The Anthropic Principle

As an example of the power of the Anthropic Principle, consider the number of directions in space. It is a matter of common experience that we live in three-dimensional space. That is to say, we can represent the position of a point in space by three numbers. For example, latitude. longitude and height above sea level. But why is space three-dimensional? Why isn't it two, or four, or some other number of dimensions, hke in science fiction? In fact, in M-theory space has ten dimensions (as wel...

 Our Life is What We Pay Attention To

When our attention is lured, herded, and commandeered in such a way, our full human potential is profoundly subverted. “Our life experience,” William James once said, “will equal what we have paid attention to, whether by choice or default.” We become what we attend to — nothing more, nothing less. A steady and exclusive stream of reality TV, entertainment gossip, social media chatter, and “breaking news” about the latest celebrity scandal or Trump’s most recent tweets — all...

 Metaphysical Knowledge is Passive, Science Proactive

What science actually does is to show that any natural object we please may be treated in terms of relations upon which its occurrence depends, or as an event, and that by so treating it we are enabled to get behind, as it were, the immediate qualities the object of direct experience presents, and to regulate their happening, instead of having to wait for conditions beyond our control to bring it about. Reduction of experienced objects to the form of relations, which are neutral as respects q...

 The Chain of Human Rights to Morphological Freedom

The right to life, the right to not have other people prevent oneself from surviving, is a central right, without which all other rights have no meaning. But to realize the right to life we need other rights. Another central right for any humanistic view of human rights is the right to seek happiness. Without it human flourishing is unprotected, and there is not much point in having a freedom to live if it will not be at least a potentially happy life. In a way the right to life follows from...

 Animal Plants: Life Adapted to a Vacuum

"These remarkable creatures combine the characteristics of animals and plants and so I call them animal-plants. ..." "All right. Don't get angry. Just explain how your creatures avoid getting dried up like mummies." "That is simple. Their skin is covered with a glassy layer, thin and flexible but absolutely impermeable to gases and liquids and all kinds of particles, so that the creatures are protected from any loss of material. . . . Their bodies have appendages which look like wings and a...

 Newton's Perspective on the Universe

As all regions below are replenished with living creatures, (not only the Earth with Beasts, and Sea with Fishes and the air with Fowls and Insects, but also standing waters, vineger, the bodies and blood of Animals and other juices {49} with innumerable living creatures too small to be seen without the help of magnifying glasses) so may the heavens above be replenished with beings whose nature we do not understand. He that shall well consider the strange and wonderful nature of life and th...

 The Composition of Planets

As to your reasoning of the inconvenience that a centre would become further removed from another centre than from the circumference of his own globe, though centres are of the same species while the centre and circumference are of contrary nature and should therefore be furthest removed from one another, I reply as follows: Firstly, that contraries need not be at the furthest distance one from another, inasmuch as one may influence the other or may be patient of influence therefrom; as we se...

 Proof that Objects Fall at the Same Rate

Salv. But, even without further experiment, it is possible to prove clearly, by means of a short and conclusive argument, that a heavier body does not move more rapidly than a lighter one provided both bodies are of the same material and in short such as those mentioned by Aristotle. But tell me, Simplicio, whether you admit that each falling body acquires a definite speed fixed by nature, a velocity which cannot be increased or diminished except by the use of force [violenza] or resistance....

 Beginnings of Speciation in Romantic Paintings

She wandered on her own, looking at the portraits. The big crowd scenes were too much for her, like epic movies all jammed into a single frame. The subjects of the portraits, on the other hand, looked at her with expressions she recognized immediately. “I am always me, I am always new, I am always me”—for eight centuries they had been saying it. Nothing but women and men. One woman had her left nipple exposed, just under the curve of a necklace; in most periods that would have been tran...

 Newton's Definitions

Def. I. The Quantity of Matter is the measure of the same, arising from its density and bulk conjunctly. THUS AIR of a double density, in a double space, is quadruple in quantity; in a triple space, sextuple in quantity. The same thing is to be understood of snow, and fine dust or powders, that are condensed by compression or liquefaction; and of all bodies that are by any causes whatever differently condensed. I have no regard in this place to a medium, if any such there is, that freely pe...