The Red Queen’s first prophet, Leigh Van Valen, was a devout student of evolution. In 173, he was searching for a phrase to express a new discovery he had made while studying marine fossils. The discovery was that chances that a family of animals goes extinct does not depend on how long that family has … Read more
The first chapter of The Red Queen opens with a discussion of the concept of “red queen” evolution, which is named after Lewis Carroll’s character in Through the Looking Glass. This concept says that species must constantly evolve in order to survive in an ever-changing environment. Ridley then delves into the theory of evolution itself, … Read more
Aside from Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes was a pragmatic political philosopher and even more pragmatic than Machiavelli he was an empiricist who also was mathematical. Aversion is bad. Attraction is good. There is no objective morality, there is no theoretical way of mending two opposing points of view. There is no such thing as static … Read more
Francis Bacon’s most important book, The Advancement of Learning, is remarkably modern. He is commonly regarded as the originator of the saying ‘Knowledge is power’. The basis of his philosophy was practical: to give mankind mastery over the forces of nature by means of scientific discoveries and inventions. He held that philosophy should be separate … Read more
Machiavelli was shocking, but other philosophers would be equally shocking if they were free from bullshit. Such honesty about political dishonesty would have been hardly possible in another age, except perhaps in Greece during the time of the sophists. When Savonarola dominated Florence in his twenties, his miserable end made an impression on Machiavelli, for … Read more
“A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges … Read more
Chapter XIII: ST Thomas Aquinas St Thomas’s most important work was the Summa contra Gentiles (1259–64). It tried to establish the truth of Christianity by arguments to a non-Christian, likely a man versed in the philosophy of the Arabs. His other book, Summa Theologiae, is of equal importance, but it assumes the truth of Christianity before … Read more
Zeno, the founder of Stoicism (a school of thought that appealed to rulers), was a Phoenician. When it comes to preaching about the superiority of slaves or the brotherhood of man, there are few philosophies that could compare to Stoicism during that moment in history. Stoicism, unlike the earlier purely Greek philosophies, is emotionally narrow and … Read more
Chapter XXVII: The Epicureans The philosophy of Epicurus, like all philosophies at the time with the exception of Scepticism, was designed to secure tranquility. Pleasure was the good. He says in a book on The End of Life, ‘I know not how I can conceive the good, if I withdraw the pleasures of taste and withdraw … Read more
Aristotle was the last philosopher to describe the world cheerfully. Diogynenes and the Cynics who came after saw the world as something to recoil from, as something dangerous and doomed. In the third century BC, Cynicism became the most popular doctrine. But it did not appeal to those who had political, scientific, or artistic ambitions, … Read more