What, Why & How do we Know ?
Just received three books in time for some holiday reading, all ordered locally via The Guisborough Bookshop. Mentioned all three in passing already. Trivium 21c by Martin Robinson is focussed on the Trivium of three complementary ways of knowing, called here Grammar, Dialectic & Rhetoric. The point being that a complete worldview needs all three. … Continue reading “A Little Holiday Reading – Robinson, Rovelli and Carroll”
Interesting to see today’s news on standardisation of units of measure, that time, distance and mass are now to be unified through the Caesium clock with application of the speed of light (c) and Planck’s constant (h). (Hat tip to Jim Al-Khalili on Twitter). Fascinating article in itself, however yet more evidence that the accepted standard … Continue reading “Carlo Rovelli – A Fresh Spin on Fundamental Physics”
Interesting review of Carlo Rovelli’s latest “Reality Is Not What It Seems” by Michael Brooks in the New Statesman. In my own review of Rovelli’s introductory work “Seven Brief Lessons“, I felt compelled to add a footnote to ensure readers understood he was peddling a minority view in Quantum Loop Gravity. Interesting in Brooks’ review of Rovelli’s latest, he highlights the well … Continue reading “Carlo Rovelli is right, in the sense that …”
I’ve been largely offline for a week visiting Florence, and in fact did very little reading whilst I was away. Florence was too fascinating. So, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Black Swan” and “Antifragile“ and Simon Blackburn’s “Truth” and “Hume“ remain incomplete and un-reviewed despite enjoying the gist I’d already gleaned from all four. Their styles could … Continue reading “Physics Moves in Mysterious Ways – Carlo Rovelli’s “Seven Brief Lessons””
Prompted to post this morning thanks to the click-bait statement “Schrödinger spread the misconception that life works against entropy” in this tweet: Schrödinger spread the misconception that life works against entropy, but there is a way of thinking at biological process as efficient entropy machines, see this dream-team paper 👇 @carlorovelli @drkjjeffery #BobPollack https://t.co/okJq99TR1A — … Continue reading “Life Versus Entropy”
I’m into the final third of Smolin’s “Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution” – his summary of lessons learned from his thesis. As Sabine Hossenfelder’s review points out, scientifically, the tone is speculative, suggesting more work and experimentation needed to complete the job. That’s true, he’s not making wild claims. “He deserves applause for also mentioning the Montevideo … Continue reading “Smolin – Hoping for the Reality of Particles?”
Quite a few of my recent posts have been focussed on the idealism <> realism relationship – from the original reality and appearances saga, where we discover truth vs seeming goes back as far as pre-Socratic Parmenides – to Hegel/Bradley vs Russell/Moore in the late 19th C / early 20th C. One reason for it … Continue reading “Taking Idealism for a Spin”
Part of my slow working through Mumford’s “Russell on Metaphysics“, I have flipped back to recap the first 5 chapters. Having been left with even deeper nagging doubts that I was right to leave Russell behind after all, I need to check my thinking by capturing the key thoughts. A sanity check. To be clear, … Continue reading “Idealism & Russell’s Metaphysics”