ARTICLES
The man who thought too fast
Frank Ramsey—a philosopher, economist, and mathematician—was one of the greatest minds of the last century. Have we caught up with him yet?
The New Yorker, 27 April 2020
Has The Economist made history, as well as reporting it?
Review of Arnold Zevin’s: “Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist”
The Economist, 16 November 2019
Nice to meet you?
Review of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Talking to Strangers”
New York Times, 6 October 2019
Accentuate the positive (download)
Review of Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now”, and “Factfulness” by Hans Rosling et al
New York Review of Books, 7 February 2019
The princess, the ghost and the machine
Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, and Descartes’ mind-body problem
Lapham’s Quarterly, December 2018
Nietzsche, philosophy and madness
Review of Sue Prideaux’s biography of Nietzsche
The Economist, 27 October 2018
How we got to be so self-absorbed: the long story
Review of Will Storr’s “Selfie”
New York Times, 1 July 2018
Laughing in the dark
Three books on Jewish humour
The Economist, 11 November 2017
The square and the tower
Review of Niall Ferguson on networks in history
The Guardian, 14 October 2017
The rake’s progress
While earning his reputation, Casanova rubbed elbows with a Who’s Who of 18th century Europe
New York Times, 8 January 2017
The tolerant philosopher
Pierre Bayle, the forgotten hero of the Enlightenment
New Statesman, 12 August 2016
A universe unpeeled
Review of Sean Carroll’s “The Big Picture”
New York Times, 12 June 2016
Who was David Hume? (download)
Review of James A. Harris’s “Hume: An Intellectual Biography”
New York Review of Books, 26 May 2016
Freedom, being and apricot cocktails
Review of Sarah Bakewell’s “At The Existentialist Café”
The Economist, 26 March 2016
“Candide” and Leibniz’s garden
Did Candide’s garden come from Leibniz? A speculative scholarly footnote
Voltaire Foundation blog, 3 February 2015
The beauty of Queen Mary’s dolls’ house
An interview about a favourite object
Gilded Birds, August 2014
Let’s have a dialogue
Review of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s “Plato at the Googleplex”
New York Times, 20 April 2014
Know thy selfie
Two books on narcissism
The Economist, 20 March 2014
Such small portions
An essay on Jewish humour, a propos Ruth Wisse’s “No Joke”
New York Times, 2 June 2013
Where did the Book of Genesis come from?
Review of Ronald Hendel’s study of the first book of the bible
The Economist, 1 December 2012
Britain’s first modern philosopher
On Noel Malcolm’s edition of Hobbes’s masterwork
The Economist, 6 October 2012
It ain’t necessarily so
The hubris of evolutionary psychology
The New Yorker, 17 September 2012
Evolution and the mind: an author’s response
A reply to a critic
Salon, September 2012
Why does the world exist?
Review of Jim Holt’s book about the puzzle of existence
Daily Beast, 17 July 2012
America the philosophical
Review of Carlin Romano’s book about America and philosophy
New York Times, 17 July 2012
Neurons v free will
The notion of a rational self is under attack again, this time from neuroscience
Intelligent Life, March/April 2012
Why life is so boring
Review of Peter Tooley’s “Boredom: A Lively History”
New York Times, 29 May 2011
Montaigne’s moment
An essay about essays, and Montaigne
New York Times, 13 March 2011
A lion in the undergrowth
Review of V. S. Ramachandran’s “The Tell-Tale Brain”
New York Times, 30 January 2011
Philosophy as inspiration
Review of James Miller’s “Examined Lives”
The Economist, 29 January 2011
The futility of fate
On David Foster Wallace’s senior thesis in philosophy
Financial Times, 4 December 2010
The limits of science
Plenty of today’s scientific ideas will be discredited. Is this a problem for science?
Intelligent Life, 20 November 2010
From classics to pop
Review of Alex Ross’s “Listen To This”
The Economist, 30 October 2010
Order of creation
On Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s “The Grand Design”
The Economist, 11 September 2010
Win or lose
No voting system is flawless. But some are less democratic than others
The New Yorker, 26 July 2010
The art of the parody
Review of the “Oxford Book of Parodies”
The Economist, 15 July 2010
What do philosophers believe?
Decoding an unusual opinion poll
Intelligent Life, 26 March 2010
Right and left
Review of “The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World” by Iain McGilchrist.
The Economist, 26 November 2009
Facts, errors and the Kindle
The printed word has an Achilles heel. Can the electronic reader help?
