I’m beginning to write up a brief introductory discussion of the great early Muslim mystic Rābiʿa al-‘Adawiyya al-Qaysiyya. In order to do so, I’m drawing first upon the discussion of her that is given by the late British scholar Margaret Smith (1886-1970) in Muslim Women Mystics: The Life and Work of Rābiʿa and Other Women Mystics in Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001). Here are a handful of my notes: In the history of Islám, the woman saint made her appearance... Read more
Stephen T. Davis is currently Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Claremont McKenna College in California. Some time ago, I read his book After We Die: Theology, Philosophy, and the Question of Life after Death (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2015). Now, I’m beginning to extract notes from it: Many mental states are characterized by what philosophers call “intentionality.” That is, they have the property of “aboutness.” They are about something; they point to things, as... Read more
Stephen T. Davis is currently Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Claremont McKenna College in California. Some time ago, I read his book After We Die: Theology, Philosophy, and the Question of Life after Death (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2015). Now, I’m beginning to extract notes from it: Professor Davis asks “What is an ultimate question?” and he supplies two criteria for identifying such questions. The first of these criteria is simply that human... Read more
I share here two passages that I’ve extracted from my reading of John D. Barrow, The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2011). At the time he wrote the book, Dr. Barrow was a professor of mathematical sciences and the director of the Millennium Mathematics Project at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom. Among his nearly twenty-five books and more than 500 journal articles,... Read more
It being Friday, a new article — this time, a review by Trevor Holyoak — has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scripture: “Feast upon the Words of Christ” Review of Book of Mormon Central, “ScripturePlus” (https://www.scriptureplus.org/); The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Gospel Library” (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/pages/mobileapps/gospellibrary); and Living Tree Software, “ScriptureNotes” (https://scripturenotes.com/). Abstract: ScriptureNotes is a valuable tool for serious, in-depth scripture study, and it definitely has the best search functionality. ScripturePlus,... Read more
After earning a law degree and an MBA at Harvard in 1977, Mitt Romney began his highly successful pre-Olympics and pre-political career in the private business sector as a management consult at, and eventually as the chief executive officer of, Boston’s famous management consultancy firm Bain & Company. Then, after co-founding it in 1984, he served as the first chief executive officer of the distinct legendary spin-off Bain Capital firm in Boston, which has invested in or acquired hundreds of... Read more
I share some further notes from Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, translated by Anthony F. Roberts (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 2002). These come from pages 81-88: The Gamaat Islamiyya or “Islamic Associations” became prominent in Egypt during the summer of 1973, just prior to Egypt’s “October War” with Israel, with summer camps organized for university students. In 1974, convinced that the threat from leftist students was no longer a serious one,... Read more
Notes from Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre (Penguin, 2017): At the age of twenty-five, Einstein sends to the Annalen der Physik three articles. Each was worthy of a Nobel Prize, and more. Each one of the three is a pillar supporting our understanding of the world. (51) Of these, the most generally famous is the second article, which introduced his theory... Read more
We’re familiar, of course, with Oliver Cowdery as one of the official Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon. But his role in the early events of the Restoration, and his experiences with the divine, were broader than that. Here are some rough notes from a incomplete manuscript of mine: A letter of Oliver Cowdery to Phineas Young, dated 23 March 1846, and sent from Tiffin, Seneca County, Ohio, in which Oliver expresses his wish that, prior... Read more
Three beautiful and related passages from Dava Sobel, The Planets (New York: Penguin, 2006): From Earth, we see the Sun as a blazing circle in the sky, brighter but no bigger than the circumference of the full Moon. The “two great lights,” as the Sun and the Moon are described in Genesis, make a matched pair. For although the Moon measures only one four-hundredth the Sun’s million-mile diameter, it nevertheless lies four hundred times closer to Earth.... Read more
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