55 - Massimo Pigliucci - A Modern Stoic

Massimo’s books include Phenotypic Plasticity: Beyond Nature and Nurture (Syntheses in Ecology and Evolution) (2001):
https://www.amazon.com/Phenotypic-Plasticity-Syntheses-Evolution-2001-07-17/dp/B01K17YKGQ

Making Sense of Evolution: The Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Biology, with co-author Jonathan Kaplan (2006):
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo4100801.html

Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk (2010):
https://www.amazon.com/Nonsense-Stilts-Tell-Science-Bunk-dp-0226667863/dp/0226667863/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=
and
How to be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (2017):
https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Stoic-Ancient-Philosophy/dp/0465097952

He is the co-author, with Gregory Lopez of Live Like A Stoic: 52 Exercises for Cultivating a Good Life (2019):
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1116985/live-like-a-stoic/9781846045967.html

He is the co-editor, with Maarten Boudry, of Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem:
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo15996988.html

You can find Massimo’s Letter conversation with David Sloan Wilson here:
https://letter.wiki/conversation/34

And my article about this conversation here:
https://areomagazine.com/2019/07/10/human-cultural-evolution-a-letter-exchange

You can find Massimo’s Letter conversaion with Philip Goff here:
https://letter.wiki/conversation/277

For more on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis:
https://extendedevolutionarysynthesis.com/

On Stoic Week: https://modernstoicism.com/about-stoic-week/

Follow Massimo on Twitter: @mpigliucci

Write to Open Letters at Letter here:
https://letter.wiki/OpenLetters/conversations

Write to me: https://letter.wiki/IonaItalia/conversations

Further Notes

Derren Brown, Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine (2016)

My essay on Stoicism: https://areomagazine.com/2019/01/21/in-praise-of-stoicism-derren-browns-happy-book-review/

For Karl Popper on the demarcation problem see:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#ProbDema

Larry Laudan on the demarcation problem:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-7055-7_6

For Wittgenstein on the definition of a game see:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#LangGameFamiRese

The SETI institute: https://www.seti.org/

Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Selection Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2001):
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/114577/the-mating-mind-by-geoffrey-miller/

Richard Lewontin, 1929–

Lawrence Kraus, A Universe from Nothing (2012)

Massimo, Maarten Boudry, Lawrence Krauss and Daniel Dennett on the Limits of Science:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRzfCemXYLc

For Wilfred Sellars on the stereoscopic vision of science see:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/#8

Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel (1941):
https://maskofreason.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/the-library-of-babel-by-jorge-luis-borges.pdf

Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (2010)

Massimo’s review of The Moral Landscape:
https://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/11-02-02/#feature

Ayn Rand’s objectivism: https://aynrand.org/ideas/overview/

The Discourses of Epictetus: http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/discourses.html

Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations:
http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html

Seneca, Of Anger: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Of_Anger/Book_I

For more on Chryssipus: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chrysippus

Timestamps
3:47 The demarcation problem, the difference between science and pseudoscience
17:26 What made Massimo change fields from biology to philosophy
21:45 What is the relationship between philosophy and science?
38:32 Science and ethics
45:59 The appeal of Stoicism
57:17 Stoic practices
1:11:31 The Stoic fork/dichotomy of control
1:23:11 Free will
1:34:00 The misrepresentation of Stoicism as repression of emotion
1:43:18 The lessons of the pandemic