == 5. The Child's Theory of Actions ==<br /> == 6. The Child's Theory of Kinds ==<br /> = III: Theories and Language =<br /> == 7. Language and Thought ==<br /> == 8. The Darwinian Conclusion ==</div>

Robert.adlington https://wiki.adlington.fr:443/index.php?title=Words,_Thoughts,_and_Theories&diff=1587 2026-09-27T10:27:52Z

<p>Robert.adlington: </p> <hr /> <div>== 1. The Other Socratic Method ==<br /> <br /> * The child treats the adult language as another source of information about the structure of the world, along with her own experience. While the child is inferring the structure of the outside world, she is also untangling the structure of language itself, and she may use solutions in one area as clues to solutions in the other.<br /> * Ultimately, our motivation for watching and talking to children is the same as Socrates'. The most central questions in cognitive science are questions that only they can answer.<br /> <br /> = I: The Theory Theory =<br /> == 2. The Scientist as Child ==<br /> <br /> * Science is cognitive almost by definition, insofar as cognition is about how minds arrive at veridical conceptions of the world.<br /> * A cognitive view of science might provide a useful middle ground, even a bridge, between logical and sociological views of science.<br /> * Quite typically, underlying any human cognitive activity is an abstract structure that is not at all apparent in superficial phenomenology or practice.<br /> * From an evolutionary point of view, three of the most distinctive features of human beings are their long, protected immaturity, the plasticity of their behavior, and their ability to adapt to an extremely wide variety of environments. Equipping human children with particularly powerful and flexible cognitive devices might be an important part of this picture. Indeed, we might think of childhood as a period when many of the requirements for survival are suspended so that children can concentrate on acquiring a veridical picture of the particular physical and social world in which they find themselves.<br /> * Once, as children, we have engaged in the theorizing necessary to specify the features of our world, most of us most of the time may simply go on to the central evolutionary business of feeding and reproducing. But, we suggest, these powerful theorizing abilities continue to allow all of us some of the time and some of us, namely professional scientists, much of the time to continue to discover more and more about the world around us.<br /> * A characteristic lesson of the cognitive revolution is that human beings (or, for that matter, machines) can perform extremely complex feats of information processing without any phenomenology at all. It is rather characteristic of human cognition that it is largely inaccessible to conscious reflection.<br /> * Children, no less than scientists, develop their understanding of the world in the context of a society that already has much knowledge of the world. they live in a rich social structure with much opportunity for contradiction, instruction, and the linguistic transmission of information.<br /> * We might argue that much of the social structure of science is an attempt to replicate the privileged sociological conditions of infancy. Aside from the division of labor, the social hierarchy largely determines who will get the leisure and equipment to do cognitive work and who other scientists should listen to. The infant solves these problems without needing elaborate social arrangements.<br /> * What happens when the theorizing mechanisms are faced with a causal problem but have no relevant evidence to operate on? What happens, we suggest, is magic, a combination of narrative, deference, and association.<br /> * In the course of developing an account of the mind, children postulate such mental entities as perceptions, beliefs, and desires as a way of explaining ordinary human behavior.<br /> * It is not that children are little scientists but that scientists are big children. Scientific progress is possible because scientists employ cognitive processes that are first seen in very young children.<br /> <br /> ==== Theories: ====<br /> * Are always constructed with reference to evidence.<br /> * Include entities and laws that are postulated or recruited from elsewhere to explain evidence.<br /> * The entities postulated by a theory are closely, &quot;lawfully&quot;, interrelated with one another.<br /> * Appeal to some underlying causal structure that we think is responsible for the superficial regularities in the data.<br /> * An accepted theory is supposed to carve nature at its joints; the theoretical entities and laws are supposed to tell you what there is and what it must do.<br /> * A test of theoreticity is the nature of our surprise at violations of the theory. If we are committed to the theory, such violations should strike us not only as surprising but as being impossible and unbelievable in an important and strong way.<br /> * A theory, in contrast to a mere empirical generalization, makes predictions about a wide variety of evidence, including evidence that played no role in the theory's initial construction<br /> * The ability to produce wide-ranging predictions is perhaps the most obvious pragmatic benefit of science, and it may also be the most important evolutionary benefit of developing theorizing abilities. The evolutionary value of a system that leads to accurate and wide-ranging predictions should be obvious. In fact, making accurate predictions about the behavior of the world and your fellow organisms is the sine qua non of cognition.<br /> * Theories produce interpretations of evidence, not simply descriptions and typologies of it. Indeed, theories strongly influence which pieces of evidence we consider salient or important. Theory-driven interpretations help to solve what computer scientists call &quot;the frame problem&quot;. Theories provide a way of deciding which evidence is relevant to a particular problem<br /> * What we mean by saying that we've explained something is simply that we can give an abstract, coherent, causal account of it. We might say that explanation is to cognition as orgasm is to reproduction. <br /> * We might speculate that we were designed with a theorizing drive and that explanation is a symptom of that drive in action.