Stephen Hicks

Lecture Five: Science and technology have accomplished wonders since the Enlightenment. But, as Karl Popper asks, how do we “distinguish between science and pseudo–science“? Thomas Kuhn suggests that scientists are less-than-objective and more “like the typical character of Orwell’s 1984.” Themes:  Logical Positivism and Analytic philosophy’s aspirations and travails. Scientific method. Science and pseudo-science. Falsifiability. […]

Lecture Eight: Entrepreneurial Education From Montessori to the Future Themes: Our entrepreneurial age. Montessori. The new Socratics. Learning as play. Core issues: Agency. Freedom. Work as creative play. Social win-win. AI and Robotics as challenge and as opportunity. Entrepreneurism as one’s comparative advantage. Concluding claim: Education as philosophy in practice. Text: Maria Montessori, The Montessori

Franz Schubert, the great lyrical composer of the early 1800s, died at age 31. While his music is usually too melancholy for my taste, what a sadness. Franz was lucky to get that many years. Biographer Christoper Gibbs reports that Schubert’s parents had fourteen children and “nine of their fourteen children died in infancy.” (The

Lecture Four: Why has moral philosophy become skeptical and sterile? In contrast, Ayn Rand rejects the is-ought dichotomy and argues that ethics is “an objective necessity” for volitional, rational beings. Philippa Foot, also updating Aristotle, states that “the grounding of a moral argument is ultimately in facts about human life.” Themes:  Naturalism. Bio-centrism. Value and