30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus

 The Brain Making Sense of an Orchestra

But our unconscious feats of unweaving and weaving are greater even than this. Think what is happening when you listen to a whole orchestra. Imagine that, superimposed on a hundred instruments, your neighbour in the concert is whispering learned music criticism in your ear, others are coughing and, lamentably, somebody behind you is rustling a chocolate wrapper. All these sounds, simultaneously, are vibrating your eardrum and they are summed into a single, very complicated wriggling wave of p...
  1  notes
 
21 JAN 2014 by ideonexus

 Knowing the World Requires Mathematics

For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics. For this is an assured fact in regard to celestial things, siDce two important sciences of mathematics treat of them, namely theoretical astrology and practical astrology. The first. . . gives us definite information as to the number of the heavens and of the stars, whose size can be comprehended by means of instruments, and the shapes of all and their magnitudes and distances from the earth, and thicknesses...
Folksonomies: mathematics knowledge
Folksonomies: mathematics knowledge
  1  notes

Everything can be reduced to mathematics.

08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 The Exponential Complexity of Man

We can see that there is only one substance in the universe and that man is the most perfect one. He is to the ape and the cleverest animals what Huygens's planetary clock is to one of Julien Leroy's watches. If it took more instruments, more cogs, more springs to show or tell the time, if it took Vaucanson more artistry to make his flautist than his duck, he would have needed even more to make a speaking machine, which can no longer be considered impossible, particularly at the hands of a ne...
Folksonomies: machine mechanics
Folksonomies: machine mechanics
  1  notes

Using automatons made to resemble ducks and the task of building one to resemble man.

08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 Direct Observation is Dead

The faith of scientists in the power and truth of mathematics is so implicit that their work has gradually become less and less observation, and more and more calculation. The promiscuous collection and tabulation of data have given way to a process of assigning possible meanings, merely supposed real entities, to mathematical terms, working out the logical results, and then staging certain crucial experiments to check the hypothesis against the actual empirical results. But the facts which a...
  1  notes

Everything is through instruments now.

05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 Lenses Supplement the Infirmities of the Senses

The next care to be taken, in respect of the Senses, is a supplying of their infirmities with Instruments, and, as it were, the adding of artificial Organs to the natural; this in one of them has been of late years accomplisht with prodigious benefit to all sorts of useful knowledge, by the invention of Optical Glasses. By the means of Telescopes, there is nothing so far distant but may be represented to our view; and by the help of Microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inq...
Folksonomies: perception senses
Folksonomies: perception senses
  1  notes

Telescopes and Microscopes allow us to see what our eyes cannot.

18 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 War Must Rely on Chemistry

It were indeed to be wish'd that our art had been less ingenious, in contriving means destructive to mankind; we mean those instruments of war, which were unknown to the ancients, and have made such havoc among the moderns. But as men have always been bent on seeking each other's destruction by continual wars; and as force, when brought against us, can only be repelled by force; the chief support of war, must, after money, be now sought in chemistry.
Folksonomies: chemistry war peace
Folksonomies: chemistry war peace
  1  notes

A 1753 claim that it is the most important thing in support of war just behind money.

18 MAY 2011 by ideonexus

 Thomas Jefferson was a Scientist

Thomas Jefferson was a scientist. That's how he described himself. When you visit his home at Monticello, Virginia, the moment you enter its portals you find ample evidence of his scientific interests - not just in his immense and varied library, but in copying machines, automatic doors, telescopes and other instruments, some at the cutting edge of early nineteenth-century technology. Some he invented, some he copied, some he purchased. He compared the plants and animals in America with Euro...
  1  notes

He called himself such and took delight in technology.

01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus

 Capitalists are Forever Exploring and Revolutionizing

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch...
Folksonomies: politics economics centrism
Folksonomies: politics economics centrism
  1  notes
Within the context of Marx's work, this reads like a bad thing, this ever-present restlessness in the market; however, it also sounds like growth and progress.
01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus

 The Science Haves and Have-Nots

Today the greatest divide within humanity is not between races, or religions, or even, as widely believes, between the literate and illiterate. It is the chasm that separates scientific from prescientific cultures. Without the instruments and accumulated knowledge of the natural sciences--physics, chemistry, and biology--humans are trapped in a cognitive prison. They are like intelligent fish born in a deep, shadowed pool. Wondering and restless, longing to reach out, they think about the wor...
Folksonomies: spiritual naturalism
Folksonomies: spiritual naturalism
  1  notes
Without science, people are trapped within a "cognitive prison".