http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-an...leo-93579/

EXCERPT: [...] The bulk of [Lawrence] Lipking’s book is devoted to showing that the historical battle lines we tend to draw between science, religion, and art, aren’t as bright and clear as we like to tell ourselves.

[...] Galileo, forced to recant his heliocentrism by the Church, nobly refused “to be swayed by myths or orthodoxies,” and boldly declared, “Nevertheless it moves.” Except, there’s no record that he said that; the rejection of myths and orthodoxies is itself a myth—one of the founding stories of modernity’s science code.

[...] Along the same lines, Descartes’ famous mental experiment, in which he stripped the world down to what can be rationally known, was, it turns out, inspired by a series of vivid dreams, in which, Descartes believed, God had called him to a great work.

[...] The fact that the early scientific greats had numerous loopy ideas isn’t usually seen as that much of a problem. Kepler’s record as both an astronomer and an astrologer can be dismissed with mutterings about the superstitions of the time. The astrology is jettisoned, and the pure science is preserved. Disaggregating isn’t necessarily always that easy, though....

[...] Lipking steps daintily around [...a...] pit when he discusses Newton’s millenarian religious musings, for example, he is careful to note that the scientist’s breakthroughs “depended on meticulous calculations, not magical thinking.” But the pit still yawns off to the side distractingly. What after all do we mean by “depended”? Newton’s intellectual pursuits were inspired by his religious beliefs, and arguably vice versa. If Galileo saw the moons of Jupiter through his theory [whereas Francesco Sizzi did not], didn’t Newton see gravity through his God? And if so, is the gravity there without the God?

The skepticism there may seem silly or excessive. Of course we know that Newton’s gravity works. But then, don’t we also in fact know, via Einstein, that Newton’s gravity does not work? And how sure are we about Einstein’s? Likpking points out that one of the most important engines of the Scientific Revolution was skepticism—the willingness to question received wisdom, the recognition that authority could not be a guarantor of truth. But as Lipking writes, “this unsheathed skepticism” is “a two-edged sword.” Once you start questioning, where do you stop?

That’s why those enemies of science often come across not as anti-science, but as hyped-up, manic, science on steroids. No one can site as many statistics as an anti-vaxxer; no one is more doubtful or more demanding of evidence than a climate denier or creationist. It isn’t that these groups reject science, but that they take its skepticism too far, refusing the established, scientific consensus—rather like Galileo. The weapons of reason ultimately turn back on reason, until all certainty is voided, and we don’t know whether Galileo said “it moves,” or whether Newton understood gravity.

[...] In fact, one of Lipking’s achievements is to put science in the context not just of religion, but of art and poetry. Part of the reason Galileo’s ideas were so seductive was because he was an artist, who could express what he saw, and what he thought he saw, on paper for others to see. Science, in Lipking’s telling, is not opposed to imagination....

"Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.

“This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before,” said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work.\

The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory, the body of laws describing elementary particles and their interactions. Interactions that were previously calculated with mathematical formulas thousands of terms long can now be described by computing the volume of the corresponding jewel-like “amplituhedron,” which yields an equivalent one-term expression.

“The degree of efficiency is mind-boggling,” said Jacob Bourjaily, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University and one of the researchers who developed the new idea. “You can easily do, on paper, computations that were infeasible even with a computer before.”

The new geometric version of quantum field theory could also facilitate the search for a theory of quantum gravity that would seamlessly connect the large- and small-scale pictures of the universe. Attempts thus far to incorporate gravity into the laws of physics at the quantum scale have run up against nonsensical infinities and deep paradoxes. The amplituhedron, or a similar geometric object, could help by removing two deeply rooted principles of physics: locality and unitarity."===http://www.quantamagazine.org/20130917-a...m-physics/

"FLOG"--To strike repeatedly with a club or stick, usually violently and in anger. See word spelt backwards...

Outstanding!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMi0kEzXl8o

"Possibilianism is a philosophy which rejects both the idiosyncratic claims of traditional theism and the positions of certainty in atheism in favor of a middle, exploratory ground. The term was first defined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in relation to his book of fiction Sum. Asked whether he was an atheist or a religious person on a National Public Radio interview in February, 2009, he replied "I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now." In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Eagleman expanded on the definition:

"Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true. But with Possibilianism I'm hoping to define a new position -- one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story."

An adherent of possibilianism is called a possibilian. The possibilian perspective is distinguished from agnosticism in that it consists of an active exploration of novel possibilities and an emphasis on the necessity of holding multiple positions at once if there is no available data to privilege one over the others. Possibilianism reflects the scientific temperament of creativity, testing, and tolerance for multiple ideas."---http://www.possibilian.com/

I consider myself a possibilian. I believe that what we experience of reality is only a thin sliver of what is actually out there, and that this reality is on this account more varied and infinitely complex than it seems. You have to consider what the universe has accomplished in 12 billion years. From random jostling atoms in a superheated soup to a consciousness capable of discerning mathematical laws and creating symphonies and democracy and the Internet, it is hard to overestimate what is possible for a reality vastly beyond us on all sides. This could be good news or bad news, but I align myself with hope, assuming a fundamental goodness in the event of Being itself.

That's what I call it. Like how you can gradually heat up a frog in a pot of water without the frog knowing it is eventually boiling to death. It's this tendency we all have to fall asleep in this massive deluge of overinformation that we live in. To go into autofilter mode. We get used to things being the same way, the status quo. Indeed, we object that this structure be dismantled at all, even if that structure is enslaving us in a mundane existence of mediocrity. How does one "wake up" to the fact that one is boiling to death? How does one raise one's consciousness out of the stupor of "everything is fine, keep shopping" that dominates our mass-produced clone-like existence? Is this an authentic mode of being---this deliberate revolt against a culture of complacent resignation to being predefined and stereotyped as mere pawns in a socio-economic power game? Or is it better to just sleepwalk along on autopilot without ever rocking the boat?

We got pot legalized here in Oregon last night. That's pretty neat. All my life I've seen pot as taboo and naughty--something only certain "types" of people partake in. Suddenly that's all gone. Starting in July we'll be able to eat or smoke our own thc containing products without fear of reprisal or guilt. While the rest of the country seems to have shifted Republican, here in good old blue Oregon we maintain our liberal values of tolerance and personal freedom. I'm glad I live here.

"We have seen great leaps in digital technology in past the past five years. Smartphones, cloud computing, multi-touch tablets, these are all innovations that revolutionized the way we live and work. However, believe it or not, we are just getting started. Technology will get even better. In the future, we could live like how people in science fiction movies did.

Today’s post is about 10 upcoming, real-life products that is set to revolutionize the world as we know it. Get ready to control the desktop and slice Ninja fruits with your eyes. Get ready to print your own creative physical product. Get ready to dive into the virtual world, and interact with them. Come unfold the future with us."==http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/revolutionary-products/