Intelligent Life, 4 September 2009
Less brutish, still short
Review of “The Age of Empathy” by Frans de Waal
The Economist, 3 September 2009
Young philosophers
Review of Alison Gopnik’s “The Philosophical Baby”
New York Times, 6 August 2009
A nervous splendor
The Wittgenstein family had a genius for misery
The New Yorker, 30 March 2009
The descent of taste
Review of Dennis Dutton’s “The Art Instinct”
New York Times, 29 January 2009
Madoff and me
Confessions of a journalist
The Economist’s Free Exchange blog, 31 December 2008
Giordano Bruno
Review of a biography by Ingrid Rowland of the philosopher-heretic
New York Times, 19 November 2008
My parrot, my self
New York Times, 11 October 2008
Talking parrots in life and literature: an essay
Apes do it: the science of humour
The study of laughter has entered mainstream psychology
Intelligent Life, 28 June 2008
A love that dare not compute its name
An essay on falling in love with robots, Battlestar Galactica, and sex-toys
New York Times, 8 June 2008
I’m a believer
Britain’s “most notorious atheist”, Antony Flew, appears to lose his unbelief
New York Times, 23 December 2007
Tales of music and the brain
Review of “Musicophilia” by Oliver Sacks
New York Times, 28 October 2007
Music, war and politics intertwined
Review of “The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century” by Alex Ross
The Economist, 25 October 2007
Atheists with attitude
Why do they hate Him?
The New Yorker, 14 May 2007
Think again
What did Descartes really know?
The New Yorker, 13 November 2006
Raising spirits
Review of Deborah Blum’s book on William James’s search for proof of life after death
New York Times, 20 August 2006
Postwar: picking up the pieces
Review of Tony Judt’s history of Europe since 1945
New York Times, 16 October 2005
The truth wars
Review of two books on truth by philosophers: Simon Blackburn and Michael Lynch
New York Times, 24 July 2005
The town of the talk (download)
A four-part special report on New York
The Economist, 19 February 2005
John Watling
Obituary in brief
The Economist, 26 July 2004 (published solely online)
When the lights went out in Europe
Review of “The Closing of the Western Mind” by Charles Freeman
New York Times, 15 February 2004
Bernard Williams, critic of moral philosophy
Obituary
The Economist, 26 June 2003
A lexicon of crazyology
Review of “Brewer’s Rogues, Villains & Eccentrics”, by William Donaldson
The Economist, 21 November 2002
Who wants to be a billionaire?
Review of “Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire” by Michael T. Kaufman
New York Times, 3 March 2002
Goodness, graciousness
Review of “A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues” by André Comte-Sponville
New York Times, 14 October 2001
Thinking hard
Review of Stephen Toulmin’s “Return to Reason”
Los Angeles Times, 19 August 2001
Willard Quine
Obituary
The Economist, 13 January 2001
God exists, philosophically
Review of Steven Nadler’s biography of Spinoza
New York Times, 18 July 1999
The postindustrial revolution
Review of Francis Fukuyama’s “The Great Disruption”
New York Times, 4 July 1999
Our crowd: the idea of the West
Review of David Gress’s “From Plato to Nato”
New York Times, 2 August 1998
Making sense of reference
Review of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Economist, 9 July 1998
Idea man
Review of George Steiner’s autobiography
New York Times, 12 April 1998
The philosophers that Sophie skipped (download)
In defense of Anglo-American philosophy
The Economist, 7 December 1996
The new science
Review of Steven Shapin’s “The Scientific Revolution”
New York Times, 17 November 1996
Future shock
Review of Lester C. Thurow’s “The Future of Capitalism”
New York Times, April 14 1996
Famous long ago
Review of “Hypatia of Alexandria” by Maria Dzielska
New York Times, 27 August 1995
Why can’t we behave?
Review of Gertrude Himmelfarb’s “The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values”
New York Times, 19 February 1995
What’s on your mind, kid?
Review of “The Philosophy of Childhood” by Gareth B. Matthews
New York Times, October 23 1994
Did Sartre ever exist?
Review of “Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend” by Kate and Edward Fullbrook
New York Times, 23 January 1994
Why do you do the things you do?
Review of Robert Nozick’s “The Nature of Rationality”
New York Times, 22 August 1993
The lesson of the drunk and the streetlight
Review of John Searle’s “The Rediscovery of the Mind”
New York Times, 11 October 1992
Brainstorming
Review of “Theories of the Mind” by Stephen Priest
New York Times, 23 August 1992
The most talked-about philosopher
Richard Rorty and two volumes of his essays
New York Times, 2 June 1991
Heidegger for fun and profit
A report from Berkeley’s “Applied Heidegger” conference
New York Times, 7 January 1990
Japes of the great
Almost every statement is false in this review of a non-existent book: “April is the Cruellest Month: The History and Meaning of All Fools’ Day,” purportedly by Erich Merkwürdigliebe
The Economist, 2 April 1988
Too bard to be true
An article about a sonnet that it is possibly by Shakespeare, in the form of a sonnet that is certainly not by Shakespeare
The Economist, 30 November 1985
Frank Ramsey—a philosopher, economist, and mathematician—was one of the greatest minds of the last century. Have we caught up with him yet?
