Robert Dahl’s On Democracy is a handbook of sorts setting out the basics of his vision of democracy. He more or less articulates a liberal pluralist version of democracy without using that term specifically. The term he does use, polyarchal democracy, he describes as a political system that has: 1. Elected officials 2. Free, fair, and frequent elections 3. Freedom of expression 4. Access to alternative sources of information 5. Associational autonomy

Given the extent of globalization, I’m often surprised when a solution which is obviously better is applied in one place and not another. The case I want to talk about here is the solution to the problem of seating a lot of people in your house. In the U.S., if you want to have any sort of large gathering, it involves having to drag in a lot of chairs from around the house, to the point where you’ve got people seated on a hodge-podge of sofas, chairs, and stools.

I am trying to track my thinking over time in how to model the behaviour of churches in response to public opinion changes on a given issue. Part 1 and Part 2 show that this has been a longer process than I anticipated. I am still trying to use the two-dimensional framework that I used in Part 2, but I’ve thought of ways to both simplify it and, paradoxically, to enrichen it too.

Introduction An intriguing part of Islamic history is the moment when Muslim scholars encountered Greek philosophy for the first time. A revealed religion with a complete cosmology suddenly bumps up against a system of thought based on deductive reason, but whose brilliance is undeniable. These Islamic scholars quickly began work reacting to this new (albeit ancient) philosophical work, ushering in a particularly productive period of thought in the medieval world. Of course, Christianity underwent a similar process; in both cases religious thinkers were impressed by what they found in Greek philosophy, and determined to evaluate their own beliefs using this newly found system of thought.

I tried to be more precise in how I measured the best books I read this year. For the second year in a row, I’ve been rating each book according to my assessment of its quality and my level of enjoyment. The four best books I read are the ones that have the highest combined rating of quality and enjoyment (I normally pick three, but I had a tie). You can see these on the graphic below.