Editor’s note: Phillip E. Johnson, Berkeley law professor and author of Darwin on Trial and other books, died on November 2. In days to come, Evolution News will share remembrances from Fellows of Discovery Institute. John Mark Reynolds blogs at Patheos where this was originally published. Men must endureTheir going hence, even as their coming hither;Ripeness is all.* So says the noble Edgar in King Lear about the death Read More ›
Discovery Institute research fellow Christopher F. Rufo is set to release his latest feature-length documentary, America Lost, which tells the story of life in three “forgotten American cities” — Youngstown, Ohio, Memphis, Tennessee, and Stockton, California. America Lost reveals the dramatic decline of the American interior through a combination of emotional personal stories and thoughtful conservative commentary. Filmmaker Christopher F. Rufo spent Read More ›
Call it a head tax on wheels. The recently announced plan to triple the Seattle city taxes on all ride-share trips — to 75 cents from 24 cents, which would create the highest flat ride-share tax in the U.S. — is out of the same playbook that brought us the 2017-18 tax on jobs. It would hurt working people and Read More ›
In the previous century, the language wars were fought over adverbs; at issue was discipline of thought and speech. How many thousands of readers of The Elements of Style felt that mixture of shame and delight when they read what Strunk and White had to say about “hopefully”? “This once-useful adverb meaning ‘with hope’ has been distorted and is now widely used to mean ‘I hope.’ Such use is not merely wrong, it is silly.”
Oh, for the good old days.
To be sure, Orwell was there to remind us about the dangers of newspeak. But as the century ground to its weary end, the Communists were in worldwide retreat, and it seemed as though words were returning to their proper meanings.
How shocking these last few years have been. Suddenly, pronouns and possessive adjectives are on everyone’s minds. “To each their own” is ubiquitous. Today one takes a stand by using the constructions we found so cumbersome in the 1980s, “he or she” and “his or her.” Whence this strife over words? What are its deep roots? How is sanity to be defended amid these battles?
Michael D. Aeschliman’s The Restoration of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Continuing Case against Scientism, an updated edition of a work first published in 1983, has the answers.
There is a double surprise in store for Aeschliman’s readers. It is alarming to learn how the rise and growth of a scientific culture has been linked with the most blatant subjectivism. It is a joy to be introduced to the “great central tradition” of witnesses to the true meaning of words and defenders of human reason, a tradition culminating in a man here fittingly characterized as its “trustee,” the redoubtable “Jack” Lewis.
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