Tag: Great Ideas
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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September 19, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
On a recent post, I attempted to define idea. Ideas are crucial to the art of learning, yet a precise and singular definition evades me. Clearly, understanding what we’re talking about is never simple. More than a basic definition, though, I want to understand where ideas come from, who uses them, how they continue or evolve,
December 29, 2023
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Charity takes center stage this time of year. In Bleak House also, charity becomes a sort of character. Even limited to the first six chapters, Dickens explores a variety of charities. The protagonist, Esther Summerson, is introduced as an orphan in the care of her godmother who is a deeply religious woman. Esther’s godmother sees nothing but sin in the young girl and therefore treats her austerely.
November 24, 2023
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Each fall, Great Books San Francisco hosts a Poetry Weekend. And if there’s one thing that I’m grateful for in this world, it’s poetry. I love to attend this event because of its hybrid nature. The first day is filled with reading and discussion. Groups of fifteen or so are separated into Zoom spaces where we read,
May 27, 2022
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
In order to continue with my investigations of Artificial Intelligence (AI), I am looking into historical understandings of the mind. Mind is also one of the great ideas, so obviously there has been a lot of research, discussion, and theorizing about what it is, where it is located, and how it functions. For today’s blog, I simply focus on Lucretius.
May 13, 2022
Thanks to 2022 Fellow in Ideas, David Yamada, for today’s post.
Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life by Zena Hitz
As the humanities and social sciences face core threats fueled by higher education budget cuts and political divisions, they are conventionally defended on vocational and practical grounds. The liberal arts, so the argument goes, provide a strong grounding for successful careers by teaching students how to read,
January 31, 2020
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
“Genome engineered plants and animals are happening right now. And this puts in front of all of us a huge responsibility to consider carefully both the unintended consequences as well as the intended impacts of a scientific breakthrough.” – Jennifer Duodna, TED Talk
In January’s Quarterly Discussion, we looked at The Law by Hippocrates and also some videos and an article by Jennifer Duodna,
January 4, 2019
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Some members in my family celebrate New Year’s Eve with lutefisk or sauerkraut. Some people celebrate with both. I, however, draw the line at lutefisk. I just cannot stomach it. What seems to me to be a petty difference of taste really bothers others, though. They fear bad karma (or something) when I disrespect the tradition. We turn this into a joke at the dinner table,
June 29, 2018
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” – Winston Churchill
Alexis de Tocqueville recognized that democracy presented major changes in the political world which would also affect the social world.
June 9, 2017
Thanks to Alissa Simon for today’s post.
In the Syntopicon (Astronomy and Cosmology chapter), Mortimer Adler notes that “Man has used astronomy to measure not only the passage of time or the course of a voyage, but also his position in the world, his power of knowing, his relation to God. When man first turns from himself and his immediate earthly surroundings to the larger universe of which he is a part,
April 28, 2017
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Did you know that Poetry is listed as one of the Great Ideas in the Syntopicon? If you didn’t you are not alone. However, the importance of this inclusion is often overlooked. Since it is National Poetry Month, now is the best time to better understand why poetry might be considered one of the “great ideas”. For me, poetry is an easy sell.