27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Children are Smarter Than Adults
This precocity of childhood may be said to characterise all the known races of man, and to be even more marked the more primitive the race. On this point, ‘It is an interesting fact,’ says Havelock Ellis (183, p. 177), ‘and perhaps of some significance, that among primitive races in all parts of the world, the children, at an early age, are very precocious in intelligence.’ And again, ‘ It seems that, the lower the race, the more marked is this precocity, and its arrest at puberty. ... 1 
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notes25 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Martin Rees: We'll Never Hit Barriers To Scientific Under...
We humans haven't changed much since our remote ancestors roamed the African savannah. Our brains evolved to cope with the human-scale environment. So it is surely remarkable that we can make sense of phenomena that confound everyday intuition: in particular, the minuscule atoms we're made of, and the vast cosmos that surrounds us.
Nonetheless—and here I'm sticking my neck out—maybe some aspects of reality are intrinsically beyond us, in that their comprehension would require some post-h...Folksonomies: understanding transhumanism
Folksonomies: understanding transhumanism
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notes03 MAR 2014 by ideonexus
What if Extraterrestrials Spoke in Music?
Might interstellar communication not be messages but music--perhaps a 600 part invention, each part on an adjacent frequency channel? If there were more conventional representation of frequencies for example, the full frequency range corresponding to the range between 1420 and 1667 megahertz would we have the wit to distinguish this music from noise. Other forms of such many-part interstellar musical inventions might exist which each A civilization provides one part. Might we be able to recog...Folksonomies: speculation
Folksonomies: speculation
1 notes
notesWith frequencies communicating ideas?
22 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Everything is Made of Atoms
Everything is made of atoms. That is the key hypothesis. The most important hypothesis in all of biology, for example, is that everything that animals do, atoms do. In other words, there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics. This was not known from the beginning it took some experimenting and theorizing to suggest this hypothesis, but now it is accepted, and it is the most useful t... 1 notes
notesTherefore all biological and chemical phenomena can be understood from this perspective of physics.
21 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Observation Reconstructs the Real
A scientific observation is always a committed observation; it confirms or denies one's preconceptions; one's first ideas, one's plan of observation; it shows by demonstration; it structures the phenomena; it transcends what is close at hand; it reconstructs the real after having reconstructed its representation. 1 notes
notes...after hypothesis as reconstructed its repreentation.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
All Human Acheivement is the Result of Networking
Human achievement is entirely a networking phenomenon. It is by putting brains together through the division of labor—through trade and specialization—that human society stumbled upon a way to raise the living standards, carrying capacity, technological virtuosity, and knowledge base of the species. We can see this in all sorts of phenomena: the correlation between technology and connected population size in Pacific islands; the collapse of technology in people who became isolated, like n...
1 Matt Ridley observes that isolated societies collapse, while networked societies succeed.
13 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Talent of Mechanics
Generally speaking, people have a very erroneous idea of the type of talent proper to the ideal mechanician. He is not a geometrician who, delving into the theory of movement and the categories of phenomena, formulates new mechanical principles or discovers unsuspected laws of nature.… In most other branches of science are to be found constant principles; a multitude of methods offer to the genius inexhaustible possibilities. If a scholar poses himself a new problem, he can attack it fortif... 1 notes
notesIt is highly intuitive and cannot be taught from a textbook. It sounds much like an art.
31 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
The Difference in How the Public and Scientists Use "Theory"
The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence. Many scientific theories are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them substantially. For example, no new evidence will demonstrate that the Earth does not orbit around the sun (heliocentric theory), or that living things are not made of cells (cell theory), th...
1 In common usage, it is the equivalent of an educated guess, in science, it is nearly synonymous with the facts it is built on.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Greeks and Romans Lacked the Virtue of Doubt
The Greek and Roman antiquarians, and even their literati and philosophers, are
chargeable with a total neglect of that spirit of doubt which subjects to a rigorous
investigation both sacts, and the proofs that establish them. In reading their accounts
of the history of events or of manners, of the productions and phenomena of nature, or
of the works and processes of the arts, we are astonished at the composure with which
they relate the most palpable absurdities, and the most fulsome and dis... 1 notes
notes...and as a result, their writing reveals an incredible gullibility.
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Deducing the Original Arrangement of Chemicals
The chemists who uphold dualism are far from being agreed among themselves; nevertheless, all of them in maintaining their opinion, rely upon the phenomena of chemical reactions. For a long time the uncertainty of this method has been pointed out: it has been shown repeatedly, that the atoms put into movement during a reaction take at that time a new arrangement, and that it is impossible to deduce the old arrangement from the new one. It is as if, in the middle of a game of chess, after the ... 1 notes
notesFrom a compound is like trying to figure out the history of a chess game from the positions of the pieces on the board at present.
