pumpkinstrokemarrow

Readers may have heard of a certain Jerry Fodor, a philosopher with a large internet footprint. I have been following him in a desultory sort of way for some years, his interests running parallel to my own - although this following has never quite got further than reading the articles he publishes in the likes of the LRB. Never read the books. Perhaps frightened to. But now, it seems, he is following in the footsteps of those many eminences who get a bit silly in old age and try to make last minute impressions on fields of endeavour other than their own. Perhaps it is a form of hubris. Having achieved god like status in one's own field and perhaps, in unrevealed truth, having run out of puff, one comes to believe that it will works in other fields. Or do they just get the idea off all those celebrities who see fit to give us their views on everything under the sun. I am a formerly celebrated reader of news on daytime TV, therefore I am a good person to lecture you on the management of nuclear power stations. In this case, Jerry has seen fit to write about how nearly all the evolutionary biologists have got it wrong. After asserting his belief in evolution and his lack of belief in the almighty, he goes on to assert that natural selection is not the big driver of evolution. Maybe intelligent design is lurking there somewhere after all. I found the review of the book in question a bit hard to follow, although it closed with the suggestion that Jerry thinks that real science should be driven by nice neat universal laws like those of the natural numbers or of gravity (although I am not sure that these last are that neat these days), and that anything that is not is not science. Will he be put in pillory by whatever establishment(s) give him tenure? I don't think I will be moved to break my duck on reading his books.

I did ought to log that there are other views about all this. The Sunday Times thought that the book was a brave and welcome challenge [to current orthodoxy], unlike my source, the TLS, which thought that it was the sort of thing that give philosophy of science a bad name.

Paid a visit to the Oxfam bookshop at Kingston the other day, where we continued to mine their seam of old lefty books. There must be a steady trickle of old lefties expiring in the Kingston area, with the result that their heirs and assigns are passing on their libraries to Oxfam. More convenient than pegging over to the rather grander Amnesty bookshop at Hammersmith. So having bought a good biog. of one J. Stalin last year, on this visit I get what is billed as the last major work of G. V. Plekhanov, Fundamental Problems of Marxism, Lawrence & Wishart, 1969. Reprint of the 1908 first edition. We will see how I get on when I have finished with the three novellas by Amelie Northomb, a French speaking but possibly Belgian lady of whom I had never previously heard. First novella about a quiet decent couple (although not so quiet and decent not to have more or less got married when they were six years old apiece) who retire to a secluded corner of the country to find, when it is too late, that they have a very odd neighbour. Whose opening gambit is to come and sit, mute, in their sitting room from 1600 to 1800 every day. More or less mute anyway, with a vocabulary which rarely strays beyond 'yes' and 'no'. The novella chronicles the effect this has on the quiet decent couple.

Today opened negotiations with http://www.senior-railcard.co.uk having decided that a saving of 30% on most rail fares was worth the £25 odd a year the rail card cost one. Struggled through the usual online rigmarole to buy a three-year card for the BH. Having parted with certain details from her passport. Does this mean that the railway people can tap into the passport database to check who the BH is? Or does it just mean that there is a fair bit of information coded into the very long passport number that I had to tell the railcard people about?

Then, being game today, I thought that I would have a second go on my own account. Got about half way through the rigmarole when the railcard people announced that I had already used the email address I was proffering and perhaps I would like to proffer another. As if the BH and I are the first people to share an email account? Why should such sharing disqualify me from the otherwise attractive offer of railcard? Have sent off a query through the contact email. We will see what they say. They being some gang contracted by I am not quite sure who to run the online part of this service.

Yet another gang with whom I now have logon, password, known facts and so on and so forth. Which I am supposed to remember and secure. More on that matter shortly.