http://iainews.iai.tv/articles/a-univers...s-auid-257
EXCERPT: We assume that effect follows cause. But could this most basic of beliefs be mistaken? Mathematician George Ellis made his name focusing on some of the big questions of cosmology and relativity. Along with Stephen Hawking, he co-authored 1973’s The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, which attempted to describe the very foundations of space itself.
More recently, Ellis has been focusing on top-down causation – the process by which higher level organised systems, such as humans, interact with their own component parts. His theories have important repercussions across many fields of research – from consciousness and free will to understanding quantum phenomena. Ellis is also an active Quaker and was a vocal opponent of apartheid during the 1970s and ‘80s.
We spoke to Ellis about his theories, their implications, and the reasons behind certain resistance to these ideas....
http://iainews.iai.tv/articles/beauty-is-truth-auid-484
=EXCERPT= [...QUESTION:] Why is it rational to use the simpler theory to explain phenomena? Could using this approach lead us to something which is beautiful but untrue? Is beauty perhaps a distraction?
JOE BUTTERWORTH: Given that science is experimental, it’s unlikely to settle on something that’s actually wrong, because in the end it has to be judged against what we observe. But yes, it’s certainly true that beauty could be a distraction, that people could place too much weight on the aesthetic concerns when really the data is telling us something different. It’s certainly true that we could go the wrong way because of our prejudice to follow what we think is the simpler model or simpler theory. But you have to use whatever guide you can find. In the end, the data keep you honest. If you’re not meeting the data, you’re not really doing science; you’re doing maths or something else entirely....
http://iainews.iai.tv/articles/new-gods-auid-495
EXCERPT: Liberal democracy is a salvational ideology like any religion. What happens now our faith is beginning to crumble? [...] “To prevent the destruction of human democracy we are willing to destroy ourselves and the world,” says [anthropologist Scott] Atran. “All of the ideologies that have been successful since the French Revolution, that have carried people, have been salvational, secularised religious ideologies. That is, each contains the idea that we can save humanity and we have the right message.” These ideologies of salvation will go to extraordinary lengths to protect and justify themselves....
http://plus.maths.org/content/maths-minu...t-averages
EXCERPT: Most people have more than the average number of ears. This might seem odd, but it's true. The vast majority of people have two ears, but the few who have only one or none bring the average down to less than two. [...] The average (technically called the arithmetic mean) is computed by adding up the number of ears of all people in the world and then dividing by the total number of people. The example illustrates that the average isn't always the best measure to use when you want to make a wholesale statement about something....
http://nautil.us/issue/11/light/why-phys...n-the-dark
EXCERPT: [...] Physics has never looked back. Today its theories and concepts are concerned largely with invisible entities: not only unseen force fields and insensible rays but particles too small to see even with the most advanced microscopes. We now know that our everyday perception grants us access to only a tiny fraction of reality.
[...] This move beyond the visible has become a fundamental part of science’s narrative. But it’s a more complicated shift than we often appreciate. Making sense of what is unseen—of what lies “beyond the light”—has a much longer history in human experience. Before science had the means to explore that realm, we had to make do with stories that became enshrined in myth and folklore. Those stories aren’t banished as science advances; they are simply reinvented. Scientists working at the forefront of the invisible will always be confronted with gaps in knowledge, understanding, and experimental capability. In the face of those limits, they draw unconsciously on the imagery of the old stories. This is a necessary part of science, and these stories can sometimes suggest genuinely productive scientific ideas. But the danger is that we will start to believe them at face value, mistaking them for theories....
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1493961.ece
EXCERPT: [...] Like other unwelcome, staining deposits, graffiti has always polarized people into defenders and aggressors, neighbourhood-watchers and anarchists. [...] From opposite ends of the spectrum, both accounts pit graffiti against the combined weight of authority, community and public property. Throughout history, unlicensed writing on walls has been linked with anti-establishment behaviour, from schoolboy pranks to full-blown insurgency. [...] Traditionally, graffiti infests the grey areas between open and hidden space: dark alleys, public conveniences, subways and disused land – places where disappearing trolls can leave their residue to shock, engage or amuse casual passers-by.
[...] But it was not always just a case of getting a message across. [Ancient] Pompeian graffitists seem to have been fascinated by the physical and visual aspects of writing. Latin (in)scribo, like Greek grapho, meant both “write” and “draw”, and there was a strong sense of both the interconnectedness of words and images and the talismanic allure of graphic design: in magic word-squares, for example, and laboriously produced alphabets, whether these are displaying pride in new-found literacy, symbolically representing all writing, or just testing the match between surface and implement. A whimsical doodle that advertises itself as a “game of snakes” comes in the shape of a sinuous serpent, hissing with sibilants...
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/0...nbach-text
EXCERPT: We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge—from the safety of fluoride and vaccines to the reality of climate change—faces organized and often furious opposition. Empowered by their own sources of information and their own interpretations of research, doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts. There are so many of these controversies these days, you’d think a diabolical agency had put something in the water to make people argumentative. And there’s so much talk about the trend these days—in books, articles, and academic conferences—that science doubt itself has become a pop-culture meme. In the recent movie Interstellar, set in a futuristic, downtrodden America where NASA has been forced into hiding, school textbooks say the Apollo moon landings were faked.
In a sense all this is not surprising. Our lives are permeated by science and technology as never before. For many of us this new world is wondrous, comfortable, and rich in rewards—but also more complicated and sometimes unnerving. We now face risks we can’t easily analyze.
[...] In this bewildering world we have to decide what to believe and how to act on that. In principle that’s what science is for. “Science is not a body of facts,” says geophysicist Marcia McNutt, who once headed the U.S. Geological Survey and is now editor of Science, the prestigious journal. “Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not.” But that method doesn’t come naturally to most of us. And so we run into trouble, again and again....
