I've a piece on the Guardian's Cif about the megaselling The Secret and The Power, basically asking what and why? A taster:

The law of attraction is manifest particularly in your feelings. Good feelings generate good outcomes. Bad feelings bad outcomes. An individual will find themselves caught up either in spirals of positivity, or negativity. It all depends upon your habits of mind. The Secret and The Power aim to help you to take your "feeling off automatic". They suggest ways of realigning your patterns of thought so as to make you happier and to improve your relationships.

Sound familiar? It's the power of positive thinking, repackaged. And could it not also be deemed a pop-psych version CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), or a form of mindfulness-lite? There are also thin links with ancient Greek Stoicism. Stoics taught that one should learn to go with the flow. To resist the flow only causes distress, and you can trust the flow because it is benign.

William James, the great psychologist of religion, grouped the 19th-century equivalents of these philosophies together, and called them "mind-cures". He described them as "a form of regeneration by relaxing, letting go". He noted they are "but giving your little private convulsive self a rest, and finding that a great Self is there."

At Greenbelt today, and I also penned this piece for the festival magazine:

“Tell all the truth, but tell it slant,” wrote the poet Emily Dickinson: “Success in circuit lies.” The advice is itself a truth, a commendation in the art of looking sideways.

Dickinson lived in an age when it was becoming impossible to find truth straightforwardly, if ever there has been such a time. In her generation, the Victorian crisis about belief in God peaked. Philosophers announced the death of God. Naturalists challenged what had always seemed to be the best evidence for God: nature’s apparent design.

What is striking about Dickinson, though, is that she both experienced the darkness of that doubt, and found a way to transform it into an experience that produced meaning. It’s all about the pursuit of the circuitous.

That her medium was poetry is no mere detail. It is almost the whole story. Poetry not only allows her to express herself – her desire for consolation, her anxiety about what’s disappearing. It is also the form of writing par excellence that can keep an eye open for what is peripheral. It can discern truths that words otherwise struggle to articulate. It glimpses, and hopes.

She was born in 1830, and although her poems are now widely available, most of her work was not published in her own lifetime. That was partly because she lived as a recluse. In the later part of her life, she even refused to leave her room. But she had, no less, many friends and was as prolific a letter-writer as she was a poet.

One of her frequent interlocutors was Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and here’s how Dickinson describes herself to him: ‘small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the Chestnut Bur, and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, that the Guest leaves.’ That description came in lieu of the photograph Higginson had requested. But isn’t it a case when a few words are worth far more than a picture? Those allusions – wren-like, bold hair, eyes like sherry dregs. They enable us to imagine her person.

She draws on the philosophy that recognises our wisdom derives not so much from what we think we know, as from the acknowledgement of what we don’t know. Understanding that generates wisdom. It reaches back to Socrates, who went around ancient Athens telling folk that there was one thing he knew for sure: he was ignorant. He also demonstrated to others that they couldn’t be so sure about what they thought they knew too. With his famous questioning, he led them to an existential precipice: to know Socrates was to know someone who sought all the truth, and in so doing, realised it mostly lies out of sight. He was profoundly disliked as a result, his bursting ego-filled bubbles arguably leading to his condemnation and death.

The same perception is written into the Hebrew tradition, not least in the story of Moses. When he ascends Mount Sinai, he enters a dark cloud. Moses asks to see Yahweh’s glory, and Yahweh concurs, only he will cover Moses with his hand as he passes by, ‘for man shall not see me and live.’ Moses too does not see anything directly. He apparently doesn’t see anything at all. Instead, an oblique experience is granted to him. It is better described as a kind of unknowing, rather than knowing. He must leave behind what he has previously observed because this seeing consists in not seeing. That which is sought transcends all knowledge. Or as Dickinson captures it in her poem: ‘The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind - .’

If this is our predicament – to be the creature who yearns for more, and is perpetually frustrated as a result – that might seem tragic: life as a bad joke. But it’s not. And Dickinson also knows why.

What she realises is that the truth which is beyond us, which is discerned only indirectly, is the only truth that is truly worth seeking. That which we can readily grasp and manipulate is too easy for us. It’s humdrum. It leaves life too small for us, the creature with an eye for the transcendent. But look further, and what you are offered is what she calls truth’s ‘superb surprise’. That’s why success lies in circuit. Our humanity is spoken to, from a direction – a source – that we had not expected. And our humanity expands as a result.

The Spirit Level is a book that has had as great an impact as any on recent political discourse. Its thesis, that inequality in society is bad for everyone, is backed up by a storm of statistics. And in turn has provoked a storm of rebuttals, which say the evidence presented proves no such thing.

