Mann's Death in Venice actually contains a snippet of philosophy about the second question, when Aschenbach, collapsed in the plaza, engages in his quasi-Socratic, anti-Socratic, ruminations.

Using the Adagietto of Mahler's Fifth is one of the touches of pure genius in Visconti's film (even though Mahlerians complain very loudly that the piece has been ruined), since it corresponds perfectly to Aschenbach's yearnings and to his circling walks around Venice.

I don't deny that scientific investigation is capable of delivering important truths about nature, but that doesn't stop questions about whether, as it is practiced, science today lives up to its potential for benefiting humanity.

I rather stumbled into philosophy. When I began my undergraduate career at Cambridge, I studied mathematics.

Experiments work when, and only when, they call into action cognitive capacities that might reliably deliver the conclusions drawn.

I don't think readers of Mann have overlooked the fact that he was a great ironist, but they have tended to see the irony in particular parts of the novella, and to miss it in others.

I didn't know that Mahler would come to play so large a role, nor that music and literature and philosophy can interinanimate one another in the way I've come to think they do in this case.