SAL RESTIVO'S BLOG: THE SOCIOLOGICAL COGITO

   I’ve heard these two truisms all my life:   No one knows what happens when you die; and no one knows if there is a god or not.   If you know that in our every day world gathering two apples once and gathering two apples again will leave you with four apples – that is, if you know that 2+2=4 then you know that when you die you enter an ending time of nothingness, and you know that there is no god.   This is the unerring conclusion of a couple of hundred thousand years of accumulated human experience.                                                          From the crystal ball of Google: ON DEATH The Scientific View: Scientifically, death marks the end of an individual's conscious experience, with consciousness completely fading as the brain shuts down. SR; ESSENTIALLY, ...

Presents a powerful narrative that situates the individual within the inescapable framework of social forces In a world increasingly defined by inequality and existential threats, Sociological Realism: Society as the Walls of Our Imprisonment offers a bold reinterpretation of society’s role in shaping the individual. Beginning with the premise that society is a reality sui generis ―a unique and formative system―Sal Restivo carefully constructs an argument about how institutions, cultural traditions, and historical processes shape our identities, behaviours, and beliefs. Tracing the development of the sociological imagination from antiquity to the present day, the author introduces foundational thinkers whilst anchoring abstract theory in personal narrative and lived experience. This distinctive volume―part introductory sociology, part sociobiography―confronts dominant ideas about free will, agency, and the autonomous self. Engaging with contemporary issues including class,...

  REFLECTIONS ON THELONIUS MONK: "All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians" Physicist and saxophonist Stephon Alexander has argued in his many public lectures and his book The Jazz of Physics that Albert Einstein and John Coltrane had quite a lot in common. Alexander in particular draws our attention to the so-called “Coltrane circle,” which resembles what any musician will recognize as the “Circle of Fifths,” but incorporates Coltrane’s own innovations. Coltrane gave the drawing to saxophonist and professor Yusef Lateef in 1967, who included it in his seminal text, Repository of Scales and Melodic Patterns. Where Lateef, as he writes in his autobiography, sees Coltrane’s music as a “spiritual journey” that “embraced the concerns of a rich tradition of autophysiopsychic music,” Alexander sees “the same geometric principle that motivated Einstein’s” quantum theory. Neither description seems out of place. Musician and bl...

  “I wrote,” the ninety year old professor told me, “in my Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Marquez), that among the charms of old age are the provocations our young themselves because they think we are out of commission.”      Sì, risposi. Ricordo di aver baciato M sulle rive del fiume Red Cedar; mi baciò appassionatamente e poi disse: "Perché succede sempre a me?" Più tardi, la sorprese di nuovo quando mi staccai dalla sua bocca e venni sulla sua spalla. Allo stesso modo, ho sorpreso una Tigre,scopandola da dietro per ore finché finalmente si voltò verso di me e disse "Basta". Poi si sdraiò a pancia in giù e si finì mentre io ero sopra di lei. Then he told me about the madam and the young girl she presented him with.   “Nothing happened, in fact it showed me I’m in no condition for this kind of chasing around....I can’t anymore.”   That’s what he told the madam over the phone.   Then he hung up the phone, “filled with a sense of liberation I hadn’t ...

  My blog this morning is a reflection on this article in National Catholic Reporter, July 3 rd , 2025.   The Catholic Church believes in science. That good Christians must be anti-science is a myth. "Science is sometimes portrayed as elitist or biased, despite its self-correcting nature, that is, science moving forward often corrects established wisdom and always must be open to new insights." — Pontifical Academy of Sciences  https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/catholic-church-believes-science-good-christians-must-be-anti-science-myth?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=other Does the Catholic Church believe in social science, does it believe in the Durkheimian sociology of God? This is the key to believing in science.  Beginning in the 1840s, a Copernican revolution unfolded challenging millennia ideas about God and religion.  These ideas were as radical in departing from the views of the Church as were the ideas of Copernicus and Gal...

  BIG BRAINS GO BUST: HOW EXISTENCE MAKES SMART PEOPLE DUMB   The ultimate question, philosophers tell us, can be posed in two ways: Why is there anything at all? Why is there “something” rather than “nothing?”   Apparently some people think that if you string a bunch of words together and put a question mark at the end you have constructed a question. Not so fast. Here is a good example of why thinking should have stop signs. Already deluded by Mormonism, Jim Holt drives his delusion further by tackling a non-question. Something can come out of nothing in a specific quantum mechanical sense, but sometimes - notably in human discourse - nothing can come out of nothing. I don't mean to be rude, but surely you're joking Mr. Holt, and Mr. TED!!   https://lnkd.in/gpyn2Hb8 Don’t let it be said that those know-it-all physicists could ever turn their backs on the Big Questions of life, the universe, and everything.   So of course they have answers...