PHiLOSOPHY
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LiFE blog

I very much enjoyed this news piece from the new issue of Prospect:

Did string theory cause the financial crisis? Perhaps, says Martin Rees, professor of Cosmology at Cambridge and president of the Royal Society. He thinks disaster may have been avoided if the City hadn't been so stuffed with Oxbridge maths whiz kids who swapped theories of everything for weird securities. "Perhaps we should blame the crash," he quipped to Prospect, "on string theorists who defected" and who ended up "as out-of-touch with reality in their banking as their physics." What advice, then, for budding geniuses doing the milk round? "Over the last three years, I've told students that the City is fine, as long as they don't call it the 'real world.' Faffing around with complex derivatives is far from anything that really matters." Nothing like the honest toil of puzzling over the mysteries of black holes and dark matter, then.

Lord Rees likes controversy, in a Gandalf the Grey kind of way. Having predicted we've only a 50-50 chance of making it through this century, he was on the Today programme this morning, saying the International Space Station was a total waste of money: after Apollo, no-one finds spacemen whizzing around the earth at vast expense at all inspiring.

Last night, Sarah Coakley was speaking on 'God, Providence, and the Evolutionary Phenomenon of Cooperation', a Faraday Lecture (which I think will go online in due course). It was interesting to hear how a leading academic theologian, in collaboration with a leading philosopher, Michael Novak, is tackling issues of evolution and altruism. In short, they really rather like it!

Coakley made some good points. For example, the way that altruism is used in discussions of evolution varies wildly, so that it is often hard to pin down just what is meant. Blind cooperation, as it were, is very different from self-sacrificial love. She suspects that often the word is deliberately blurred so that more can be claimed than the science warrants, be it a reductionist wanting to explain moral behaviour and explain it away, or a believer wanting to claim that evolution has proven the power of love.

In a forthcoming book with Novak, God, Games and Evolution: The Principle of Cooperation (Harvard University Press), she'll be teasing these differences out.

Novak advocates the idea that cooperation is a third fundamental principle of evolution, alongside natural selection and mutation. Without it, he argues, 'competitiveness dethrones itself', that is the highly organised, cooperating natural world we see around us could never get off the ground.

Coakley's argument, far too roughly, seems to be that evolutionary cooperation, as specifically defined in the mathematical calculus of game theory, is a kind of preparation for the emergence of altruism proper. Her use of game theory is important in this claim since game theory is not an explanation of cooperation but rather a description or account of cooperation. This leaves open what you make of the metaphysics of cooperation, its moral significance, say, if you think it has any (as presumably most human beings would) or the question of its 'primal causation' (which for believers will be God - God as being that without which not only cooperation but evolution itself would not be possible: God as the sustaining principle in nature, the Being of being). So moral altruism 'nestles' in pre-moral cooperation. Evolution readies the ground for the phenomena that range from cooperation, through empathy and care, to love and self-sacrifice.

One corollary of these ideas concerns the relationship between science and religion. Coakley resists the 'two magisteria' model, since it suggests that faith is not subject to rational discussion and that God is a kind of optional extra for those who have the eyes of faith, rather than being capable of being discerned by natural theology. Instead, she conceives of a relationship between science and religion of mutual inspiration and mutual chastening, in which both learn from each other as to their limits and strengths.

Perhaps there should be a division of physics analogous to apophatic theology, the kind of theology that proceeds by saying what God is not, since it knows that divinity is ultimately characterised by unknowability. Theology still comes up with new ideas, new ways of talking about God. But the mystery only deepens: that is a positive result for the apophatic theologian.

The parallel would be that physical reality is characterised by ultimately unknowability too, hence 'apophatic physics'. Physics would still progress, though in such a way that more understanding makes for a corresponding deepening of the mystery of things.

Apophatic physics has, in a sense, already been around for some time, at least since light showed wave/particle duality. Just what light is itself is impossible to say. Quantum theory has subsequently derived probabilistic wave equations that suggest the likelihood of detecting a photon in any given place - and thereby fascinatingly deepened the puzzle about the nature of light.

