Matthew Henry John Bartlett

Stanley Fish on Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s new book Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion:

The assumption she challenges — or, rather, says we can do without — is that underlying it all is some foundation or nodal point or central truth or master procedure that, if identified, allows us to distinguish among ways of knowing and anoint one as the lodestar of inquiry. The desire, she explains, is to sift through the claims of those perspectives and methods that vie for “underneath-it-all status” (a wonderful phrase) and validate one of them so that we can proceed in the confidence that our measures, protocols, techniques and procedures are in harmony with the universe and perhaps with God.

What is the zeitgeist? What is it here in NZ? What are the best bits, the flames you would like to see fanned? Like in the 60s it was maybe folk music – that was the thing to be into, the good bleeding edge.