Daily Thoughts 09/04/2012

Daily Thoughts 09/04/2012

This morning, I finished reading Evolutionaries by Carter Phipps. I enjoyed the philosophy and ideas in the book.  However, it failed for me in some ways.  There was very little about the science of evolution, history of science, or philosophy of science in the book.  It is hard for me to accept that a book which claims to combine a science, evolution, with philosophy and religion does not include enough material on science.  For example, there is one sentence mentioning Einstein's view of god.  It would have been interesting to have some material on physicists views on religion. 

There are also terms like cosmic which are used without any background in cosmology in the book.  The feeling is one of a kind of mystical foggy view of science.  I saw no references to more advanced topics in science like superdeterminism, information theory, quantum physics, or even evolutionary biology.

 There is also a tiny bit on Darwin.  I had hoped there would be more on Darwin's ethical views which are quite interesting.  Darwin was very much against slavery.

The reason to read Evolutionaries is to learn some very interesting views on philosophy and religion in relation to evolution as a concept.  I especially liked the section on transhumanism which is the closest idea to science in this book.

This morning, I checked the displays.  We have a lot of new books out in the new book display area.  More are coming in.  I also checked the gift books and updated the Twitter and Facebook accounts for the library.

I have a copy of Publishers Weekly and the September 2, 2012 issue of the New York Times Book Review to read.  Also, the graphic novel Days of Destruction Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco has come in for me to read.  It looks like a very polarized book.

Web Bits

Library as Platform
http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/09/future-of-libraries/by-david-weinberger/

How Copyright Enforcement Robots Killed the Hugo Awards
http://io9.com/5940036/how-copyright-enforcement-robots-killed-the-hugo-awards