When asked by Melvyn Bragg, what light is, the physicist John Barrow replied: 'It's always a bad question to ask scientists what something is. We tend not to know what things really are but just what they do and what their effects are.'

Then there is dark energy and dark matter. Actually, these constituents of the universe wouldn't be very good candidates for apophatic physics, at least not at the moment. The problem is that almost nothing is known about dark energy and dark matter. You need to know a little about what something does and what its effects are for good apophatic physics to get going - like light, about which lots is known. If you have simply no understanding of something, you have no way of saying anything interesting about its mysteriousness too.

Apophatic physics might be an idea whose time has come since it really does seem as if a Theory of Everything is off the cards now. The latest work suggests that any proposed unification of fundamental forces would only take place at such high energies that quantum effects would obscure just how the forces were behaving, which is to say that no physicist could say how they were behaving.

At these Planck scales physics enters its cloud of unknowning. The implication is that the fundamental nature of reality is firmly located somewhere within that cloud and that no matter how intensely science peers, it will not be pierced. Seeing into 'the mind of God', to recall Stephen Hawkings phrase, won't be possible.

Scientists will keep trying of course. Theologians keep trying too. And understanding increases, negatively, as mystery.

Over the weekend I read the fascinating new edition of On the Internet by Hubert Dreyfus. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in life online. By way of a review, I've penned this piece, that is online at the Guardian's Cif site.

What can a blog about belief and unbelief hope to achieve? Learning, respect, graceful disagreement, lightness of touch, changes of mind, commitment? These are worthwhile aspirations to which most contributors here presumably sign up. However, the internet is a very particular medium within which to conduct this discourse. It is unlike face to face conversation, musing over a book, or going to church – other ways you might pursue the interest. If Marshall McLuhan was right, and the medium is the message, what impact does the nature of a blog have on the content of a blog, as it were?

The philosopher Hubert Dreyfus has just published a new edition of his book, On the Internet. I have found it a fascinating read whilst pondering these questions. His analysis of the online medium is generic. What is striking, though, is that matters of belief and unbelief would appear to exacerbate many of the net effects he explores.

Central to his discussion is Kierkegaard's article The Present Age. In it, the philosopher lamented the rise of what he called the public sphere, which can be aligned with a pervasive press and now the global internet. He feared it was a great leveller of opinion. There is a good, democratising side to the public sphere. Everything and everyone is capable of winning attention. Individuals in the present age can learn about all sorts of things: "The present age is one of understanding, of reflection," Kierkegaard wrote.

However, that comes at a price. The weighty can become confused with the lighter; everything from celebrity relationships to mass starvation can apparently carry the same significance. With everything and everyone granted an equal 15 minutes of fame, it is hard to form judgments that make a difference in life. Thus, the present age is one "which flies into enthusiasm for a moment only to decline back into indolence". What is won in "extensity" is lost in intensity. Passions can be roused in an instant. Positions can be dropped in an instant too.

That said, Kierkegaard would have recognised the great benefit that the internet offers those that have commitments to things in the real world. It is a tremendous medium for gathering facts and rallying support. However, this comes with a serious risk too. Whilst the internet makes it very easy to collect information in support of a commitment, it is as easy to collect information that supports the opposite or different commitments as well. Online, you can find evidence to fit any choice – the phenomenon of leveling again. Hence the internet is the perfect medium for the perpetuation of conspiracies, myths and prejudices. But it must also be remembered that free-surfing is not the same as freethinking. The net can be a place more to do with the rebuttal of others than engagement with others.

Kierkegaard wrote a lot about profound commitments and "ultimate concerns", matters that are at the core of your life and to which you give your life – family, politics and faith. He believed that without them, human existence is characterised by despair. This raises a further, related issue: a great risk with a blog like this is that it makes holding opinions on matters that should be of the utmost importance almost too easy.

