Discoveries

Last night I prepared a mix of music for my next gig coming up soon. Discovered some old tracks on the external hard drive that I had totally forgotten about, particularly in the more rare jazz side of grooves. Sometimes re-discovery can be really be delightful, and in a way , a wonderful eargasm.

Florence , not only plays with grasshoppers and presents them as a present, but now she has found delight in playing with a daddy long leg which I found on the kitchen floor yesterday still alive. Then she started holding it in her mouth as the poor creature tired to get away. I was slightly amused.

On the radio they have been talking about food and wine, and in particular, the classic toasted cheese sandwich and the best way to make it. Mine has to be with Worcester sauce on it. What is your favourite way of creating the perfect cheese on toast?

So i headed for Canterbury and had a cheese, tomato and bacon croissant with a filter coffee at Pret. I do love Pret. The food is absolutely delicious.

Found these two books for a quid each -



Weather is warm but been very hazy, and thudery looking. 

Discoveries

Last night I prepared a mix of music for my next gig coming up soon. Discovered some old tracks on the external hard drive that I had totally forgotten about, particularly in the more rare jazz side of grooves. Sometimes re-discovery can be really be delightful, and in a way , a wonderful eargasm.

Florence , not only plays with grasshoppers and presents them as a present, but now she has found delight in playing with a daddy long leg which I found on the kitchen floor yesterday still alive. Then she started holding it in her mouth as the poor creature tired to get away. I was slightly amused.

On the radio they have been talking about food and wine, and in particular, the classic toasted cheese sandwich and the best way to make it. Mine has to be with Worcester sauce on it. What is your favourite way of creating the perfect cheese on toast?

So i headed for Canterbury and had a cheese, tomato and bacon croissant with a filter coffee at Pret. I do love Pret. The food is absolutely delicious.

Found these two books for a quid each -



Next i am off to Ashford to do a charity shop visit.

Weather is warm but been very hazy, and thundery looking.

Book 84 - Bertrand Russell "A History of Western Philosophy"

Bertrand Russell "A History of Western Philosophy" (George Allen & Unwin)






Many astute reviewers have observed that the chapters in this book are relatively self-sufficient and can be read independently. I have been doing just that intermittently for the last year, and do you know what I have found? It is not true. The book can be used to dip into all right, but you will gain enormously from reading it complete, in the right order and in as short time as possible. Thus you will appreciate the numerous cross-references, most of them subtle and suggestive, and you will also get a much better idea of the all-important big picture. Don’t let the size or subject scare you. It is no heroic achievement to read the whole thing from cover to cover. The book is beautifully written and supremely readable.

Professional philosophers (surely this is an oxymoron?) should be aware that this book was not written for them. Nor is it for seasoned amateur philosophers. This book is designed for the intelligent and curious laymen; if they are fans of Bertrand Russell, so much the better. Of that company am I. So this is going to be one unapologetic ally prejudiced review, prejudiced in favour of the author that is. The aforementioned, and no doubt hugely knowledgeable, reviewers have claimed countless times that Russell is biased, opinionated and irreverent. They are right. But what they call “faults”, I prefer to call “integrity”. Being the man he was, Bertrand Russell could not have written any other History of Western Philosophy but this one.


Biased, opinionated and irreverent as he is, it is important to note some things Bertrand Russell is not. He is not boring, dishonest or, except occasionally in the purely historical chapters, superficial. He is certainly no mean master of the English prose. Speculative non-fiction on abstruse subjects doesn’t get better than that. Lucidity, precision, brevity, brains and wit are elevated to their utmost heights and merged with fantastic readability. As for the book’s shortcomings in terms selection and emphasis, no work of such sweeping scope – from Thales to Dewey, all of them within social and historical context – could possibly be perfect, to begin with.

What we get is a vision of friend and foe up to the present of the book's writing, and hence you will not find anything about Sartre,Barthes,and others.

By no means should you accept his facts and opinions at face value. He is bound to be “unfair” to many philosophers, by which people usually mean they disagree with him. Bertrand Russell didn't write this book as a scholar in (vain) searching of perfect objectivity. He wrote it as a professional philosopher (perhaps it’s not an oxymoron, after all) who was absorbed in philosophical problems for his entire life, not to mention that he made some reportedly not negligible contributions to many of them. It remains a classic and a wonderful place to start your personal adventure in the field with the aforementioned caveat i hinted at the bias within the text.