David Auerbach
Categories
Essays - Waggish
Is Social Science a Joke?
Richard Biernacki exposes fatally sloppy sociology, covered up with fake science. Are quantitative methods hopelessly compromised in social science?
Am I a Redundant Human Being?
Austrian writer/painter Mela Hartwig’s short novel from 1931 portrays a misfit who is at once self-loathing yet keenly arrogant.
Portnoy’s Obsolete Complaint
Portnoy’s Complaint no longer resonates. It has become a snapshot of a culture that emancipated its scions from itself.
Father Time: Chronos and Kronos
A brief history of (Greek) Time. How Time-Chronos and Titan-Kronos have been confused from the very beginning. Time the Winged Serpent, Time the Melancholy Saturn, Time the Destroyer.
The World as Metaphor in Musil’s The Man Without Qualities
Genese Grill’s study of The Man Without Qualities provides a guide through the mystical “Other Condition” in the elusive latter portions of Robert Musil’s modernist novel.
Wilfrid Sellars and Edmund Husserl on Science and Life
Two philosophers, Husserl and Sellars, and the vision the hopes they both shared for a nonreductive unification of science and society.
Books of the Year 2012
My books of 2012, favorites and others of interest. Satantango, The Galley Slave, William Bronk’s Later Poetry, Carl Barks, and many others.