Philosophy in the wider world

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a site devoted to theories of causal history. The site has entries for many ancient and early modern philosophers as well as for Russell, Schlick, Popper, Reichenbach, Hempel, Mackie, Suppes, David Lewis, Marjorie Grene, Paul Humphreys, Nancy Cartwright, James Woodward, and Christopher Hitchcock.

It's always interesting to find philosophers being cited in the medical sciences literature. Last July, I noted Carl Hempel's influence on the DSM. There is also Karl Popper's impact in epidemiology. For instance, Mervyn Susser and his partner, Zena Stein, made use of Popper's work. Susser also made reference to the work of Imre Lakatos, Thomas Kuhn, and Mario Bunge (among other philosophers).

The journal History of Psychiatry has an article on 'Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and its impact on the theory of psychopathology' by Norbert Andersch and John Cutting.

The same journal also has published 'Karl Jaspers on the disease entity: Kantian ideas and Weberian ideal types' by Chris Walker.

Blossom Dearie:


I posted last June about Berkeley's popularity among the poets. Peter Brooke reviews a book from 2010 called ‘We Irish’ in Europe: Yeats, Berkeley and Joseph Hone by W. J. McCormack. According to the book, somehow the Italian fascists (esp. Giovanni Gentile) co-opted Berkeley for their awful ideology. McCormack's book is also reviewed in Berkeley Studies by Tom Jones.

Wuthering Expectations has a post about Schopenhauer's influence on the French Decadents (something to which I alluded in a couple of posts). If I ever get the time, I'd like to look more closely at Schopenhauer's influence on Anna Karenina.

From the Huffington Post: 'The Unexpected Way Philosophy Majors Are Changing The World Of Business'.

The BBC Radio 4 has a series called Baldi, which is about a 'Franciscan priest and philosophy lecturer [who] turns amateur sleuth to solve murder mysteries'.

BBC Radio 3's series 'Wagner's Philosophers' (with broadcasts on Adorno, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the German idealists).

Blossom Dearie performed the Adjectives song ('Unpack Your Adjectives' -- it's on YouTube) for Schoolhouse Rock. This next song of hers' never made it onto children's TV: