31 JUL 2014 by ideonexus
Memory Systems as a Shared Resource
This inspired them to depart from testing memory for lists of words and events, and to explore the amount of rich, in-depth information remembered by couples about experienced events. They found these social exchanges led to clear collaborative memory benefits, which could take three forms:
“New information” such as finally snatching an elusive name of a musical thanks to a chain of prompts between the two parties.
Richer, more vivid descriptions of events including sensory information.
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1 27 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Sensations are Related in the Brain
Production of speech is seen as a pure motor act, involving muscles and the neurons controlling them, while perception of speech is seen as purely sensory, involving the ear and the auditory pathway. This parcellation of the systems appear intuitive and clear, but recent studies [beginning with Taine 1870!] ... suggest that such divisions may be fundamentally wrong. Rather than separate processes for motor outputs and individual sensory modalities, adaptive action seems to use all the availab...Speaking involves not just motor functions in the brain, but auditory, suggesting sensory inputs for the brain are not segregated.
25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
School Kills Scientific Inquiry
Again, in the customs and institutions of schools, academies, colleges, and similar bodies destined for the abode of learned men and the cultivation of learning, everything is found adverse to the progress of science. For the lectures and exercises there are so ordered that to think or speculate on anything out of the common way can hardly occur to any man. And if one or two have the boldness to use any liberty of judgment, they must undertake the task all by themselves; they can have no adva... 1 
notes
notesThe structure of curriculum is to set a path and provide no deviation from it, but deviation from the path is the stuff of scientific discovery.
25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Most Scientists are Not on the True Scientific Path
Now the true and lawful goal of the sciences is none other than this: that human life be endowed with new discoveries and powers. But of this the great majority have no feeling, but are merely hireling and professorial; except when it occasionally happens that some workman of acuter wit and covetous of honor applies himself to a new invention, which he mostly does at the expense of his fortunes. But in general, so far are men from proposing to themselves to augment the mass of arts and scienc... 1 notes
notesAccording to Bacon, the goal of science is to endow humanity with new discoveries and powers, but most scientists are focused on personal gain.
25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Science Must Continually Renew Itself
It is idle to expect any great advancement in science from the superinducing and engrafting of new things upon old. We must begin anew from the very foundations, unless we would revolve forever in a circle with mean and contemptible progress. 1 notes
notesGreat advancement does not come from perpetually building on old ideas, but by rebuilding the old in a new light of understanding.