A case in point might be the Charter for Compassion launched last week by Karen Armstrong. It is a very good cause and, for what it's worth, I'd be in agreement with her that compassion is at the heart of religion, and that it has been distorted in the modern world. (It's no doubt distorted in every age, but that is another matter.) Benevolent causes can gather many thousands of signatures online and have flourished in the internet age. And yet, Kierkegaard's question would be whether you can be really committed to something when all it can demand from you is the click of a mouse.

Of course, the organisers of the charter hope that the clicks they gather represent much more. But think of all the groups you can join on Facebook, or the causes to which you can add your email address via round-robins. The internet does not prohibit commitment but in the escalation of the number of commitments you can make, it dilutes commitment, and so undermines commitment. Again, this is particularly felt when it comes to matters of belief and unbelief because with these concerns, commitment is supposed to be fundamental. The great challenge that the Charter for Compassion faces is not winning virtual support but developing real-world weight.

For Dreyfus, perhaps the greatest limitation of the internet is that it is disembodied. He argues that many online problems stem from this incorporeal nature, from the sense of isolation the net can foster to the failure of technology whizzes to develop search engines with intelligence.

The observation raises a final issue of which to be conscious on a blog about religion. It is because we have bodies that we feel in touch with the world, that we are responsible and vulnerable to one another. Conversely, when we are not physically present to one another, it is easier to be brutal and distant. Clearly, this manifests itself in derisory posts and comments. But there is a more subtle and interesting reflection that follows from being disembodied too.

Dreyfus believes that being embodied is a central feature of any profound education. People learn from a myriad of signals not just the word, and by being immersed in an environment that demands involvement, risk and commitment from them. In other words, the internet is inherently limited when it comes to gaining understanding. That does not mean it is worthless. Far from it. But when it comes to such seminal matters as belief and unbelief – when you confront others with whom you profoundly disagree – the subtle as well as obvious ramifications of being disembodied are certainly worth bearing in mind.

You might like to listen to Equal Time For Freethought, broadcast last night on New York City's WBAI public radio. I was talking about After Atheism, passionate agnosticism, and the lust for certainty.

Here's an experiential definition of God worth pondering, given by Rowan Williams and recorded by Rupert Shortt in his new biography of the Archbishop, Rowan's Rule.

God is first and foremost that depth around all things and beyond all things in which, when I pray, I try to sink. But God is also the activity that comes to me out of that depth, tells me I'm loved, that opens up a future for me, that offers transformations I can't imagine. Very much a mystery but also very much a presence. Very much a person.

Roger Scruton, in The Sunday Times, writes on the difference between friendship-making in the real world, and online - arguing that it turns on risk. '(Online) there grows between us a reduced-risk encounter, in which each is aware that the other is fundamentally withheld, sovereign within his impregnable cyber-castle.' Does this matter, he asks. He thinks it does:

As people habituate themselves to living in virtual worlds where all is permitted and nothing is paid for, virtues like courage and justice will disappear, since nobody will have a need for them. Without those virtues, however, people will be unable to risk themselves in real encounters, and will hide instead in their narcissistic dreams.

Neuroscience. I feel it's been everywhere this week, right inside my head. It is impressive, as watching a brain functioning is bound to be. My complaint is that this fascination gets wildly overblown and becomes confused with insights about what it is to be human.

Take In Our Time. Neuroscience was the subject this week. The history was well done, as you'd expect from this almost always excellent programme. But when it came to the question of consciousness, and the relationship between brain and mind, pretty much all we got was an assertion of materialism and the claim that consciousness is the 'management of long term goals'. It was as if the neo-cortex is kind of fancy Filofax.

Last night, I went to watch the searingly superb film I've loved you for so long, starring Kristan Scott-Thomas. Neuroscientists should replace their organiser screens for the silver screen (if not a mirror on real life.) Two minutes of this film would stop anyone from making such silly comments.

Second dose of neuroscience: a review in The Times of two books about numbers and marketing, majoring on the new discipline of neuromarketing. 'It produces some startling results,' writes reviewer Brian Appleyard. These add up to: 1. Warnings on cigarette packets don't work; 2. People don't always mean what they say; 3. Shopping can be thrilling.

