What, Why & How do we Know ?
It’s almost a couple of weeks since Pinker responded with round III of his debate with Wieseltier over whether the humanities have a genuine claim of “scientism” against certain factions of the science community, or not. [I’ve commented twice on this debate, and mentioned it in several other posts too. Most recently the post on … Continue reading “Pinker vs Wieseltier III #Scientism”
Lisa Jardine tweeted a link to this piece by Alice Bell, on BP funding of the International Centre for Advanced materials with the comment “More please.” In so far as the emphasised conclusion is not to simply object to, or place demands on, industrial funding of “science”, but that the public debate should aim to … Continue reading “Disservice to Science & Technology @ProfLisaJardine @alicebell”
The point of critical disagreement is to test agreement, it’s not for the sake of argument itself. The point is to achieve progress on what can be agreed – to expand mutual knowledge, not to perpetuate and extend disagreement. (Of course that doesn’t change the fact that ultimately everything agreed as known is contingent and … Continue reading “The Dogma – a work in progress.”
I’m an “anti-realist” in the sense that my world view (in the header by-line, the manifesto and anywhere else in the blog) is epistemological – about what we can know about the world, to the extent that what the world out there really is is NOT what really matters. That is I’m not concerned with correspondence … Continue reading “Objects without SOMism”
Feynman already was inspirational when he was alive, but “The Fantastic Mr Feynman” was an excellent science documentary for a science editor to conclude, as Feynman himself did, that love is more important than science. Ironic that they included that science-101 lecture clip where he emphasises the basic falsification rule of science, that if the experiment … Continue reading “What’s so funny ’bout … #37”
Dan Pink’s “Drive” caught on as a best seller in the last couple of years in promoting the concept of “Motivation 3.0”. Of course, the terminology catches the fashion of the internet generation, and good luck if the brief readable book, with its “Toolkit” of ideas does lead to more management catching on in more … Continue reading “Motivation 3.0 – Pink Does Maslow”
Another hat tip to David Morey; we have a dialogue going between emails, Facebook and the blogs, and David keeps picking up excellent source references. Here the latest example: A conference speech from the Bank of England analysing the banking crisis. The Tower of Basel metaphor is about less is more – a few simple … Continue reading “The Tower of Basel”
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”