I referred to this scene from Annie Hall in my talk yesterday. A classic.
“Something he read.” That’s always the problem, isn’t it?
(Note that everyone seems to be buying into some sort of Big Rip cosmology. It makes for a more vivid eschatology.)
Brooklyn Is Not Expanding Read More »
John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts has a great post about the development of the modern definition of “Life” (which, one strongly suspects, is by no means fully developed). Once we break free of the most parochial definitions involving carbon-based chemistry, we’re left with the general ideas that life is something complex, something that processes information, something that can evolve, something that takes advantage of local entropy gradients to make records and build structures. (Probably quantum computation does not play a crucial role, but who knows?) One of the first people to think in these physical terms was none other than Erwin Schrödinger, who was mostly famous for other things, but did write an influential little book called What Is Life? that explored the connections between life and thermodynamics.
Searching for a definition of “Life” is a great reminder of the crucial lesson that we do not find definitions lying out there in the world; we find stuff out there in the world, and it’s our job to choose definitions that help us make sense of it, carving up the world into useful categories. When it comes to life, it’s not so easy to find a definition that includes everything that we would like to think of as living, but excludes the things we don’t.
For example: is the Milky Way galaxy alive? Probably not, so find a good definition that unambiguously excludes it. Keep in mind that the Milky Way, like any good galaxy, metabolizes raw materials (turning hydrogen and helium into heavier elements) and creates complexity out of simplicity, and does so by taking advantage of a dramatic departure from thermal equilibrium (of which CV readers are well aware) to build organization via an entropy gradient.
Update: Unbeknownst to me, Carl Zimmer had just written about this exact topic in Seed. Hat tip to 3QD.
The Meaning of “Life” Read More »
We outsource to Clifford the task of advertising the Categorically Not! events that KC Cole organizes at the Santa Monica Art Studios. Except for this Sunday, since I’m going to be one of the presenters, and I never shy from doing my own PR. The event (see blurb below) will begin at 6:30; everyone is welcome.
The topic is Mistakes! I think we’re all familiar with them. As the scientist, I suppose it’s my job to talk about mistakes made by scientists, and I’m not too proud to stoop to using Einstein as my example. He made some whoppers, and that’s not even including his personal life.
Any fun examples of scientific mistakes? Best would be those that teach some cute lesson about how true progress is impossible if you’re too timid to make mistakes, etc etc. Ideas are welcome.
Here is the blurb:
Blunders, boo boos, bloopers, errors, slip-ups, goofs, misinterpretations and misunderstandings. Everyone makes mistakes. In science, the notion of “mistake” is often itself misunderstood. Frequently, a “mistake” often turns out to be nothing more than a limited or skewed perspective. Or as Einstein put it, discovering a new theory is not so much like tearing down a house to build a new one as climbing a mountain from which one can see farther; the old “house” is still there, but is seen in a vastly different context. Mistakes in personal life and matters of policy can ruin lives; but “mistakes” in a humorous context can also make us laugh.
For our September 9th Categorically Not!, Caltech theoretical physicist Sean Carroll will talk about how mistakes are an inevitable part of scientific inquiry. From Aristotle through Kepler to Einstein, leaps in understanding have often been the offspring of wrong ideas, or right ideas that were suggested for the wrong reasons. (And what about Einstein’s so-called “biggest blunder”?) Sean is the author of a textbook on general relativity, lecturer in a course on cosmology offered by the Teaching Company, and a blogger at Cosmic Variance.
For a psychological perspective, social psychologist Carol Tavris will talk about her new book: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts. She’ll describe the biases that blind us to our mistakes, make us unwilling to change unsupported beliefs, and allow us to think ourselves above conflicts of interest. She’ll also explain how the need to justify mistakes prevents us from realizing we might be wrong, ensuring we make the same mistakes again. The antidotes are the scientific method, and a sense of humor.
And as for sense of humor, the endlessly talented Orson Bean will talk about how mistakes are the basis of comedy. Orson won a Tony nomination for his role in Subways Are For Sleeping, appeared regularly on the Tonight Show with Jack Paar (and later Johnny Carson), and hosted numerous game shows (he is the last surviving panelist from To Tell the Truth). More recently, he played Dr. Lester in Being John Malkovich as well as numerous other film and TV roles. He is also the author of the book Me and the Orgone: One Guy’s Search for the Meaning of it All.
The National Academy of Sciences panel charged with evaluating the Beyond Einstein program has come out with its recommendations. Briefly: the first priority should be the Joint Dark Energy Mission (where “joint” means “with the Department of Energy”), but we should keep up some amount of work on LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. Steinn has the lowdown, so you should go there for details.
I am happy to know that JDEM will go forward (if NASA listens to the panel, about which I’m less sure than Steinn seems to be); very happy that LISA gets at least some support, although if I were the European Space Agency I’d certainly be shopping around for more reliable partners; slightly bemused that little effort seemed to go into pushing a CMB probe; and very sad to see X-ray astronomy get the shaft, as Constellation-X and EXIST seem right out of the picture. We can only hope for happier times ahead.
National Academy: Dark Energy First, Maybe LISA Second Read More »
Thomas Benton, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, describes the process by which the Teaching Company produces its recorded college-level courses for popular consumption:
[L]ecturers are chosen on the basis of “teaching awards, published evaluations of professors, newspaper write-ups of the best teachers on campus, and other sources.” Selected professors are invited to give a sample lecture, which is then reviewed by the company’s regular customers. The most favored professors are brought to a special studio near Washington, where their lecture series is recorded and filmed.
It all sounds rather exciting, like the academic equivalent of being discovered in a coffee shop by a Hollywood casting director.
Yes indeed! And there I was, last April, toiling away at Teaching Company World Headquarters in Chantilly, Virginia, to produce a set of lectures on cosmology and particle physics. These are now available as Dark Matter, Dark Energy: The Dark Side of the Universe, a series of 24 half-hour lectures aimed at anyone with a DVD player and a smidgen of curiosity about the natural world. In plenty of time for Christmas, I may add.
Even though the lectures are nominally about dark matter and dark energy, I used them as an excuse to cover lots of fun stuff about general relativity, particle physics within and beyond the Standard Model, and the early universe. Here is the lecture outline:
The Teaching Company does a great job with production, so there are plenty of riveting graphics along the way. The actual lectures are given in a tiny studio in front of just a couple of people, which is not my preferred mode of speaking; I much prefer to have a real audience that will laugh and furrow their brows in puzzlement, as appropriate. So I don’t think my delivery was as sprightly as it could have been, especially in the first couple of lectures when I was getting used to the process. But there’s always the content, I suppose. And I wear a variety of fetching jackets and ties throughout the lectures, so in addition to deep insights about the workings of the universe, you also get a fashion show.
If cosmology isn’t your thing, the Teaching Company has an impressive array of courses on all sorts of stuff, from ancient history to modern jazz. It’s been getting good reviews, such as a recent Wall Street Journal article that refers to we lecturers as “reputable and often quite talented,” which I think is good. As Benton goes on to say:
Even as more and more people find higher education financially out of reach, or impractical to continue beyond early adulthood, recorded lectures — combined with the increasing availability of online lecture content and Web resources like the Wikipedia and countless blogs — are bringing on the Golden Age of the autodidact. I can’t help thinking that Diderot would approve, and I wish academe would do more to encourage such activities.
I’m sure Diderot would indeed approve, if he could just figure out how to work the remote on the DVD player.