New Textbook (completed)

My survey of the history of Western political philosophy (@110, 000 words), with a focus on its contemporary relevance, has been sent off to the publisher for production.  

This new book builds on a quarter of a century of my teaching this subject, though the serious writing on this book started back in 2020.

Hopefully the book will be out in print in 2024.

Cheers, 

Colin

Nuffield Council of Bioethics (Ladder for public health interventions)

 I recently came across the Nuffield Council on Bioethics "Ethics Tools for Decision-Makers" which contains the following useful "ladder for public health interventions":

Cheers, 

Colin

Year in Review (2023)

Time for my annual summary of the past year (2023), at least on the research front.

I spent the first half of the year on sabbatical at Bilkent University in Ankara, Türkiye.  It was an amazing experience, both professionally and personally.  My youngest son came with me on this trip and attended an international highschool in Ankara.  I taught a bioethics course for graduate and undergraduate students in the philosophy department.  We lived on the campus, so it was only a 15 minute walk from home to the department and gym.  So this really permitted me to optimize time for research.  

Tragically the devastating earthquake occurred 2 weeks after our arrival, and in-person classes at the university were cancelled for the following 2 months (the class moved to zoom) and the teaching term was extended into part of the summer term to enable students to catch up on what was missed due to disruption from the earthquake.

On the research front I wrote and/or had a number of new papers accepted/published.  These include many of what I consider to be among my best articles published to date:

Colin Farrelly, (2023). Geroscience and Public Health's Plastic "Ecology of Ideas". The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences, 78(5), 793–797.

Colin Farrelly, (2023). Longevity Science and Women's Health and Wellbeing. Journal of population ageing, 1–20. Advance online publication.

Colin Farrelly, (2023). Geroscience and climate science: Oppositional or complementary?. Aging Cell, 22(8), e13890. 

Colin Farrelly, From Sanitation Science to Geroscience: Public Health Must Transcend ‘Folkbiology’, Public Health Ethics, Volume 16, Issue 2, July 2023, Pages 165–174.

Colin Farrelly, (2023). "Post-Protean" Public Health and the Geroscience Hypothesis". Aging and Disease, 10.14336/AD.2023.0721. Advance online publication.

Colin Farrelly (2023). "Framing Longevity Science and an "Aging Enhancement" in The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Human Enhancement (editors Fabrice Jotterand & Marcello Ienca.

The major research activity of the year was completing a major survey (for a forthcoming textbook) of the classics in Western political philosophy, which I have been writing for many years now.  I am in the final editing stage of this book, and expect it to be send off to the production stage in a few weeks (once I find some time for final edits and revisions!).

I am also making headway with what I hope will be a new book on the ethics of longevity science and aging, building on recent publications in this field.  Without a doubt the first half of this year was my most productive for research.  My daily schedule was (a) get my son sent off to school (a bus would collect him from campus each day at 7:30am, (b) workout and then (c) write until my son returned at 4pm, when I would cook dinner for us both.  

I did have teaching obligations 2 days a week, but that was on a topic related to my research so it complemented (vs competing with) the momentum necessary for writing.  Teaching only one course in the winter term was a reprieve from the 3 courses I have taught in the winter term for the past decade.  So that translated into a perceptible research dividend for me.  This year (and for the foreseeable future) I will limit my teaching to only 2 courses per term vs trying to teach an additional course once a year (i.e. 5 per year). 

My philosophy meetup group was also a busy community outreach activity again this year, as I hosted reading groups on Man's Search for Meaning, Good Arguments, Grit, The State, and Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement.  This initiative continues to be a really enriching experience for me.  I have met many wonderful people and feel much more connected to my community after having run this group for the past 5 years.  Membership is now over 350 members! (of which about 35-40 are actively attending meetings regularly)

In 2023 I also played pickleball for the first time (which I love), continued with improv lessons (now at the advanced level) and performed in another half a dozen Murder Mystery plays.

I look forward to seeing what 2024 has in store for me as I continue to try to learn and develop as a scholar and human being.  All the best to everyone!

Cheers, 

Colin

PS:  I also gave a presentation at Canada's first Geroscience summit in Toronto in October, and discussed some of the insights in the paper below

Dewey Quote on Science and Imagination

 Brilliant passage from John Dewey, a thinker decades ahead of his time: 

[click image to expand it]

Cheers, 

Colin

Nature Index Rankings (USA vs China)

The Nature Index ranks universities based on their contributions to research articles published in high-quality natural-science and health-science journals. The top 10 universities in the world are all in China and the US, but China now dominates with 7 of the top 10 universities in the world (only Harvard, Stanford and MIT can compete with the top universities in China for research output).

Cheers, 

Colin

Human Rights Declining in the 21st Century (!)

EurkeAlert! news drew my attention to this interesting report on human rights in the world.  Some items of notice from the report:

» Global human rights, on average, have declined in the 21st century.

» Less than 20% of countries score in the A or B range (80–100).

» The global median human rights score is an F (50).

» Democracy is one of the strongest predictors of governments’ respect for human rights.

» The COVID-19 pandemic caused a decline in human rights globally. Several governments used the pandemic to justify imposing harsher public security practices, leading to human rights violations. Recent academic research has found that repressive governments during the COVID-19 pandemic put curfews and lockdowns in place earlier and kept them longer than non-repressive countries.12 In addition, surveys of human rights experts around the world find evidence that government respect for economic and social rights, as well as civil and political rights, declined as a result of COVID.13

Cheers,

Colin