Category Archives: Science

Do all quantum trails inevitably lead to Everett?

Posted on December 23, 2018 by

I’ve been thinking lately about quantum physics, a topic that seems to attract all sorts of crazy speculation and intense controversy, which seems inevitable.  Quantum mechanics challenges our deepest held most cherished beliefs about how reality works.  If you study … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Tagged , , , , | 54 Comments

Are the social sciences “real” science?

Posted on March 18, 2017 by

YouTube channel Crash Course is starting a new series on what is perhaps the most social of social sciences: Sociology. The social sciences, such as sociology, but also psychology, economics, anthropology, and other similar fields get a lot of grief … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Tagged , , , , | 43 Comments

What do scientific theories actually tell us about the world?

Posted on February 9, 2017 by

One of the things that’s exciting about learning new things, is that often a new understanding in one area sheds light on what might seem like a completely separate topic.  For me, information about how the brain works appears to have shed … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , | 75 Comments

Consciousness is composed of non-consciousness

Posted on May 9, 2016 by

The components of a thing are not individually the thing. For example, the components of the chair I type most of my blog posts from are not the chair itself, but the wood of the frame, the springs for the … Continue reading →

Posted in Mind and AI, Philosophy, Science | Tagged , , , , , , | 63 Comments

97% of the observable universe is forever unreachable

Posted on February 1, 2016 by

The other day, I was reading a post by Ethan Siegel on his excellent blog, Starts With a Bang, about whether it makes sense to consider the universe to be a giant brain.  (The short answer is no, but read … Continue reading →

Posted in Science, Space | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 65 Comments

First Peoples and Neanderthals

Posted on July 19, 2015 by

This weekend, I finished off the last of the ‘First Peoples‘ PBS miniseries on prehistoric humans.  If  you’ve watched other documentaries on human prehistory and found them interesting, then you’ll want to watch this one to get the latest findings. … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

‘The Selfish Gene’: Classic science worth checking out

Posted on October 26, 2014 by

I don’t usually read old science books.  After a decade or so, I find that their content tends to have too much dated material.  But ‘The Selfish Gene‘ keeps coming up in conversations, not just because its author, Richard Dawkins, is … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

The evolution of the scientific method.

Posted on October 13, 2014 by

Empiricism, the idea that sensory experience is a source of knowledge, is ancient.  People have obviously learned through sensory experience as long as there have been people.  Studying the night skies gave ancient humans insight into the flow of the … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

There is only one dogma of science: truth is better than fantasy

Posted on October 2, 2014 by

Dave Pruett has a post up at the Huffington Post looking at a declaration of eight “eminent” scientists and scholars calling for science to move past its materialistic focus.  The list of authors in this declaration includes Rupert Sheldrake, whose TED … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Tagged , , , , , , , | 40 Comments

Free will persists even if your brain made you do it

Posted on September 21, 2014 by

The free will debate has been going on for millenia and, like most philosophical debates, shows little chance of being settled anytime soon.  A significant part of the debate is definitional: what do we mean when we say “free will.”  We can … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy, Science | Tagged , , , , , | 18 Comments