A friend found an old volume on the shelf of a deceased relative. I’ve been helping to figure out what it is.

I’ve learned enough to find it interesting to share—and also invite Twitter for hypotheses or questions, and size up its potential interest to specialist scholars.

🧵 The volume is a little less than 8” x 6”, bound in vellum, and the only markings are on the spine: “Physica”and “A 14”

There are no other indications of past library or private ownership inside or out.

Holes on the cover suggest ties or clasps, no longer present.

@hannonregular It is not clear he is denying divine omniscience. At the beginning he sets up a problem which he later undermines and reformulates.

And even on a Boethian account of omniscience, God doesn’t know “the future” because what that refers to is not future for Him, only for us. @hannonregular Up to here he has been undermining materialism (and the dualism of the alleged mind-body problem)

"Several of Berry’s friends urged him to abandon the book, anticipating Twitter eruptions and withering reviews."

Reflecting on the reception (so far) of Wendell Berry's new book, A Need to Be Whole
🧵 That opening quotation is from a February New Yorker essay anticipating the book.

newyorker.com/magazine/2022/…

In addition to book reviews, surveys of legal and bioethics issues, etc., the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly publishes articles across the humanistic and social-scientific fields.

Going to thread some examples here... Vol. 43, No.2 (Summer 2020)

Thomas C. Behr, “Luigi Taparelli on Cult, Culture, and Authentic Progress” (starts on pdf page 99)

catholicscholars.org/PDFFiles/v43n2…

Have hinted at a new role, can now announce as official: accepted the editorship of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly.

Hugely honored by the invitation. The Quarterly has a great legacy, and I’ll be calling on voices old and new to contribute to its continuation. The FCS Quarterly started as a mostly internal newsletter for the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, but developed into a proper journal, the print embodiment of the FCS mission to advance interdisciplinary Catholic scholarship.

Cutting through vague platitudes about “Catholic mission,” some of the most practical advice for Catholic university leaders was published in @americamag a few years ago.

americamagazine.org/issue/our-reas… One of the co-authors, Michael Naughton presented a version of this at @MSMU several years ago. Now it’s been expanded into a handy little book, with more clear practical advice, from @CUAPress

Should be required reading for Catholic college trustees

cuapress.org/9780813233802/…

Last up: Francis Maier, drawing on previous experience with synods to reflect on the risks of synodality, pertaining to the honesty of the process, the orthodoxy of results, and the quality of follow-through. Commends Hanby’s Communion essay on synodality

communio-icr.com/files/48.4_Han…

Final main panel at FCS convention: Christopher Ruddy on synodality as people’s participation in the life of the Church. How is this realized, and what are the opportunities and risks, of the present synodal process? True development of doctrine expresses deeper understanding of, not reversals or deformations of, the Church’s teaching.

“Love Among the Ruins”

Great lineup of main speakers for the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars conference in DC Sept. 23-25.

Catherine Pakaluk, John Keown, Veronica Ogle, Teresa Collett, Philip Bess, Christopher Ruddy

More info:
catholicscholars.org/images/Convent… @CRPakaluk @ProfCollett

Can we fix higher ed?

Higher ed finance and management is a mess of intersecting and nested principal-agent problems.

We can take some practical steps to realign the stakes and incentives.

🧵 1/ Practically, many higher education problems boil down to distorted incentives, reflecting systemic lack of skin-in-the-game: people with power but no personal interest, people with interest but no power. 2/

Of all the save-the-environment lifestyle changes that could have been pushed, why is bug-eating the one gaining traction? So gross, and so little actual benefit. Eating insects seems the most unappealing of all possible “save the planet” reforms—but after aluminum water bottles and paper straws it is the laziest and most cosmetic, and therefore promising?

We are getting a real world lesson in the value of understanding the rationality of those you judge wrong, and understanding the sense of pride of those you judge vicious. “Know thy enemy” doesn’t mean “Know that he’s an enemy” nor “Know what sins/crimes make him an enemy.”

This is an example of the sort of exercise in modeling another’s ideas and interests that needs to be cultivated.

(No idea if accurate, but it’s the right kind of attempt.)

https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/1496736900660580353

A classical charter school network (@GreatHeartsAcad) in AZ and TX grew from 7000 to 17,000 in the past 5 years. The wait-list is almost as long.

Most will want to go to college somewhere.

Don’t tell me liberal arts colleges don’t have a market. @GreatHeartsAcad Catholic colleges strong in liberal arts -- many of whom need to recruit only a few hundred students per year -- take heart. The first graph is insignificant. The other two are your future.

How to read Plato

Here are some basic principles for interpreting Socratic dialogues.

(Intended for new readers of Plato, perhaps useful to experienced readers too.)

1/6 1. Every dialogue is an apologia for Socrates.

Plato used the dialogues to illustrate the exceptional virtues of his teacher, and the flaws of Socrates' critics.

If you don’t think Socrates comes off well, you are reading it wrong.

2/6

I am now personally convinced that Rosica plagiarized his licentiate thesis.

I will present new and strong evidence here. But it is not conclusive.

We won’t know for sure until we have access to the thesis. 1/ For background, we’ve suspected for a while that the 1990 thesis is plagiarized: work published around the same time, on the same topic (the Emmaus story in Luke), has already been shown to be plagiarized. 2/

https://twitter.com/JoshHochschild/status/1102931853617610752