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Feb 17, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 11:9:55
“Galileo's Credo”: http://www.thenation.com/article/166261/galileos-credo (The Nation 2-14-12)
The publication of two recent biographies of Galileo, by John Heilbron and David Wootton, coincided with the 400th anniversary of the publication of Starry Messenger (1610), the treatise in which Galileo reported the astronomical observations he had made with the instrument not yet called the telescope. Heilbron, a distinguished historian of physics and mathematics, has spent many years studying the relations between science and religion, including how the Roman Catholic Church stimulated and materially supported a research program of Catholic astronomy. Wootton has previously written on the history of atheism and unbelief, and about Galileo's controversial Venetian friend Paolo Sarpi-a theologian and tireless critic of the papacy. In Venice there is a statue of Fra Paolo in Campo Santa Fosca commemorating his survival of a botched assassination attempt in October 1607. The cutthroats were sheltered and paid by Rome, yet Sarpi continued to defend freedom of thought and belief, both in conversation and in print, and to discuss science with Galileo. In Heilbron's account, Galileo is a versatile connoisseur and critic; in Wootton's, he is all but a modern scientist without faith.
Feb 16, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 9:14:19
The occult obsessions of Britain's greatest scientist Sir Isaac Newton (UK Daily Mail 2-16-12)
He laid the foundations of classical physics and is considered to be one of the greatest scientists of all time.
But Sir Isaac Newton was also deeply interested in the occult and applied a scientific approach to the study of scripture and Jewish mysticism.
Now Israel's national library, which contains a vast trove of Newton's esoteric writings, has digitised his occult collection and posted it online.
Jan 26, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 15:3:21
Freud: the last great Enlightenment thinker (Prospect 12-14-11)
Freud's ideas are today not simply rejected as false. They are repudiated as being dangerous or immoral; the “gloomy mythology” of warring instincts is condemned as a kind of slander on the species, the fundamental nobility of which it is sacrilege to deny. To be sure, righteous indignation has informed the response to Freud's thought from the beginning. But its new strength helps explain one of the more remarkable features of intellectual life at the start of the 21st century, a time that in its own eyes is more enlightened than any other: the intense unpopularity of Freud, the last great Enlightenment thinker.
Jan 25, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 14:27:59
A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond (NY Times 1-19-12)
IN 1905, at age 55, Sir William Osler, the most influential physician of his era, decided to retire from the medical faculty of Johns Hopkins. In a farewell speech, Osler talked about the link between age and accomplishment: The “effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of 25 and 40—these 15 golden years of plenty.”
In comparison, he noted, “men above 40 years of age” are useless. As for those over 60, there would be an “incalculable benefit” in “commercial, political and professional life, if, as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.”
Jan 17, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 8:53:12
The cyborgs are coming! Living brains implanted with electronic chips to replace 'faulty' parts (UK Daily Mail 1-17-12)
Faulty parts of living brains have been replaced by electronic chips, in an astonishing and controversial scientific breakthrough.
It's a move that has been anticipated many times in science fiction, with creatures such as The Terminator, a 'cyborg' hybrid of flesh and machinery.
But now, researchers at Tel Aviv University have successfully created circuits that can replace motor functions - such as blinking - and implanted them into brains.
By David Brown | Posted at 8:45:14
“What if humans could be made twice as intelligent?”: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45998325/ns/technology_and_science-science/ (MSNBC 1-14-12)
According to Earl Hunt, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington and president of the International Society for Intelligence Research, approximately one person in 10 billion would have an IQ of 200. With a current world population of 7 billion, there may or may not be one such person alive today, and in any case, his or her identity is unknown. However, the 17th-century genius Isaac Newton, discoverer of gravity, calculus and more, is sometimes estimated to have had an IQ of 200 (though he never took an IQ test).
Using him as an archetype, what if we were all a bunch of Newtons? Would the world be much more advanced than it is today?
Jan 10, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 14:45:30
Animal Studies Cross Campus to Lecture Hall (NY Times 1-2-12)
This spring, freshmen at Harvard can take “Human, Animals and Cyborgs.” Last year Dartmouth offered “Animals and Women in Western Literature: Nags, Bitches and Shrews.” New York University offers “Animals, People and Those in Between.”
The courses are part of the growing, but still undefined, field of animal studies. So far, according to Marc Bekoff, an emeritus professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, the field includes “anything that has to do with the way humans and animals interact.” Art, literature, sociology, anthropology, film, theater, philosophy, religion—there are animals in all of them.
Jan 4, 2012
By David Brown | Posted at 10:51:6
Scientists List 2011's Most Fascinating Discoveries (Live Science 12-28-11)
Sometimes the science news that grabs headlines isn't the same news that piques the interest of working scientists. As part of our year-end round-up, LiveScience asked researchers to tell us what they considered the most interesting science stories of 2011 and why. Here's what they wrote back
By David Brown | Posted at 10:22:28
The lost city of Cahokia: Archaeologists uncover Native Americans' sprawling metropolis under St Louis (UK Daily Mail 1-4-12)
Mr Lawler wrote: 'A millennium ago, this strategic spot along the Mississippi River was an affluent neighbourhood of Native Americans, set amid the largest concentration of people and monumental architecture north of what is now Mexico.
'Back then, hundreds of well-thatched rectangular houses, carefully aligned along the cardinal directions, stood here, overshadowed by dozens of enormous earthen mounds flanked by large ceremonial plazas.
'Cahokia proper was the only pre-Columbian city north of the Rio Grande, and it was large even by European and Mesoamerican standards of the day, drawing immigrants from hundreds of kilometres around to live, work, and participate in mass ceremonies.'
By David Brown | Posted at 10:7:44
Patients at risk after scientists withhold test results from clinical trials of new medicines (UK Daily Mail 1-4-12)
Missing data from clinical trials could endanger patients, health experts have warned.
The British Medical Journal has raised concern that some test results go unreported and are deliberately hidden, enabling pharmaceutical firms to make unfounded claims.
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