My Monthly Recommendation: From Catapults to Computers, Excellent Gifts for the Avid Intellectual Reader!
I’ve decided this month to talk about my three favorite books in ancient science. And they may surprise you! They actually cross into many different subjects that will fascinate any avid reader of history, science, or nonfiction generally. So they would make...My Monthly Recommendation: Sarton and Lehoux on the Whole Sweep of Ancient Science
To help make ends meet and help you understand the ancient origins of modern science better than Christians would ever let you if they had their way, each season I shall discuss a selection of books from my long-standing recommendations list on ancient science. And I...Ammon Hillman Is Not Telling You the Truth: The Gospels Do Not Describe Pedophilia, and No One Was Getting High on Vaginas
There is a classicist named Ammon Hillman (a.k.a. David Hillman) who wrote a decent dissertation on ancient pharmacology and then went on to make absurd claims about the Gospels and early Christianity that verge into pedophilia and an obsession with genitals. And yes,...
The Weird Fruit Mystery (Correcting a Sentence in My Survey of Roman Science)
An attentive reader caught an error in my book on The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire (which was based on my Columbia university dissertation). It actually involves a Weird Fruit Mystery. So this article will serve as a corrective footnote, and a solution to the...My Monthly Recommendation: Ancient Science Starter Kit
Every month I will write about something I recommend buying and why. I am an Amazon Associate, so if you click through the sales link in any of these recommendation blogs (like today’s), or indeed any article or page here at all, I will get a commission...From Homer to Frontinus: Biased Translation Is Not Unique to Biblical Studies
I am often asked what the best Bible translation is. My usual reply is that there aren’t any. All translations are biased, they merely differ as to how or where. The best you can do is to read it in the original language (and I teach a course with a lecture on...Jesus Is an Extraterrestrial
There are two new books assessing the intersection of religion and astrophysics. Both are fantastic reads. First is Aliens and Religion: Where Two Worlds Collide, by Jonathan MS Pearce and Aaron Adair (Onus 2023), which explores the philosophical problems that...Twelve Books at Herculaneum That Could Change History
There is a fabulous ancient treasure still buried at Herculaneum in the Bay of Naples. It is an actual ancient library that has been locked under a veritable rock of volcanic ash since 79 A.D. It likely contains thousands of scrolls, comprising hundreds of books. As...What Exactly Was the Scientific Revolution?
The “Scientific Revolution” is often mentioned and discussed as a crucial development in human civilization that fundamentally changed the entire course of history. World society after and before that event looks consistently yet radically different. For...Rome vs. China: What Made the Difference?
It’s often asked, why did the Scientific Revolution occur only in Europe and not China? By which I shall here mean what I explain in my book The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire as the normalization of effective scientific methods across (at least literate)...A Psychology of Men? A Critical Review of Robert Glover’s No More Mr. Nice Guy
Today I will be reviewing a book by, about, and for men. It was written by Robert A. Glover, a real psychotherapist—presumably; his bio attests a PhD in family and marriage therapy and years of clinical practice, although I found no appreciable research...Ancient Theories of Gravity: What Was Lost?
Everyone rags on Aristotle for totally phoning in his theory of gravity. But in perspective, (a) Aristotle was a biologist, not a physicist, so his not being the best at physics should not be held to any more account than when a modern biologist goofs some esoteric...Galileo’s Goofs: Lessons We Can Learn from Failure
I’ve written before about the importance and methodology of thought experiments, and how they are often screwed up even by professional philosophers (see On Hosing Thought Experiments). Today I’m going to pull a page out of the history of science to...Join My Course on Ancient Science & Technology and Learn All You Didn’t Know about Greco-Roman Advancement & How Christianity Put an End to It!
Based on Richard Carrier’s Columbia University dissertation and now published as a book, this course will astound you with what ancient scientists thought and accomplished and how they laid the groundwork for modern science, to be recovered and built upon only after a...The Sociology of Ancient Scientists Cannot Be Based on Medieval Source Selection
I recently wrote a brief letter to the editors of Isis, a leading peer reviewed journal in the history of science, to call attention to a fatal error in a recent article they published on the sociology of ancient science, “Ancient Greek Mathêmata from a Sociological...Get Dr. Carrier’s Latest!
About the Author
Richard Carrier is the author of many books and numerous articles online and in print. His avid readers span the world from Hong Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University, he specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism and humanism, and the origins of Christianity and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, with particular expertise in ancient philosophy, science and technology. He is also a noted defender of scientific and moral realism, Bayesian reasoning, and historical methods.
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