Douglas Stalker

Engineers, Cranks, Physicians, Magicians

Medicine in industrialized nations is scientific medicine. The claim tacitly made by American or European physicians, and tacitly relied on by their patients, is that their palliatives and procedur...

On Being Blue

In a philosophical approach to color, Gass explores mans perception of the color blue as well as its common erotic, symbolic, and emotional associations.

Rhyme without Reason

If you associate with academics who discuss the arts — the professor critics, interpreters, aestheticians, and assorted cultural deep thinkers on campus — you will meet one of their major products: nonsense on stilts. I learned the phrase “nonsense on stilts” from Paul Ziff, who learned it from reading the works of Jeremy Bentham. Ziff isn’t timid about using this phrase in connection with aesthetics or any other area of philosophy. It fits his irreverent attitude towards intellectual matters generally. For him, there simply are no precious ideas or sacred books, including his own. He is severe with all ideas. The typical aesthetician (or beautician, as Ziff likes to call them) is at the other end of the spectrum: indulgent as can be with ideas. A master, one might say, of the uncritical attitude.