Are these 'startling results'? They seem pretty obvious to me. What's going on here, I suspect, is the contemporary need for a certain kind of evidence. The more hi-tech it is, the more robust it is taken to be. If it implies humans are machines then, for some reason, all the better.

The trouble with the neuroscientists - or to be fair the ones that get into the media - is that they are too excited by the technology to ask any critical questions. Here's an experiment to perform to test my hypothesis. Put a neuroscientist in a scanner whilst they're doing some neuroscience. I bet the same part of the brain lights up as a kid's playing on an Xbox, drenched in stupifying dopamine.

Third dose: I listened to a Night Waves special on economics, that included a section on neuroeconomics. At last, presenter Matthew Sweet managed to extract some rigorous analysis and the programme pointed out fallacies. One is that going to the hardware tells you more than it actually will. Open the lid on your computer. It'll tell you almost nothing about what is on your monitor, and absolutely nothing about why words and images are being displayed.

The truth is that 'where' tells you little about 'how', which again tells you little about 'what', which adds up to virtually nothing about 'why'. Neuroscience knows increasing amounts about the 'where' of stuff in the brain. That is fascinating and perhaps provides some hints about 'how' - though I think it helps to remember: (a) no-one has much idea about how the brain actually works and so by claiming too much, too soon neuroscience risks turning itself into a kind of neo-phrenology, and anyway; (b) consciousness is bound to depend upon externalities too - such as relationships, language, location, history, etc, etc, emotions and our bodies. It is called having a life.

As to the 'what' of consciousness, let alone the 'why' - you see where I'm going.

'I can honestly say that this was one of the most profoundly moving (as well as academically worthwhile) books I have had the pleasure (if that is the correct word) to read for a long while.'

From a review of Havi Carel's Illness in the THE today, one of our Art of Living series.

I would, wouldn't I: but I do, truly agree.

Prince Charles is 60. The BBC has been playing the National Anthem. And I've been struck by how the story is almost invariably reported in relation to his 'destiny'. He is said to be a man in waiting, a man who would be king, a man whose life won't be fulfilled unless or until he can ascend the throne and exercise his birthright.

I've a feeling this says more about us than Charles. By all accounts, he has already done a lifetime's worth of work, developing his interests, sometimes giving voice to his opinions, and above all in his charities. The philanthropy of the man is distinguished, even given his privileges. That his story is told in relation to royal power, not this human kindness, is what says something about us.

Adam Phillips, ever with an eye for what we are unaware of, explores something of this in his forthcoming book, written with Barbara Taylor. Called On Kindness, they say:

People are leading secretly kind lives all the time, but without a language in which to express this, or cultural support for it. Living according to our sympathies, we imagine, will weaken or overwhelm us; kindness is the saboteur of the successful life. We need to know how we have come to believe that the best lives we can lead seem to involve sacrificing the best things about ourselves; and how we have come to believe that there are pleasures greater than kindness. Kindness, we will argue in this book - not sexuality, not violence, not money - has become our forbidden pleasure.

Not forbidden to the kindly prince, it seems.

Another essay from the ever thoughtful, surprising and practical Roman Krznaric, this time Work and the Art of Living.

The essay explores how to decide what career path to follow and how to find work that is truly life enhancing. Let Albert Schweitzer, Marie Curie and even Zorba The Greek be your guides to a more adventurous career.

Don't forget Work in our Art of Living series too!

Mark Pinsky was a Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellow with me this summer, and he probably knows more than anyone else in the media about American evangelicalism.

He wrote an interesting piece in USA Today on how the British way of 'doing' science and religion is very difference from the way Americans 'do' it. In short, there is a strand of anti-science thinking in American evangelicalism that doesn't exist in the UK. 'Among the Protestant evangelicals who have dominated the political and cultural discourse on this subject in the U.S. news media, such researchers often are considered enemies of faith.'

British evangelicals who are also scientists, on the other hand, cite 'a disparate mixture of empirical scientific evidence and the veracity of Scripture for their Christianity'. Science and faith both play a part.

