LOSS OF CERTAINTY - REVIEW OF SURI AND BAL'S "A CERTAIN AMBIGUITY"

Every thinking human being tries to build his or her worldview from the store of his or her own experiences or by drawing upon one's reasoning powers or by drinking from the fount of existing wisdom and knowledge. Every human being has a personal philosophy of life and existence even if it were not as sophisticated as that of, say, Bertrand Russell.

Shakespeare has memorably stated: "There are more things in heaven and Earth,..., than are dreamt of in your philosophy." There may come a time in one's life when this worldview gets shattered and one desperately clings to some beliefs, any beliefs. As they say, Nature abhors a vacuum. Some may become devoutly religious, some may become atheists or agnostics, some may find solace in, say, Spinoza's philosophy or Nietzsche's philosophy.

THE PRIMACY OF ECONOMICS - REVIEW OF LIONEL SHRIVER'S "THE MANDIBLES"

Some novels bring out the truth better than most nonfiction books do. Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (1957), for instance, showed how a nation could collapse if the correct economic policies were not followed. I read it 25 years ago as an engineering undergraduate and I was so profoundly impacted by it that I became a capitalist for life. This was the book that readily came to my mind when I read Lionel Shriver's The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047 (2016) recently.