Archive

Biology 101 for Lawgivers?

“For just as all the sophisticated doctors and most sophisticated athletic trainers pretty much agree that those who are to be good doctors or trainers must be experienced about nature – and indeed much more than the former … in the same way, the statesman must have certain norms taken… Read more

Puzzling over some bilingual receipts

The issue of bilingualism is central to my study of the Tebtunis priests. The priests employed Egyptian in “personal” (and, of course, cultic) texts throughout the Roman period—language preference is a more complicated matter—but the use of demotic Egyptian in official contexts drops significantly rather early on—not immediately with the… Read more

A Dwarfish Whole

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, its body brevity and wit its soul (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) In her book on “Poetic closure”, Barbara Herrnstein Smith envisioned a poem of maximal closure as “pre-eminently teleological” and “in a sense […] suicidal […], for all of its… Read more

Should we give a voice to the poor and marginalised?

In any society which champions equality (not to mention liberty and the pursuit of happiness) it is surely of paramount importance that we do not ignore the different concerns and life experiences of those outside of political, social or economic elites, but how can this be achieved in practice? Hearing… Read more