This is a summary of and commentary on the prologue titled “The Metropolitan Explosion” of Peter Hall’s (1966), “The World Cities”. Although the defining elements of his “World City” remain unchanged, a major shift has been in manufacturing (element # 4b) in urban suburbs. The World Cities are gradually leaving behind the role of being […]
Category: English Blog
In this post, I posit the concept – the Estranged – as a dialectical opposite to Simmel’s concept of the Stranger. If the stranger is remembered for his ‘distance’ from the (host) group, the estranged is remembered for his ‘departure’ from the (reference) group. Simmel defined the Stranger as an “organic member of the group” (p. […]
“marking up a book is not an act of mutilation but of love.” You know you have to read “between the lines” to get the most out of anything. I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading. I want to persuade you to write between the lines. […]
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest-whether the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories-comes after wards. These are games …” — Camus, The Myth of […]
“Christianity was born among the urban Jews of the Roman Empire and spread gradually into the countryside. Even in largely rural Europe, monasteries functioned as surrogate cities and Christianity spread outward from these centers of structure and literacy. Pagus is the Latin word for “countryside,” and in the countryside the old polytheisms lingered long after […]
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The Qur’an was translated into Latin in 1142