Book Reviews
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Review – The Physicist and the Philosopher
Jimena Canales tells the neglected story of Einstein and Bergson, the physicist and the philosopher. It is a story of a debate–a debate about time–that took place on April 6th, 1922. The mere mention of Einstein in a debate with anyone is enough to draw one in to hear more. But it helps, of course, that Canales recounts the arguments so well. We might think that Einstien was the famous one in this debate, but, historically, we would be mistaken. Einstien became well known after the famous eclipse expedition in 1919 that confirmed his theory, and, so, he was just beginning to see his stature rise at this time. But…
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Review – At the Existentialist Cafe
At the Existential Cafe is about (as the title readily suggests) the movers and shakers in the modern line of existentialism. As Bakewell notes, this line can be traced in different ways: “…to anguished novelists of the nineteenth century, and beyond that to Blaise Pascal…and beyond that to the soul-searching of St. Augustine, and beyond that to the Old Testament’s weary Ecclesiastes and to Job…But one can go the other way around, and narrow the birth of modern existentialism down to a moment near the turn of 1932-3, when three young philosophers were sitting in the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue du Montparnasse in Paris, catching up on gossip and drinking…
