There is a kind of agnostic who genuinely has no opinion and so doesn’t criticise those who do. But many agnostics have a very clear opinion indeed: that the balance of probability is too fine to call. This is not suspension of belief in the face of uncertainty but the certain belief that the matter is especially uncertain.
ReadTAKING FOOD WITH A PINCH OF SALT – EDINBURGH BOOK FESTIVAL, 13 AUGUST. Talking about my book The Virtues of the Table at 3pm.
ReadThe portable personal stereo created the mindset of portable personal space. People increasingly move around in bubbles, behaving as though in their own living rooms, oblivious to others.
ReadStart with a wrong idea of the parts and, good though they may seem, the whole you try to build from them just won’t add up, and the cool, rational pursuit of the abstract general good will not lead to the real good after all.
ReadSpin doctors are out; bona fide professors are in. Or at least that’s how Ed Miliband’s office has spun his interest in the “politics of empathy”, which has led him to call on the services of one of the world’s leading researchers on autism, Simon Baron-Cohen…
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