thinking
A few more comments on the scientific thinking thing, because it's generated a bunch of comments. As usual, some of them are good points, and some of them have completely misunderstood what I was trying to say. so let's take another crack at it.
While the post was worded somewhat strongly, I'm not really trying to stake out a position diametrically opposed to what Neil DeGrasse Tyson said. In fact, I suspect we agree more than we disagee. We certainly share the same broad goal, namely to see more people thinking more scientifically more often. The difference is really a question of emphasis.…
tags: philosophy, thinking the improbable, middle world, atoms, atheism, physics, Richard Dawkins, streaming video
In this video, Biologist Richard Dawkins makes a case for "thinking the improbable" by looking at how the human frame of reference limits our understanding of the universe [22:42]
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.
Yesterday I was listening to Morning Edition on NPR and caught this very intriguing segment, Shakespeare Had Roses All Wrong. Would you describe a bridge as fragile, elegant, beautiful, peaceful, slender, pretty? Or as strong, dangerous, long, sturdy, big, towering? Lera Boroditsky, an assistant psychology professor at Stanford University, found that it depends - for native German and Spanish speakers, on whether your native tongue assigns a feminine or masculine gender to the noun bridge.
Boroditsky proposes that because the word for "bridge" in German -- die brucke -- is a feminine noun…
Hmmm...
I must admit that the attention this blog has been getting as of late has left me astonished (when I first started writing I wondered if anyone would ever read my posts), and Eric of The Primate Diaries has given my ego another boost by bestowing The Intellectual Blogger Award upon me (my only regret is that I can't give him the same award in return). Part of the joy of receiving such recognition is passing it on, however, and I've been thinking long and hard about which other bloggers really get my mental wheels turning when I read their work. Envelope, please...
The Anterior…