Word: cartesian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Many years ago, Simon Blackburn tried to teach me philosophy, an endeavor I suspect he found rather frustrating. If he had written this book back then, we both might have had more fun with Cartesian dualism and the like. Blackburn has produced the one book every smart person should read to understand, and even enjoy, the key questions of philosophy, ranging from those about free will and morality to what we can really know about the world around us. Alas, he is better at explaining doubts and skepticisms and moral relativism than at charting a path out of such dilemmas...
...Cartesian model of pain, like the Cartesian model of consciousness, began to be seriously challenged in the 60s. In 1965, Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall proposed the "gate-control" model of pain, which involved a gate in the spinal cord that could increase or decrease pain impulses. What was most revolutionary about the model was not the idea of the gate per se, but the contention that the gate was controlled not just by sensory impulses, but signals that came from the brain, signals, for example, like emotions. How we felt could control what we felt...
...found Mark in Joyce's unheated basement. He hadn't expected me. This is so surreal, he said. I'm glad you exist, I replied. In a Cartesian sense at any rate, he responded. It was a little depressing, but I was proud to have done it, to have found my long lost uncle Mark. My manhunt was complete; I had finally won a scavenger hunt. (I always lost the ones with the eggs.) And there he was, not even huddled under a bridge. We chatted, but I was tired and Mark's never been good with conversation. Well...
...Corbusier loved Manhattan. He loved its newness, he loved its Cartesian regularity, above all he loved its tall buildings. He had only one reservation, which he revealed on landing in New York City in 1935. The next day, a headline in the Herald Tribune informed its readers that the celebrated architect FINDS AMERICAN SKYSCRAPERS MUCH TOO SMALL. Le Corbusier always thought big. He once proposed replacing a large part of the center of Paris with 18 sixty-story towers; that made headlines...