Stay Tuned

As if to remind me that I do not, in fact, live all by myself in a cave filled with books and jazz cds I have received a number of inquiries from friends and strangers regarding whether I ever intend to write anything else for this, or any other, blog. If they had asked me just three months ago I might have hemmed and hawed and said something like "I've probably already overstayed my welcome". A number of interesting things have come my way since then, however, and some of them strike me as rather blogworthy.

First, the philosophy department here at Ohio University has just finished a three-day colloquium with Bas Van Fraassen, Emeritus professor of philosophy at Princeton University and Distinguished professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University, author of such seminal works in the philosophy of science as The Scientific Image and Quantum Mechanics: An Empiricist Interpretation. His most recent book, Scientific Representation, was the focus for our colloquium and I can honestly say that it is the best book in the philosophy of science that I have read in the last three years, and among the best books in philosophy generally that I have ever read. It is erudite, well-argued, thorough, thought-provoking, and just a plain old-fashioned page-turner. It presents some arguments that, for Van Fraassn, are rather new: he seems to be moving away from some of his older views towards a new, anti-realist view that he calls structuralist empiricism. I hope to discuss some of his arguments in a few future posts.

Second, I've come across a fascinating new book on St. Augustine's theological epistemology in the De Trinitate that has got me to thinking anew about some of the issues that I have explored before in this forum, and as I work my way through a more thorough re-reading of this book, I suspect that I will find that I have more to say along those lines.

Finally, on a more personal note, I have recently begun to explore Benedictine spirituality with some interest, and will be exploring the possibility of becoming an Oblate; in addition I have also answered the call of the Diocese of Steubenville for men interested in serving the Church in the Permanent Diaconate. Both of these steps open up some very new territory for me, and I find that in thinking through each of them, I have made some rather startling discoveries both about my faith and about myself.

So this blog is not yet moribund, as long as one doesn't count sheer boringness as a measure of such things.