In the early 1940s, two researchers on either side of the Atlantic, child psychiatrist Leo Kanner in Baltimore and paediatrician Hans Asperger in Vienna, independently identified and classified a condition they both called autism (from autos, Greek for ‘self’). This conjunction ‘is still considered one of the great coincidences of twentieth-century medicine’, writes Steve Silberman […]
Bucked from his half-broken horse in Jorge Luis Borges’s famous short story ‘Funes the Memorious’, Ireneo Funes suffers a head injury that leaves him pathologically unable to forget. ‘He knew the forms of the clouds in the southern sky on the morning of April 30, 1882, and he could compare them in his memory with […]
As a visiting professor in Germany in 2011, I found myself alone above the gravestone of Richard and Cosima Wagner at Wahnfried, the couples’ legendary home in Bayreuth. I was studying the corrosive influence of the cult of genius on the Nazis. The anti-Semitic Wagner, however beautiful his music, played a central role in that […]
A history of the idea of the mind might seem a curious project. We tend to assume that all human beings see themselves as creatures possessed of some kind of controlling intelligence that directs their behaviour. But it is far from clear that this has always been how human beings have thought of themselves. When the […]
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Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm