Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

This week, I express my dismay at how fast time seems to be moving for me of late and how it reflects the existence of various sources of knowledge in our world.

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Sources:

[1] Ada Palmer, Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age, (University of Chicago Press, 2025), 603.

[2] If this word epistemology leaves you confused, have no fear, for my own benefit as well I wrote a blog post explaining this word alongside two of its compatriots. “Three Ologies,” Wednesday Blog 6.6 (podcast 5.6).

This week, I want to address how we recognize knowledge in comparison to the various fields of inquiry through which we refine our understanding of things.

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Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

Art

Raphael, The School of Athens (1509–1511), Apostolic Palace, Vatican Museums, Vatican City. Public Domain.

Sources

• “On Writing,” Wednesday Blog 6.27.
• Surekha Davies, Humans: A Monstrous History, (University of California Press, 2025).
• Marcy Norton, The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals After 1492, (Harvard University Press, 2024), 307.
• Dead Poets Society, (1989) "What will your verse be?" Video on YouTube.

This week, I discuss some of the things which are common to all of us, problems we all share, and why I think we ought to look at solving those problems.

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Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, some words about the art, and the craft, of writing.

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Links in this episode:

• Patrick Kingsley, Ronen Bergman, and Natan Odenheimer, “How Netanyahu Prolonged the War in Gaza to Stay in Power,” The New York Times Magazine, (11 July 2025).

• John McWhorter, “It’s Time to Let Go of ‘African American’,” The New York Times, (10 July 2025).

• Bishop Mark J. Seitz, D.D., “The Living Vein of Compassion’: Immigration & the Catholic Church at this moment,” Commonweal Magazine, (June 2025), 26–32.

• “On Technology,” The Wednesday Blog 5.2.

• “Artificial Intelligence,” The Wednesday Blog 4.1.

This week, on the patriotism we live in our ordinary lives.

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In honor of Independence Day, here is a recitation of the Declaration of Independence of the United States.

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This week, some words on endings.

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This week, why we should not lose sight of our common humanity in a time of war.

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Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

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This week's sources:

[1] “Masks,” Wednesday Blog 4.15.

[2] Luke 10:27 (New American Bible).

[3] St. Augustine, Confessions 8.7.

[4] Joan-Pau Rubiés, “The Renaissance of Encounters and the Renaissance of Antiquities,” Renaissance Quarterly 78, no. 1 (2025): 1–41, at 12.

[5] Philippe Desan, Montaigne: A Life, trans. Steven Rendall and Lisa Neal, (Princeton University Press, 2017), xxxiii.

[6] “On the Cannibals,” Wednesday Blog 4.20.

This week, the coalescence of my thoughts over the last few months about how the way we communicate today in 2025 is so rooted in our technology.

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Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

This week, the fourth in several scribblings about my research: borrowing from Oscar Wilde, the importance of being earnest with one’s sources.

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Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane

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Sources:

• Ologies Podcast: https://www.alieward.com/ologies
• "Metropolis," Wednesday Blog 3.20: https://wednesdayblog.org/2023/01/11/metropolis/.
• Marie V. Alessandro, "The Workers of Metropolis" in Cinema at UMass Boston, (6 November 2020), https://blogs.umb.edu/cinemastudies/2020/11/06/workers-of-metropolis/
• Surekha Davies, “Here be black holes: Like sea monsters on premodern maps, deep-space images are science’s fanciful means to chart the edges of the known world,” Aeon (13 July 2020), https://aeon.co/essays/how-black-holes-are-like-sea-monsters-at-the-edge-of-our-vision.
• Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Ed., Notes-Bibliography System Quick Guide, https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html.
• Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S.G.C. Middlemore, (London, 1878): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2074.