Author: manwithoutqualities

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martyn thompson

Michael Oakeshott on the History of Political Thought

Martyn Thompson’s contribution to the Companion: My concern is twofold. First, I shall outline what I take Oakeshott to have meant by the phrase “the history of political thought” and then I shall consider some criticisms from Oakeshott’s perspective of the theory and practice of Quentin Skinner, the leading figure in the so-called Cambridge School…

food

The Man Who Ate New Orleans

Now why didn’t I think of this as the premise to a documentary? So, I’ll do it without the cameras around. Up to 722 stops already and as the Rev. Ray Cannata says in the video “Life flows from the table. NOLA is both heaven and hell – the former something to enjoy, the latter something to…

hayek

Hayek in China

This from The Economist and again here: In the past year, the spirits of Keynes and Hayek have done battle for the minds of China’s policymakers. This month Andrew Batson of GK Dragonomics, a research consultancy in Beijing, argued that Hayek seems to be winning. Austrian Schooldistributed cognitiondistributed knowledgeEmbodied cognitionFriedrich Hayekphilosophical psychologysocial epistemologySpontaneous order

oakeshott

First Impressions

The new companion has landed in my mailbox. A fine production and my congrat to you and Paul for your efforts in bringing it to press. In an earlier message, you said there would be some surprises here, or words to that effect. Wow! What a stunner from Robert Grant! I think most of us…

distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, embodied cognition, embodiment, enactivism, extended cognitive systems, extended mind, externalism

Substituting the Senses

Check out this essay forthcoming from the power team of Clark, Kilverstein and Farina. Sensory substitution devices are a type of sensory prosthesis that (typically) convert visual stimuli transduced by a camera into tactile or auditory stimulation. They are designed to be used by people with impaired vision so that they can recover some of…

Noël Malcolm

Oakeshott and Hobbes

Here is a trailer from possibly the greatest living Hobbes scholar – Noel Malcolm – who we were lucky enough to nab for our Companion. Even those who know only a little about Michael Oakeshott know that he had a strong and abiding interest in the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. His edition of Leviathan (1946)…

music

The science of conducting

An interesting article from The Economist: Determining a conductor’s influence is tricky. Does a “good” conductor wangle bravura performances from his players, or simply preside over a self-organising virtuoso ensemble? To find out, Dr D’Ausilio watched two (anonymous) conductors leading five excerpts from Mozart’s symphony number 40 played by eight violinists from the Città di…

beer

Kwak in London

I ordered two bottles of Kwak for my chum and I at De Hems, a hybrid pub/bar with a superior range of brews. The barman cavalierly plonked the opened bottles on the bar. This sort of service does not befit a bar that supposedly knows how to do things properly: as with all Belgian beers there…