Saturday, 23 February 2008 09:36 pm
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deckardcanineI could not tell from the cover or the one-paragraph summary, but the first few pages of Naked in Death indicate that it takes place in the future. It must, if a police detective has an AutoCook and a voice-activated shower. At least there hasn't been any far-fetched technology yet.
But enough about that probable pulp for now. I want to tell you about the 2007 book I just finished: Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar... Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes, by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein.
To give you an idea what it's like, read or think back on the famous joke about Holmes and Watson on their camping trip. That joke is featured in boldface on pages 30-31 to illustrate inductive, not deductive, reasoning. You may think that expounding on the joke will kill its power as a joke, but the authors throw in a little of their own humor to keep it going.
It's a pretty fast-paced set of lessons, which is not entirely a good thing. Having taken a few philosophy courses in high school and college, I found most of it to be a capsulized review. Fortunately, I needed some of that review, as well as some lessons I'm pretty sure I was never taught. It's worth noting that the authors do not sound fully neutral: I often picked up their biases for or against a school of thought. This was okay by me, even when I disagreed. At least I didn't feel like I might be steered without knowing it.
The humor is not all in boldfaced recycled jokes and exposition. There are a few single-panel cartoons, mostly from The New Yorker. At the back, humor even extends into the timeline, the glossary, and the acknowledgments.
I passed 15-20 jokes on to the rest of my family, some of which amused me for hours. Some of the ones I skipped were already familiar to us. A couple were disgusting. A couple made me feel as tho I missed something, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't -- that they were just super-lame to me.
If this were just a philosophy book, I wouldn't read to the end. If it were just a joke book, I wouldn't read to the end. In combination, it was just worth the time to read to the end.
But enough about that probable pulp for now. I want to tell you about the 2007 book I just finished: Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar... Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes, by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein.
To give you an idea what it's like, read or think back on the famous joke about Holmes and Watson on their camping trip. That joke is featured in boldface on pages 30-31 to illustrate inductive, not deductive, reasoning. You may think that expounding on the joke will kill its power as a joke, but the authors throw in a little of their own humor to keep it going.
It's a pretty fast-paced set of lessons, which is not entirely a good thing. Having taken a few philosophy courses in high school and college, I found most of it to be a capsulized review. Fortunately, I needed some of that review, as well as some lessons I'm pretty sure I was never taught. It's worth noting that the authors do not sound fully neutral: I often picked up their biases for or against a school of thought. This was okay by me, even when I disagreed. At least I didn't feel like I might be steered without knowing it.
The humor is not all in boldfaced recycled jokes and exposition. There are a few single-panel cartoons, mostly from The New Yorker. At the back, humor even extends into the timeline, the glossary, and the acknowledgments.
I passed 15-20 jokes on to the rest of my family, some of which amused me for hours. Some of the ones I skipped were already familiar to us. A couple were disgusting. A couple made me feel as tho I missed something, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't -- that they were just super-lame to me.
If this were just a philosophy book, I wouldn't read to the end. If it were just a joke book, I wouldn't read to the end. In combination, it was just worth the time to read to the end.