Sportive Thoughts

This is in response to Al's query at Al's Notepad. If you have additional suggestions for books that "discuss the impact of philosophy on politics, technology, and other more concrete features of modern life," let him know as well.

• A History of Philosophy, Frederick Copleston, S.J.
• Godel, Escher, and Bach, Douglass Hofstader
• From Romanticism to Critical Theory, Andrew Bowie
• Idealism as Modernism and Modernism as a Philosophical Problem, Robert Pippin
• Cities of Words, Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow, and Themes Out of School, Stanley Cavell
  

This list gets more abstract as it continues, and clearly doesn't address "technology" as much as one might like. That's becuase (I believe) Modern technology is dependent on scientific knowledge, and Modern science for the most part has become distinct from Modern philosophy. True, Carnap, Kuhn, Putnam and others have variously tried to make philosophy applicable to scientific knowledge, but it's fair to say that philosophical advances are further separated from technological application than are scientific advances. As Al and Richard C (in the comments) note, the one exception is Modern philosophical logic and its applicability to computing. Hence, the recommendation of Hofstader as a layman's reader of the overlay. Enjoy!

Update on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 at 01:10PM by Jared

Suggestions are coming in from Ortho:

• Information Bomb and Open Sky by Paul Virillo
• The Perfect Crime by Jean Baudrillard
  

and from Mark:

• Exploring Technology and Social Space by J Macgregor Wise
  

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