Author: Douglas McLennan

Why We Need To Understand Aristotle’s Three Kinds Of Knowledge

The reason that Aristotle bothered to outline these three kinds of knowledge is that they require different styles of thinking—the people toiling in each of these realms tend toward habits of mind that serve them well, and distinguish them from the others. Aristotle’s point was that, if you have a phronetic problem to solve, don’t send an epistemic thinker. – Harvard Business Review

How Ordinary Germans Let Naziism Creep In

“Consumerism boomed in the early years of the Third Reich (and even, for a time, during the war). For all that Nazism was a dictatorship, ordinary non-Jewish Germans felt they had choices they had not had before. As the economy improved, Germans travelled widely, a process supported by Nazi organisations such as Strength Through Joy, which offered a range of affordable holidays. Travel-writing journalism developed as a form. The Nazis made theatre and concerts available to wider audiences.” – History Today

China’s Curious Fascination With Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes was first introduced to Chinese readers in 1896, with translations of four stories appearing in Current Affairs newspaper. So popular were they with readers that in 1916 the Zhonghua Book Company published The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes, featuring 44 stories that rendered Conan Doyle’s prose into classical Chinese. Los Angeles Review of Books

Hard Not To Be Jealous Of Tom Stoppard

Stoppard can’t write women? He gives us Night and Day. Emotion? The Real Thing. Competitiveness is evidently one of the many sources of his creativity, albeit competitiveness of a patient, five-day-test-match kind. He worries quite a lot about the amount of time he spends writing and revising a play. ‘If the next gap is as long as the last one,’ he said in 2017, ‘I will be 103 and no doubt ready with blue pencil and blue-black ink as usual.’ – Literary Review

How The Meritocracy Has Separated Us

Looking back at the last four decades, it’s clear that the divide between winners and losers has been deepened, poisoning our politics and driving us apart. This has partly to do with deepening inequality of income and wealth. But it’s about more than that. It has to do with the fact that those who landed on top came to believe that their success was their own doing, the measure of their merit — and by implication that those left behind had no one to blame but themselves. – Chronicle of Higher Education

Activists Call For Boycott Of All US Museums

The group’s demands, issued on its Instagram page with the hashtag #NoMuseumOctober, stipulate that until every institution publicly announces that frontline workers will be provided hazard pay and benefits for their labour until a Covid-19 vaccine is available, the museum-going public should “refrain from providing these ‘democratic’ institutions the admission dollars they so desperately crave”. – The Art Newspaper

Smithsonian Lays Off 237 Staff

The layoffs are the first permanent staff cuts made by the world’s largest museum organization since it was forced to close its sites March 14 to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The Smithsonian lost $49 million — from store and restaurant revenue as well as canceled ticketed events, classes and tours — between March and September, spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas said. – Washington Post