Mark noted that they resist getting drawn into the cultural issues that occupy their American counterparts; when it comes to what they believe about abortion or homosexuality, they are far more nuanced. Similarly, Brits scoff at ID and creationism, holding to what is sometimes called 'theistic evolution', the notion that divinity acts through natural processes.

British evangelicals don't have access to the media in the same way that Americans do, and British journalists on the whole don't think to turn to evangelicals for comment either. That said, some British evangelicals, like John Houghton, are playing a part behind the scenes, in this case persuading American evangelicals that climate change is a major spiritual as well as scientific issue.

A forgotten copy of Cicero's perhaps little read dialogue, On Old Age, has been discovered in an Irish library. It prompted me to have a look at the book, widely available online, not least since I sense it is not a subject often covered in philosophy or self-help. What a practical read it is. The book is set up as a dialogue, with Cato, the respected now elder statesman.

Cato notes the folly of old age, how everyone wants it, and yet how everyone complains about it when it arrives.

He argues that the key to happiness in old age is to have located sources of sufficiency inside yourself, and to learn to trust in the benevolence of nature, the great source of consolation for the Stoics.

He notes that it frees you from the youthful bonds of passion, and the want of endless pleasures.

Old age can be a time for reflecting on the wisdom gathered over the years, be that gained on the battlefield (we are talking Romans here) or gained at the writing-desk (Plato is said to have died aged 85 whilst writing). The crowning grace of old age is influence, though it is the honourable conduct of youth that earns it. Memory may fade, though a regular intellectual practice mitigates that.

The faults of old age, such as fretfulness, fidgetiness or ill-temper, are more faults of character than time of life. Similarly, old age may be feared because death is nearer, though surely if a long life teaches you anything it should be that death comes to all? Wise men die cheerful, he notes.

There is clearly a role for older people in public life, he believes, because of the wisdom they have gained. Not everyone on a ship needs the physical strength to pull sails. Someone must steer the boat.

He is pressed to give his advice on how to prepare for old age before old age arrives. And perhaps that points to the greatest insight in Cicero's dialogue: Laelius, who is not yet old, asks Cato, who is, how he copes with old age, and finds contentment in it.

The message is that conversation with people in old age is likely to yield the greatest wisdom. How many younger people think to do that?

Tonight, Christopher Jamison, the abbot of Worth Abbey and star of the TV series The Monastery, is giving a lecture on climate change at Operation Noah. I've seen a text of his speech, and written this piece, now up on the Guardian's Cif site.

Can the climate change crisis be answered purely by science and technology, or does it need to be understood as a moral and spiritual issue too? In a lecture for the Christian climate change agency, Operation Noah today, Christopher Jamison, the Abbot of Worth Abbey that featured on the TV series The Monastery, will make a compelling case that it is very much the latter.

An abbot would say that, wouldn't he. But read on. At root, Jamison is calling for a more serious engagement with ethics in public life. This means not just overcoming the fear of appearing to be merely moralizing. And not just learning to see ethics as more than a series of issues – as if it were mostly a matter of deciding whether you are for or against abortion, assisted dying, gay marriage, and so on. His agenda demands even more than equating ethics with human rights, for all that human rights can achieve. Rather, ethics is about the shape of life taken as a whole, and the direction in which a society is headed; it is about your vision of the good life, as the ancient Greek philosophers used to put it.

More particularly, when it comes to climate change, the argument is that rules and laws will not be enough, any more than they were enough to curtail the worst excesses of the City. (Incidentally, Jamison has been an advisor to the FSA, so he knows what he is talking about.) This is because climate change is not just about human behaviour, but human desire. It is our desire for freedom, for novelty, for comfort that lies at the heart of the crisis. Our piecemeal behaviours, such as hopping on cheap flights or leaving the heating on, are products of that desire.

Tackling climate change is, therefore, a matter of finding a new moral framework from within which to envisage life. Jamison believes that the Benedictine way of life, which he and his brethren follow, has some resources for doing that. He also believes they are accessible to all, regardless of vocation or faith.

