Plato's stave: academic cracks philosopher's musical code

"It may sound like the plot of a Dan Brown novel, but an academic at the University of Manchester claims to have cracked a mathematical and musical code in the works of Plato. Jay Kennedy, a historian and philosopher of science, described his findings as 'like opening a tomb and discovering new works by Plato.'"

Article in today's Guardian

Do Thought Experiments Tell Us Anything? - London, 30 June

Leading a Big Ideas discussion at the Wheatsheaf pub at 8pm. Full details here.

Two "new" podcasts

I've just discovered that there are podcasts of two talks I gave at the RSA's website.

The first is about The Duck That Won The Lottery - which in paperback is Do They Think You're Stupid?, and was given at the Birmingham Book Festival in October 2008. You can listen here.

The second is about Complaint, and was given at the RSA in London in June 2008. You can listen or download it here.

Belief's lowest common denominator

"Human beings are pattern seekers who tend to see purposeful agency where there is really nothing but blind nature. I'm pretty sure that is what, at root, makes so many people believe that there is something more to life than life, that there is some higher order behind, above or underneath the natural world. Like many of the most universal beliefs in human history, this reveals human flaws, not divine laws."

Latest post at the Guardian's Comment is Free Belief

June podcast

This edition is all about “How to Live” and was recorded live at the Arnolfini Centre as part of Bristol Festival of Ideas in May. Joining me are John Cottingham, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Reading; Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer; and Michael Foley, author of The Age of Absurdity.
Click here to listen or download now, or download from


BPM is produced by Julian Baggini in association with The Philosophers’ Magazine.

False witness

"There is something of the pantomime to recent debates concerning science and religion, the question of their compatibility answered with alternating choruses of "Oh no they aren't" and "Oh yes they are". One would hope, therefore, that the entry, stage left, of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson might raise the level of the dialogue. But although the arguments in Absence of Mind are eloquent and beguiling, what might look like subtlety is too often plain sloppiness."

Review in June 14 edition of the New Statesman

The faces of evil

"The idea of evil, remarks Norwegian philosopher Lars Svendsen, has in recent decades been seen as “a holdover from a mythical, Christian worldview whose time had already passed”. But the fact that Svendsen’s A Philosophy of Evil is being published within weeks of literary critic Terry Eagleton’s On Evil and philosopher Tzvetan Todorov’s Memory as a Remedy for Evil suggests that the secular world is not quite ready to dispense with the concept of evil just yet. At the same time, a new reissue of theologian John Hick’s 1966 classic Evil and the God of Love shows there’s still life in the Christian perspective too. Perhaps this resurgence of interest is inevitable, for even though evil as an idea may have been out of fashion, as a reality it has never gone away. Attempts to do without the word in the face of genocide, torture and flagrant disregard for life, collapse into euphemistic absurdity."

Review of four evil-related books in this weekend's FT

There is no one either good or bad, but circumstances make them so

"The desire to find the fatal flaw is based on a widespread but false assumption that character is the only way to unlock the secrets of a killer. Either the person is depraved, which explains everything, or the person acted completely "out of character" and it's all just a mystery, a case of someone going mad. There is no halfway house. We seem to have a deep faith that not only do people have a character which determines how they would act in different situations, but that we know what those characters are like."

Not quite the headline I would have chosen, but it is indeed my piece in today's Independent

Humanism, Philosophy and the Arts - 26 June

Talking on film and ethics at this one-day conference at London's Conway hall. Full details here

Religion, Respect and Freedom - Exeter, 2 June

Giving a talk at the invitation of the Devon Humanists tonight at 7.30 at the Phoenix Arts Centre. Full details here.