A highway journey in France should be many stuff. This one contains a couple of precocious children, a meditative writer reason on imprinting a few of the worthier features of French civilization on their still-malleable minds, and his indulgent, level-headed spouse. Seizing an unforeseen chance to mix kin go back and forth with a few studious examine into medieval France, the author and his relations embark from Paris on a direction that takes them via Versailles, excursions, Chartres, Lyon, Carcasonne, Toulouse, Avignon, Dijon and issues among.
Along the way in which they immerse themselves in France's wealthy medieval background, ultimately exploring the outstanding mountain-top ruins of the mysterious and romantic non secular sect often called the Cathars, within the country’s severe south. From cheese and charcuterie to landmark resorts to Michelin-starred eating places; from Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas to Descartes and Magritte, Rowland blends the adventurous family's go back and forth reviews with an astute and engaging exam of a few of our private assumptions in regards to the nature of truth and our courting to the world.
Rolling alongside again roads of their trusty rented Peugeot; in crusader castles and feudal dungeons; in bistros and supermarchés; in a borrowed state farmhouse, in a sumptuous cave-dwelling in Vouvray, family members discussions flip to the realm view of medieval Europe, a method of idea and belief considerably varied from our personal. Suspecting that the Enlightenment and Reformation tossed out the newborn of ethical walk in the park with the bathwater of hypocrisy and superstition, Rowland argues that smooth values, derived from fundamentalist technological know-how and rationalism, have decreased humans to alienated objects—human assets, or worse, human capital.
Reviewers have in comparison Ockham's Razor to either Peter Mayle's A yr in Provence and Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the artwork of motorbike upkeep. it's actually a distinct mixing of philosophical hypothesis with an attractive and sometimes funny trip narrative that's either real and hugely creative. Its head can be within the clouds either actually and figuratively, yet its toes are planted firmly in daily realities of the trendy global and its demanding situations from kinfolk dynamics to worldwide meltdown.
ABOUT WADE ROWLAND
Ranked between Canada's prime literary reporters, Wade Davies Rowland has produced greater than a dozen books on matters starting from tv journalism and arranged crime, to foreign environmental legislation, to his present issues which come with the social impression of communique applied sciences, the philosophy of technological know-how, and the resources of human values.
His writing is frequently educated via his adventure as a newspaper reporter and tv author and manufacturer, and senior government with either CTV, Canada's greatest inner most tv community and CBC, the nation's public broadcaster. this present day, Rowland is an affiliate Professor within the division of communique stories at Toronto's York collage, the place he teaches undergraduate and graduate classes within the ethics of conversation. His scholarly paintings has seemed in a couple of educational journals.
Rowland's first paintings on his departure from company media and go back to writing used to be "Spirit of the net: The Age of knowledge from Telegraph to Internet", which chronicles the background of verbal exchange applied sciences and their impression on civilization. it truly is at present in its 3rd edition.
In Ockham's Razor, Rowland addresses problems with fairness, justice, caliber, and human dignity via a commute narrative within which the writer and his relations take a street journey via France which culminates in an exploration of the storied Cathar ruins in Languedoc, France.
His newest books pursue questions of the resources of human values from various views: "Greed, Inc.: Why organisations Rule Our World", an exploration of the character of the fashionable company company; and "Galileo’s Mistake" at the old dispute among Galileo and the Catholic Church.
