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The peacock tail of literate culture
I’ve just finished reading Geoffrey Miller’s Spent, now over 15 years old, and, whatever its limits as evolutionary psychology, it gives you a genuinely…
May 18
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Dr Cristian Ispir
1
1
You write the book you need to read
Nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita. In the middle. Not the beginning, not the end. The middle is the hardest place to be, because you can see both…
May 15
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Dr Cristian Ispir
1
The threshold of textual reproduction
We tend to imagine the loss of ancient literature as catastrophe, dramatic and violent.
May 11
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Dr Cristian Ispir
1
1
The evolutionary selection of literary canons
Some texts survive.
May 9
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Dr Cristian Ispir
2
Humanity’s most elegant hack
The alphabet may never be supplanted
May 5
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Dr Cristian Ispir
2
1
We still call it Earth
Why is our planet called “Earth” (Terra) when 71% of its surface is covered in water?
May 2
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Dr Cristian Ispir
4
1
April 2026
History and the onus reversal
“History is written by the winners” is an evolutionary statement.
Apr 28
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Dr Cristian Ispir
2
2
Waxing literary
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, European humanists became drunk on Ciceronian wine.
Apr 24
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Dr Cristian Ispir
2
What Marco Polo had and didn't have
No freedom.
Apr 20
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Dr Cristian Ispir
3
1
Spotty camels and naming things we've never seen before
What does the mind do when it encounters something it has never seen before, not something slightly unfamiliar, not a variation on a known theme, but…
Apr 17
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Dr Cristian Ispir
2
The comfort zone of aporia
We are not good at not knowing.
Apr 13
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Dr Cristian Ispir
3
1
1
The past that speaks now
The medieval artist setting a Roman triumph in a Gothic city was not confused about history, but was making a claim about it.
Apr 10
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Dr Cristian Ispir
2
1
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