02 JUN 2015 by ideonexus
Metaphor in Science
Metaphor in science, Boyd suggests, is a version of the everyday process in which a metaphor is pressed into service to fill gaps in a language’s vocabulary, like rabbit ears to refer to the antennas that used to sprout from the tops of television sets. Scientists constantly discover new entities that lack an English name, so they often tap a metaphor to supply the needed label: selection in evolution, kettle pond in geology, linkage in genetics, and so on. But they aren’t shackled by the...
1 08 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Science Can Comfort in Times of Stress
Science and religion are often taken to offer competing explanations of the world (Preston & Epley, 2009). That science can be a source of meaning, similar to religion, is not a completely new idea; it has been raised by philosophers (Ziman, 1978/1991) and scientists (Dawkins, 2006) alike. While many have attempted to understand the emotional or social underpinnings of religious belief, the possibility that science might serve similar psychological functions has received less attention. E...Scientific evidence that secular individuals can turn to their belief in science when faced with stressful situations just as the religious turn to their faith.
16 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
The Joy of Being Wrong
It does happen. I have previously told the story of a respected
elder statesman of the Zoology Department at Oxford when I was
an undergraduate. For years he had passionately believed, and
taught, that the Golgi Apparatus (a microscopic feature of the
interior of cells) was not real: an artefact, an illusion. Every
Monday afternoon it was the custom for the whole department to
listen to a research talk by a visiting lecturer. One Monday, the
visitor was an American cell biologist who presente...Dawkins describes a professor being convinced that he was wrong about something for many years and being thankful for convincing to the truth.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Carl Sagan's Summary of the Selfish Gene
In a very real sense human beings are machines constructed by the nucleic
acids to arrange for the efficient replication of more nucleic acids. In a sense our
strongest urges, noblest enterprises, most compelling necessities, and apparent free
wills are all an expression of the information coded in the genetic material: We
are, in a way, temporary ambulatory repositories for our nucleic acids. This does
not deny our humanity; it does not prevent us from pursuing the good, the true,
and the be... 1 
notes
notesWe are machines constructed by nucleic acids to construct more nucleic acids... sounds a lot like Dawkins.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Genetic Drift of Languages
Just as some species are more similar than others and are placed in the same family, so there are also families of languages. Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French and many European languages and dialects such as Romansch, Galician, Occitan and Catalan are all pretty similar to each other; together they're called 'Romance' languages. The name actually comes from their common origin in Latin, the language of Rome, not from any association with romance, but let's use an expression of love as nr ... 1 notes
notesLanguages evolve and have a family tree like species in evolution.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
We Only Notice Certain Statistical Events
Sometimes we can literally count the number of ways you can reshuffle a series of bits - as with a pack of cards, for instance, where the 'bits' are the individual cards.
Suppose the dealer shuffles the pack and deals them out to four players, so that they each have 13 cards. I pick up my hand and gasp in astonishment. I have a complete hand of 13 spades! All the spades.
I am too startled to go on with the game, and I show my hand to the other three players, mowing they will be as amazed ... 1 notes
notesUsing the example of a remarkable card-dealing hand, Dawkins explains how every hand of cards is statistically improbable, but we only notice and awe at combinations that are significant to us in some way.
29 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
The Personhood Associated with the Word "God"
In his Spiritual Exercises, the Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis writes:
We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence. But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir the heart profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch, body with...While deists and others use it to mean a spiritual force, the word is so infused with the idea of a consciousness similar to human beings that it seems irretrievably corrupted for use by spiritual naturalists.
08 FEB 2011 by ideonexus
Distinguishing the Meme Content from the Meme's Effect on...
[Cloak] defined the i-culture as the instructions in people's heads, and the m-culture as the features of people's behaviour, their technology and social organization. he explicitly likened his i-culture to the genotype and m-culture to the phenotype... in The Extended Phenotype [Dawkins] says 'Unfortunately, unlike Cloak... I was insufficiently clear about the distinction between the meme itself, as replicator, on the one hand, and its "phenotypic effects" or "meme products" on the other' (D... 1 notes
notesA survey of different scientists exploring varying metaphors to express the difference between the meme as an idea and the manifestation of the meme in society.
08 FEB 2011 by ideonexus
Good Replicators have Fidelity, Fecundity, and Longevity
Effective memes will be those that cause high fidelity, long-lasting memory. Memes may be successful at spreading largely because they are memorable rather than because they are important or useful. Wrong theories in science may spread simply because they are comprehensible and fit easilty with existing theories, and bad books may sell more copies because you can remember the title when you get to the bookshop -- though, of course, we do have strategies for overcoming these biases. An importa... 1 notes
notesSince memes rely on memory, and memory is not digital, how effective are they as a replicator in our brains?
08 FEB 2011 by ideonexus
Is Beethoven's <em>Fifth Symphony</em> a meme, or only th...
Whether by coincidence or by memetic transmission, Beethoven is the favourite example for illustrating this problem. Brodie (1996) uses Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Dawkins (1976) uses the Ninth and Dennett (1995) uses both the Fifth and the Seventh. Dennet adds that the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth are a tremendously successful meme, replicating all by themselves in contexts in which Beethoven's works are quite unknown. So are they the meme, or the whole symphony?
If we cannot answe... 1 notes
notesWe cannot specify the unit of a meme.
