David Linden

An new interview with neuroscientist David J. Linden provides some physiological context and grounding for reconsidering and thinking anew about what it means to be human.

From the Point of Inquiry introduction:

Click here for the complete Point of Inquiry introduction and links to the interview and the iTunes subscription page for P.O.I.

David Linden’s The Accidental Mind provides more evidence for the essential role and function of narrativity or, in Linden’s words, the “always-on narrative creation system in the left cortex” in cultural evolution — especially in relation to myth, religion, scientific methodology, and the arts in general.

Taking into account the physiological can only further our understanding of how myths, religions, scientific theories, and aesthetic values have changed and evolved in the past and what directions and forms they might take in the future.

Steven Pinker

from the TED.com introduction:

“Steven Pinker’s books have been like bombs tossed into the eternal nature-versus-nurture debate. Pinker asserts that not only are human minds predisposed to certain kinds of learning, such as language, but that from birth our minds — the patterns in which our brain cells fire — predispose us each to think and behave differently.

His deep studies of language have led him to insights into the way that humans form thoughts and engage our world. He argues that humans have evolved to share a faculty for language, the same way a spider evolved to spin a web. We aren’t born with “blank slates” to be shaped entirely by our parents and environment, he argues in books including The Language Instinct; How the Mind Works; and The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.”

Click here to go to TED.com for more about Steven Pinker.

David Linden’s The Accidental Mind provides more evidence for the essential role and function of narrativity or, in Linden’s words, the “always-on narrative creation system in the left cortex” in cultural evolution — especially in relation to myth, religion, scientific methodology, and the arts in general.

Taking into account the physiological can only further our understanding of how myths, religions, scientific theories, and aesthetic values have changed and evolved in the past and what directions and forms they might take in the future.

Kurt Gödel and Werner Heisenberg each described limits to certainty — Gödel in mathematics and Heisenberg in quantum physics. But those limits appear illusory in the context of more inclusive meta-narratives: complementarity in physics and Gödel-mapping in information theory. Adopting a narrative stance allows us to think through or transcend the proposed limits.

Kurt Gödel

This inclusive, transcendence-inducing capacity of narrativity would seem to render narrative somehow qualitatively different, unique — somehow superior in relation to other forms of discourse.

Werner Heisenberg

from Reuters News, July 31, 2008:

A mechanical brass calculator used by the ancient Greeks to predict solar and lunar eclipses was probably also used to set the dates for the first Olympic games, researchers said on Wednesday.

The Antikythera Mechanism was retrieved from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901, an example of the technological prowess of the ancient Greeks.

This is to me truly amazing and makes me wonder if technology (especially technology used to store and control electricity) might have developed centuries sooner than it did. What took so long? Mythological or magical thinking leading to the imprisonment, torture, or execution of free thinking trouble-makers? Probably.

Click here to read the article.

Below are before and after pictures of the Antikythera Mechanism; click to enlarge.

Michael Shermer

In his recent Scientific American article, Michael Shermer brings out some facts that may explain why and how untested stories—theories in search of an hypothesis, if you will—can trump scientific reasoning. I think that some of the facts about brain functioning that Shermer discusses also provide an insight into possible reasons for why the conflict between science and religion and other mythic types of thinking has persisted for so many centuries and appears set to persist for many centuries into the future.

Here is a quote from the article; you can read more via the link that follows;

We have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives (believing there is a connection between A and B when there is not) are usually harmless, whereas false negatives (believing there is no connection between A and B when there is) may take you out of the gene pool. Our brains are belief engines that employ association learning to seek and find patterns. Superstition and belief in magic are millions of years old, whereas science, with its methods of controlling for intervening variables to circumvent false positives, is only a few hundred years old. So it is that any medical huckster promising that A will cure B has only to advertise a handful of successful anecdotes in the form of testimonials.

Here is the link to the original article:

How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results: Scientific American

And light years to go before I sleep
And light years to go before I sleep

Here’s a wormhole to Virgin Galactic’s website.

From the introduction to the June 27, 2008 Point of Inquiry podcast.

P. Z. Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris and the author of Pharyngula, the most heavily-trafficked science blog online.

In this discussion with D. J. Grothe, P. Z. Myers details his expulsion from a screening of Expelled, Ben Stein’s documentary which claims that the scientific community is limiting academic freedom by not allowing Intelligent Design to be taught or discussed in the schools. He explains the background of how he and other scientists were invited to appear in the film under false pretenses, and what his response has been. He addresses “focus groups” and other marketing methods for finding the best way to communicate science to the public. Calling himself part of the “radical fringe,” he elaborates on his view that leading science organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement for Science and the National Academies of Science are “playing a shell game” on the public when it comes to teaching the compatibility of science with religion, arguing instead that there is a direct link between science education and religious skepticism. And he also shares his thoughts about the future of the atheist and rationalist movement in the United States.

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What is marvelous, amazing, about nature is that it was here before us and will be here long after we are gone. In the meanwhile we sit around the campfire and entertain ourselves with stories.

The following selections from a recent popular book on cosmology, Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang by Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok, would make for good reading at a campsite under a dark, star-filled desert night sky:

Cosmology, the study of the origin and evolution of the universe, has some unique limitations that call for a high degree of caution. Scientists cannot perform direct experiments on the universe, and they cannot travel back in time. The best they can do is gather indirect information about the history of the universe through painstaking observations of distant objects that emitted their light a long time ago and try to piece together a logical account. But the evidence is uneven, with highly detailed information about some epochs and little or no information about others. Even if one story fits all the available evidence well, there is always the possibility that another story might fit just as well, or better (7-8).

The history of the universe can be compared to a play in which the actors–matter and radiation, stars and galaxies–dance across the cosmic stage according to a script set by the laws of physics. The challenge for the cosmologist is to figure out the story line after arriving at the show 14 billion years too late, long past the crucial opening scenes (18).