Philosophy
Otto Neurath argued that social progress depended on finding a visual language in which to express scientific facts and relations. We cannot expect everyone, especially working people, to acquire the technical proficiency with formal mathematics to understand the results of science, but that doesn't mean that not everyone can understand science. We all can if someone finds a way to translate it for the rest of us.
This piece from the BBC is an amazing example of this in terms of the relation between public health and economics (hat tip to Kerry for sending me the link):
In a democracy, especially one in which our stance towards the rest of the world makes a real difference in real lives, how come we have to go elsewhere -- to the BBC -- to see something like this. Why isn't CNN with all their technological flash and fluff using it to effectively educate us in this sort of way?
- The Ontology Of Accents
Last night at dinner with the department, a colleague, whose native language is not English, declared that he has an accent. Someone else said that he didn't because there was no discernible difference between the way he pronounced words and the way...
- Otto Neurath And The Credit Crisis
One of my heroes is Otto Neurath. He was a member of the Vienna Circle, a philosopher and a sociologist. He turned down an opportunity to work with Max Weber and instead went into museum work. His idea was to create science museums to start a social revolution....
- What Makes A Great Teacher?
When I'm on a plane chatting and the person next to me finds out that I teach philosophy, the reaction is either, "I took that in college and hated it" or "I took that in college and had the strangest teacher." When I get the second one, inevitably...
- Ready, Seti, Go
So MT asks how much money ought we be spending on SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This is a very interesting one. On the one hand, should it be successful and finds real evidence of other intelligent beings in the universe it would...
- Einstein And The Logical Left
Albert Einstein had a problem. He had been working for almost five years to figure out a way to work gravitation into his theory of relativity and he thought he had it. But then there were the holes. He knew he needed a set of field equations and he thought...
Philosophy
Envisioning Science
Otto Neurath argued that social progress depended on finding a visual language in which to express scientific facts and relations. We cannot expect everyone, especially working people, to acquire the technical proficiency with formal mathematics to understand the results of science, but that doesn't mean that not everyone can understand science. We all can if someone finds a way to translate it for the rest of us.
This piece from the BBC is an amazing example of this in terms of the relation between public health and economics (hat tip to Kerry for sending me the link):
In a democracy, especially one in which our stance towards the rest of the world makes a real difference in real lives, how come we have to go elsewhere -- to the BBC -- to see something like this. Why isn't CNN with all their technological flash and fluff using it to effectively educate us in this sort of way?
- The Ontology Of Accents
Last night at dinner with the department, a colleague, whose native language is not English, declared that he has an accent. Someone else said that he didn't because there was no discernible difference between the way he pronounced words and the way...
- Otto Neurath And The Credit Crisis
One of my heroes is Otto Neurath. He was a member of the Vienna Circle, a philosopher and a sociologist. He turned down an opportunity to work with Max Weber and instead went into museum work. His idea was to create science museums to start a social revolution....
- What Makes A Great Teacher?
When I'm on a plane chatting and the person next to me finds out that I teach philosophy, the reaction is either, "I took that in college and hated it" or "I took that in college and had the strangest teacher." When I get the second one, inevitably...
- Ready, Seti, Go
So MT asks how much money ought we be spending on SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This is a very interesting one. On the one hand, should it be successful and finds real evidence of other intelligent beings in the universe it would...
- Einstein And The Logical Left
Albert Einstein had a problem. He had been working for almost five years to figure out a way to work gravitation into his theory of relativity and he thought he had it. But then there were the holes. He knew he needed a set of field equations and he thought...