Author Archives: Jesús Zamora Bonilla
From Constantine to Justinian: the triumph of Christian ‘terrorism’
One book that has caused much stir in the past months is Catherine Nixey’s The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World. I confess I approached the book with some skepticism, for ‘the classical world’, I thought, […]
Has theoretical physics become a sleeping beauty?
The progress that physics experienced during the 20th century was probably one of the greatest and most everlasting successes of the humankind. Discovering the hidden and minute composition of matter and energy, as well as realising that the […]
On scientific co-authorship (& 3): Intelectual property rights and the individualization of items of knowledge
In our previous entries, we asked why it is that collaborating scientists prefer to publish one single paper in which all their contributions are ‘mixed’, instead of one individual paper by each co-author (with quotations to the other collaborator’s […]
On scientific co-authorship (2): An economic diversion, Ronald Coase’s theory of the firm
Let me leave aside for a moment our talk about scientists and papers, and bring up a topic that, at first sight, might seem totally unconnected: Ronald Coase’s economic theory about the firm and the allocation of property rights. […]
On scientific co-authorship (1): Why do scientists publish together?
The allocation of merit to individual scientists is one of the crucial aspects of how scientific systems work. Publication of ‘papers’ in important journals, and, still most significantly, citation of those papers in the works of colleagues, is perhaps […]
The Enlightenment wars (& 3): but...what kind of humanism do we need?
In the two previous entries (1, 2) of this series I described the different diagnoses that Marina Garcés and Steven Pinker make of humanity’s current predicament, without concealing my sympathies for the latter’s: with up […]
The Enlightenment wars (2): the details
Are we in the best of the times, as Steven Pinker asserts? Or do we live in a ‘posthumous’ society, to say it with the favourite image of Marina Garcés? As I told in the previous entry, it is […]
The Enlightenment wars (1): progress or decline?
Keep in mind the word Enlightenment, because it’s very likely that it will be one of the most fashionable concepts within the next months. At a global level, Steven Pinker’s new book, Enlightenment now, will probably carry the […]
Humanities: how not to defend them, and how to do it (2)
In the past entry I presented a criticism to a few common arguments (or rather, topics) that we often find ‘in defence’ of the humanities. Those arguments were problematic not only because their fallacious nature, but because they only […]
Humanities: how not to defend them, and how to do it (1)
Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas (Plato is my friend, but Truth is still a better friend of mine), they say Aristotle whispered when he explained the arguments with which he demolished the theories of his teacher, whose school, […]