Who Is the Greatest Modern-Day Thinker?

Via a reader, Stephen J. Dubner in Freakonomics at The New York Times relays this question from a college student in a "core" (great books?) curriculum.

Once you’ve thought about what it means to be a thinker, then comes the hard part of thinking about who best fits the description.

Which includes the criteria for greatness, and maybe even for "Modern-Day".

So who are your nominees, and why?

Naming U. of C. research center after Nobel Prize winner has faculty split

U. of C. is the University of Chicago, and the Nobel Prize winner is Milton Friedman (1912-2006). Jodi S. Cohen reported in the Chicago Tribune, June 18, 2008,

In a letter to U. of C. President Robert Zimmer, 101 professors--about 8 percent of the university's full-time faculty--said they feared that having a center named after the conservative, free-market economist could "reinforce among the public a perception that the university's faculty lacks intellectual and ideological diversity."

(via "Diogenes" at Off the Record)

--Terrence Berres

Book culture without books?

David Carter reviews The Book is Dead (Long Live the Book) by Sherman Young, in Australian Humanities Review, March 2008

It seems appropriate to be writing this in Tokyo where a recent bestseller list showed that five of the year's most successful novels, including the top three, were first written to be read on mobile phones before being republished in book form.

(via Milt's File)

--Terrence Berres

Van Doren on Adler (2008)

In the newly-published edition of Charles Van Doren's 1985 book The Joy of Reading, one of the recommended works continues to be the Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon to Great Books of the Western World. Mr. Van Doren's revised essay includes this (p. 444).

...The work stands as a monument to the efforts of critical philosophy in our century that will long endure.

I wrote that sentence twenty years ago, and I no longer believe it to be true, although it should be. ... We talked on the phone a few weeks before [Adler's death] ... I recalled the deep sadness that accompanied his statement in that last conversation to the effect that everything he had worked and fought for throughout his life had failed. I said "No, no!" but the statement was in large part correct. ... I'm not sure that Adler's vision will ever be seen again, and I think we have lost something rich and beautiful.

(via Apocaloopsis)

--Terrence Berres

Standing Up For What You Don't Believe

Steve Fuller in TPM Online

I agreed to serve as an expert “rebuttal” witness in the first US trial to test ID [Intelligent Design] as fit for public science instruction, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005). In other words, my testimony addressed the arguments of those who thought ID had no place in science classes.

--Terrence Berres