Conventional scientific theories can’t explain telepathy and precognition. Nor can they provide a convincing explanation for consciousness. The usual scientific assumption is that the material world is all there is. To explain anomalous evidence, should this assumption be superseded by… Read More ›
Books and Book Reviews
Book Review contributions are single-authored or multiple-authored reviews of recent books in the area of social epistemology.
Review: John Troyer’s Technologies of the Human Corpse, Mark D. West
In some ways, we moderns are as much in the dark as were the ancients when we contemplate death. Currently holding sway in the West is the “metabolic definition,” as laid out by Schrödinger in 1944, which suggests that life… Read More ›
Review: Daisy B. Herndon’s American Nuclear Deception: Why the Port Chicago Experiment Must be Investigated , Lee Basham
As the African proverb says, until the Lion tells the story, the glory goes to the hunter. — Daisy B. Herndon As I understand, the Lion was needlessly assassinated, and the hunter thought the hero.[1] Epistemology studies the acquisition and… Read More ›
A Match and Some Gasoline, Des Hewitt
Michael Gibson’s Paper Belt on Fire: How Renegade Investors Sparked a Revolt Against the University is inextricably linked to my own interests: the university and its purpose. You might think that I will find it an easy book to review…. Read More ›
Nothing to Lose but Our (Digital) Chains! Adam Riggio
Digital Humanism: A Philosophy for the 21st Century, Christian Fuchs’s latest book, is a collection of essays that are linked, broadly, through examining different aspects of the digital humanities and humanity’s becoming digital. The best essays in the book cover… Read More ›
Appreciating and Elaborating on Raphael Sassower’s Review of Mad Hazard, Stephen Turner
I appreciate Raphael Sassower’s (2022) efforts to make sense of my memoir—Mad Hazard: A Life in Social Theory (2022a)—and hope in this response to make a little more sense out of the issues he raises. He does a good job… Read More ›
A Response to Sheldon Richmond’s Review of Architecture and Objects, Graham Harman
Here I would like to respond briefly to Sheldon Richmond’s “The Inner Life of Objects,” which describes itself as a critical review of my book Architecture and Objects (Richmond 2022; Harman 2022). His review is by no means bitingly critical,… Read More ›
A Hazard Called Sociology: Review of Stephen Turner’s Mad Hazard: A Life in Social Theory, Raphael Sassower
Years ago, I traveled on a sabbatical to South America and returned with what I thought was a derivative of my companion book on the trip, Jacques Derrida’s The Post Card (1987), thinking my thoughts and feelings deserved to be… Read More ›
Love in a Cold Climate, Des Hewitt
Sociology is often defined as the study of the relationship between the individual, the economy and the state, and the institutions and cultures that arise as a consequence of this relationship.[1] What holds this relationship together is usually called the… Read More ›
The Inner Life of Objects: A Critical Review of Architecture and Objects, Sheldon Richmond
To be is to be an object. Objects are not to be identified with any particular entity, such as material things, spiritual things, abstractions, qualities, qualia, essences. Nor can objects be completely defined by a finite set of disjunctive statements…. Read More ›