25 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Paul Saffo: The Illusion of Scientific Progress
The breathtaking advance of scientific discovery has the unknown on the run. Not so long ago, the Creation was 8,000 years old and Heaven hovered a few thousand miles above our heads. Now Earth is 4.5 billion years old and the observable Universe spans 92 billion light years. Pick any scientific field and the story is the same, with new discoveries—and new life-touching wonders—arriving almost daily. Like Pope, we marvel at how hidden Nature is revealed in scientific light. Our growing corpu...Folksonomies: scientific progress progress
Folksonomies: scientific progress progress
24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
H.G. Wells on the Future
We look back through countless millions of years and see the great will to live struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from power to power, crawling and then walking confidently upon the land, struggling generation after generation to master the air, creeping down into the darkness of the deep; we see it turn upon itself in rage and hunger and reshape itself anew, we watch it draw nearer and more akin to us, expanding, elaborating itself, pursuing its relen...28 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Gertrude B. Elion's Tragedy
I had fallen in love with a young man..., and we were planning to get married. And then he died of subacute bacterial endocarditis... Two years later with the advent of penicillin, he would have been saved. It reinforced in my mind the importance of scientific discovery...Her love died from an infection penicillin could have cured, but it was invented two years later.
17 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Equations are Treasures
Equations seem like treasures, spotted in the rough by some discerning individual, plucked and examined, placed in the grand storehouse of knowledge, passed on from generation to generation. This is so convenient a way to present scientific discovery, and so useful for textbooks, that it can be called the treasure-hunt picture of knowledge.Found in nature, plucked and put in a display case for others to admire.
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...The 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.
29 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Recognition of Ignorance is a Prerequisite for Science
Only when a few curious people said "I don't know" did science begin. Recognition of our ignorance is a prerequisite of scientific discovery.Folksonomies: scientific discovery ignorance
Folksonomies: scientific discovery ignorance
We have to acknowledge that we don't know.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Reading the Music of Science
Is nobody inspired by our present picture of the universe? The value of science remains unsung by singers, so you are reduced to hearing--not a song or a poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age. Perhaps one of the reasons is that you have to know how to read the music. For instance, the scientific, article says, perhaps, something like this: "The radioactive phosphorus content of the cerebrum of a rat decreases to one-half in the period of two weeks." Now, what...Folksonomies: science ionian echantment
Folksonomies: science ionian echantment
People aren't amazed by scientific discovery because, maybe, they don't understand it.