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Never really aware, let alone ponder about various factor which shaped my 'tastes and aversion in epistemology'. Binary thinking of right/wrong stands on the belief that there is such thing as 'truth', which human can be observed 'objectively'. This books is a refreshing reminder that we are perhaps too confident about our 'objectivity'. Viewing such as 'bias' to be eliminated is also not wise. They're: connections.

RIP Bellah, he died few weeks ago.

Got diverted following up several references that Bellah mentioned in the book, especially Barbara Herrnstein Smith's 'Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth, and The Human'.

Had I met Graeber & Bellah's work while I was in High School (perhaps with some1 who could guide me to their main idea), I would choose anthropology as my bachelor study.

Most powerful argument for armistice between science & religion I've ever encountered: '..in a culture that privilege theory, we have tended to think of.. religion and science as cognitive, as ways of knowing above all. But I have arguing.. that they are practices, not theory, ways of living rather than ways of knowing'

Never since Graeber's debt have I made highlights & notes in almost every page of a book. Maybe it's not too wise to rate a book when I only 9% done, but even if the rest of the book is not as good as the first 9% (highly unlikely) I wouldn't mind to still give it a 5*, thanks to its enlightning preface.

Love the chapter 'Religion, Utility, and All That...':

The Higgs boson is important, but it has a very well defined role. In a monotheistic universem it would be an overstatement to single out the Higgs boson as a deity. Maybe in patheistic universe, we could have many god particles..

the fun thing about reading books beyond my background is to find unintelligible explanation such as one about 'virtual particles', which 'has' following properties

1. It Doesn't exist for ever,
2. It can not 'survive' in the real world
3. Nonetheless, it can briefly come into existence, 'have' further interaction, them must disappear (!)

It surely puts a nice twist on the idea of 'reality'..

there is zen poetry in physics: ...one of the beautiful aspects of the Higgs mechanism is that it tells us about the 'richness of empty space'..

dung...

Without a physics bg, I guess one need to consult many other sources to digest this amazing discovery, whose elements are beyond our common sense. e.g: it turns out that there can never be an 'empty space'. Within empty space there are always at least two non matter: dark energy (the energy it contains) and higgs field, the mass giver of all matter, which 'takes a nonzero value but remains uniformly spread everywhere

paraphrasing Rumi: out beyond the higgs field, there is a space, I'll se you there.. :D

Its discussion on our relationship with time (biologically & culturally) complements Lee with Smolin's intriguing perspective on the reality of time in 'Time Reborn'.

This is why I like reading more than one books at once: it is more likely to find connections between various camps of ideas.

Mostly reading with TTS, finding myselft repeating the fire section over and over because it's so... umm.. delicious.

Superb books, with so many revelations and intriguing discussions in each page, lending new pair of eyes to see many things that I have taken for granted!

Minus the Sci Fi saga, I find the 'Iris' part of the first 5 chapter slightly boring and too much to bear. Forcing my way through because I really like the Blind Assassin part.