{"id":708,"date":"2004-12-31T13:25:19","date_gmt":"2004-12-31T17:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoreti.ca\/?p=708"},"modified":"2004-12-31T13:25:19","modified_gmt":"2004-12-31T17:25:19","slug":"lightman-the-diagnosis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=708","title":{"rendered":"Lightman: The Diagnosis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"randomhouse.com | The Diagnosis by Alan Lightman\" href=\"http:\/\/www.randomhouse.com\/catalog\/display.pperl?0-375-42119-X\">The Diagnosis by Alan Lightman<\/a> is one of the best novels about information and philosophy I have read. The hero, who works for a company that just processes information (without apparently contributing anything &#8211; just quantity), begins to go numb in a way reminiscent of Socrates after he swallows the hemlock. Woven into the novel are the e-mail exchanges of the hero with his son who is taking a course online and a Socratic dialogue. The book is a &#8220;diagnosis&#8221; of a culture that has confused quantity of information processed with wisdom. It is Plato&#8217;s story of writing in the Phaedrus in novel form.<br \/>\nFor an interview with the author see, <a title=\"identity theory | the narrative thread - alan lightman\" href=\"http:\/\/www.identitytheory.com\/people\/birnbaum5.html\">identity theory | the narrative thread &#8211; alan lightman<\/a>.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nAfter The Diagnosis I was disappointed in Reunion which is about a middle-aged prof who goes back to a school reunion and remembers his first love. Sappy stuff that shows that Lightman, while good at philosophy, is terrible at love and women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Diagnosis by Alan Lightman is one of the best novels about information and philosophy I have read. The hero, who works for a company that just processes information (without apparently contributing anything &#8211; just quantity), begins to go numb in a way reminiscent of Socrates after he swallows the hemlock. Woven into the novel &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=708\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Lightman: The Diagnosis<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}