Learning is a lifetime pursuit. You will, if you choose to, learn far more after school (no matter how many years you go or don’t go) than you will in the classroom. Every adult, I think, should make a choice:
Commit to a lifetime of exploration and discovery, or let others control your mind.
Here are some books I read in 2025. What choice will you make in 2026?
“To those of us who study history not merely as a warning reminder of man’s folies and crimes, but also as an encouraging remembrance of generative souls, the past ceases to be a depressing chamber of horrors; it becomes a celestial city, a spacious country of the mind, wherein [thousands]…still live and speak, teach and carve and sing.” – Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History
I have written often on the importance of studying history, and Will & Ariel Durant’s short The Lessons of History is an attempt to distill such ideas. It also serves as a postlude to their massive, eleven volume, The Story of Civilization. In Lessons, the writers take a broad overview of history, focusing on ten topics, and what history can teach us. Here I will review three of the major themes from The Lessons of History.
Continue readingPeople who lack formal scientific credentials are nonetheless qualified to speak with authority on matters of common science. – Douglas Axe, Undeniable
In the last few years, especially during the pandemic debacle, authoritarian science has replaced the scientific method which follows the evidence wherever it leads. We heard many bureaucrats, politicians, and talking heads say things like “Follow the Science” or “Trust the Science.”
When anyone questioned them, the questioners were told not to question the science, to accept the word of strangers, and that you — the people — couldn’t understand, so just listen to the experts.
This isn’t how science works. This is anti-science. Real science — and real scientists — aren’t afraid of questions. They also know people are smart. Not everyone needs an academic degree, or to be anointed an expert by someone, to understand, interpret, and test allegedly scientific claims.
Molecular biologist Douglas Axe writes in Undeniable we all think, in some way, like scientists:
Basic science is an integral part of how we live. We are all careful observers of our world. We all make mental notes of what we observe. We all use these notes to build conceptual models of how things work. And we all continually refine these models as needed. Without doubt, this is science. I have called it common science to emphasize the connection to common sense.
There is technical science that requires mathematics, experimentation, and so forth, but you can still understand scientific claims and concepts without those. You can test claims from the experts. In an era where the experts are often shown wrong (such as in climate, disease, or origins of life), we need citizen scientists.
Don’t fear science. Study it, use it. Your mind is a superpower to wield in preserving your health and freedoms. Anyone who tells you to be quiet and don’t question is someone who fears the truth will become known.
Make the truth known.
Jarrett Stepman writes:
A well-educated person should read deeply and broadly…Reading authors with opinions both contemporary and ancient can be a profoundly illuminating experience. It becomes quite clear that the advancement of time has led to many positive changes—and more than a few bad ones as well…’Decolonizing’ bookshelves represents a further closing of the American mind, but now intellectual shallowness is being paired with self-righteous zealotry. It’s a frightful combination.
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” ― Ray Bradbury
I was listening to this podcast concerning how students aren’t ready for college. In particular, what they have read in their educational or personal lives is rather deficient. Instead of offering the best of the best for them to read, colleges instead replace classics with forgettable, trendy books.
So while colleges are falling down on their job of broadening minds and overcoming prejudices — through the abandoning of classical education — what about the student or not going to college? What about the person who doesn’t care about reading the classics or doesn’t think it’s necessary?
As educator and writer Susan Wise Bauer writes, “A classical education is valuable [even] for people who hate Homer.” In her book The Well-Trained Mind, she describes the frustration of employers who are expected to prepare people for life in the world. Many graduates of high school “can’t write, don’t read well, can’t think through a problem.”
Bauer writes that, “A well-trained mind is a necessity” no matter your path in life, and even though a “classical education is not intended to teach all subjects comprehensively,” it is designed to teach us how to learn.
But it goes further than that. There’s something deeply fascinating about reading books that have often endured for centuries. They reveal our past and our history. It allows us to join what Mortimer J. Adler named the “Great Conversation” which is the “ongoing conversation of great minds down through the ages.”
And there is the rub: Perhaps at no time in history have we had such a widespread hubris in society. We think those who came before us can’t possibly have anything to teach us.
The truth is that we wouldn’t be here without them. They experienced far more great events — and terrible disasters — than we can imagine. Our civilization is built on their millennia of knowledge. We mistakenly believe many of our contemporary issues are new — rarely are they.
Schooling, at all levels, can be very important in achieving your purpose. Increasingly, though, secondary education has lost its way, forgotten its purpose. These institutions that were built on an idea that stretches back to the Middle Ages — Western Civilization’s contribution of the university — is in terrible trouble. However that all may play out, realize this:
Your education, your mind, and where you take them, is solely up to you. “Being smart” is not based on the decision of others, but what you decide to be. Be part of the Great Conversation and rise above fast-food-internet “knowledge.” See beyond the selfish views that act like we are the first to walk the Earth. The voices of our ancestors left many lessons for us. One in particular stands out.
