Philosophy at Christmas – gawd bless us, *every one*.

Christmas – Philosophy for Everyone

Better Than a Lump of Coal

Fritz Allhoff, Scott C. Lowe

From the blurb:

From Santa, elves and Ebenezer Scrooge, to the culture wars and virgin birth, Christmas – Philosophy for Everyone explores a host of philosophical issues raised by the practices and beliefs surrounding Christmas. Offers thoughtful and humorous philosophical insights into the most widely celebrated holiday in the Western world Contributions come from a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, theology, religious studies, English literature, cognitive science and moral psychology The essays cover a wide range of Christmas themes, from a defence of the miracle of the virgin birth to the relevance of Christmas to atheists and pagans

Interview: Cycling and Philosophy

Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza

Mike Austin

Click to buy

We recently caught up with Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza and Michael W. Austin, the editors of Cycling – Philosophy for Everyone, released last year. We caught up with them recently and asked them a few questions about their editorial approach, and sound out why cycling is surprisingly complex and philosophically rich.

Why did you decide to edit a book on cycling and philosophy?

A colleague wrote that Ilundáin had found his calling with this project. But he’d rather say the book and the calling found him serendipitously when he saw the series editor Fritz Allhoff’s call for proposals.  Mike Austin was first to sprint for it and get the nod, but graciously offered to edit this as a tandem. It made sense because our combined experience meant we would steer the project in the right direction (and we think it has covered philosophically fascinating terrain).

What are some of the central concerns of the book, and why are they important?

One of our main goals was to capture the experiential and philosophical richness that cycling embodies. It is a seemingly simple activity that offers a surprisingly complex nature when examined philosophically. Another concern was to use the appeal of cycling—cyclists are a very passionate group of people—to stimulate philosophical and intellectual thinking in a way that was fun yet rigorous. As Plato said, we never learn

Interview: What Is Nanotechnology and Why Does It Matter?

We recently interviewed Fritz Allhoff, co-author (along with Patrick Lin and nanoscientist Daniel Moore) of What Is Nanotechnology and Why Does It Matter?: From Science to Ethics. Fritz talks about his motivations for writing, and the unique approach of the book.

Philosopher’s Eye: Why did you decide to write What Is Nanotechnology…?

Fritz Allhoff: Back in 2004, my colleague Patrick (Pat) Lin and I started nanoethics.org, a non-partisan group that provided a forum for social and ethical implications of nanotechnology. Our previous work had been in applied ethics—particularly the ethics of emerging technologies—and nanotechnology was beginning to draw a lot of attention. We got funding from the US National Science Foundation for some of our work, and this monograph emerged from that grant.

PE: What makes this area interesting to you?