We’re presently in the midst of a third intellectual revolution. The first came with Newton: the planets obey physical laws. The second came with Darwin: biology obeys genetic laws. In today’s third revolution, were coming...

the appearance” of design is not exactly evidence against design. According to Dawkins, though, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is almost certainly something else.

It seemed strange to Kellan that the more people were crowded together, the less they were willing to acknowledge it; their interaction became a thing of unwelcome necessity and their gaze turned ever inward.

Society is much more easily soothed than one’s own conscience.

We criticize Americans for not being able either to analyse or conceptualize. But this is a wrong-headed critique. It is we who imagine that everything culminates in transcendence, and that nothing exists which has not...

They made a science out of people?” she said. “What a crazy science that must be.”–“Mr. Z

O comportamento ritual não só revela realidades práticas e mundanas, é também um teatro vivo da psicologia colectiva e uma das mais ricas expressões da ideologia e crenças – mentalidade – de uma sociedade. Afinal...

Therapy entails the conceptual machinery to ensure that actual or potential deviants stay within the institutionalized definitions of reality, or, in other words, to prevent “inhabitants” of a given universe from “emigrating”. It does this...

The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness. We feel that we are living in a world in which...

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaWisdom: Something you can learn without knowing it.

On ne peut opposer absraitement le spectacle et l’activité sociale effective.

But into the first decades of the twentieth century, even at the New York Times, it was uncommon for journalists to see a sharp divide between facts and values. Yet the belief in objectivity is...

Air is no less heavy because we do not detect its weight.

Concurrently, the growing class power and public voice of conservative and liberal well-to-do black folks easily obscures the class cruelty these individuals enact both in the way they talk about underprivileged blacks and the way...

One can’t love humanity. One can only love people.

The danger today is in believing there are no sick people, there is only a sick society.

Rape culture is a concept of unknown origin and of uncertain definition; yet it has made its way into everyday vocabulary and is assumed to be commonly understood. The award-winning documentary film Rape Culture made...

Being in prison for seven years was like being in an army that never drilled, never deployed, and only fought itself.

evolved” into an ape that ended up as Leonardo Da Vinci is an attitude that comes in conflict with the scientific method of research and it certainly violates its standard principles.

Another myth that is firmly upheld is that disabled people are dependent and non-disabled people are independent. No one is actually independent. This is a myth perpetuated by disablism and driven by capitalism – we...

The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does...

Rather than looking for explanations for why all people deserve to be treated with compassion and respect, we ought to be working at creating a world in which people are treated with compassion and respect....

The decline of geography in academia is easy to understand: we live in an age of ever-increasing specialization, and geography is a generalist’s discipline. Imagine the poor geographer trying to explain to someone at a...

Chicago is not the most corrupt of cities. The state of New Jersey has a couple. Need we mention Nevada? Chicago, though, is the Big Daddy. Not more corrupt, just more theatrical, more colorful in...

In my early teens, [my grandfather] would sometimes stomp around his living room, where he used to shave towards mid-day with bowl, brush and open razor, deriding my ignorance and mocking the made-up discipline of...

The circumstances of everyday life were too demanding-and in American’s great cities, appalling.

There can be no spirituality, according to the Sufi masters, without psychology, psychological insight and sociological balance.

Have a little sociological beano. As you said – in sociology one can do anything and call it work.

It should be apparent that the belief in objectivity in journalism, as in other professions, is not just a claim about what kind of knowledge is reliable. It is also a moral philosophy, a declaration...

And when there are enough outsiders together in one place, a mystic osmosis takes place and you’re inside.

Show me a culture where honesty is considered ridiculous, where nobody’s ever accountable for anything, where anger gets admired as a sign of strength, and I’ll show you a place where misery is permanent

Pity is cruel. Pity destroys.

we live now in circumstances that encourage rather than discourage lying; evidence and activity are more easily concealed, and the need to rely on demeanor as an indicator of a person’s truthfulness is greater. And...

The problem with capitalism is that “we have a global theology without morality, without a Bible.” And that’s dangerous, he warns – “we’re not going to be able to exist in a global context if...

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives...

The church and the scientific community are fighting at times a common enemy: the truth religion cannot deny and the positivist materialist scientist is unable to explain.

Politics divides a nation, instead of bringing its people together.

I know how easy it is to sound like a corny version of Noam Chomsky when talking about something like this, but in a country where millions of dollars are spent on nuclear weapons, corporate...

Dehumanization isn’t a way of talking. It’s a way of thinking—a way of thinking that, sadly, comes all too easily to us. Dehumanization is a scourge, and has been so for millennia. It acts as...

Miss Taylor says kids that are colored can’t go to my school cause they’re not smart enough.” I come round the counter then. Lift her chin up and smooth back her funny-looking hair. “You think...

Character depends on characters. Few people are character. Other’s should try to opt one but they don’t, they lose.

It is culture that is the bully.

Only when we learn to value the differences among us can we achieve the true spirit of humanity.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaIntellectual: One who knows no craft.

With sociology one can do anything and call it work

To recognize and comprehend what influences us and others is to function with purpose.

To understand how that astounding moral blindness was possible, it is helpful to think of the workers of an armament plant who rejoice in the ‘stay of execution’ of their factory thanks to big new...

It takes centuries for sense to become common

It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.

Ideas do have consequences in history, yet not because those ideas are inherently truthful or obviously correct but rather because of the way they are embedded in very powerful institutions, networks, interests, and symbols.