Psychological Tests to Measure Intelligence

William Stern in his introduction to The Psychological Methods of Testing Intelligence (1914): The objection is often made that the problem of intellectual diagnosis can in no way be successfully dealt with until we have exact knowledge of the general nature of intelligence itself. But this objection does not seem to me pertinent….We measure electro-motive […]

Algeria Spurred Albert Camus’s Writing

Born in Mondovi, Algeria, Nobel laureate Albert Camus’s background in working-class European settings and his personal familiarity with human suffering provided the setting for many of his works. His father was killed in World War I and his deaf mother worked as a housecleaner to raise her family in a tiny apartment. In his first […]

The Hard Take-offs and Landings of Office Work

Swiss-born British author and philosopher Alain de Botton writes in The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work: The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a pitch of concentration by the interactions of the office. Now there are only silence and the flashing […]

We All Want Our Lives to Have Meaning

Christina Feldman writes about putting an end to the endless pursuit of becoming someone in her Tricycle (Fall 2016) article Doing, Being, and the Great In-Between: In the Buddha’s teaching, desire is a very interesting word. In fact, it’s not one word alone; there are a number of words in Pali that might be translated […]

When Good Impressions Prevail, Your Character Becomes Good

As you think, so shall you be. Thus writes Swami Vivekananda in Karma Yoga: The Yoga of Action: If good impressions prevail, the character becomes good; if bad, it becomes bad. If a man continuously hears bad words, thinks bad thoughts, does bad actions, his mind will be full of bad impressions; and they will […]

Writing Down A Pack of Lies

Ursula K. Le Guin writes in the novel Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never […]

Distinctions of the Modern Age

Alain de Botton writes in The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work: What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours. Our ancestors could […]

DNA Works in Mysterious Ways

Richard Dawkins writes in his best-selling The Selfish Gene, Different sorts of survival machine appear very varied on the outside and in their internal organs. An octopus is nothing like a mouse, and both are quite different from an oak tree. Yet in their fundamental chemistry they are rather uniform, and, in particular, the replicators […]

Compatibility is a Feat of Love

From The Course of Love by Alain de Botton, Love reaches a pitch at those moments when our beloved turns out to understand, more clearly than others have been able to, and perhaps even better than we do ourselves, the chaotic, embarrassing, and shameful parts of us. That someone else gets who we are and […]

Relating to Our Thought Process

Chogyam Trungpa writes in Mindfulness in Action: Making Friends with Yourself through Meditation and Everyday Awareness, Meditation allows us to step out of fundamental self-deception. This approach is not cutting off the thought process altogether, but is loosening it up. Thoughts become transparent and loose, so they can pass through or float around more easily. […]