<br /> * Theories may turn out to be inconsistent with the evidence, and because of this theories change. In fact a tenet of modern epistemology is that any aspect of a theory, even the most central ones, may change.<br /> * The initial reaction of a theory to counter-evidence may be a kind of denial. The interpretive mechanisms of the theory may treat the counter-evidence as noise, mess, not worth attending to. At a slightly later stage, the theory may develop ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses designed to account specifically for such counter-evidence. The theory gets ugly and messy instead of being beautiful and simple. The preference for beautiful theories over ugly ones plays an additional major role in theory change.<br /> * A next step requires an alternative model to the original theory. The theory may limp along for some time under the weight of its auxiliary hypotheses if no alternative way of making progress is available. The ability to fix on this alternative is the mysterious logic of discovery.<br /> * The new idea is not simply the olde idea applied to a new domain, but rather the earlier idea is itself modified to fit its role in the new theory. Moreover the fertility of the alternative idea may not be immediately recognized. Initially it may be applied only to the problematic cases.<br /> * A final important dynamic feature of theory formation is a period of intense experimentation and/or observation. This period might span both the crisis of the earlier theory (when anomalous results are being produced right and left) and the first stages of the new theory (when a whole range of new predictions become available).<br /> * In the development of the heliocentric theory of the planets:<br /> ** Auxiliary hypotheses involving more and more complex arrangements of epicycles were initially invoked to deal with counterevidence <br /> ** Later heliocentrism was introduced by Copernicus, but it continued to rely on epicycles as an auxiliary hypothesis.<br /> ** Tycho Brahe's account acknowledges many of the flaws of the Ptolemaic accounts and uses the ides of heliocentrism to deal with them, but fails to accept the central idea that the earth itself goes around the sun.<br /> ** Only with Kepler is there a really coherent heliocentric account that deals both with the anomalies and with the earlier data itself. And while, strictly speaking, experimentation on the heavenly bodies was impossible, periods of intense and detailed observation in this transitional period provided a far richer empirical base than had been available before.<br /> *This distinctive pattern of prediction, interpretation, and explanation is among the best indicators of a theoretical structure and the best ways of distinguishing the theory theory from its developmental competitors.<br /> *Infants show a kind of motivation and satisfaction that goes well beyond any immediate functional or social reward. Infants seem to have cognitive orgasms.<br /> *A person's theory is a system that assigns representations to inputs just as one's perceptual system assigns representations to visual input or one's syntactic system assigns representations to phonological input.<br /> *The representations are operated on by rules that lead to new representations; for example, the theory generates predictions. There are also distinctive functional relations between the theoretical representations and the input to them; theories predict, interpret, and explain data.<br /> *Exactly what is the input to our theory systems?<br /> *There is no atheoretical, evidential, &quot;ordinary knowledge&quot; level of representation, at least not once we get past very low level perceptual processing. All representation will be theory-laden. Even apparently &quot;ordinary&quot; kind of knowledge, like our knowledge that this is a jar and that is a table, or perhaps even that these are two objects and one is on top of the other, will be the result of the application of everyday theories.<br /> *The most important and distinctive thing about theories is the fact that the very patterns of representation that occur can alter the nature of the representational system itself.<br /> *Moreover, this system may be dynamic at yet another level. It is also possible that the very rules that restructure the relations between inputs and representations may change as a result of new input. That is, as we learn more, we also learn new ways to learn. Certainly this seems to be true in science, and it may also be true in development.<br /> *To borrow Neurath's philosophical metaphor, the theorizing view sees knowledge as a boat that we perpetually rebuild as we sail in it. At each point in our journey there may be only a limited and constrained set of alterations we can make to the boat to keep it seaworthy. In the end, however, we may end up with not a single plan or rivet from the original structure, and the process may go on indefinitely.<br /> *Presumably, creatures who constructed representations in different ways in childhood, who did not assume underlying causal structure, did not search for the simples explanation, did not falsify hypotheses when there was counter-evidence, and so on, were at an evolutionary disadvantage. In adulthood, such creatures were less good at predicting which berries were members of a poisonous natural kind, which kinds of minerals would make the most seductive body paint, or when their babies were old enough to be left alone without danger. In this sense nature itself guarantees that the system gets to an understanding of nature.<br /> <br /> == 3. Theories, Modules, and Empirical Generalizations ==<br /> = II: Evidence for the Theory Theory =<br /> == 4. The Child's Theory of Appearances ==<br /> == 5. The Child's Theory of Actions ==<br /> == 6. The Child's Theory of Kinds ==<br /> = III: Theories and Language =<br /> == 7. Language and Thought ==<br /> == 8. The Darwinian Conclusion ==</div>

Robert.adlington