Tuesday, August 29, 2006

My Mental Diet

I really like movies!

As for books, I am NOW (or still!) READING:

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution (2007) by Kevin R. C. Gutzman, J.D., Ph.D.
The Technological Society ([1954] 1967) by Jacques Ellul
Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence by Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade
What Color Is Your Parachute? 2012 by Richard N. Bolles
A Husband After God's Own Heart by Jim George
Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II by George Weigel
Summa contra gentiles by St Thomas d'Aquino [AVAILABLE ONLINE]
On Cleaving to God (De adhaerendo Deo) by Albertus Magnus [AVAILABLE ONLINE]
Covenantal Theology: The Eucharistic Order of History by Fr. Donald Keefe, SJ
Salz der Erde (Ein Gespräch mit Peter Seewald) von Joseph Kardinal Ratzinger und Peter Seewald
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

…AND SHELVING, IN MEMORIAM:

The Road of Science and the Ways to God by Stanley L. Jaki
Very Special Relativity by Sander Bais
Behind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human Knowledge by Konrad Lorenz (tr. Ronald Taylor)
Thought and World - The Hidden Necessities by James Ross
Why Think? Evolution and the Rational Mind by Ronald de Sousa
Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning by Nancey Murphy
Peripatetikos #6
A Gilson Reader: Selections from the Writings of Etienne Gilson (ed., with intro.) by Anton C. Pegis
放屁!名利雙收的捷徑 Harry G. Frankfurt/著 (譯者:南方朔)
Philosophical Theology (1969) by James F. Ross
A Maritain Reader: Selected Writings of Jacques Maritain (ed., w/ intro.) by Donald and Idella Gallagher
Faith and Freedom: An Interfaith Perspective by David Burrell, C.S.C.
Ihn will ich suchen, den meine Seele liebt: Gebete und Betrachtungen von Johannes vom Kreuz
The Return of History and the End of Dreams by Robert Kagan
Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future by Ben J. Wattenberg
Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology by Mary Douglas
The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It by Phillip Longman
The Pigeon by Patrick Süskind
The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China by Mark Elvin
God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations for Modern Science by James Hannam
The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto by Pico Iyer
A Crisis of Saints: The Call to Heroic Faith in an Unheroic World by Fr. George Rutler
The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
Religion in the Making by A. N. Whitehead
Wittgenstein: Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief (ed.) by Cyril Barrett
Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology by James K. A. Smith
The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom by Simon Winchester
Walking the Tightrope of Reason: The Precarious Life of a Rational Animal by Robert Fogelin
The Curious History of Relativity: How Einstein's Theory of Gravity Was Lost and Found Again by Jean Eisenstaedt
Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped Him by Timothy W. Ryback
Wittgenstein Reads Weininger (ed.) by David G. Stern & Béla Szabados
Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger with Douglas Hall Kent
Natural Right and History by Leo Strauss
Wittgenstein and Modern Philosophy by Justus Hartnack
Wittgenstein Reads Freud: The Myth of the Unconscious by Jacques Bouveresse
Essays on Wittgenstein's Tractatus (ed.) by Irving M. Copi & Robert W. Beard
Hegel's Dialectic and Its Criticism by Michael Rosen
The Rediscovery of the Mind by John Searle
The Danger of Words and Writings on Wittgenstein by Maurice O'Connor Drury, David Berman (ed.), Michael Fitzgerald (ed.), John Hayes (ed.)
From Religion to Philosophy: A Study in the Origins of Western Speculation by Francis M. Cornford
How to Solve the Mind-Body Problem by Nicholas Humphrey
The Evolving Brain: The Mind and the Neural Control of Behavior by C. H. Vanderwolf
Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind and Language by Maxwell Bennett, Daniel Dennett, Peter Hacker, John Searle
Thomas Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings (ed.) by Timothy McDermott
Cultural Movements and Collective History: Christopher Columbus and the Rewriting of the National Origin Myth by Timothy Kubal
A Very Private Gentleman by Martin Booth
The Reality of Time and the Existence of God: The Project of Proving God's Existence (1989) David Braine
Contemporary Philosophy: Studies of Logical Positivism and Existentialism by Frederick Copleston
Powers: A Study in Metaphysics (2001) by George Molnar
Necessity, Cause and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle's Theory (1980) by Richard Sorabji
Labyrinth: A Search for the Hidden Meaning of Science (2001) by Peter Pesic
"Gavagai!" Or the Future History of the Animal Language Controversy (1986) by David Premack
Darwin Among the Machines (1997) by George Dyson
The Grand Design (2010) by Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow
Are Quanta Real? A Galilean Dialogue (1973) by Josef M. Jauch
Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius (2004) by William R. Shea & Mariano Artigas
Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness (2005) by John S. Rigden
Scientist and Catholic: Pierre Duhem (1990) by Stanley L. Jaki
What Distinguishes Human Understanding? (2002) by John Deely
The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics (2010) by David Harriman, Leonard Peikoff (Introduction)
A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will (2005) by Robert Kane
Kant (Blackwell Great Minds) (2005) by Allen W. Wood
The Soul of the Person: A Contemporary Philosophical Psychology (2006) by Adrian Reimers
The Logic Manual (2010) by Volker Holbach (incl. associated webpage!)
Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories (1958) by Truman Capote
Pure Drivel (1999) by Steve Martin
Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar (1989) by Edwin G. Pulleyblank
The Concept of Mind (1947) by Gilbert Ryle
The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe (2007) by Michael Frayn
Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World (2001) by Robert Nozick
Cosmos in Transition: Studies in the History of Cosmology (1990) by Stanley L. Jaki
War of the Worlds: The Assault on Reality (1996) by Mark Slouka
How Real is Real? Confusion, Disinformation, Communication (1976) by Paul Watzlawick
The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods (1920/1934) by A. G. Sertillanges, O.P.
Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide (2009) by Edward Feser
De Rationibus Fidei (ca. 1264) by St. Thomas Aquinas
Schopenhauer (1967) by Patrick Gardiner
Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy (2009) by Walter Ott
God's Existence. Can it be Proven? A Logical Commentary on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas (2010) by Paul Weingartner
Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction (2002) by Christopher Janaway
An Introduction to Philosophical Logic (1982; 1st ed.) by A. C. Grayling
Self, Logic, and Figurative Thinking (2009) by Harwood Fisher
The Development of Logic (1962) by William Kneale & Martha Kneale
Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings (1998) (ed.) Ralph McInerny
• God Is a Bullet by Boston Teran
The Blue Hour by T. Jefferson Parker
Under the Dome by Stephen King
Duma Key by Stephen King
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Terror by Dan Simmons
The Talisman by Stephen King & Peter Straub
Point Omega by Don DeLillo
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
The Nature of the Mind by Peter Carruthers
Personal Identity by Harold Noonan
Theory and Truth by Lawrence Sklar
Philosophical Logic by John P. Burgess
Philosophy of Logic by W.V.O. Quine
From a Logical Point of View by W.V.O. Quine
Everywhere and Everywhen by Nick Huggett
Thinking about Physics by Roger G. Newton
Real Essentialism by David Oderberg
Why Marx Was Right (2011) by Terry Eagleton
Logic (1985) by Juan Jose Sanguineti
Nominalism and Realism – Volume 1 of Universals and Scientific Realism (1980) by D. M. Armstrong
A Theory of Universals – Volume 2 of Universals and Scientific Realism (1980) by D. M. Armstrong
Couplehood by Paul Reiser
What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth by Wendell Berry
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism by Robert P. Murphy, Ph.D.
Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective on the Role of Government, Taxes, Health Care, Deficits, and More (2010) by John M. Médaille
Leibniz's Mill: A Challenge to Materialism (2011) by Charles Landesman
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism by Kevin D. Williamson
In Defence of Global Capitalism (2001) by Johan Norberg
The "Poisoned Spring" of Economic Libertarianism –– Menger, Mises, Hayek, Rothbard: A Critique from Catholic Social Teaching of the 'Austrian School' of Economics (2011) by Angus Sibley
Micro (2012) by Michael Crichton w/ Richard Preston
The Case for Working with Your Hands, Or Why Office Work Is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good (2010) by Stephen Crawford
The Conscience of a Liberal (2009) by Paul Krugman
Free Lunch: Easily Digestible Economics, Served on a Plate (2003) by David Smith
The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (2000) by Hernando de Soto
Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction & Economics (2005) by Paul Ormerod
What's Wrong with the World (1910) by G.K. Chesterton
The Servile State (1912) by Hilaire Belloc
The Sun of Justice: An Essay on the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church (1938) by Harold Robbins
Next (2006) by Michael Crichton
Before I Go to Sleep (2011) by S. J. Watson
A Stab in the Dark (1981) by Lawrence Block
Goliath (2002) by Steve Alten
Now Wait for Last Year (1966) by Philip K. Dick
The Communist Manifesto: A Norton Critical Edition (1848/1988) by Karl Marx, ed. by Frederic L. Bender
From Political Economy to Economics: Method, the Social and the Historical in the Evolution of Economic Theory (2009) by Dimitris Milonakis & Ben Fine
End the Fed (2009) by Ron Paul
The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War ([1981] 2010 2nd ed.) by Arno J. Mayer

