Reading Nature is Like Interpreting the Bible
An experiment in nature, like a text in the Bible, is capable of different interpretations, according to the preconceptions of the interpreter.
Memes in the Watson category “/hobbies and interests/reading”
61–80 of 91
Huxley on a Bit of Scripture
As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as part of his duty, the words, 'If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me. Paul had neither wife…
The Virtue of Gratitude
We have no difficulty reminding the 4-year-old to “say thank you” when Grandma hands her an ice cream cone, but in other situations—especially when a religious turn-of-phrase is generally used—we often pass up the chance to teach our kids to express gratitude in naturalistic terms. Instead of thanking God for the food…
Consciousness of the Fallibility of Our Senses is a Result of Studying Science
A consciousness of the fallacy of our senses is one of the most important consequences of the study of nature. This study teaches us that no object is seen by us in its true place, owing to aberration; that the colours of substances are solely the effects of the action of matter upon light; and that light itself, as…
Fractal Geometry Changes One's Perspective of the World
Fractal geometry will make you see everything differently. There is a danger in reading further. You risk the loss of your childhood vision of clouds, forests, flowers, galaxies, leaves, feathers, rocks, mountains, torrents of water, carpet, bricks, and much else besides. Never again will your interpretation of these…
Convergent Evolution in Cacti and Succulents
Let’s begin with one observation that strikes anyone who travels widely. If you go to two distant areas that have similar climate and terrain, you find different types of life. Take deserts. Many desert plants are succulents: they show an adaptive combination of traits that include large fleshy stems to store water…
Vestigial Traits in Humans
Our bodies teem with other remnants of primate ancestry. We have a vestigial tail: the coccyx, or the triangular end of our spine, that’s made of several fused vertebrae hanging below our pelvis. It’s what remains of the long, useful tail of our ancestors. It still has a function (some useful muscles attach to it)…
Science Cannot be Celebrated With Poetry
The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are, therefore, speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel…
Avicenna Describes His Learning
At night I would return home, set out a lamp before me, and devote myself to reading and writing. Whenever sleep overcame me or I became conscious of weakening, I would turn aside to drink a cup of wine, so that my strength would return to me. Then I would return to reading. And whenever sleep seized me I would see…
Science the "Fair Effusive Ray"
SCIENCE! thou fair effusive ray From the great source of mental Day, Free, generous, and refin'd! Descend with all thy treasures fraught, Illumine each bewilder'd thought, And bless my labour'g mind.
A Strategy for Allowing Children Access to Digital Media
Knowing full well the need for our kids to be digitally conversant, yet fully aware of the dangers, we came up with a few rules as our boys became preschoolers. First, my wife and I divided digital experiences into categories. Two of the categories involved things necessary for school work or for learning about…
There is a Lust of the Mind...
There is a lust of the mind that, by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of knowledge, far exceedeth the short vehemence of carnal pleasure
An 11th Century View of Science
The chief aids to philosophical inquiry and the practice of virtue are reading, learning, meditation, and assiduous application. Reading scrutinizes the written subject matter immediately before it. Learning likewise generally studies what is written, but also sometimes moves on to what is preserved in the archives of…
One Who Can See in the Country of the Blind
"Why did you not come when I called you?" said the blind man. "Must you be led like a child? Cannot you hear the path as you walk?" Nunez laughed. "I can see it," he said. "There is no such word as see," said the blind man, after a pause. "Cease this folly and follow the sound of my feet." Nunez followed, a little…
Supernatural Concepts Worthy of Further Inquiry
At the time of writing there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study: (1) that by thought alone humans can (barely) affect random number generators in computers; (2) that people under mild sensory deprivation can receive thoughts or images 'projected' at them; and (3) that young…
Douglas Crockford on Reading Code
One of the things I've been pushing is reading. I think that is the most useful thing that a community of programmers can do for each other—spend time on a regular basis reading each other's code. Then are's a tendency in project management just to let the programmers go off independently and then we have the big…
Donald Knuth on Getting to the Source Material
Seibel: Do you feel like programmers and computer scientists are aware enough of the history of our field? It is, after all, a pretty short history. Knuth: There aren't too many that are scholars. Even when I started writing my books in 1963, I didn't think people knew what had happened In 1959. I was reading in…
Dan Ingalls Wonders how Genius Finds Time to Do Its Work
Often, reading about famous people, the side of it that I'm interested in is, how do they make their life work? All the things that weren't their passion, and how did they deal with that and with their family, and with their finances, and balancing that Or did they just hole up and say, "To hell with everything else,"…
The Book Wheel
Ramelli's designs were very inventive and often required precise machining that was impossible in his day. Many were successfully manufactured and sold, two or three centuries later. Ramelli designed the "book-wheel" or “reading wheel” to present volumes of text to readers in whatever position they had last placed…
Cybernetics as a Trait of Living Organisms
One of the most characteristic properties of all living organisims, from the smallest to the largest, is their capacity to develop, operate, and maintain systems which set a goal and then strive to achieve it through the cybernetic process of trial and error. The discovery of such a system, operating on a global scale…