There is a proverb that says Curiosity killed the cat. Unsurprisingly, this term has a long and fascinating history. It was first found in a play, Every Man in His Humour, by British polymath, Ben Johnson. Originally, the perpetrator was Care that...
I have often asked myself the question: What thinker has had the most influence on America? Each time I was hard-pressed to think of any recent American thinker because not enough has elapsed to provide a clear context. No, I am looking for someone...
My recent essay, “The Decline of Thinking in America,” included the recommendation that schools should change their emphasis from “telling students what to think to teaching them how to think.” After reading the essay, a friend of mine asked me...
Late one night many years ago, my college roommate awakened me with the announcement that he had just written a profound essay and wanted me to read it right away while the “ink was still fresh.” I stumbled over to his desk, looked at the typed page...
Some time ago I asked a friend what she thought of the 3000 migrants who for several days had been moving in a caravan toward our southern border. She replied, “Caravan of migrants? I haven’t heard anything about that.” I then said, “I don’t know...
Part 1 of this essay began by noting the strange but amusing behavior of many Americans to the Coronavirus—rushing out and buying toilet paper. It ended by recalling Christopher Morley’s observation that humor can reveal how important and...
If an explorer from another galaxy happened to visit the U.S. within the last few weeks, she would surely have been puzzled at one public reaction to the Coronavirus—rushing out and buying toilet paper in greater quantities than almost any...
For millennia, people naturally, almost instinctively, understood that truth is objective rather than subjective. In other words, truth is what is actually so about something as distinguished from what people guess, feel, think, or believe is so...
