Interdisciplinary Book and Film Reviews

THE PARADOX OF CHOICE:  WHY MORE IS  LESS.  HOW THE CULTURE OF ABUNDANCE ROBS US OF SATISFACTION By Barry Schwartz, Reviewed by   Geoffrey W. Sutton I'm in the market for a new tablet. There are so many good choices. There are things I like about Apple and Android. Then I think about getting close to a lightweight laptop--so, I think about Windows. Schwartz is right--at least based on my experience! Schwartz attributes his thinking about The Paradox of Choice to the preparation of an article on  self-determination for the American Psychologist. In this 265-page paperback, he explores the "darker side" of freedom using humor, examples  from daily life, and easily understood accounts of psychological research to illustrate the psychological cost of an over-abundance of choice.  In the prologue, Schwartz grants that choice is essential to autonomy, which in turn provides the grounds for well-being. However, his thesis is tha...

A Woman of No     Importance By     Sonia Purnell Reviewed by     Geoffrey W. Sutton A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II A woman of no importance is more than just another spy story. Virginia Hall was a true hero who battled men’s prejudice against female warriors  as she simultaneously took on the Nazi occupiers of France by organizing resistance fighters and sending vital intelligence to British and Amer ican intelligence planners in London during World a War II. Her contributions were  recognized much later than were her male peers as cultures in the UK and USA gradually changed to appreciate women.  Fortunately the book not only gives Virginia a voice but it educates us about the horrors of war and the importance of small hidden  acts of courage that support the more visible efforts of armed forces.   Virginia Hall's contribution ...

THE BLACK SWAN:      THE IMPACT OF THE HIGHLY    IMPROBABLE By  Nassim Nicholas Taleb Reviewed by    Geoffrey W. Sutton Currently, we are experiencing a Black Swan event. Covid-19, a coronavirus, is raging from nation to nation knowing people down with flu symptoms and sending others to hospitals or to their grave. All of a sudden, when the virus began to spread, world financial markets plunged wiping out trillions of dollars worth of savings and financial assets. Black Swan events are those unpredictable events that are so unique that they cannot be predicted using traditional statistical modeling. Black Swan events are statistical outliers that most scientists would remove from a dataset to avoid skewed distributions. But you do not need to understand statistics to know, that scientists and business leaders can miss events that are so rare. Nassim Nicholas Taleb published The Black Swan in 2007 and my academic review was pu...

WHY DARWIN MATTERS:  THE CASE AGAINST INTELLIGENT DESIGN By    Michael Shermer Reviewed by    Geoffrey W. Sutton My answer to Shermer's book title framed as a question, Why Darwin Matters? , is that it matters a great deal. Psychological scientists often refer to evolutionary theory in their articles and textbooks thus psychologists, and those in similar professions, need to know the basics of evolutionary theory to understand and critique the way the theory is employed in the understanding of human behaviour. Shermer begins his work with a biographical event. "I became a creationist shortly after I became a born-again evangelical Christian in high school ..." (p. xx).  Those interested in the integration of Christian faith and science will find this book a quick and useful review of the major points involved in the evolution-intelligent design (ID) controversy that has primarily involved biologists perhaps because the evolutionary psy...

THE END OF FAITH:  RELIGION, TERROR, AND THE FUTURE OF REASON      By      Sam Harris Reviewed by      Geoffrey W. Sutton The 9/11 Islamic terrorists emblazoned the psychological truism of the path from belief to behavior on the minds of millions. The world saw the lethiferous power of religious belief. We witnessed the purpose driven death. Sam Harris pummels readers with invidious images of destruction associated with religious belief. We may well dispute many of his conclusions but the ineluctable truth is that beliefs matter. At times acerbic, Harris has prepared a puissant polemic focused primarily upon the terror of Islam with ample scathing visited upon Christianity and Judaism.  His thesis is that the beliefs of religious people have become unhinged from reason to the point that meaningful conversations cannot take place.  He asserts that reason is in exile (chapter 1) and that survival requires a return...

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon     By    Daniel C. Dennett Reviewed by   Geoffrey S. Sutton One Sunday I had the occasion to view both spells in action. A Christian scholar was presenting various theological perspectives on the apocalypse when an attorney interrupted with challenges to the speaker’s shifting from literal to metaphorical interpretations and to textual problems with the doctrine of the trinity. At one point, the theologian, notably frustrated with the challenger, raised his hands, and decried that he did not know the answers to all the questions, noting that humans are ‘‘peanut-brained’’ (repeated twice for emphasis), and that anyone who pretended to understand such mysteries was arrogant.  And that is the problem in discussing religion. It is notably hard to analyze using logic and any questioner is cursed (though I suspect the lawyer had been called worse than "peanut-brained").In thi...