Friday, May 30, 2014

Spinoza, distributed rootless cosmopolitan

I have written about or documented Spinoza-related materials in various cyberlocales (this one included), and it occurs to me I should link to the relevant pages on my own sites at least, because I was not certain where to place this link to an insightful document on Spinoza's rootless cosmopolitanism:

Baruch-Benedictus: From uprooted roots to root-independent ideas? by Marcelo Dascal

This essay can be compared to Rebecca Goldstein's Betraying Spinoza, which was published at or near the beginning of a popular Spinoza revival of recent years. I wrote about this elsewhere, engaged Goldstein personally on the book talk circuit, and in an online forum. I do not recall where, offhand.  However, I began my blogging about Spinoza with . . . .

Rebecca Goldstein on the 350th Anniversary of the Excommunication of Baruch Spinoza

I followed this up with:
Newer entries show up in the current version of my Studies in a Dying Culture blog under the rubric Spinoza. The entries to date are:
There are a number of Spinoza pages on my main web site. Regardless of subject matter, they all (and also external web pages) can be accessed via my bibliography:

Spinoza & Marxism (with Basic Spinoza Web Guide)

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Martin Gardner Centennial & Testimonials

This year marks the centenary of Martin Gardner's birth. Check out this new web site in homage to Gardner:

Martin Gardner Home Site (Martin Gardner Centennial 1914-2014)

There is also a web page for testimonials:

Martin Gardner Testimonials

My testimonial is #55.

Note also this National Public Radio broadcast:

Martin Gardner, Genius Of Recreational Mathematics
NPR, April 12, 2014 (sound file & transcript)
Weekend Edition's own "Math Guy" Keith Devlin calls the late Martin Gardner the greatest "math guy" of all time. As Devlin tells NPR's Scott Simon, Gardner had little formal mathematics training.