Clive Thompson on the Creative Imagination of Coders
Clive Thompson explores the origin stories of coders and recognizes they share one common character trait: a creative imagination.
Susanne Langer on Creative Philosophy in a New Key
In Susanne Langer’s 1942 book, Philosophy In a New Key, the first American female philosopher challenges thinkers to embrace a new creative philosophy.
The Invisible in Haruki Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
In Haruki Murakami’s short story, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, he offers insight into the phenomenology of sound taught by Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Walter Benjamin on Explosive Reading and the Storyteller
Walter Benjamin considers The Storyteller an artistic observer capabale of seeing and communicating beauty in a way that transforms readers and listeners.
Ernst Cassirer on the Gift of the Artist
Keywords Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man, Lewis Hyde, Seeing, Artistic Observation, Gift, William Blake “The past is preserved only in darkness, the future is not raised to the level of an image, as something which can be anticipated. It is the symbolic expression which first creates the possibility of looking backward and looking forward… […]
Ludwig Wittgenstein on the Ladder Illusion
Keywords Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein’s Ladder, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus “Pay attention to the patter by means of which we convince someone of a truth of a mathematical proposition. It tells us something about the function of this conviction. I mean the patter by which intuition is awakened.” Ludwig Wittgenstein For Rudolf Otto, silence anticipates the numinous, […]
Kate Mascarenhas’s The Psychology of Time Travel
Four women will invent time travel. Three will make their mark on history. Two will do anything to be remembered. One will not survive. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TIME TRAVEL Summer is here and we are cracking open a new book together. We’d love for you to join us in reading The Psychology of Time Travel […]
Narrative Architecture in Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode
Keywords Jane Alison, Narrative Architecture, Meander, Spiral, Explode “The wave is one. There’s a reason we’re drawn to it, whether viewing or watching entranced as one wave after another breaks on shore: a wave is a clear instance of energy charging static matter until that energy is spent and equilibrium returns, elegant and satisfying. Arcs […]
How to Read More by Creating a Reading Habit
“The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade.” Anthony Trollope For most teachers and professors wondering how to read more books, establishing new routines, resolutions, and goal-setting are the answer. But let’s face it: life is changing at a far more rapid […]
How Time and Space Converge to Evoke Walter Benjamin’s Aura
“The concept of aura which was proposed above with reference to historical objects may usefully be illustrated with reference to the aura of natural ones. We define aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes […]
Walter Ong’s Psychodynamics of Orality and the Reader
Keywords Walter Ong, Psychodynamics, Orality and Literacy “Until writing was invented, men lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror. Speech is a social chart of this bog.” Marshall McLuhan When we trace language from orality, characterized by the pre-socratics and […]
10 Diverse Books That Reflect Human Experience
“The book industry is focusing more on diverse voices and stories: a reflection of the real demographic of the United States, allowing all to find their stories reflected in books. Children’s publishers across the industry have put an emphasis on finding diverse authors and stories, and I believe adult publishers are accelerating their efforts as well. All voices should be represented […]
A Thousand Eyes of Curiosity With Alberto Manguel
“Now open in my eyes a thousand eyes of curiosity.” Virginia Woolf, The Waves ALBERTO MANGUEL (BORN 1948) Alberto Manguel is a proliferate writer and reader. His world travels both in and out of books converge in everything he writes. His writings explore an intimate love of reading that is arguably unparalleled by anyone alive. […]
Henri Bergson on the Cinematographic Mechanism of Thought
Keywords Henri Bergson, Cinematic Mechanism of Thought, Intuition, Cognition, Creative Mind, Elan Vital “In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would […]
William Covino on the Art of Wonder in Philosophy
“The art of rhetoric underlines the ambiguity of language; to practice the art, one remains mindful that all conclusions are provisional, tentative. The art lies not in the completion of a text, but in the transfiguration of one text — one system of possibilities — into another.” William A. Covino, The Art of Wondering REVISING […]