G. K. Chesterton was said never to have produced a masterpiece. The reason is not because he never wrote a great book, but because he wrote so many. But if we had to pick one of Chesterton’s books as his best, it might be Orthodoxy—his case for Christianity. Chesterton became famous in 1904, when he responded to the provocations […]
In the old natural philosophy, the purpose of inquiry into nature was to better know what creation is. It taught nomenclature (the names of things), taxonomy (how the thing fits in with other things), morphology (how things are internally structured), and scientific method (how to investigate natural things). It was focused on the wonder and […]
When I was in junior high school, I had a horse named Lady Anne that could count to three. I would say, “Count to three!” and she would scrape the ground three times with her right hoof. She could do it for one and two as well. She also nodded her head when she was […]
One of the questions people ask about traditional logic is why it doesn’t teach truth tables. Modern logic, the most common kind of logic encountered in high school and college, uses them, so why does traditional logic ignore them? Many people encounter a smattering of logic in high school math courses. Here, more than likely, […]
As Ariel Castro was being sentenced to 1,000 years in prison without parole for keeping several women hostage in his Cleveland home last year, he unwittingly articulated a view of human responsibility that is championed by many of our intellectuals. Castro insisted he did nothing wrong and blamed his crimes on addiction. This is a […]
Modern educators love to talk about “critical thinking skills,” but not one in a hundred even knows what he means by the term. Every time our country goes through an education reform spasm—which it has undergone about every twenty-five years since the 1920s—the education establishment trots out a set of slogans that always sounds good […]
In 1969, philosopher Henry Veatch wrote a book called Two Logics: The Conflict Between Classical and Neo-Analytic Philosophy. It scandalized the philosophical establishment of the day. The book challenged the underlying assumptions behind the new logic that had been taught in colleges and universities for over fifty years. The issues addressed in the book were […]
There are two ways to go wrong when it comes to education. The first is to emphasize the intellect over the affections; the second is to emphasize the affections over the intellect. The first we might call the “Rationalistic Fallacy”; the second we might call the “Romantic Fallacy.” These two fallacies plague all modern intellectual […]
Why a Knowledge of Grammar Is Indispensable for an Understanding of Logic I meet a lot of homeschool mothers at conventions all over the country and one of the most common questions I get is this: “What do you do for a critical thinking skills program before we do your logic program in the seventh grade?” […]
Several years ago, a killer whale at the Orlando Marine Park drowned his trainer. Tilikum, the whale, made national headlines by dragging Dawn Brancheau, his young female caretaker, by her ponytail underwater to her death. And it wasn’t the first time. It was, in fact, Tilikum’s third such indiscretion, giving him a rather unattractive personality […]