We are down in Portland, Oregon, for a couple of days, and naturally the first order of business is a visit to Powell's City of Books on Burnside Street. It's right down the street from Whole Foods.
It is, of course, a great bookstore, although it didn't have a couple of items on my Amazon Wish List: Simon Leys' Chinese Shadows and Peter L. Berger's Social Construction of Reality. Well, I can understand Powell's not having the Berger book, since maybe Berger is a bit too right wing for lefty Portland. But the Leys book? Hard to figure.
Here's a couple good things about Powell's. In the Philosophy section they have big dividers announcing, say, books "By Plato" followed by books "On Plato." And that goes for all the prominent philosophers, past, present and future.
Now, in the Psychology section, Jung and Freud are abstracted from the general run of psychology and occupy a special section all on their own, facing an information desk. Jung is on the left and Freud is on the right. Hmm. So what is that all about, given that Jung is probably right of center and Freud left of center. Does that mean that Jung is considered the first among equals in the Powell's universe and Freud second? Or what?
I tell you what I worry about. How long can Powell's survive downtown in Portland? Let's face it; books are not the kind of business that can justify occupying prime downtown real-estate. Let's leave the decline of Borders and Barnes and Noble; those guys have their own problems. A more vital concern is my own favorite HalfPrice Books. In Seattle HalfPrice is retreating from downtown to the suburban strip mall. It used to have a store right close to downtown Seattle on Capitol Hill. That store closed years ago. HalfPrice used to have a store in the University District. That store closed a year ago. Now I have to drive 20 minutes to get to a HalfPrice book store. It's an outrage!
Still, the internet has been good for the book business. Used to be that a used bookstore was a musty mess of the old and the irrelevant. But now, with an active pricing system for used books from Amazon to Abebooks, every used bookstore knows the price on just about every book imaginable and knows exactly what to feature on its shelves. And it shows.
Well, I got a book by Thomas Kuhn, the "paradigm shift" guy, on his further reflections on his Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Remember that his main line was that science was a social endeavor, and that scientists are social beings. Thus science advances as the old generation dies off and can no longer enforce its orthodoxy. The application to climate science is obvious. We have seen, in the Climategate emails, how climate scientists enforce orthodoxy. And we see how funding drives the scientific community, for modern science lives by funding from government, and government funds the agenda that enhances its power.
Today, I think, I am going to go to Powell's and look at its "Activism" section. Yes, in lefty Portland, the culture of activism is alive and well and it has a whole section on How to Do It. I suppose that my interest in Activism is not really the how-to, but the why. What is it that motivates people to launch themselves into the practice of politics as a saving faith?
You know my take on Activism. I think that the rise of the market economy has radically altered the nature of politics, and the warrant for government force. I think that the modern era is founded upon the new and radical reality that the basis of human cooperation must be the surrender to the market and its prices, rather than surrender to the local lord and his power. The Soviet Union and Maoist China did a controlled experiment on this, and proved that political power is a dead hand. And yet we have this great movement, what I call the Great Reaction, with what amounts to a religious faith in the use of political power.
I don't get it. But I certainly do get the importance of Powell's Books, even if it can't forever survive in downtown Portland, Oregon.
It is, of course, a great bookstore, although it didn't have a couple of items on my Amazon Wish List: Simon Leys' Chinese Shadows and Peter L. Berger's Social Construction of Reality. Well, I can understand Powell's not having the Berger book, since maybe Berger is a bit too right wing for lefty Portland. But the Leys book? Hard to figure.
Here's a couple good things about Powell's. In the Philosophy section they have big dividers announcing, say, books "By Plato" followed by books "On Plato." And that goes for all the prominent philosophers, past, present and future.
Now, in the Psychology section, Jung and Freud are abstracted from the general run of psychology and occupy a special section all on their own, facing an information desk. Jung is on the left and Freud is on the right. Hmm. So what is that all about, given that Jung is probably right of center and Freud left of center. Does that mean that Jung is considered the first among equals in the Powell's universe and Freud second? Or what?
I tell you what I worry about. How long can Powell's survive downtown in Portland? Let's face it; books are not the kind of business that can justify occupying prime downtown real-estate. Let's leave the decline of Borders and Barnes and Noble; those guys have their own problems. A more vital concern is my own favorite HalfPrice Books. In Seattle HalfPrice is retreating from downtown to the suburban strip mall. It used to have a store right close to downtown Seattle on Capitol Hill. That store closed years ago. HalfPrice used to have a store in the University District. That store closed a year ago. Now I have to drive 20 minutes to get to a HalfPrice book store. It's an outrage!
Still, the internet has been good for the book business. Used to be that a used bookstore was a musty mess of the old and the irrelevant. But now, with an active pricing system for used books from Amazon to Abebooks, every used bookstore knows the price on just about every book imaginable and knows exactly what to feature on its shelves. And it shows.
Well, I got a book by Thomas Kuhn, the "paradigm shift" guy, on his further reflections on his Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Remember that his main line was that science was a social endeavor, and that scientists are social beings. Thus science advances as the old generation dies off and can no longer enforce its orthodoxy. The application to climate science is obvious. We have seen, in the Climategate emails, how climate scientists enforce orthodoxy. And we see how funding drives the scientific community, for modern science lives by funding from government, and government funds the agenda that enhances its power.
Today, I think, I am going to go to Powell's and look at its "Activism" section. Yes, in lefty Portland, the culture of activism is alive and well and it has a whole section on How to Do It. I suppose that my interest in Activism is not really the how-to, but the why. What is it that motivates people to launch themselves into the practice of politics as a saving faith?
You know my take on Activism. I think that the rise of the market economy has radically altered the nature of politics, and the warrant for government force. I think that the modern era is founded upon the new and radical reality that the basis of human cooperation must be the surrender to the market and its prices, rather than surrender to the local lord and his power. The Soviet Union and Maoist China did a controlled experiment on this, and proved that political power is a dead hand. And yet we have this great movement, what I call the Great Reaction, with what amounts to a religious faith in the use of political power.
I don't get it. But I certainly do get the importance of Powell's Books, even if it can't forever survive in downtown Portland, Oregon.
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