Tårnbygningen
November 30, 2013
On the campus of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences stands a collection of striking old buildings. One of them – Tårnbygningen – houses the business school and the philosophers. The name means Tower Building. I am very lucky to be a visiting professor there and find it a joy every day I walk towards …
Fictional Worlds
November 24, 2013
If you watch any Doctor Who episode from the classic series, you might well wonder what all the fuss is about. Some were better than others but there are undoubted moments of mediocrity to be found. Occasionally it was downright awful. Yet the series celebrates its 50th anniversary this weekend and has been lauded throughout …
Comedy is no Laughing Matter
November 17, 2013
‘The art of comedy’ is an expression that sometimes gets used but I’ve never known how seriously it’s meant to be taken. It’s far from obvious that comedy is respected as a credible art form and, just as the theatre of war is not a real theatre, talk of the art of comedy does not …
Playing with the Possible
November 10, 2013
The future contains many possibilities. While not everything is within our control, quite a lot is. We have a say in which of the possibilities become real. Not everyone sees all that is open to them, however. Some have a greater imagination than others and can see more of the possible. Imagination is a source …
True Stories?
November 3, 2013
Yesterday was a remarkable day. It was not just that it lasted 32 hours, spent mainly on my way from Kuala Lumpur to Nottingham with an 8-hour time difference. But on the flight and since, I have come to think afresh on the question of truth in fiction and the place of storytelling in our …
Cultural Exchange
November 2, 2013
In the last week I have travelled far. Doing so, I have eaten food I couldn’t identify, got lost on the outskirts of a city I didn’t know, listened with growing fondness to the local pop music, stood out as the only white European in a crowd, unable to speak the same language as everyone …
Solitude
October 20, 2013
A precondition for much great art is solitude. We all have a tendency towards sociability, communication and laughter, yet this tendency must be curbed if one is to make progress on worthy artistic endeavours. Writing, painting, composing, sculpting, choreographing, philosophizing and designing will all require deep concentration at some point, best achieved in loneliness. For …
The PhD
October 13, 2013
A few years ago I was ‘first opponent’ at a PhD defence in Norway. The procedure of the viva voce exam was very different from the UK. The candidate was to give a public lecture and then I and another opponent had to engage him in a protracted debate, all in front of a sizeable …
The Metaphysics of Chess
October 6, 2013
As soon as the necessities of life are secured, we turn to the arts but also to games. Arts and games are alike in having no immediate practical value but their very pointlessness reveals their intrinsic value to us. Games are sometimes called pastimes. It might look as if their purpose is merely to pass …
Photo Synthesis
September 29, 2013
The camera, even in my childhood a rare item, is a gadget that everyone I know now possesses. We used to choose our shots carefully. There were only 24 or 36 frames on a roll of film, which then required time and money to be developed and made into prints. Any movement led to a …
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