The Literary Interrogator: Evidence of Thought

Reviews of books on Philosophy, Physics, Biology, Archaeology, History and more by Private Investigator, Literary Scholar and Professional Proofreader Patrick Kurtz

This book review blog is about discussing works I, The Literary Interrogator, have been reading lately. All of these are in some way or the other connected to my journey of investigating the biggest questions there are:

Who are we?
Why are we here?
Where do we come from?
Why is there something rather than nothing?

Exploring these ultimate questions has led me to a great variety of fields, from the main spiritual texts of the great religions to the histories and myths of indigenous people, from biology to physics, from history to archaeology, from neuroscience to – what I believe is the ultimate type of human exploration – consciousness research. Apart from orthodox scientific literature, I am also looking into alternative approaches, and that with an open mind.

The starting point of my exploration back in 2018 or so was a purely rationalistic, atheist and anti-theist, Darwinistic mindset, shaped by the convictions predominant in my family and by the Western educational system I grew up with. Spoiler alert: Things have changed. And this will, of course, be reflected in my reviews.

My journey was kickstarted by learning about the archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe; I found myself fully unable to reconcile the existence of this enormous and incredibly elaborated site at such an early point in human history (about 9.600 BCE) with my conceptions of this very history. I felt deeply dissatisfied with the scholarly history books I had read so far, with the media depictions of our history and, above all, with my school education, remembering that our History classes, grotesquely, started with the Ancient Greeks in about 600 BCE – what had happened in the 9.000 years in between? And what the heck had happened before Göbekli Tepe to enable a society to build such a mind dazzling site right at the end of the last Ice Age? I had to know more, and so my journey – that eventually led me to the four existential questions listed above – began.

On the road, I've also regularly been picking up memoirs/biographies and books of – more or less – fiction like the classic Greek dramas or loads of SciFi novels, and I'm planning to, every now and then, drop a review on these, too.

Why do you call this blog "The Literary Interrogator: Evidence of Thought" and why is it in English?

Concerning the title of the blog: Well, I wanted to be clever and catchy. The title includes a number of puns on my professional carrer as a private investigator, a proofreader and literary scholar, and a writer. "Evidence of Thought" plays around various concepts I've repeatedly come across, like "Abscence of evidence is not evidence of abscence", or Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum"; and it's of course also related to the detective thing.

Why English? It might be irritating for English speaking readers to find this English blog on a website written in German. Fair point. Maybe one day I'll find the time to provide two complete language versions. For now, this blog has to be in English for the main reason that almost all of my related reading is in English and that many of the books I am reviewing aren't even available in a German translation. Accordingly, I'm actually regularly overstrained when trying to explain the ideas that derived from my reading in German because I often do not even know the proper translations of many of the terms. On these occasions, I'm often terribly slow in formulating my ideas. So, when it comes to scientific/scholarly conversation, I actually feel more at home in English than in my mother tongue.

List of book reviews on "The Literary Interrogator: Evidence of Thought" by subject area

I started this blog in May 2025. As with all things, it needs time to grow. Accordingly, the subsequent list of reviews will stay neat for the foreseeable future. Stay tuned, bear with me, or whatever.

Philosophy | Metaphysics:

Iain McGilchrist: The Matter with Things

List of book reviews on "The Literary Interrogator: Evidence of Thought" by rating

10 out of 10:

Iain McGilchrist: The Matter with Things

9 out of 10: