Reviewing the book “Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny” By Michael Tomasello — This book is about ontogeny, meaning the development of an organism. From the very beginning of life as a fertilized egg to an adult organism. Here the term is applied to human ontogeny, from a cognitive perspective. Children obviously don’t come into the world thinking like adults, and there isn’t…

Reviewing the classic book of René Guénon — I was surprised by this book, and it was a pleasure to read. It was published in French 1927 by René Guénon, in which he argues for the decay of the modern world. It is, in some sense, the long prophetic vision of the apocalypse, but rather than the “literal”…

Reviewing Satchin Panda’s book about the Circadian Rhythm — I’ve had sleep problems for as long as I can remember. I always went to bed late and did not get sleepy until way past midnight. At some point, I often took more than one hour to fall asleep. When I finally got into fitness in my late teens, I…

A Book Review of The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World By Iain McGilchrist — This book is brilliant. On the one hand, I feel bad for delaying reading it. But on the other hand, the wait allowed me to get into other topics, which made me get a lot more out of McGilchrist’s work. The book starts by clarifying some myths about the brain…

Reviewing By Harry Frankfurt’s Book “On Bullshit” — I was already familiar with Frankfurt’s concept, but I wanted to read the original work, and I’m glad I did. First of all, it is quite a funny book. When the book arrived, and my girlfriend asked what it was, I said it was a philosophical take on bullshit. She…

A Book Review of Mind in Motion By Barbara Tversky — I’m curious about cognition, and I’m particularly interested in cognition that goes beyond words or analytic thought. I was intrigued when I found this book, and I was hoping for something covering embodied cognitive science, which I’m familiar with but wanted to dig deeper into. The idea is that thought…

A Book Review of “How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It” by Kelly McGonigal — The book is written by psychologist Kelly McGonigal, based on a course he taught at Standford on the science of willpower. He divides willpower into 3 factors. The first being “I will”, the second “I won’t”, and the third “I want”. They are sort of like distinct personalities, and they…

A Book Review of Myth and Mayhem — Jordan Peterson has had a big influence on me. I don’t consider him a guru, and I didn’t care to follow the drama that arose out of his popularity, but I found his ideas in Maps of Meaning highly useful. I discovered him in 2016, roughly when he started to…

A Review of Christopher Ryan’s Book Civilized to Death — I was, in some sense, the type of person the book is arguing against. I’m not a fan of when people idealize the past, specifically a state of pre-civilization. …