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Don't really have time for yet another book, but this seems intriguing! We start off with semiotics and an intriguing semantic clock...as well as a Derrida reference right out of the starting block - irresistible.
Oh, and there's Zeno and mathematics too! Whoops, and there goes Plato as well- and we're not even done with page 1...

Don't really have time for yet another book, but this seems intriguing! We start off with semiotics and an intriguing semantic clock...as well as a Derrida reference right out of the starting block - irresistible.
Oh, and there's Zeno and mathematics too!

Don't really have time for yet another book, but this seems intriguing! We start off with semiotics and an intriguing semantic clock...as well as a Derrida reference right out of the starting block - irresistible.

Don't really have time for yet another book, but this seems intriguing! We start off with semiotics and an intrigueing semantic clock...as well as a Derrida reference right out of the starting block - irresistible.

Don't really have time for yet another book, but this seems intriguing! We start off with semiotics and an intrigueing semantic clock... irresistible.

...the change of pronunciation, over time, exhibited by the Queen is the consequence of the propagation of a particular lingueme that has become established as convention – had replacing hed. Ironically, the Queen is likely to have been influenced by younger members of her entourage who are leading the change in the Queen’s English.

Today there are between 6,000 and 8,000 languages spoken in the world. It is difficult to say precisely how many. This is because it is inherently tricky to determine whether a spoken variety counts as a dialect or a language in its own right. [...] Nearly every week one of the world’s languages dies out. This happens when the last speaker of a language dies, or, more accurately, when the penultimate speaker dies..

Today there are between 6,000 and 8,000 languages spoken in the world.3 It is difficult to say precisely how many. This is because it is inherently tricky to determine whether a spoken variety counts as a dialect or a language in its own right. [...] Nearly every week one of the world’s languages dies out. This happens when the last speaker of a language dies, or, more accurately, when the penultimate speaker dies

Political aspects of language classification:1) When languages are reclassified, [...] eg. demise of Yugoslavia as a political entity led to the official distinction as separate languages of Bosnian and Montenegrin, which had been categorized within former Serbo-Croatian (itself a single language divided into national varieties distinguished by different alphabets because of religious differences)

Chinese is an L1 for many more people than any other language, and English is by far the most common L2. In China alone, a recent estimate of numbers of people studying English exceeds 155 million: 10 million in elementary school, 80 million in high school, at least 5 million in universities, and 60 million adults in other instructional contexts. Many more millions will soon be added to these estimates...

This account was appropriated by Christian apologists, who identified the pattern with the Divine Plan of Creation and repressed the emphasis on a primordial matter. For those who accepted this synthesis, the task of the natural philosopher is to uncover the mathematical pattern upon which the universe is ordered. "

Interesting! "... commitment to Plato’s philosophy tended to reinforce a Pythagorean orientation towards science. Indeed, the Pythagorean orientation became influential in the Christian West largely as a result of a marriage of Plato’s Timaeus and Holy Scripture. In the Timaeus, Plato described the creation of the universe by a benevolent Demiurge, who impressed a mathematical pattern upon a formless primordial matter

Interesting! "... commitment to Plato’s philosophy tended to reinforce a Pythagorean orientation towards science. Indeed, the Pythagorean orientation became influential in the Christian West largely as a result of a marriage of Plato’s Timaeus and Holy Scripture. In the Timaeus, Plato described the creation of the universe by a benevolent Demiurge, who impressed a mathematical pattern upon a formless primordial matter

Oh my gosh... and suddenly I see a parallel between Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum and Borges's Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. I'm not sure if I've read the latter, but now I feel I have to check it out.

Reading this, it's rather easy to see how many members of the Third World came to see the USA as "evil". The Cold War US foreign policy actions seem incredibly self-serving, though to be honest, I suppose all governments put their own countries first. It's the degree of US meddling, though, that seems infuriating.

Well, just the introduction to this book would already give a person a good overview of the philosophy of science, which I'll endeavor to work into my review, if and when I ever get there. :P

Btw, I recognized one of the editors of this book, Stathis Psillos, https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... from having read some of his own work elsewhere, where he wrote in a very clear, lucid style.

Well, just the introduction to this book would already give a person a good overview of the philosophy of science, which I'll endeavor to work into my review, if and when I ever get there. :P

Btw, I recognized one of the editors of this book, https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... from having read some of his own work elsewhere, where he wrote in a very clear, lucid style.

OMG... I missed the fact that Gene Wolfe
passed away on April 14, 2019. Neither had I realized that he was 87 when he died! RIP GENE WOLFE, you will be sadly missed...

RIP Umberto Eco. :(:(:(
There goes an enormous presence in the thinking world, but we will keep it alive. Thank you, Umberto, for everything.

Popper criticized Newton’s idea that it was possible to extrapolate generalizable laws of nature from specific experiments or tests, by criticizing the inductive method on which it was based, and turning it on its head. He did so by applying a Humean scepticism towards induction itself, and defining science as a deductive process.

[Wittgenstein's] central claim that there are no such things as philosophical ‘problems’ only philosophical ‘puzzles’ arising from the use of language, and that philosophy was about the pursuit of meaning rather than truth, embodied everything that Popper hated about the self-indulgence of philosophers.

Popper loathed [Wittgenstein]. He considered his whole philosophy to be mistaken and, worse, entirely contrary to what philosophy should be about.

[For Popper, as opposed to for the Logical Positivists], the task was not to demarcate physics from metaphysics, but to demarcate ‘science’ from ‘pseudo-science’...

Interesting- i knew that Wittgenstein had been influentual with the Vienna Circle, but I had not known that Gödel had been a member too. I suppose mathematics would predispose one towards Logical Positivism in a way?

Pinkerton’s Detective Agency, a sinister body which got its start during the Civil War and subsequently became the industrialists’ secret police, furnishing spies, gunmen and strike-breakers on demand. (The Pinkerton tradition was to prove all too durable, and was influential in the founding conception of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, set up in 1908.)

Attempts to wrest some concessions from the mine-owners in western Pennsylvania through a secret society, mostly Irish, known as the Molly Maguires, failed when ten of the leaders were hanged for murder and conspiracy in 1876. The evidence against them was provided by an undercover agent employed by Pinkerton’s Detective Agency, a sinister body which got its start during the Civil War and subsequently became the indu

It should also be borne in mind that the industrial working class never formed a majority of the American population. For most of the nineteenth century the farmers were the majority;[...]Organized labour thus operated from a weak basis...

Hmmmmm - I started this book in the middle, and was taken aback about the things he said about native Americans, only to realize that he calls native Americans "Indians". To me, Indians hail from India. How annoying. ...so he means multi-generational white Americans when he says native Americans.

I salute you Tanith Lee !! I just found out Tanith passed away in May this year, at age 67. She formed a huge part of my childhood and teens. I was so obsessed with her work, that I'd always be on the lookout for the latest T.Lee, and was actually quite embarrassed about the addiction before I finally outgrew her. Yet, she will always remain a part of me. :)

This book is making me realize how little I know of French history and politics... :(