Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 256

“Mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe”

    I have many interesting books in my library, among them James N. Gardner, Biocosm: The New Scientific Theory of Evolution: Intelligent Life is the Architect of the Universe (Makawao, Maui, HI: Inner Ocean, 2003).   James Gardner is a lawyer, a graduate of Yale Law School, as well as a former Supreme Court […]

A first pass at Sayyid Qutb

    One of the principal architects of modern Islamic “fundamentalism” and, therefore, derivatively, of modern Islamic extremism (including such groups as al-Qaeda), was Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), an Egyptian author and educator who was a leading member and theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s.   Qutb published prolifically, including twenty-four books […]

The Whitmer Family Prior to the Book of Mormon (A)

    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was probably organized in the home of Peter Whitmer Sr., where much of the translation of the Book of Mormon also took place.  David Whitmer, a son of Peter Sr., was one of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon.  (For a very recent […]

A mid-mission jaunt from Switzerland to northern Germany

    I’ve been asked by a friend who is a reader of and a commenter on this blog to explain how in the world I was able to visit the north German university town of Göttingen almost precisely midway through my mission to Switzerland.  (I mentioned this somewhat curious fact in yesterday’s blog entry […]

Imagination as a Key Element in Science and Mathematics

    A nice little interlude from Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre (Penguin, 2017), pages 74-77:   Contrary to his popular image, Albert Einstein was not a great mathematician.  Indeed, he struggled with mathematics.  In 1943, a nine-year-old girl named […]

Hebrew Wordplay on the Name “Benjamin” in the Book of Mosiah?

    A new article has appeared today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.  It’s by Professor Matthew Bowen:   “Becoming Men and Women of Understanding: Wordplay on Benjamin — An Addendum” Abstract: Royal and divine sonship/daughterhood (bānîm = “children”/“sons,”bānôt = “daughters”) is a prevalent theme throughout the Book of Mosiah. “Understanding” […]

Norwegian churches that survived the Black Death, and other matters

    The latest installment of my Deseret News column discusses a few of my very favorite buildings, and I’m unusually pleased at the photographs that my editor at the newspaper, Christine Rappleye, selected to accompany it.  I’ve visited many if not most of these marvelous relics of that earliest Christian period in Norway, still […]

Good Reasons to Attend Church

    Searching through a pile of papers, I came across a little book today that I haven’t seen for quite a while:  Paul McFate, 52 Good Reasons to Go to Church, Besides the Obvious Ones (Chicago: ACTA Publications, 2004).  It’s a lot of fun, and I’m going to share some notes from it as […]

Correcting a basic mistake in neuroscience, or just committing one?

    I share some notes that I jotted down from Douglas Fox, “The Brain, Reimagined: Physicists who have revived experiments from 50 years ago say nerve cells communicate with mechanical pulses, not electric ones,” Scientific American (April 2018): 60-67:   Curiously, although physicians have been administering general anesthesia for nearly two centuries now, and […]

A Great Early Muslim Woman: Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya (3)

    I share some further notes from Margaret Smith, Muslim Women Mystics: The Life and Work of Rābiʿa and Other Women Mystics in Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001).  These are from pages 29-52:   It is said that Rābiʿa al-‘Adawiyya or, as she is sometimes also known because of her birthplace, Rābiʿa al-Baṣriyya received many offers of marriage, […]