Here is a link to my last post for Discover. It is a kind of summation of the themes I was working on there.
So now to the future.
My hats off to all the bloggers out there who can post 3 or 4 times a week. I think I may be a crusty old-timer in this new medium so I will be posting here a couple of times a week on themes from the book as well as a broader set of topics which run ashore of the human search for the True and the Real. These will include:
Science and Religion - the Good, the Bad and the Future
Science and the Human Prospect - how to best deploy science in the service of a just and sustainable culture.
Topics in Cosmology (woopie!)
Cool new stuff in astrobiology, planet and star formation
Stuff on the Foundations of Science (physics in particular but hey biology can be pretty weird too)
Topics in the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics - the endless debate about what QM really tells us.
The study of Consciousness (I got pulled deep into this via my bloggingheads debate and am now lost in how cool the topic is)
So thare you go. Hopefully the mucking around will be useful. So many wonderful topics, so many other day-to-day urgencies that get in the way (sigh).
Tomorrow's topic: Francisco Varela and Phenomenal Promise
Posts
The Great Pant Rip Episode of 2012
12 years ago
Adam, I like your list of topics. To add to your list may I suggest
ReplyDelete1) Emergentism and explanatory gaps
2) Evolution and the human animal - we are somewhere in the middle of evolution, not the end-point and it is no longer just biological.
Good choices. Emergentism is something I have been encountering again after first reading some papers in graduate school. Human evolution and origins are both topics I covered a little in the book and now have a serious jones for. Of particular interest is the relation between physical and cultural evolution. For example how the development of physical characteristics for speech led to more brain development which led to the development of more sophisticated social strutures which looped back to more speech etc. etc.
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