I've just finished reading Wheen's biography of Das Kapital and found it extremely engaging. I'm even motivated to tackle the book itself, which has previously seemed intimidating and foreboding simply by virtue of its size and reputation.

Mad: Using similar reasoning to that used in the example you'd have to say that eating a deceased brother would not be wrong either, so long as he died of natural causes. After all, who is harmed? Therein lies the fault of the reasoning used in these dilemmas: harm (or greater harm) is the only crit...

I think all the books on the list did shake the world. I wouldn't say they're the only books that shook the world but they certainly did in my opinion.

I think another reason, and this one has no empirical backing that I know of, is that when you have been thinking and speaking in one language for a very long time, as an adult has, you might try to translate the new language into the old one and back again when communicating rather than directly ty...

Hi Sarah. welcome to booktalk.

I'm pretty new to booktalk as well. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have been.

Has anybody read any of these biographies? Has anyone read any of the actual "Books that shook the world"? I've read P.J. O'Rourke's biography of Wealth of Nations and just borrowed Francis Wheen's biography of Das Kapital . I was unimpressed by O'Rourke although I am impressed by Adam Smi...

Books that shook the world Can ideas change the world? The famous words of Karl Marx's eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, inscribed on his gravestone in Highgate cemetery, seem to suggest not. 'The philosophers,' Marx wrote, 'have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.' T...

I've already commented on the article in a thread started by JulianTheApostate in the Stuff of Thought discussion section, so i won't comment further on that. I just wanted to make further mention of the ubiquitous "trolley car" cases. I wish I had the book in front of me so I could quote ...

This strikes me as untrue. Athletes who are supported so they can train regularly, with top notch equipment, with all the best gear, have a great advantage over athletes who don't have this support. If they are so worried about advantages, every athlete should use the same make and model of skis, b...

Ah, I see Pinker is trotting out Jonathan Haidt and moral dumbfounding again. Psychologists aren't usually very good philosophers and Pinker isn't any exception. His treatment of the philosophical issues involved in morality is quite shallow. Most people immediately declare that these acts are wrong...