Tom chivers telegraph biography of abraham

  • Why science is better than history.
  • A pure, prototypical psychopath would score 40.
  • Tom Chivers has a particularly misguided post up The Telegraph arguing that science is better than history.

    • •

    Recent Posts

    Tom Chivers has a particularly misguided post up The Telegraph arguing that science is better than history.  Given how under siege many in the humanities feel themselves to be today, this post is unnecessarily adversarial.  Chivers does claim to recognize that history is a valuable endeavor (albeit limited in his view), but argues that if you only had time to read one kind of book, it should be books on science rather than history.

    Now, I think anyone familiar with this blog knows that I have a strong and passionate interest in science.  But saying that science should be preferred over history strikes me as saying that veggies should be preferred over grains, that sleeping should be preferred over exercise, or that reading books should be preferred over reading the news.  In other words, it strikes me as an inane incoherent recommendation.

    The fact fryst vatten, if you want to be a well rounded learned human being, you need to be well read in a lot of subjects.  I’m oc

    •

    Why science is better than history

    As I've said before, you don't actually have all that much time on the planet. A little over 4,000 weeks, and that's if you eat your 10 a day and live to your full life expectancy. Depending on how fast you read, and how easily you get distracted by Gogglebox or faffing around on Twitter, you're probably going to get through about 1,000 books in that time.

    So, from that point of view, I'm going to man the claim: if you want to understand the world, science is better than history.

    If you read a history book – say Doris Kearns Goodwin's marvellous biography of Lincoln, A Team of Rivals – you will learn how Abraham Lincoln (and his Republican rival/colleagues, Edward Bates, Salmon P Chase and William H Seward) lived. You will learn about the Civil War, and American politics and life in the 19th century, and slavery. You'll learn some stuff about how the modern Democratic and Republican parties came to be. You'

  • tom chivers telegraph biography of abraham

    • •

    Book reviews

    "In terms of literary genres, something new and enthralling is going on inside his books ... the wonderful Australian poet Les Murray is likewise on the spectrum, and the antic brilliancies of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books may be the refracted glintings of an autistic imagination. But such kinship in no way diminishes the bold and original solitariness of Tammet's forays and ambition."
    (Brad Leithauser, Wall St Journal, 6/10/17)

    "De hecho, [Tammet] afirma con rotundidad que su lengua materna no fue el inglés, sino los números, pero es capaz de escribir en un inglés pulquérrimo y también de traducir al francés los poemas del australiano Les Murray, un candidato recurrente al Nobel" (Marius Serra, La Vanguardia, 1 April 2017)

    "Acabo de leer La poesía de los números, uno de esos libros formidables que te estallan dentro de la cabeza como una supernova … escribe muy bien. En 2006 publicó una autobiografía, Nacido en un día azul, que me encantó. Pero La poesía de los númer