[The complete list of all the books I've read in the past 18 years or so is, I think––I hope, still!––mostly on an old hard drive and on a file in my laptop. Let me know if you want it, for some odd reason. -- 6 Dez 09]

9 comments:

Jamie said...

Wow, lots of Gilson. Can you recommend any good Catholic fiction from the last few decades?

Codgitator (Cadgertator) said...

I would say Walker Percy is your best bet. There's also some recently deceased Southern Catholic writer I noticed in an edition of OSV.

Codgitator (Cadgertator) said...

Also, Jamie, if by some slim chance you see this thread again, check out John Fante, the Catholic Bukowski before the Catholic Bukowski. Not exactly orthodox, but he does at least make the Catholic experience a central part of his writings and American consciousness.

e. said...

Just what other languages are you exactly fluent in, besides Chinese & German?

Damn! I wish I could read books that were in languages other than English as you yourself seem capable of so doing!

By the way, how quickly do you actually complete reading a particular book you dedicate such study to?

Codgitator (Cadgertator) said...

e.,

I am "fluent" in English, German, and Mandarin. I can pick my way through Spanish and Latin texts. I put fluent in scare quotes because, in the first case, my oral-aural German has really fallen in the past few years (though my reading is still quite good), and, in the second case, while my oral-aural Mandarin is quite good nowadays, my reading is much slower. It takes me easily four times as long to read a longish work in Chinese as it does in English or German. My oral-aural Spanish is by now quite poor, but my background in Latin and Spanish allow me to, as I say, work through texts as a kind of chronic hobby.

Best,

Codgitator (Cadgertator) said...

Well, maybe I should say 2-3 times longer to read Chinese. It depends on the topic and my motivation. ;)

e. said...

Were these languages self-taught or were you formally educated in these?

(If it happened to have been self-taught, could you recommend some resources? If not, what schools did you happen to attend and what courses?)

How long did it take you before you mastered them and became fluent?

Thanks!

Codgitator (Cadgertator) said...

e.,

I studied Latin in 7th and 8th grades, then took four years of German in high school, before majoring in Germanic studies in college for a BA. Along the way I took two years of Spanish and studied Russian a bit on my own. I came to Taiwan knowing literally no Chinese, but my first year I focused intensely on oral-aural ability, and when I decided to stay a second year, I took about 10 months of textbook classes at a small language center. After that, the past four years or so have all been self-study with an increasing emphasis on literacy in Chinese. Meanwhile, I continue to "improve" my Latin by reading the Vulgate and picking through various latin course books, as well as reading in/about a fair share of Scholastic thought. Fluency takes years and I actually deny I am "fluent" in anything but English. The key is to learn enough to USE a language for your own interests in your mother tongue. Learning a language to learn the language is ultimately a stifling dead end (unless you are into pure linguistics or philology).

Best,

e. said...

"Learning a language to learn the language is ultimately a stifling dead end (unless you are into pure linguistics or philology)."

Indeed, only a mad person would want to learn a language simply for the sake of doing so.

As far as my own purpose is concerned, I would like to rely on primary, original sources without having to lean heavily on somebody else's translations since there might be things that aren't coming across (e.g., nuances) as a result of their translation process.

Most of the sources that I would like to read are in Latin.

That said, if you have any recommendations or advise on how I should go about this, it would be greatly appreciated.

I know that simply learning the language might not be enough; therefore, if you have any other hints on how I might be able to gain such proficiency so as to become capable of doing exactly this; that would be great!