About
Coffee Theory is an independent blog written and maintained by me, Greg Linster.
What about the name? I’m glad you asked. What’s often left out of history books is that caffeine helped fuel the Age of Reason. I know that this initially sounds like drivel spewing from the mouth of a raging coffee addict, but please bear with me. Prior to the Enlightenment, many Europeans spent their days in a drunken stupor from drinking too much beer. Until coffee and tea arrived in Europe, alcoholic drinks were the popular daytime beverages. This was largely for health reasons (the drinking water was unsanitary).
Once coffee hit the scene in Europe and coffee houses started springing up, it could be argued that the market for ideas vastly improved. Europeans, for the first time, were fueled by a stimulant instead of a depressant. With a cup of piping hot coffee in hand, the name Coffee Theory came to me while I was trying conjure up a name for my blog. What do I use this blog for? Well, first consider the following passage written by Nassim Taleb in his landmark book The Black Swan.
The lesson for the small is: be human! Accept that being human involves some amount of epistemic arrogance in running your affairs. Do not be ashamed of that. Do not try to always withhold judgment — opinions are the stuff of life. Do not try to avoid predicting — yes, after this diatribe about prediction I am not urging you to stop being a fool. Just be a fool in the right places.
This blog seems like the perfect place to be a fool. It’s also probably worth mentioning here that I’m fairly philosophical and my worldview is heavily influenced by evolutionary theory. I’m particularly interested in evolutionary theory’s applications to the social sciences and the humanities. Along with the occasional book review, you’ll find an eclectic array of aphorisms, essays, & articles in this blog.
Please feel free to brew yourself a cup of coffee and hang around if you enjoy what you read. To make that easier, you can stay abreast of all the updates on this site by subscribing via the RSS feed, Email, or on Facebook. I also write a monthly newsletter filled with book recommendations called Read More.
Coffee Theory is licensed under a Creative Commons License, meaning you are free to share, copy, distribute, and adapt any of the posts, provided you properly attribute them to Greg Linster.
Find Me Elsewhere on the Web:
Greg Linster (Personal website)
Facebook (Microblog)
+Greg Linster & Flickr (Photography)
Quora (Q & A)
Full Disclosure: There are affiliate links to products (namely books) on this site. However, I would never recommend something I didn’t enjoy or find useful. If you buy these books (or other products) through those links, I get a small commission.
