A panel of lectures moderated by Edward Davis.
I have just come back from a quick trip to the old German city of Jena, close to Weimar. By one of those unfortunate accidents of history, Jena found itself on the wrong side of the border through the Cold War, so having suffered through thirteen years of the Third Reich and four years of…
Joel Primack is a professor of physics and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His wife, Nancy Abrams, is a specialist in the history and philosophy of science. Together they deliver this motivational TEDx talk, which calls for a cosmological, Big History perspective as a means to solving some of our most difficult…
Like all of us, economist Tyler Cowen loves a good story. But in this intriguing talk from TEDxMidAtlantic, he asks us to step away from thinking of our lives—and our messy, complicated irrational world—in terms of a simple narrative.
The Seven Laws of Unnerving Uncertainty (Spelling “Mistake”) 1. Multiplicity: I never do anything for just one reason and it never has just one effect. Life is like playing piano with oven mitts on. 2. Infinity: Anything that has a cause, has multiple causes extending back in time infinitely. Anything that has an effect, has…
Metanexus:Views 2001.11.07 3185 words One of the most wonderfully curious turns of phrase that I ever stumbledupon in science was the delightful title of Rita Levi-Montalcini’s 1988autobiography. Levi-Montalcini, a neurobiologist, was the fourth woman toreceive the Nobel Prize in Medicine, which she received in 1986, along withStanley Cohen, for the discovery of nerve growth factor….
The main difficulty I have with Holmes Rolston’s essay on “Possibility Space” is in his statement: “We face questions about the increase of complexity and diversity, about contingency and inevitability in such increase, about novelty and progress.” Looking over my notes from the April 19 presentation, I am struck by the comment that Rolston presents…