13 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Thinking Means Understanding in More Than One Way
Thus, your knowledge is represented in various forms that are stored in different regions of the brain, to be used by different processes. What are those representations like? In the brain, we do not yet know. However, in the field of Artificial Intelligence, researchers have found several useful ways to represent knowledge, each better suited to some purposes than to others. The most popular ones use collections of "If-Then" rules. Other systems use structures called 'frames'--which resemble...Folksonomies: cognition understanding
Folksonomies: cognition understanding
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notes
notes24 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Example of How Language Affects Thought
Another way of describing the revolution in physics is to say that the key moves and acts, physicists do not care; 'matter' to them means 'to matter'. moves and acts, physicists do not care; 'matter' to them means 'to matter', to make a difference. But our language is still geared to express 'states of being', rather than processes. In this connection, also, the German language helps to explain German philosophy. The Germans have been especially prone to hypostatize their abstractions, identi...
1 Our language is focused on describing states of being rather than processes.
26 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
Mathematics Lies Outside Ourselves
I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our
function is to discover or observe it, and that the theorems which we
prove, and which we describe grandiloquently as our "creations," are
simply the notes of our observations.
* * *
Let us suppose that I am giving a lecture on some system of
geometry, such as the ordinary Euclidean geometry, and that I draw figures
on the blackboard to stimulate the imagination of my audience, rough
drawings of straight lines or ... 1 notes
notesWhen teaching mathematics, it does not matter how nice the drawings or the teaching space, the ideas are what's important and they are independent of the teaching method.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Hell for Scientists
I had at one time a very bad fever of which I almost died. In my fever I had a long consistent delirium. I dreamt that I was in Hell, and that Hell is a place full of all those happenings that are improbable but not impossible. The effects of this are curious. Some of the damned, when they first arrive below, imagine that they will beguile the tedium of eternity by games of cards. But they find this impossible, because, whenever a pack is shuffled, it comes out in perfect order, beginning wit... 1 notes
notesIs a place where the improbable occurs everywhere.
16 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Why Do Supernatural Acts Require Mood-Setting Rituals?
If any spiritualistic medium can do stunts, there is no more need for special conditions than there is for a chemist to turn down lights, start operations with a hymn, and ask whether there's any chemical present that has affinity with something named Hydrogen. Folksonomies: skepticism supernatural
Folksonomies: skepticism supernatural
1 notes
notesChemists don't need to turn down the lights. Physicists don't need to chant.
17 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Evolution Can Only Build on What is Already There
To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there. Folksonomies: evolution vestigial traits
Folksonomies: evolution vestigial traits
1 notes
notesCrick describing the clutter of nature.
08 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Explanation of the Higg's Boson
Protons are more massive than electrons, for example, and electrons are way more massive than neutrinos. Photons have no mass at all. For most us, that's no more than a fun fact (and not all that much fun, really). For physicists, though, it's a mystery that demands a solution. Why are the masses so different — and why do any particles have any mass at all?
The answer, suggested several scientists back in the 1960's, is that the entire universe is suffused with a sort of energy field — i...Folksonomies: physics
Folksonomies: physics
1 notes
notesA descent, down-to-earth explanation of the Higg's Particle and why it matters.
30 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Mathematical VS Metaphysical Understandings of Quantum Ph...
The mathematical framework of quantum theory has passed countless successful tests and is now universally accepted as a consistent and accurate description of all atomic phenomena. The verbal interpretation, on the other hand – i.e., the metaphysics of quantum theory – is on far less solid ground. In fact, in more than forty years physicists have not been able to provide a clear metaphysical model. 
1 We have explained the quantum world mathematically, but we have failed to understanding it verbally.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
The Strong Anthropic Principle
The weak anthropic principle is not very controversial. But there is a stronger form that we will argue for here, although it is regarded with disdain among some physicists. The strong anthropic principle suggests that the fact that we exist imposes constraints not just on our environment but on the possible form and content of the laws of nature themselves. The idea arose because it is not only the peculiar characteristics of our solar system that seem oddly conducive to the development of h... 1 notes
notesOur existence puts constraints on the very laws of nature.
30 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
The Need to Cross-Pollinate Knowledge
When chemists have brought their knowledge out of their special laboratories into the laboratory of the world, where chemical combinations are and have been through all time going on in such vast proportions,—when physicists study the laws of moisture, of clouds and storms, in past periods as well as in the present,—when, in short, geologists and zoologists are chemists and physicists, and vice versa,—then we shall learn more of the changes the world has undergone than is possible now t...Folksonomies: progress cross-pollination
Folksonomies: progress cross-pollination
Chemsits and physicists must come out and study nature, while geologists and zoologists must go into the lab, so that scientific progress may multiply.
