15 JUN 2016 by ideonexus
Theoretical Uncertainty has No Meaning
If one looks at the history of knowledge, it is plain that at the beginning men tried to know because they had to do so in order to live. In the absence of that organic guidance given by their structure to other animals, man had to find out what he was about, and he could find out only by studying the environment which constituted the means, obstacles and results of his behavior. The desire for intellectual or cognitive understanding had no meaning except as a means of obtaining greater secur... 1 
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notes30 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Bottom-Up VS Top-Down Method for Finding Laws
Broadly speaking, to discover new regularities and laws we either follow top–down or the bottom–up approach (Fig. 1). In the top–down approach, the search begins with an external observation e.g., Newton’s laws of motion. The observer intuitively imagines a set of elements, a set of interactions and a mathematically expressible form to connect the two. Components are weaved into a mental map and experiments are planned to verify or nullify the model. If the experimental observations r... 1 notes
notesFascinating explanation for why laws are harder and harder to find as we move into macroscopic sciences.
30 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Laws in Biology
In scientific jargon, law describes a true, absolute and unchanging relationship among interacting elements. Unlike in some fields, social customs and authorities do not determine the establishment of laws in science. Given that laws are derived from empirical observations, it implies that laws symbolize regularities endorsed by a majority opinion. People also use terms like rules and principles to describe consistent relationships expressed by mathematical equations e.g., Heisenberg uncertai... 1 notes
notesThere are fewer and fewer laws as we move from fundamental sciences, like mathematics and physics, to more complex and chaotic sciences, like chemistry, biology, and climatology.
19 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
The Selfish Gene as a New Perspective on an Old Hypothesis
The selfish gene theory is Darwin's theory, expressed in a way that
Darwin did not choose but whose aptness, I should like to think, he
would instantly have recognized and delighted in. It is in fact a logical
outgrowth of orthodox neo-Darwinism, but expressed as a novel image.
Rather than focus on the individual organism, it takes a gene's-eye view
of nature. It is a different way of seeing, not a different theory. In the
opening pages of The Extended Phenotype, I explained this using the
me...
1 It is Darwin's theory, but a story told from the gene's point of view.
15 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
Einstein's "Biggest Blunder"
For much of the modern era, scientists followed Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton in believing the cosmos to be eternal and unchanging. But in 1917, when Albert Einstein applied his theory of relativity to space-time as a whole, his equations implied that the universe could not be static; it must be either expanding or contracting. This struck Einstein as grotesque, so he added to his theory a fiddle factor called the "cosmological constant" that eliminated the implicatio...
1 The story of how Einstein's belief in a static Universe prompted him to introduce a fudge-factor in his Theory of Relativity, the Cosmological Constant.
29 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
The Problem with the Term "Music Theory"
Music Theory. You will forgive me for turning, as I always do in moments of intellectual want, to my Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, which defines the word "theory" as, and we quote, "The analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another." My friends, few words offer as much rational solace as does the word "theory." Examining the plausibility of a theory demands that we analyze facts, reason logically, think objectively, and examine comprehensively. Having done so, we will assumab..."Theory" implies facts and scientific understanding through observation and testing. Music is an art, filled with idiosyncrasies, and no hard rules.
18 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
The Story of How the Universe's Size was Determined
It was into this fiery climate of the 1920s that the Protestant-raised Hubble, adorned with the cape, cane, and British accent he had adopted while at Oxford, returned after the war. He arrived at the Carnegie Institution of Washington-funded Mount Wilson Observatory outside Pasadena, California, insisting on being called "Major Hubble."^'' Looking through the great Hooker telescope—at one hundred and one inches in diameter and weighing more than one hundred tons it was by far the largest a...Includes a cautionary tale of Shapely, who helped prove the Sun was not the center of the Universe, but who thought the Milky Way was all the Universe there was without empirical data.
18 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
Einstein's Cosmological Constant
Georges Lemaitre was a pudgy, pinkish Belgian Jesuit abbe—a Catholic priest—who also happened to be a skilled astronomer. Lemaitre had noticed that Einstein's general theory of relativity would have implied that the universe was expanding but for a troublesome little mathematical term called the cosmological constant that Einstein had inserted into his equations. Lemaitre saw no convincing reason why the cosmological constant should be there. In fact, Einstein himself had originally calc...He put the constant into his theory to keep the Universe static, but observations demonstrated it was expanding, so he changed his theory to match the evidence.
08 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
Trivia VS Knowledge
Have you ever met anyone with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure rock bands? I knew a group of people in Los Angeles who spent their time browsing the used bins at record shops back in the days when music was recorded on vinyl (which is making a comeback these days, even though most kids have never heard anything other than compressed 128-kilobite-per-second digital recordings). Some of these people were so obsessed with obscure bands that they deserved the moniker "vinyl vermin." They coll... 1 notes
notesGraffin relates the story of "Vinyl Vermin" who collected trivia about music rather than cultivating opinions on what was good or bad. He relates this to amassing taxonomy knowledge without a theory.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Theories Must be Falsifiable
In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality. Folksonomies: theory falsifiability
Folksonomies: theory falsifiability
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notesIf they are not, they do not speak about reality.
