What, Why & How do we Know ?
Been distracted by other housekeeping tasks for several days but reacted to this on Twitter last week, and now bring it forward here: Although I don’t subscribe to constructor theory per se, this has two key components I hold. “Atomic” components of the cosmos are the limits of conceivability. All else (physical and psychological) are … Continue reading “No Possibility is Inconceivable”
Few days without any posting thanks to several glorious days in the mountains of UK Lake District (Facebook album here.) Never seen such conditions for hiking and views in dozen or more trips over 40 years. As usual I’m using down time to read, two books this time. I mentioned Martin Robinson’s Trivium 21c already, … Continue reading “Science is Only Human”
Discounting the intellectual snobbery that this is about Dan Brown, as indeed the reviewer himself suggests, it is worth a read. The headline is: “Dan Brown’s New Novel Pushes Atheism and Endorses Intelligent Design … Wait …What?“ I’ve not digested the whole yet (and there are secondary references to follow-up) but my own position is … Continue reading “Teleology Without a God”
Ergodicity is my new favourite word. Some things are ergodic, some are not, they’re non-ergodic. And rather than a definition (see also post-note below), it deserves a riff … A ubiquitous question is, does the end always justify the means or maybe no end ever justifies any & all means? You might achieve the same … Continue reading “Ergodic or non-Ergodic, that is the question.”
There was a time when I followed John Brockman’s Edge regularly, it was a great way to pick up relationships between living thinkers you already knew and admired and others you didn’t, from across unlimited intellectual fields. The great thing about the annual Edge Question is that apart from the open question, there is no … Continue reading “Hidden Concepts – Edge 2017 – Let’s play Connections instead of Bulldog”
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”
At Hay on Wye HTLGI festival again for the final weekend: My late arrival and changes to programme meant Friday pm didn’t quite go according to my pre-planning, but got to see and hear; Denis Noble, Anne Bowcock and Rupert Sheldrake chaired by David Malone, talking on the promissory hype of the Human Genome project … Continue reading “How The Light Gets In 2016 #htlgi2016”