27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus

 Fluid Intelligence has Made the Most Gains

So which kinds of intellectual performance have been pushed upward by the better environments of recent decades? Surprisingly, the steepest gains have not been found in the concrete skills that are directly taught in school, such as general knowledge, arithmetic, and vocabulary. They have been found in the abstract, fluid kinds of intelligence, the ones tapped by similarity questions (“What do an hour and a year have in common?”), analogies (“BIRD is to EGG as TREE is to what?”), and ...
Folksonomies: intelligence iq
Folksonomies: intelligence iq
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03 OCT 2013 by ideonexus

 Humanity has Reached the Hatching Point

To begin our position-fixing aboard our Spaceship Earth we must first acknowledge that the abundance of immediately consumable, obviously desirable or utterly essential resources have been sufficient until now to allow us to carry on despite our ignorance. Being eventually exhaustible and spoilable, they have been adequate only up to this critical moment. This cushion-for-error of humanity's survival and growth up to now was apparently provided just as a bird inside of the egg is provided wi...
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Thinking of our Earth as an egg, we have been living on the yolk so far. We are reaching the point, by burning our fossile fuels off and exceeding the production capacity of our agriculture, where our intellect must launch us into the stars.

21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 An Egg is a Chemical Process

An egg is a chemical process, but it is not a mere chemical process. It is one that is going places—even when, in our world of chance and contingency, it ends up in an omelet and not in a chicken. Though it surely be a chemical process, we cannot understand it adequately without knowing the kind of chicken it has the power to become.
Folksonomies: chemistry fate perspective
Folksonomies: chemistry fate perspective
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But one with a long, complex history ahead of it.

05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 Questions Without Answer

Daddy,' she says, 'which came first, the chicken or the egg?' Steadfastly, even desperately, we have been refusing to commit ourselves. But our questioner is insistent. The truth alone will satisfy her. Nothing less. At long last we gather up courage and issue our solemn pronouncement on the subject: 'Yes!' So it is here. 'Daddy, is it a wave or a particle?' 'Yes.' 'Daddy, is the electron here or is it there?' 'Yes.' 'Daddy, do scientists really know what they are talking about?' 'Yes!'
Folksonomies: questions conundrums
Folksonomies: questions conundrums
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Example of an inquisitive child asking the hard questions of science.

18 MAY 2012 by ideonexus

 Galileo on Empiricism

If experiments are performed thousands of times at all seasons and in every place without once producing the effects mentioned by your philosophers, poets, and historians, this will mean nothing and we must believe their words rather our own eyes? But what if I find for you a state of the air that has all the conditions you say are required, and still the egg is not cooked nor the lead ball destroyed? Alas! I should be wasting my efforts... for all too prudently you have secured your position...
Folksonomies: philosophy empiricism
Folksonomies: philosophy empiricism
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Lamenting the fact that if something philosophy asserts cannot be observed in nature, then why not abandon it?

24 NOV 2011 by ideonexus

 The Molecular Beauty of a Butterfly

When I see the butterfly, I imagine in my mind's eye the extraordinary chemical machinery of life, the winding loom of he DNA, the proteins linking like lock and key, the ceaseless hubbub of molecular commerce that goes on behind the scenes, from egg, to caterpillar, to chrysalis, to adult. Surely, no land of faerie is more magical than the transformation that occurs in the chrysalis, when a creepy-crawly caterpillar curls up in a self-made sack and rearranges its molecules to emerge as a win...
Folksonomies: science wonder enchantment
Folksonomies: science wonder enchantment
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Chet Raymo describes what he sees when he thinks of a butterfly.

08 JUN 2011 by ideonexus

 A Beautiful Quote on Wonder

31 I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
Folksonomies: nature wonder poetry prose
Folksonomies: nature wonder poetry prose
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From Walt Whitman on the wonder all around us. Especially enjoy the "a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars" part.