Benedict thought the good life is about the cultivation of virtues. In this, he was following the ancient Greeks. Jamison highlights four virtues that might be particularly valuable today: fortitude (or courage), justice, temperance (or moderation) and prudence (or care). These four need to become part of the public discussion. Justice often is already, but alone it is not enough.

This is a big ask, though climate change is a big problem. The Pope recently spoke of the need for nothing less than an "ecological conversion", something that will take time to stimulate and sustain. There is an important link to the question of happiness here too: if a desirable life is at least in part a happy life then what do we take happiness to be? Again, along with the Greeks, Jamison is quite clear that we have got our answer to that question wrong. Happiness is not about feeling good; the hedonistic assumption is part of the problem. Rather, it is about pursuing the good, knowing the good and doing good. He believes that religious faith is a particular good way of nourishing such a vision of happiness, though he is quite prepared to admit that a faith is not necessary to it.

Now, it would be easy to respond by casting stones. For one thing, the church is a late convert to climate change. The head of Operation Noah is Mark Dowd. He makes films for TV and only a couple of years ago interviewed the Vatican's spokesman on climate change for his film "God is Green": it was quite clear then that the Vatican had barely any idea about climate change. However, when it comes to a subject like this, no-one is without sin.

So perhaps a more constructive way forward is to ask about the challenges the abbot's comments represent. For if you buy the argument that there is a need for more than science and technology to respond to climate change, then they are profound challenges indeed. (That some don't buy the argument is partly because they believe the moral ask is too much.) The challenge includes developing a different idea about happiness, which is to say an idea of the good life that is knowing and doing good rather than merely feeling good. The very notion of the good life raises a related issue, namely a sense of and commitment to community: community is difficult in a pluralistic society, where the nature of the good life is not agreed and people live fragmented lives.

There are other issues to confront, such as what we think about freedom. In the Benedictine way of life, freedom is seen primarily as an interior condition rather than a freedom to act in the world; it is about freedom of spirit rather than freedom of choice. Moreover, the Rule insists that it is necessary to give up on choice in order to find that inner freedom: another major challenge to most of Western living.

Jamison explores these issues at greater length in his bestselling books, that latest being Finding Happiness. No small part of his appeal is that he is actually living the life he commends, which is why he is an attractive figure, not a moralizing one. His points are well made, but if responding to climate change needs more than science it also needs more than argument. For if Jamison is right, then climate change demands nothing less than what religious people call a conversion, a fundamental reorientation of your way of life.

In an interesting Analysis programme last night, on certainty in politics and public life, Michael Blastland appeared to come to the conclusion that whilst everyone knows there is little certainty to be had in life, no-one wants to admit it in public. Worse, there's a kind of conspiracy between journalists and politicians: though both know the lust for certainty is a fool's game, journalists demand it and politicians deliver it.

Their 'excuse' is that the public couldn't take it if politicians said they don't know, things aren't that simple, we're feeling our way forward. They might be right, though they fool themselves too, often confusing values with means (think of the number of times ministers say, 'It's the right thing to do' as if that is justification for a policy); or in the case of the banking crisis, how a kind of empiricist ideology got muddled up with the reality of bad data in, poor analysis out.

Incidentally, the programme begins with John Habgood's great line about the lust for certainty being a sin. We used that at the launch of After Atheism a recording of which is online.

I've only just heard about the journal In Character. Each issue of the quarterly is dedicated to a virtue, currently Forgiveness, previously Compassion, Honesty and so on. It brings together scholars and journalists versed in public policy, the humanities, religion, and the sciences. Moreover, everything appears to be online.

In her fantastic book on silence, Sara Maitland describes making two journeys to explore two difference kinds of silence: the silence of the desert traditionally associated with the religious life of the hermit; and the silence of the mountains traditionally associated with the Romantics and their encounter with the sublime. It makes for some fascinating thoughts.

Desert silence, she concludes, precipitates a kenotic response, an emptying of the self; a sense of transparency and dissolving before the infinity of sand, sun and air. This was precisely what the hermits sought, in their struggle to gain a purity of heart and mind that was open to God.

