What Is Science? From Feynman to Sagan to Curie, an Omnibus of Definitions by Maria Popova “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious — the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” “We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology,” Carl Sagan famously quipped in 1994, “and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That’s a clear prescription for disaster.” Little seems to have changed in the nearly two decades since, and although the government is now actively encouraging “citizen science,” for many “citizens” the understanding of — let alone any agreement about — what science is and does remains meager. So, what exactly is science, what does it aspire to do, and why should we the people care? Stuart Firestein writes in the excellent Ignorance: How It Drives Science: Real science is a revision in progress, always. Science does not purvey absolute truth, science is a mechanism. Carl Sagan echoed the same sentiment when he remarked: Later:
El algoritmo de Dios El algoritmo de Dios es un término que surgió en la búsqueda de aquel algoritmo que indicara los pasos mínimos que resuelven un cubo de Rubik cualquiera. El término se usa profusamente, no sólo para el cubo de Rubik. Mucho antes de conocer dicho término, cuando me encontraba con diversos tipos de problemas, ya me asaltaba recurrentemente una pregunta irrelevante (para el caso que me ocupaba), pero que espero te haga pensar un poco en la importancia de algunas cuestiones que quizás no conoces: “¿Qué solución daría Dios si fuera él quien resolviera el problema?” Lo más sorprendente quizás, es que “las soluciones de Dios” no sólo no están vedadas al intelecto humano, sino que son numerosas y prolíficas. Poniendo condiciones a Dios “¿cual es la solución/respuesta PERFECTA?” Un ejemplo. Sí, lo se, en realidad los concursos más fascinantes eran las “demos”, en lugar de calcular un aburrido Pi se trataba de crear una “intro” (¡¿tampoco sabes lo que es?! El problema perfecto
THALER'S QUESTION - An EDGE Special Event LEE SMOLIN Founding and Senior Faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada; Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Waterloo; Author, The Trouble With Physics Perhaps the most embarrassing example from 20th Century physics of a false but widely held belief was the claim that von Neumann had proved in his 1930 text book on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics that hidden variables theories are impossible. These would be theories that give a complete description of individual systems rather than the statistical view of ensembles described by quantum mechanics. In fact de Broglie had written down a hidden variables theory in 1926 but abandoned work on it because of von Neumann's theorem. For the next two decades no one worked on hidden variables theories. In the early 1950's David Bohm reinvented de Broglie's theory. I cannot comment on why economists made the mistake of thinking about market equilibrium as if it were unique.
ORNAMENTO Y DELITO- ADOLFO LOOS El embrión humano pasa, en el claustro materno, por todas las fases evolutivas del reino animal. Cuando nace un ser humano, sus impresiones sensoriales son iguales a las de un perro recién nacido. Su infancia pasa por todas las transformaciones que corresponden a aquellas por las que pasó la historia del género humano. A los dos años, lo ve todo como si fuera un papúa.
Artificial Intelligence Gets Creative Strange but true: science's most improbable research | Science | The Observer Why do Bedouins wear black in the desert? The question so intrigued four scientists – all non-Bedouins – that they ran an experiment. Their study, called Why Do Bedouins Wear Black Robes in Hot Deserts? This is Improbable: Cheese String Theory, Magnetic Chickens, and Other WTF Research by Marc Abrahams Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book "It seems likely," the scientists wrote, "that the present inhabitants of the Sinai, the Bedouins, would have optimised their solutions for desert survival during their long tenure in this desert. The research team – C Richard Taylor and Virginia Finch of Harvard University and Amiram Shkolnik and Arieh Borut of Tel Aviv University – quickly discovered that, as you might suspect, a black robe does convey more heat inward than a white robe does. Taylor, Finch, Shkolnik, and Borut measured the overall heat gain and loss suffered by a brave volunteer. The results were clear. Bedouins' robes, the scientists noted, are worn loose.
Mars and the Mind of Man: Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke in Conversation, 1971 by Maria Popova “It’s part of the nature of man to start with romance and build to a reality.” On November 12, 1971, the day before NASA’s Mariner 9 mission reached Mars and became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, Caltech Planetary Science professor Bruce Murray summoned a formidable panel of thinkers to discuss the implications of the historic event. Murray himself was to join the great (Carl Sagan and science fiction icons Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Arthur C. We are now in a very interesting historic moment with regard to Mars. Following Clarke is Carl Sagan, who does what he does best in discussing the issue of how rigorous we need to be in sterilizing spacecraft that makes contact with other planets — taking a scientific particularity, linking it to the universally human, then circling back to the science having engendered a whole new understanding of its context: We can be emotionally predisposed as pessimists as well as optimists. Arthur C. Donating = Loving