Conferences Books

"The Catholic Writer," edited by Ralph McInerny, is a collection of papers presented at the Wetheresfield Institute by eight men and women of various professions -- most are college professors and a few are editors of national periodicals -- bound together by their Catholic Faith.

Gregory Wolfe's article, "'Ever Ancient, Ever New': The Catholic Writer in the Modern World," opens the book. In what is the best of the eight essays, Wolfe outlines the role of the modern Catholic writer, both the writer of fiction and non-fiction. Wolfe says that today's Catholic writers ought to have three themes that run throughout all their work: (1) the recovery of the sacred; (2) the critique of the world; (3) the assimilation of modernity.

The other seven essays comment on Catholic writers of the 20th century.

Russell Hittinger writes an interesting article on Christopher Dawson's understanding of the social sciences. Edward A. Synan, a former student of Étienne Gilson, authored a pleasant piece about his former teacher. Michael Novak writes on "perhaps the greatest exemplar of the Catholic laity in the last two centuries," Jacques Maritain. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen writes on the Catholic defender of the faith, Hilaire Belloc. Alice von Hilderbrand composed a beautiful essay on the intellectual life and attitude of her husband, Dietrich von Hilderbrand. Willaim A. Marra's work on Dietrich von Hilderbrand's philosophy of love, happiness, and sex complements Alice von Hilderbrand's work. And finally, Michael Platt writes on the theme of happiness in the fiction of Willa Cather.

Of these eight papers, Wolfe's paper is of most value since it (correctly) outlines the task of the modern Catholic writer. The other essays intermingle biography with thought, and, at times, more biography than thought. Though these essays make for interesting reading, few insights on the modern tasks are offered.

But this is only the view of one person who, after reading Wolfe's article, thought the other seven would follow suit. My disappointment denied this book of a fifth star. I would say that any person who is Catholic and wants to be a "Catholic writer" as opposed to a "writer who is Catholic," ought to read the whole book at least once, and Wolfe's article should be read a few times each year.

easily read in layman's terms to understand the basic principles of chaos mathematics.

This book is written in reaction to the tendency of neo-scholastic thinkers to neglect the role of the figure of Christ in the thought of Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and other Dominican thinkers. To redress this imbalance, Emery and Wawrykow have done an excellent job of compiling essays to address the long-neglected depictions of Christ in the writings and art of the medieval Dominicans through a multidisciplinary approach.

This book is a fine collection of papers originally presented at a free Lutheran conference on the issue of homosexuality. The timely essays cover the issue from various angles including biblical study, psychological research, ecumenical impact, etc.

The papers unanimously support the traditional understanding that homosexuality is a sin which God can transform. This book should be widely read by all interested in the Church's policy toward, and care for, our brothers and sisters in Christ whom are homosexual.

This pamphlet, really a 16 page, 3.5"x5.75" tract, is part of an eight-part series intended to be given to young men approaching draft age. Right, this series was created in 1956, when the mandatory draft was still in effect. The series was prepared by the Peace Problems Committee of the Mennonite General Conference.

This pamphlet answers the question of why you should be a Christian, and was written by the eminent Mennonite theologian, Paul Peachey (b.1918). Overall, I found it to be a good little tract, one that is quite interesting and thought-provoking.

The book is a useful collection of paper (some long, some short) on the definition and physics behind the "habitable zones" around stars. While perhaps not technical enough for all applications, it's nice to finally see many of these issues discussed in one volume, instead of spread throughout many different journals and texts. The climate of such planets is covered of course, but the addition of topics such as how stellar evolution influences the habitable zone (how long is the habitable zone habitable, for instance), the implications of high planetary obliquity, and atmospheric collapse of tidally locked planets round out the presentation. While somewhat lacking in math for such a text, perhaps the biggest negative I can see is that some of the material is not as up-to-date as I would like, but in a field like this that would be hard to do even if it was annually updated.

My own view is that every American should be more informed about the erosion of the public domain and the privatization of information.

Gore, with whom I don't often agree, warned that the new regime of patenting/licensing/copyright amounted to "selling the tree of knowledge to Wall Street." His warnings went largely unheeded (by him as well, evidently).

The collection here reminds us of what we are losing as the public domain is being eroded by privatization.

I have read many of papers contained in the three CASYS conference proceedings and have been quite impressed with the direction anticipatory systems research is heading. Anticipatory systems research is derived from Robert Rosen's seminal works "Anticipatory Systems", "Life Itself" and "Essays on Life Itself"; these were basically ignored (much like Rashevsky's work prior to Rosen) but slowly its value is being realized.

Anticipatory systems acknowledge that real processes, particularly life, do not obey causal laws required by our present 'religion' of reductionism. This can be seen in all aspects of science whether one looks at attempts at cybernetics, algorithmic information theory, physics or biology (to name a few). We have consistently run up against the same roadblocks to progress since our present way of thinking excludes the possibility of ever answering some very basic questions.

There is a lot of interest here from Dubois' works in hyperinclusion (although I do not agree with his interpretation of Rosen) to Ekdahl's excellent research on the link between induction and anticipatory systems. Nadin's work is quite good for someone just beginning to get interested in this area. Many aspects of science that are complete mysteries now begin to make much more sense whether it is the Feynman-Wheeler theories of QED, understanding Shnoll's results or learning theories in general when one sees that the problem is our clinging to linear causality.

It is quite interesting to contrast this to Wolfram's pinnacle of ironic science, "A New Kind of Science" - he has no 'new' science, just more of the old stuff. Unfortunately his money has helped him generate lots of hype about fluff when there is much more exciting and genuinely new work being done as it has in the past: quietly and thoughtfully.

Not quite as great a "read" as its predecessor, "Cold Comfort Farm," but a charming period piece nonetheless. Stella Gibbons had a keen eye and an splendid control of the language.

I have owned - and read - this book for many years. For anyone who has had an interest in delving in to the world of theatre which is on the very edge of discovery, read this book. Take a group of ethnically diverse actors, a carpet, a pair of boots, a very rough idea and a collection of small African villages, some of whom have never encountered anyone from outside their own small community, and you have the perfect mix for rediscovering the true meaning of theatre. At one and the same time massively amusing and wonderfully inspiring, enter into the world and the mind of the 20th century's most creative forces - Peter Brook.