What, Why & How do we Know ?
Science is an appeal to authority, but where does that authority come from? An interesting Guardian piece by Graham Redfearn on Naomi Oreskes (with a TED Talk of hers at the bottom) There really is no scientific method. Inductive of hypotheses and predictions, true, but actually a rare case Deductive of observed evidence, true, but … Continue reading “Science is an Appeal to Authority”
Blogging live from the IAI – How The Light Gets In – conference at Hay-on-Wye. (Not to be confused with the contemporary and almost co-located Hay Festival of Arts and Literature.) Well, I was live when I wrote that – but sadly teeming rain, muddy tented venues and lack of any safe power supplies, meant … Continue reading “Bang Goes The Big Bang”
Not been tempted to interject yet in the PM “Christian Country” vs the BHA Open Letter response, but there is one point I need to make. Fact: we are a Christian country in the sense that not only cultural but also deep and long-standing institutional “traditions” have arisen from Christian values. That says nothing exclusive … Continue reading “Doing God”
Transparency is the current buzzword as the masses clamour for maximum communication of everything, nothing being “secret”, but the downside of everything being communicated to everybody by the most immediate un-mediated means is what I’ve always called the memetic problem: The message gets simplisticated to the easiest to communicate and understand – comfortable and familiar … Continue reading “Memetic “Flocking Behaviour””
Struck by a parallel, reading the Roger Anderton translation of the Dusan Nedelkovich (1922) work on Roger Boscovich (1763). A parallel with Alan Rayner. Earliest piece on unified field theory (100? years before Mach and 150 before Einstein) already led to ideas of relativity in the world as we experience it being distinct from any … Continue reading “Space-Time / Space-Matter”
Big data (*) – power of correlation of patterns without necessary causation, understanding or explanation – makes sense when the data largely reflects human psychology and behaviour. Because the human explanations would involve rationalisations and game-theoretic responses, not objective scientific causation. The what may be useful even before the why is considered. The what may provide … Continue reading “The Ladies Have It.”
Mentioned earlier I was reading Stuart Kauffman, and was impressed by his extending the story of life beyond the ubiquitous focus on DNA and genes. After that it’s been a bit of a roller-coaster, as this biologist covers psychology, philosophy and fundamental physics in his quest of Reinventing the Sacred – a common fault I … Continue reading “Reinventing the Sacred”
Disappointed in finishing Krauss’ “A Universe From Nothing”. He makes some good points (see previous post) but nothing entirely new – quantum fluctuations, big bang, matter asymmetry, inflation, flatness, cosmological constant, CMBR distribution – and most of the newer stuff is very speculative. If this is new to you then he is a strongly recommended … Continue reading “Krauss Falls Short of Nothing”