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One of three.
"Pre-Galilean" Foolishness
I am currently reading The Master and His Emissary , which appears to be an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience literature well enough to say for sure, yet.) But then on page 186 I find: "Asking cognition, however, to give a perspective on the relationship between cognition and affect is like asking astronomer in the pre-Galilean geocentric world, whether, in his opinion, the sun moves round the earth of the earth around the sun. To ask a question alone would be enough to label one as mad." OK, this is garbage. First of all, it should be pre-Copernican, not pre-Galilean. But much worse is that people have seriously been considering heliocentrism for many centuries before Copernicus. Aristarchus had proposed a heliocentric model in the 4th-century BC. It had generally been considered wrong, but not "mad." (And wrong for scientific reasons: Why, for instance, did we not observe stellar parallax?) And when Copernicus propose...
...it never ends, does it?
ReplyDeleteYou said it.
ReplyDeleteI'm in a similar situation. It got so bad I developed the horrible habit of reading several books at the same time (I know this is not the perfect way of describing it; maybe saying I read many books in parallel is better? Anyway, I think you understand: I start a book, then another before finishing, then another... eventually, I finish them all).
ReplyDeleteDon't you have a reader, Gene? I have a Sony Reader, and it's very practical for voracious readers. For people like you, who I presume reads many books that are be in the public domain, it's even better, because those you can get for free.
I saw that bottom one in a used bookstore the other day and almost got it, but figured I'd never get around to it. Looked very interesting.
ReplyDeletePedro, I have several books going at once always.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about readers is, I like to write all over the books. I also have eidetic memory of where quotes are by physical location in the book: I'm not sure that would work with a reader.
Daniel, the world needs more round tuits!
ReplyDeleteI don't often read that many books at one time, but I do usually have 2 or 3 that I am reading in a given time frame. It has more to do with my attention span. Sometimes after reading one book for too long I find myself beginning to just gloss over the sentences without fully taking them into my head. However, I find that when I switch gears and pick up a different book that my brain is able to focus again.
ReplyDeleteI too have a somewhat eidetic memory. I found this out when I used to have to read technical publications for troubleshooting. They (the Navy) attempted to switch over to a completely CD-ROM based system and I was completely lost (good thing I held onto the hardcopies). It isn't that I remember the location of specific words or phrases in a book (I am horrible at remembering quotes), I actually remember concepts and subjects (or the groups thereof) in specific areas of a book.
Basically, if you give me a book in electronic form, it will take quite a while to find what I am looking for. Whereas, if you give me a hardcopy version, my hands will flip to the desired page within a few seconds.
My kindle/iPad toting friends think that I am full of crap when I tell them this and say that it is so much easier to find what you're looking for because you can search keywords/phrases. They don't get that I don't remember words/phrases, but that I remember concepts and subjects, and I remember them with regard to where they physically lie in a book. Even stranger, I often don't even consciously know where the section is that I am looking for, but my hands do.
You're probably right. I do have a similar skill in remembering where to find quotes, though mine is not as strong as for me to call it "eidetic memory". I tend to remember whether a quote was in the left page or in the right page, and more or less in what part of the page. You're right. It doesn't work well with a reader. I've found that the reader is great for reading a book start to finish, but no good for reference.
ReplyDelete