Category Archives: Social Science


Dialectics and Spinoza

“Have you ever wondered why sociologists still study Marx if he was wrong?” (Erik Olin Wright, “Analytical Marxism”) This fragment grew into a series of YouTube videos: Rationalism and Socialism The time has come for socialists to reconsider Spinoza. As Macherey put it in his 1979 book Hegel or Spinoza, “the entire problem is that […]



Looking for a Theory of Action

You absorb more philosophy than you realize when you study math. Choices, commitments to specific philosophical doctrines, were collectively made long before our modern textbooks were written. I feel I should revisit some of these choices. This document is a repository for reflections—basically diary entries—undertaken for the ultimate purpose of articulating a logic and an […]


Capital for STEM majors

Resources linked in this doc: As a working teacher, I’m always thinking about ways to make the history of ideas accessible to ordinary people—say, the average undergrad or advanced high school student. Some people publish articles. Some people post. I make slideshows and typeset mathematical notes. 1. Notes on Capital vol. 3, ch. 10, “The […]



Cluster Analysis of Kink Role Affinity Scores

Slideshow (PDF) Peer review for an article presenting the method and results of this project was completed in January 2022. The article will be published in 2022 by the Journal of Homosexuality. The slideshow appearing here contains a few full-color figures that couldn’t appear in the (black-and-white) forthcoming print version.