Romantic silence, she concludes, precipitates a creative response, a fulfilling of the self; an encounter with the sublime in nature leads to the search for connections and stories, which is why the Romantics came to associate it with creativity and genius - be that Wordsworth in Cumbria or Shelley in the Alps.

And notice, the two kinds of silence are diametrically opposed: one undoes the self, one renews it. Moreover, if desert silence is religious and old, romantic silence is post-enlightenment and new. They reflect two different kinds of senses about the self, pre-modern and modern. The first is a self that is permeable to the divine; the second is a self that is autonomous and free.

For the first, the good life is found in emptying the illusory nature of the self in favour of the truth that lies outside of the self, and in God. For the second, the good life is found in creating a narrative of the self - 'finding yourself'; it generates individuality, character and self-esteem. Conversely, the religious self sees the post-enlightenment self as fragmented, atheistic and hubristic. The post-enlightenment self sees the religious self as superstitious, irrational and dependent.

The post-modern self - that Maitland doesn't discuss, though the fact that she can explore both suggests this is where she is positioned - no doubt introduces a new dimension again, perhaps an odd mix of the two, feeling the force of the emptying self though struggling to commit to a narrative that might provide a way of making sense of such an experience of self. Post-modern silence would be a different silence again, perhaps a silence of surface and play, mirrors and simulacra.

What is novel about Maitland's exploration is that she situates these two kinds of self against silence. In the first case, it is the ineffability of the divine; in the second, the ineffability of the sublime. We all have to chose how we might approach the silence that lies beyond us, for it is in silence that what is beyond us comes to us, supremely so in the silence of death. One of Maitland's themes is that an inability to handle silence is a grave problem for people today. You might say that to know yourself is to chose your silence.

There's an excerpt from Mark Rowland's superb memoir The Philosopher and the Wolf in The Telegraph today. I've reviewed it for The TLS and suspect it will become a philosophical cult classic. A clip from the clip:

It was not just that I loved having him around - although I did. Much of what I learnt, about how to live and how to conduct myself, I learnt during those 11 years. Much of what I know about life and its meaning I learnt from him. What it is to be human: I learnt this from a wolf. And so thoroughly did he insert himself into every facet of my life, so seamlessly did our lives become intertwined, that I came to understand, even define, myself in terms of my relationship to Brenin.

You might like to listen to iconoclast John Gray on climate change, speaking as part of Radio 3's free thinking festival. He certainly thought freely, and as a result was rebutted with force by the audience, though I didn't feel anyone actually addressed his central points. Here's what they were, in a nutshell:

1. Climate change is happening and is a bigger problem than most people (that is non-scientists) think.

2. As a student of geopolitics, he is quite sure that the rapidly industrialising countries, such as China and India, can't and won't be weaned off carbon-based energy. Further, those countries whose wealth depends on carbon-based energy, such as Russia and the Gulf States, won't be weaned off it either.

3. Climate change is a global problem. Therefore, because China, India, Russia and the Gulf States - not to mention countries in Africa and South America - won't be weaned off carbon, anything that Europe and America do to move from carbon-based energy (given that the latter does anything significant) will have little impact upon climate change.

4. His central point follows from this analysis: believing that European initiatives can make a difference to climate change is utopian and, therefore, dangerous.

5. So what, in Europe, to do? Use our scientific and technological wherewithal to adapt to the climate change that will come. He cited two examples: Finland moving to nuclear and the Netherlands withdrawing from lowlands.

6. At a personal level, not taking flights, as if that will make a difference to the climate, is useless, though it may lead to other benefits, such as reducing air congestion over London. Recycling similarly, though again there may be non-climate-related benefits. You might consider such things as supporting charities that work to stop the reduction of rain forests, or those that seek to raise living standards in the developing world, since that will increase opportunities for education and therefore reduce growth in the population, arguably the fundamental contributor to climate change.

Bleak thinking. Challenging thinking. Realistic thinking?

The thing about silence, according to Sara Maitland in her wonderful new tome A Book of Silence, is not that silence is an absence of noise but that it is a space where you can start to notice the noise.