title, what title?

... so that I could read them again and again and again. There are three such books, which I artificially prolonged my reading to enjoy them. I will share them one by one as time permits. The Island of the Day Before This is one of the not so well known works of Umberto Eco. On the outside the book is on the quest to find an efficient method to measure the longitude in the middle ages. Unlike latitude, which could easily be measured by the angle of the north star, the longitude requires a working time reference. If I have a clock on London time, and observe that there is a 4 hour difference between midday times, you can deduce you have a 4/24 or 60/360 degrees difference. But a reliable clock that would withstand the high seas was hard to get those days. The main character is intertwined in a conspiracy that involves the de facto ruler of France - Cardinal Richeleu - and ends up as the only survivor of a ship sent out to search the international day line. As he tries to recover what h...

Ahlak'in kaynagi din'ler degildir. Din'ler Insan Cins'ini basarili kilan -yasamda kalma acisindan basaridan bahsediyorum- ahlak diye butunledigimiz davranis kaliplarini ozetleyen dusuncelerdir. Bu davranis bicimleri evrimsel olarak aciklanabildigi gibi akilsal olarak da aciklanabilir, ve Tanri'ya inananlar Akil'i verenin Tanri olduguna inandiklari icin yine Ahlak'i Tanri'ya baglayabilirler. Eger Ahlak'in temelinin din -ozelinde Kitap'lar ve hadisler/azizler/hikayeler- olduguna inanirsak, bunun sonucu diger dinlerden, hatta ayni dinin baska yorumlarindan olan insanlari ahlaksiz olduguna da inanmaktir. Ki bu da ahlakli olmanin en buyuk itici gucu -incentive- olan diger insanlar ile guven baglari kurabilme sansini yokedecegi icin aslinda Ahlak'i baltaliyici bir yaklasimdir. Bu konuyu yazili medya'ya tasiyan Ismet Berkan'in yazisini okumanizi oneririm. Su anki laiklik tartismalarinin merkezinde de aslinda dunya tarihinde ilk defa Isla...

My trip to Turkey, which I described in my previous post, was rewarding both sensually and intellectually. I bought many book in Turkish. Even though I am able to read in German, I am not as fast as I am in Turkish. One of the books I bought was Umberto Eco's 5 Moral Pieces . One of the pieces is an excerpt from a correspondence between Eco and the old Milanese Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, which was published as a series on a major Italian newspaper (which was published later as a book titled Belief or Non Belief ). This piece has helped me clarify my thoughts on secularism and it's constituent role in democracy. In one of his letters the Cardinal asks Eco the question "how can one be sure that the principles on which he bases his actions are absolute, if he they are not based on a eternal and absolute force such as God...". Eco replies by stating that a set of moral principles based on the basic paradigm of not treating others in a way that would make upset us, had ...