Tag: featured

A Brief Reminder that the World is Magic

ByTucker Sigourney June 13, 2023 0 Comments
“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.”- C. S. Lewis, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader You have heard it said that the word is governed by "scientific laws"—that, at its smallest scales, the world is a collection of particles of such-and-such a sort (or fields, or...

You Can Be Intellectually Humble and Dogmatic

ByPaul Rezkalla January 5, 2021 1 Comment
“Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” -G.K. Chesterton There’s a modern temptation—one that perhaps academics are particularly susceptible to—to equate intellectual humility and a sort of agnosticism…a receptivity to alternatives…a willingness to entertain all viewpoints. The less...

You Can’t Just “Do Your Own Research”

ByPaul Rezkalla September 10, 2020 2 Comments
“Do Your Own Research.” I’ve seen this phrase more times in the last couple of months than I have, probably, in my entire lifetime. It’s often posted in ALL CAPS and served with a healthy dose of exclamation points—or exclamation “marks” to our UK readers (not that we have any, or any readers, at all, for that matter). Links to pop-science blogs about mask inefficacy, YouTube...

The Politics of Imponderables

ByMarshall Thompson June 1, 2020 0 Comments
What follows is a reposting of an article originally appearing on the Prindle Post. As I glance over the front page (or, let’s be real, the home page) of various newspapers, nearly every story is about either COVID-19 or U.S. racial injustice. Here I want to pause and look not at the stories themselves, but at the discourse developing around both stories. I want to look at the moral outrage we...