All credit to the RSA for bringing together the book's two authors and two of its biggest critics. So who won the hour long debate? It was a stalemate, if the audience is anything to go by: at the end, Matthew Taylor asks whether anyone's mind has been changed, and one person alone admits as much.

I'm not surprised, as the authors and the opponents present exactly the same defence/critique to make their opposing cases. Regression analysis, removal of outliers, the small samples - standard statistical methods. To one side, that's the strength of the case. To the other, its weakness.

So what to make of it? Well, I sided with the critics, not really because of their evidence, but because they seemed to me to make the important, bigger point. You just can't derive policy from evidence when it comes to systems as complex as human societies. Instead, you must make the ethical case for what you want to do. That's hard. But that's, presumably, only because politics is hard, and any shortcuts are a delusion.

... well, in a demythologized sort of way. The view comes about having seen a wonderful presentation, Align, last night at the Museum of London. Psychogeographers, Robert Kingham and Rich Cochrane, use music, images, history and stories - punctuated by the words of John Bunyan - to explore the association between London and ley lines. It's a great way of telling of the palimpsest nature of the city, the way sites gather certain associations over the centuries - the obvious example being churches, though healing wells and plague pits feature too.

They toy with the contested, though broadly, archeological interpretation of ley lines: they are straight routes over the landscape used for millennia; and the rather recent New Age view, to do with cosmic energy flows. But turn to the more interesting question, of why we humans are captivated by such notions anyway?

In short, we are map-making creatures. Maps - physical, emotional, social and imaginative - helping us to navigate the world. Without them, life would be impossibly disorientating. Straight lines have a particular appeal, for the obvious reason that they set a sure path. And if you think ley lines have no place in the modern world, then next time you're on the London tube take a look at the famous underground map. What else is that crisscross pattern?

I've a piece up at the Guardian's Cif Belief about evolutionary science and notions of progress, and the dangers of popular science. A taster:

How might one vent the progressivist opinions that were such an inspiration? The solution is found in popular science. All you have to do is include a disclaimer in the introduction: "This book is written for the general reader." Unleashed from scientific rigour, individuals are then free to embrace all manner of interpretations, speculations and applications. And, of course, it is popular books, not scientific papers, that tend to influence the wider cultural debate.

Now, this is a theory worth considering in relation to popular science writing in general. How many contemporary "big idea" books lift research from behavioural economics or neuroscience, say, only then to enjoy a scientifically questionable rhetorical freedom?

Darian Leader was very fascinating about mourning, yesterday at the Edinburgh book festival. He noted that mourning changed from having a big public dimension to being personal and private with the First World War: there were simply too many deaths for the Victorian rituals of mourning to cope with. But, he mused, has this made mourning more difficult for us or just different?

That it might have become more difficult is supported by considering the nature of mourning. It seems to require a public dimension, as the sadness of death is not just an inner trouble, but is about re-establishing your relationship with the world. As Lacan observed, when someone dies, you don’t just lose them, but you lose yourself as you were with them. Finding yourself again, then, is a social act – which perhaps explains why many cultures have professional mourners, though not our own, unless you count undertakers dressed in black. It’s their very artificiality, or symbolic role – like dressing in black – which announces that something foundational is taking place, and that all are involved.

Similarly, there’s the ancient thought that ‘nature mourns with you’: the mourner’s world has to be remade and that requires a remaking of the world too. Or, in Hamlet, the Danish prince can only mourn when he sees Laertes ostentatiously mourning: then, Hamlet's loss is externalised, and only in ceasing to be a self-obsessed inner concern can the mourning really begin.

Leader reflected that the shopping streets of Victorian Edinburgh would not have known the brands of today, though they would have had ‘mourning shops’, places to buy the paraphernalia of mourning - clothes and the like. It seems morbid to us. But perhaps there was a lost wisdom in it.

I'm at the Edinburgh Book Festival and talking later about being a genius, on a panel with David Shenk, author of The Genius In All of Us. A preview.

I think Shenk has a good point, which is that genetic determinism is wrong. (He's very against the notion that genius is a genetic gift.) A plethora of factors have a bearing upon who we become and are. Actually, I suspect, that the growing story over the next few years won't just be that nurture matters more, but that bar a few exceptions like the causes diseases, genes tell us surprisingly little about ourselves.

What Shenk overlooks* I was left thinking more about, though, are the cultural factors. There are moments in history that produce geniuses, just as there are periods of history that are dark ages. It's surely significant that Socrates, Plato and Aristotle followed one another; as did Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo. (If the mood's right, I might try to make the case that we live in a dark age now, driven largely by the dominance of the philosophy of materialism.)

