Wednesday, June 4, 2008
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
This is the immigrant experience told with honesty and pathos. The good and the bad of two cultures mixed and rendered inseparable. You leave your parents' land and tongue but you are your parents and their land and tongue, and you are your children and their new land and tongue. It is a mystery, a joy and a deep sorrow, all achingly expressed in this good book.
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
This is the immigrant experience told with honesty and pathos. The good and the bad of two cultures mixed and rendered inseparable. You leave your parents' land and tongue but you are your parents and their land and tongue, and you are your children and their new land and tongue. It is a myster, a joy and a deep sorrow, all achingly expressed in this good book.
Science, Faith, and Society by Michael Polanyi
This is a careful and authoritative discussion of how science works and its scope. He speaks against a naive view of self-correcting science and premise-free science. He gives historical examples of validated experiments that proved to be mistaken, and theory eventually found true despite contradictory experimental evidence. He wants science to be free and not limited by tradition, dogma, or seniority. Belief in truth, love of truth, pursuit of truth. He considers radical empiricists as inevitably moving to complete metaphysical nihilism. He denies truth is demonstrable but holds that truth is knowable. Knowledge of reality will lead us to God.
Science, Faith, and Society by Michael Polanyi
This is a careful and authoritative discussion of how science works and its scope. He speaks against a naive view of self-correcting science and premise-free science. He gives historical examples of validated experiments that proved to be mistaken. And theory eventually found true despite contradictory experimental evidence. He wants science to be free and not limited by tradition, dogma, or seniority. Belief in truth, love of truth, pursuit of truth. He considers radical empiricists as inevitably moving to complete metaphysical nihilism. He denies truth is demomnstrable but holds that truth is knowable. Knowledge of reality will lead us to God.
Dark Hero of the Information Age by Flo Conway & Jim Siegelman
A book about Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics. Cybernetics is Greek and the Latin is Gubernator, hence governor, which controls the speed of an engine by negative feedback. Cybernetics is system control.
Wiener was a polyglot genius, a child wonder, possibly the smartest boy in the world at the time. He went on to scientific greatness despite the persistent bipolar disorder which plagued him and an obsessive controlling wife who caused serious family troubles and alienated Wiener from his most talented collaborators, causing serious problems discussed in agonizing and voluminous detail in the book, almost ruining it.
Weiner, however, was a true genius and a legend at MIT. He invented cybernetics (unless you give proper credit to On Governors by my favorite scientist, James Clerk Maxwell). He was at Aberdeen Ballistic proving grounds, the 'Los Alamos' of WWI. He used statistical methods to extend Einstein's explanation of Brownian motion. He developed mathematical methods of measuring communication that were popularized by Shannon, who got all the credit. Decades too soon he recommended using vacuum tubes for a digital computer in the 1920s, but was rejected by Vannevar Bush. He had an idea for optical computing decades before it became feasible. And he recommended continued use and research on analog computing, which only now has recaptured interest.
His cybernetics research led to 'circular causality' and machines behaving 'with purpose,' an affront to reductionist philosophers. He formed a teleology society and studied brain nerve networks. He proposed that entropy and information are negatives of one another, information measuring order and entropy measuring disorder. He wrote a novel called The Tempter, a retelling of Faust in the technological age. He predicted that nucleic acids would be used in machines. He predicted 3-D electronic circuits.
Wiener was a polyglot genius, a child wonder, possibly the smartest boy in the world at the time. He went on to scientific greatness despite the persistent bipolar disorder which plagued him and an obsessive controlling wife who caused serious family troubles and alienated Wiener from his most talented collaborators, causing serious problems discussed in agonizing and voluminous detail in the book, almost ruining it.
Weiner, however, was a true genius and a legend at MIT. He invented cybernetics (unless you give proper credit to On Governors by my favorite scientist, James Clerk Maxwell). He was at Aberdeen Ballistic proving grounds, the 'Los Alamos' of WWI. He used statistical methods to extend Einstein's explanation of Brownian motion. He developed mathematical methods of measuring communication that were popularized by Shannon, who got all the credit. Decades too soon he recommended using vacuum tubes for a digital computer in the 1920s, but was rejected by Vannevar Bush. He had an idea for optical computing decades before it became feasible. And he recommended continued use and research on analog computing, which only now has recaptured interest.
His cybernetics research led to 'circular causality' and machines behaving 'with purpose,' an affront to reductionist philosophers. He formed a teleology society and studied brain nerve networks. He proposed that entropy and information are negatives of one another, information measuring order and entropy measuring disorder. He wrote a novel called The Tempter, a retelling of Faust in the technological age. He predicted that nucleic acids would be used in machines. He predicted 3-D electronic circuits.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
The Limits of Science by P. G. Medawar
A classic discussion by a scientist with impeccable credentials. Debunks the myth of the "scientific method" as the way science is done.
He makes a case for the limits of science and that at times true inferences have come from false premises.
Science cannot answer questions about origins and meaning of existence.
A good book to go back to from time to time.
He makes a case for the limits of science and that at times true inferences have come from false premises.
Science cannot answer questions about origins and meaning of existence.
A good book to go back to from time to time.
The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel
This is a popular-level, well-written story of investigation of evolution and science. Its main value is accessibility and exposure to seminal thinkers who understand the limits of science and the weaknesses of neo-Darwinism. It is full of revealing quotes on both sides. It makes clear that to say that science is the only "begettor of truth" (Richard Lewontin) is self-contradictory since this thesis itself is not testable by the scientific method. William Lane Craig, Robin Collins, Jay Wesley Richards, Stephen C. Meyer, Alvin Platinga are all featured and interviewed or quoted. Good endnotes and bibliography. Would make a good enjoyable class book.
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