Well, I didn't do as much reading in June as I'd have liked to. Actually that's a bit misleading. I read a lot, but not many books. There is just too much on the internet that catches my attention and keeps me from reading all the books I'd like to. There's a surprising number of good articles out there. Sturgeon's Revelation may be true, but 10% of the internet is still quite a bit. I also got a lot read in a book I've been working my way through for a while, but probably won't finish for another month or so. It's not an easy one. Here are the books I read in whole in June:
The Limits of Science, Peter Medawar.
Really I wanted to read Memoirs of a Thinking Radish, but since the neither of the two libraries I have easy access to had it on hand I read this instead. I think I read this one too fast and without enough thought. He's an easy and accessible writer and a good anthropologist of science, but I think that made it easy to miss what he was saying in some cases. I kind of stopped reading after he dismissed induction by way of an apparent paradox; a paradox that I think has been reasonably solved. Not only that, but I don't think that, understood properly, that particular paradox bears on induction one way or the other. Because of that rather trivial mistake I kind of skimmed the rest of the book so I may have missed what he was getting at. I read him as saying something like Stephen Jay Gould, that science and religion are separate domains and never the two shall meet. Of course hardly anyone believes this, not even Medawar or Gould. Their religious beliefs were heavily influenced by their scientific worldview. Still, a great scientist who I happen to think got the philosophy wrong is still worth listening to on the topic of what science is and how it works.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts In a World That Can't Stop Talking, Susan Cain.
As a self-identified introvert I object to the hamster ball theory of introversion. I find it insulting to both the introvert and the extrovert, as though introverts are somehow fragile and special care needs to be taken or that extroverts are boorish and annoying and ought to back off, neither of which is accurate or useful. I had hoped to find some alternative understanding in Cain's book, but it wasn't to be. I don't think it's a bad book, and it certainly isn't as narrow-minded as the hamster ball theory, but it doesn't do much to explain introversion/extroversion. The problem, I think, lies with trying to force the concepts to do more work than they are prepared to do. For instance, Cain makes the case that introverts have trouble in school because schools encourage speaking up. On the other hand Cain also makes the case that introverts do well in school because they can focus better than extroverts. So which is it? Do introverts do better in school or worse? I think the answer is that the I/E continuum doesn't have much to do with it at all. There's a lot more in the book trying to reduce I/E to some other function like sensitivity or openness to experience, but these seem to be different traits that are at least partially independent of I/E. Open/closed, sensitivity/insensitive, introvert/extrovert, liberal/conservative, fox/hedgehog. Once we cram everyone into some sort of simple dichotomy that purports to explain so much we end up losing what explanatory power the concept had to begin with. Still, the concept does have some usefulness. By knowing that I'm an introvert you know whether I'd generally prefer to go to a large exciting party with lots of people or talk one-on-one with someone. Leave it at that and it's fine. Then again the real case that Cain wants to make is that we ought to value the opinions of those who aren't outspoken or dead certain of their beliefs and that thesis seems entirely reasonable.