The New Yorker, 27 April 2020
Has The Economist made history, as well as reporting it?
Review of Arnold Zevin’s: “Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist”
The Economist, 16 November 2019
Nice to meet you?
Review of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Talking to Strangers”
New York Times, 6 October 2019
Accentuate the positive (download)
Review of Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now”, and “Factfulness” by Hans Rosling et al
New York Review of Books, 7 February 2019
The princess, the ghost and the machine
Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, and Descartes’ mind-body problem
Lapham’s Quarterly, December 2018
Nietzsche, philosophy and madness
Review of Sue Prideaux’s biography of Nietzsche
The Economist, 27 October 2018
How we got to be so self-absorbed: the long story
Review of Will Storr’s “Selfie”
New York Times, 1 July 2018
Laughing in the dark
Three books on Jewish humour
The Economist, 11 November 2017
The square and the tower
Review of Niall Ferguson on networks in history
The Guardian, 14 October 2017
The rake’s progress
While earning his reputation, Casanova rubbed elbows with a Who’s Who of 18th century Europe
New York Times, 8 January 2017
The tolerant philosopher
Pierre Bayle, the forgotten hero of the Enlightenment
New Statesman, 12 August 2016
A universe unpeeled
Review of Sean Carroll’s “The Big Picture”
New York Times, 12 June 2016
Who was David Hume? (download)
Review of James A. Harris’s “Hume: An Intellectual Biography”
New York Review of Books, 26 May 2016
Freedom, being and apricot cocktails
Review of Sarah Bakewell’s “At The Existentialist Café”
The Economist, 26 March 2016
“Candide” and Leibniz’s garden
Did Candide’s garden come from Leibniz? A speculative scholarly footnote
Voltaire Foundation blog, 3 February 2015
The beauty of Queen Mary’s dolls’ house
An interview about a favourite object
Gilded Birds, August 2014
Let’s have a dialogue
Review of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s “Plato at the Googleplex”
New York Times, 20 April 2014
Know thy selfie
Two books on narcissism
The Economist, 20 March 2014
Such small portions
An essay on Jewish humour, a propos Ruth Wisse’s “No Joke”
New York Times, 2 June 2013
Where did the Book of Genesis come from?
Review of Ronald Hendel’s study of the first book of the bible
The Economist, 1 December 2012
Britain’s first modern philosopher
On Noel Malcolm’s edition of Hobbes’s masterwork
The Economist, 6 October 2012
It ain’t necessarily so
The hubris of evolutionary psychology
The New Yorker, 17 September 2012
Evolution and the mind: an author’s response
A reply to a critic
Salon, September 2012
Why does the world exist?
Review of Jim Holt’s book about the puzzle of existence
Daily Beast, 17 July 2012
America the philosophical
Review of Carlin Romano’s book about America and philosophy
New York Times, 17 July 2012
Neurons v free will
The notion of a rational self is under attack again, this time from neuroscience
Intelligent Life, March/April 2012
Why life is so boring
Review of Peter Tooley’s “Boredom: A Lively History”
New York Times, 29 May 2011
Montaigne’s moment
An essay about essays, and Montaigne
New York Times, 13 March 2011
A lion in the undergrowth
Review of V. S. Ramachandran’s “The Tell-Tale Brain”
New York Times, 30 January 2011
Philosophy as inspiration
Review of James Miller’s “Examined Lives”
The Economist, 29 January 2011
The futility of fate
On David Foster Wallace’s senior thesis in philosophy
Financial Times, 4 December 2010
The limits of science
Plenty of today’s scientific ideas will be discredited. Is this a problem for science?
Intelligent Life, 20 November 2010
From classics to pop
Review of Alex Ross’s “Listen To This”
The Economist, 30 October 2010
Order of creation
On Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s “The Grand Design”
The Economist, 11 September 2010
Win or lose
No voting system is flawless. But some are less democratic than others
The New Yorker, 26 July 2010
The art of the parody
Review of the “Oxford Book of Parodies”
The Economist, 15 July 2010
What do philosophers believe?
Decoding an unusual opinion poll
Intelligent Life, 26 March 2010
Right and left
Review of “The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World” by Iain McGilchrist.
The Economist, 26 November 2009
Facts, errors and the Kindle
The printed word has an Achilles heel. Can the electronic reader help?