My feeling is that education is more than just about effort too, the factor Shenk emphasizes - what's become known as the 10,000 hour rule. Again, there's a cultural issue at stake here, namely that genius arises from within lively traditions of philosophy, art, literature and so on. To put it another way, genius is an aesthetic issue, and so is about style, and that requires sitting at the feet of master, perhaps for many years. Which means you need a master.

Underneath Shenk's thoughts is an unarticulated worry about freedom: are we less free than we think we are, not least when it comes to realising any potential? The answer is surely yes. So there is not a genius in all of us, which is why even in Edinburgh this August, there is no Shakespeare or Socrates peddling his or her wares on the streets.

That said, there's a consolation. The geniuses of history that there are, do leave us their best work to enjoy. We can grow to appreciate it, and so glimpse their glimpse of eternity.

*see comments!

Machiavelli has had advice for Tony Blair before, the line about not to mind whether you are loathed as a leader. But he has further advice now for the former PM, who has announced he is to give all his earnings from his forthcoming autobiography to charity. In short, Niccolo says that TB has made a mistake, again.

Machiavelli recognised that the wealthy like to give, and hope to win a generous reputation in so doing. But he also realised that a reputation can't be bought. It must be earned.

This goes even when the reputation involves the exchange of large sums. He concluded: 'There is nothing so self-defeating as generosity: in the act of practising it, you lose the ability to do so, and you become either poor and despised or, seeking to escape poverty, rapacious and hated.'

He realised that the only option is to give, and to do so strictly in secret. In time, this very act will affect your character, and it's only then that, sensing the change, people may come to call you generous.

The New Statesman has done an interesting thing: devote an issue to scientists writing not about science, but about the state of science.

The editorial prism is one of threat: the front page shouts 'The War Against Science.' For Simon Singh, it's mainstream science versus alternative medicine, a fight over which he's been dragged through the libel courts. For Michael Barrett, there's a culture war on, with science and scientists being shown less than the respect they deserve. There's also an intercultural challenge to western science, described by Michael Brooks, as China seems destined to become the world's leading science base.

But there are deeper battles being waged too, that emerge as you read through the pages.

One concerns metaphysics, and the radically different views of nature presupposed by different sciences. The variety comes through in Michael Brooks' list of 20 cutting-edge ideas in science.

• Quantum physics has no conception of time, which perhaps implies that humans make it up; only it's a pretty powerful invention, because some biologists are working hard at preventing one dramatic consequence of time: aging.

• Many in physics regard the cosmos as, at base, held together by something abstract, namely information; whereas many working in the field of consciousness proceed on the basis that consciousness is an information processing activity which is, at base, purely material and tangible.

• Some parts of evolutionary biology show that we've little idea about the mechanisms involved in the evolution of life, let alone its origin; whereas other parts are already talking about the creation of life in the lab and the prevalence of it on earth-like planets across the universe.

• Some research suggests that humans are not special, sharing the vast majority of our genes with other animals; whereas other research shows just how crucial language is to our perception of the world, even our very thoughts - which would suggest that we're pretty different from one another, let alone from our evolutionary cousins.

One consistent message from Michael's piece is that most of our environment remains entirely unknown to us, be that the 96% of the universe that physicists call 'dark', or the 70% of the earth that is covered in mostly unexplored, deep ocean.

These are metaphysical battles, different from the cultural ones, and there's a third front implicit in the articles too: should we trust science at all? Read Oliver James and Susan Greenfield in the magazine, and you'd have grounds for doubt. Genetic determinism has blinded us to one of the great tragedies of modern life - widespread mental ill-health - argues James, which is actually a social concern. He deploys evidence to make his case but worries that science journalism, and the social Darwinist assumptions of 'the ruling elite', make it hard for the evidence to get through.

Greenfield's concern is male power, it proving to be an intransigent block to women progressing in science. It's not only women scientists who suffer as a result. Science does too, as it loses the different perspective women bring to problems.

And yet, if James and Greenfield worry about the human flaws inherent in science, Colin Blakemore has the opposite view. For him, science is to be trusted. It springs from the same source as religion - a need to find answers to questions. But whereas religion is misconceived, science has a power not just to find answers, where possible, but to save us from ourselves too. Indeed, the stakes could not be higher. It's 'touch and go' whether we'll 'outlive this century', so, 'we must trust in science; it's the only solution to the problems we face.'

That would seem to come pretty close to affording science a superhuman power: scientists are engaged in a process that transcends the flaws they otherwise bring to the process by virtue of being human. For obvious reasons, Blakemore carefully uses the word 'trust' in his replies, though 'faith' would arguably not be inappropriate.