Dawkins Fallacy – False Premise
The statement, “However, as we shall see, there are special circumstances in which a gene can achieve its own selfish goals best by fostering a limited form of altruism at the level of individual animals.” Is a fallacy/false premise Historically, compassion and self-less behaviors are not a “limited form of alt…[Read more]

The fifth of ten notebooks, drafted between April 2006 and June 2007. Some of the material has appeared previously in poetry collections I have published since 2006, but I have gone back to the original drafts to rethink and reconfigure what appears here. While particular places are referenced in the text of some of the poems in this volume, only…[Read more]

The fourth of ten notebooks, drafted between February and August 2006. Some of the material has appeared previously in poetry collections I have published since 2006, but I have gone back to the original drafts to rethink and reconfigure what appears here. This fourth volume differs from the first three in that all of the compositions are clearly…[Read more]

The third of a series of collections that draw on material from notebooks I kept between 2004 and 2013. I returned to that material in 2021 with Basho and haibun in mind, as well as the prosimetrum tradition that flourished in medieval Europe. Both play off a tension between poetry and prose, and, looking back, that is what I found myself doing…[Read more]

Abstract of panel organized by the Sephardic Studies Discussion Group for the 2024 MLA Annual Convention.

As the prominent social psychologists, Baumeister and Leary, point out, “Groups can share food, provide mates, and help care for offspring (including orphans). Some survival tasks such as hunting large animals or maintaining defensive vigilance against predatory enemies, are best accomplished by group cooperation…. Competition for limited res…[Read more]

Functions of Religion
1. Fear of the unknown Fear of the unknown is a popular theory. The philosopher David Hume, the anthropologist Malinowski, and Einstein all emphasize the role of anxiety – or fear.
2. Anthropomorphism, the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object, is another favorite theory. Xenophanes (…[Read more]