What is one to make of an essay seeking to bridge a purported divide of understanding between science and the humanities – in which the humanities are said to fear and mistrust the sciences – that opens with the sentence, “The great thinkers of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment were scientists”? The essay […]
Compromising with Reality
. I spent less than the usual time on social media yesterday – I took a kind of day-after breather – but I devoted most of what time I did spend to venting. You can see it in my twitter feed down on the right. It was not my larger self on display, but “moderation […]
God and Man at the Higgs Boson Level
. Cross posted at the Algemeiner. I wrote the other day how most physicists who speak of it are uncomfortable with the label “God” particle for the Higgs boson particle, the existence of which scientists at CERN confirmed on Wednesday. The rather casual, sensationalistic origin of the label clarifies that discomfort, as does, I suspect, unsurprising scientific worry that too conventional […]
How We Lived on It (41) – A Universe Not Made for Us
. This is the first part of what is so far a 16-part tribute series to Carl Sagan produced on YouTube by Callum Sutherland. You can find the series Facebook page here. Related articles Carl Sagan On The Final Shuttle Launch (buzzfeed.com) Space Shuttle’s Legacy: A Carl Sagan Remix (brainpickings.org) Seth MacFarlane Producing New Take […]
It’s All a Great Big Google
The news came out last month. With little fanfare, Google has made a mammoth database culled from nearly 5.2 million digitized books available to the public for free downloads and online searches, opening a new landscape of possibilities for research and education in the humanities. The digital storehouse, which comprises words and short phrases as […]