Intelligent Life, 4 September 2009
Less brutish, still short
Review of “The Age of Empathy” by Frans de Waal
The Economist, 3 September 2009
Young philosophers
Review of Alison Gopnik’s “The Philosophical Baby”
New York Times, 6 August 2009
A nervous splendor
The Wittgenstein family had a genius for misery
The New Yorker, 30 March 2009
The descent of taste
Review of Dennis Dutton’s “The Art Instinct”
New York Times, 29 January 2009
Madoff and me
Confessions of a journalist
The Economist’s Free Exchange blog, 31 December 2008
Giordano Bruno
Review of a biography by Ingrid Rowland of the philosopher-heretic
New York Times, 19 November 2008
My parrot, my self
New York Times, 11 October 2008
Talking parrots in life and literature: an essay
Apes do it: the science of humour
The study of laughter has entered mainstream psychology
Intelligent Life, 28 June 2008
A love that dare not compute its name
An essay on falling in love with robots, Battlestar Galactica, and sex-toys
New York Times, 8 June 2008
I’m a believer
Britain’s “most notorious atheist”, Antony Flew, appears to lose his unbelief
New York Times, 23 December 2007
Tales of music and the brain
Review of “Musicophilia” by Oliver Sacks
New York Times, 28 October 2007
Music, war and politics intertwined
Review of “The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century” by Alex Ross
The Economist, 25 October 2007
Atheists with attitude
Why do they hate Him?
The New Yorker, 14 May 2007
Think again
What did Descartes really know?
The New Yorker, 13 November 2006
Raising spirits
Review of Deborah Blum’s book on William James’s search for proof of life after death
New York Times, 20 August 2006
Postwar: picking up the pieces
Review of Tony Judt’s history of Europe since 1945
New York Times, 16 October 2005
The truth wars
Review of two books on truth by philosophers: Simon Blackburn and Michael Lynch
New York Times, 24 July 2005
The town of the talk (download)
A four-part special report on New York
The Economist, 19 February 2005
John Watling
Obituary in brief
The Economist, 26 July 2004 (published solely online)
When the lights went out in Europe
Review of “The Closing of the Western Mind” by Charles Freeman
New York Times, 15 February 2004
Bernard Williams, critic of moral philosophy
Obituary
The Economist, 26 June 2003
A lexicon of crazyology
Review of “Brewer’s Rogues, Villains & Eccentrics”, by William Donaldson
The Economist, 21 November 2002
Who wants to be a billionaire?
Review of “Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire” by Michael T. Kaufman
New York Times, 3 March 2002
Goodness, graciousness
Review of “A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues” by André Comte-Sponville
New York Times, 14 October 2001
Thinking hard
Review of Stephen Toulmin’s “Return to Reason”
Los Angeles Times, 19 August 2001
Willard Quine
Obituary
The Economist, 13 January 2001
God exists, philosophically
Review of Steven Nadler’s biography of Spinoza
New York Times, 18 July 1999
The postindustrial revolution
Review of Francis Fukuyama’s “The Great Disruption”
New York Times, 4 July 1999
Our crowd: the idea of the West
Review of David Gress’s “From Plato to Nato”
New York Times, 2 August 1998
Making sense of reference
Review of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Economist, 9 July 1998
Idea man
Review of George Steiner’s autobiography
New York Times, 12 April 1998
The philosophers that Sophie skipped (download)
In defense of Anglo-American philosophy
The Economist, 7 December 1996
The new science
Review of Steven Shapin’s “The Scientific Revolution”
New York Times, 17 November 1996
Future shock
Review of Lester C. Thurow’s “The Future of Capitalism”
New York Times, April 14 1996
Famous long ago
Review of “Hypatia of Alexandria” by Maria Dzielska
New York Times, 27 August 1995
Why can’t we behave?
Review of Gertrude Himmelfarb’s “The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values”
New York Times, 19 February 1995
What’s on your mind, kid?
Review of “The Philosophy of Childhood” by Gareth B. Matthews
New York Times, October 23 1994
Did Sartre ever exist?
Review of “Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend” by Kate and Edward Fullbrook
New York Times, 23 January 1994
Why do you do the things you do?
Review of Robert Nozick’s “The Nature of Rationality”
New York Times, 22 August 1993
The lesson of the drunk and the streetlight
Review of John Searle’s “The Rediscovery of the Mind”
New York Times, 11 October 1992
Brainstorming
Review of “Theories of the Mind” by Stephen Priest
New York Times, 23 August 1992
The most talked-about philosopher
Richard Rorty and two volumes of his essays
New York Times, 2 June 1991
Heidegger for fun and profit
A report from Berkeley’s “Applied Heidegger” conference
New York Times, 7 January 1990
Japes of the great
Almost every statement is false in this review of a non-existent book: “April is the Cruellest Month: The History and Meaning of All Fools’ Day,” purportedly by Erich Merkwürdigliebe
The Economist, 2 April 1988
Too bard to be true
An article about a sonnet that it is possibly by Shakespeare, in the form of a sonnet that is certainly not by Shakespeare
The Economist, 30 November 1985