Category Archives: Uncategorized

Yesterday I went to Kew Gardens (it rained all day, I got very wet). I was prompted to visit the Chinese pagoda and the Chinese garden by a conversation on BBC 3’s ‘Free thinking’ podcast about plant hunting and the naming of plants. The curator explained that the plants in the garden now carried theirContinue reading “Botany and Colonialism”

Have you noticed the discourse about waste, recently? Yesterday, I read an article in the London Review of Books about morality. The author, Thomas Nagel, discussed 2 types: consequentialism (concerned with good/bad outcomes of our actions – utilitarianism is a popular version – and proponents take a rationalist perspective that we can always work outContinue reading “Morality and Waste”

Last Friday, I walked from Pluckley station to Rooting and then turned back. Learning from my previous experience, I chose a much gentler walk from my book of walks. There was no-one around except a farmer in his tractor. There were some very fine trees on the edges of large fields of mono-crops of broadContinue reading “Pluckley”

Recently, I discovered that our family owned slaves in Barbados. I watched an interesting BBC programme, presented by David Olosoga, where he described a UCL project to list in a database all those British people who had been compensated by the government after the abolition of slavery. I think his point was that much BritishContinue reading “Blood Legacy”

As an evidence reviewer, I suspect that my work commits epistemic injustice in that it privileges the information needs of doctors and other professional classes, bringing together information that is narrowly scientifically valid. Thus it reinforces the divide between the lived experience of illness and misfortune, and the scientific codes that make up acceptable evidence.Continue reading “Epistemic Injustice 2”

This is a question that the celebrated sci-fi writer, Ursula Le Guin, explored in her book, ‘The Lefthand side of Darkness’. In it, she conceived of a race of a humanoid people who had evolved to the extent that men could get pregnant and bear children. For a few days a month, members of thisContinue reading “is gender necessary?”

Havi Carel’s book, ‘the Phenomenology of Illness’ discusses dying as part of our lives. To live an authentic life, we must from time to time confront our own death, our finitude. Illness is often a moment of pause where we come nearer to death and most of us will be ill before we die. ToContinue reading “Dying Authentically”

I came across this term whilst listening to the BBC 3 podcast ‘Free Thinking’ . This episode introduced me to the work of Havi Carel and the philosophy of illness which I blogged about recently. Epistemic injustice occurs when one person’s account or claims to knowledge is ignored or de-legitimised in favour of accounts fromContinue reading “Epistemic Injustice”

Yesterday I went for a walk from Seaford to Cuckmere Haven (I didn’t reach the haven). I have been suffering from the after effects of brain tumour treatment for a couple of years now and have become physically quite weak. I love walking in the countryside and decided quite recently to take this up againContinue reading “Walking with Illness”

This is the phrase that clinicians use for those patients stuck on a ventilator in an ICU who are without hope of recovery but pressures from families and other doctors allegedly prevent them from turning off the machine. The familiar story of an individual beating the odds to recover had its latest outing in theContinue reading “Futile Treatment”