When they forgot what truly mattered in their lives, they lost it all.
Bored at work? Need something to listen to in the car other than mindless babble? Well, I have been collecting interesting podcasts over at Soundcloud. In particular, give a listen to my selection on books, writing and learning.
Reclaim lost minutes of your day, shut down the Facebook feed, and exercise your mind. You’ll feel much better…
“Does studying history matter?”
This is often asked by students and adults alike. There’s the famous response from George Santayana that goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This is certainly true, but let’s go deeper. In The Well-Trained Mind, Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise write that when Ken Burns was asked why history is important, he responded, “History is the study of everything that has happened until now. Unless you plan to live entirely in the present moment, the study of history is inevitable.” Bauer and Wise continue with:
History, in other words, is not a subject. History is the subject. It is the record of human experience, both personal and communal. It is the story of the unfolding of human achievement in every area — science, literature, art, music, and politics. A grasp of historical facts is essential to the rest of the classical curriculum.
We all agree education is important; that our kids deserve the best learning; that our teachers should be the best at their job — then we have this tendency to walk away and let our government take the reigns. They roll out one “education program” after another — effectively experimenting on our children every few years — while spending loads of money.
Then we all get angry, argue and complain when we find out our children aren’t measuring up to other nations or aren’t prepared for life.
Amanda Ripley takes on this “Twenty-first Century mystery” of why, in a country that spends untold millions on education, still falls short. In her essential book, The Smartest Kids in the World (and how they got that way), she dives deep into American education as she follows three students as they attend schools overseas. What is one major difference Ripley finds?
Teaching is treated as a top-tier profession. Teachers are educated and expected to perform accordingly.
Continue reading
We often equate science with facts and laws of nature, therefore we tend to hold writings couched in scientific lingo in high regard. To a fault we have become too trusting and forget that people write or say these things and people have agendas (purposefully or not). Yes, this is going to be one of those critical thinking posts (I know, it doesn’t quite fit with the theme of the site anymore, but I still occasionally touch on these topics).
Not that the abuse of science is anything new, but it seems to me like it’s becoming more prevalent. With technology so pervasive, we think we know science and trust anything that sounds vaguely like it. That can be a mistake. Take this article on “Finding Israel’s First Camels.” Innocent sounding enough, isn’t it? But very quickly we see an agenda materialize when we read, “Their findings further emphasize the disagreements between Biblical texts and verifiable history.” So is this on an archaeological find or a theological debate?
Reading further we don’t really learn about claimed “disagreements” other than, “archaeologists have shown that camels were not domesticated in the Land of Israel until centuries after the Age of the Patriarchs (2000-1500 BCE). In addition to challenging the Bible’s historicity, this anachronism is direct proof that the text was compiled well after the events it describes.” This is quite the statement and one would expect serious proof, yet the authors of this report don’t do this. The careful reader will note that they base their claim on the assumption that they have found the oldest camel remains.
The rational reader then will ask, “How could they possibly know they have found the oldest remains?” Well, they cannot, but these finds support their particular view of the Bible, so why bother with logic? Amazingly, this article actually waves a couple of red flags on its own:
“In all the digs, they found that camel bones were unearthed almost exclusively in archaeological layers dating from the last third of the 10th century BCE or later…The few camel bones found in earlier archaeological layers probably belonged to wild camels…the origin of the domesticated camel is probably the Arabian Peninsula…In fact, Dr. Ben-Yosef and Dr. Sapir-Hen say the first domesticated camels ever to leave the Arabian Peninsula may now be buried in the Aravah Valley. [emphasis added]”
Almost? Probably? May? And so they did find “earlier” remains that are “probably” wild?
Wow. This is the “science” that leads to the proclamation that “the Bible’s historicity” is challenged?
I don’t think the Bible has much to worry about here (and others have pointed out that the researchers above have ignored other research outside of Israel). My goal here isn’t to start a fight between “believers” and “non-believers,” but to show that conclusions couched in science or coming from scientists doesn’t mean we should not test their claims. Often, as with this example, it is not that hard. Another recent example was the recent Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham spectacle, portrayed as some great intellectual moment between science and religion.
It was more between two people who promote the “science and religion” aren’t compatible myth, albeit from different ends of the spectrum. One thinks science can’t see into the past (Ham), the other thinks science too dumb to detect design (Nye). Funny, I look at the Sun and see it as it was eight minutes ago and archaeology and forensics detect design every day.
These are the best we have to debate serious issues? They are not, but serious doesn’t sell.
We should be concerned that science and theology are so easily hijacked. Those who are well-schooled in the issues often don’t want to jump into the fray, they have better things to do. We cannot, however, give up on science, critical thinking and flushing out those who abuse these things and other higher fields of learning such as theology. We’ve let the few, the entertaining, and the media take over our learning for far too long.
Pope John Paul II said it best with, “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.”
Darrick Dean 