source: http://io9.com/5887189/10-science-policies-i-wish-the-government-would-institute

There’s been a lot of talk recently about how science is defined and who does it best. I don’t much care to follow that, because it makes me stomp around my room shouting at the walls, and that’s a waste of time. I’d rather discuss science in a way that makes other people shout at the walls. So here are the ten things I would enforce, in the science department, if I ran a country. Any country at all.

10. Creationism is Only Discussed Publicly if it Involves a Randomly Selected Creation Story

This goes for all debates, articles, and talking heads on TV news shows. Anyone can talk about teaching Creationism as a scientific theory or advocate for it. The catch would be that, before they go into the debate, the city hall meeting, or the tv show, they would head to a computer, press a button, and one of the many creation stories would pop up on screen for them to use. So on any given day, or television set, you would see people advocate for teaching kids that the world was created by Odin and the human race emerged from between his toes, or that the Titans are trapped in Tartarus and the human race was created when Gaea the Earth banged Uranus the Sky, and so on. Not only would it add a great deal of variety and novelty to the debate, it would neatly separate out those who think Creationism has scientific merit and those who just want to teach their own religion.

9. Companies That Do Health Research on Their Own Products Must Disclose the Results to the Government

Hi tobacco companies! Hi! Companies do internal studies on their own products all the time. They use what they learn to find better ways to market their substance, and better areas of research. From time to time, though, those studies seem to indicate something sinister. Obviously, companies can’t be forced to outright publish their results or their hard-earned data might be used by their competitors. It seems, though, that someone needs to be watching. And that someone watching, if they see something really troubling, needs to then turn the study over to the actual public.

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8. Every Study That Uses Public Funds is Published Publicly

This is as much to help scientists as to help everyone else. A lot of public money is spent on a lot of scientific studies. Those studies, if they are judged (often by people who volunteer their time) to be worthy of publication, are published in journals far less widely read than the people who do the work, or the people who need the work, would like. Scientific journal subscriptions can be massively expensive, and a barrier to people having the scientific information they, kind of, paid for.

7. Scientists Must Come Up With A Different Word for “Theory” When Used in a Scientific Sense

Look, it’s obvious that people simply can’t handle this one. Oh, they’re okay with gravity. Some start taking issue with relativity. And then? Then we get into other theories and people start saying, “Well, well, you know, that’s just like, uh, your opinion, man.” No. No it is not. I like the way ‘theory’ trips off the tongue, and I like, generally, when scientific terminology has everyday applications as well, because it lends richness to the language of both the scientific and the everyday. But this one’s caused enough grief. Just make up a word and use that.

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6. The Government Shall Always Be Building One “City of the Future”

Every few years in a magazine, or every time Disney builds a new theme park, people start showing off a ‘City of the Future.’ It’s stylish and minimalist, sometimes with innovative new public transportation systems, sometimes with extraordinary vertical farms, sometimes with inspiring or insane cooperative ways to power the city, and always with building that look like soaring groups of white wings. None of those cities actually happened, did they? And why? Because no one built them. America has a growing population that has to live somewhere. It’s time to just build one. Pick a place and really do it right. It could be a boon to research and a goad for other cities to modernize. If nothing else, it will make for a fascinating documentary in a few decades.

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candide94:

Language

Appreciate that languages change over time; that they are in a constant flux; that there is no Platonic Form of (or “Queen’s”) English. All you have to do is watch Shakespeare:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGEbCemKatY

Appreciate that different languages express thoughts in different ways – to this end, learn a second language, absorb its grammar, it will open your ears. Appreciate that even in globalized world, language is an important marker of identity for people. Google the Chomskyan Revolution in Linguistics and read Stephen Pinker on the subject:

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Instinct-Science-Mind-Penguin/dp/0140175296/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1305496452&sr=8-2

Finally, see my post on the dangers of Linguistic Determinism

 http://candide94.tumblr.com/post/5458315948/to-be-or-not-to-be

 

Science

By science I do not mean scientific knowledge* but the scientific method. It’s our best tool for making sense of the world. Observation, the experiment, Occam’s Razor, Popper’s falsification.

(*Chemistry. Biology. Physics. Maths. All wonderful. But they have enough people defending their camps. Personally, I’d argue no one should leave school with no knowledge of Newton. But, I decided I’d stick to one scientific idea and that one was gonna be evolution)

Here’s a concise and clear step by step guide to researching scientifically:

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_scientific_method.shtml

Evolutionary Biology

I don’t mean Darwin and the Beagle. I mean Fisher, Haldane, Mayr – a decent grasp of population genetics is a must. Plus google Gould and his “punctuated equilibrium” for the controversies. Appreciate that Natural Selection and Evolution are two distinct things. Skip the God Delusion and read Dawkins’ books on biology – the man’s enthusiasm shines through. Finally, if you decide to click on any of my links, make it this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_evolutionary_synthesis

 

Maps

Picture a map of the world in your head – know where countries are in relation to one another. This is a biggie: maps are fun, while away an afternoon just flicking through an atlas. Learn where exactly your latest holiday destination actually is. Pick up any fantasy novel and appreciate the effort that’s gone into making the maps – the story is written into the hills. My advice, draw your own maps and realize what a great tool for art and expression cartography can be. Check this guy out – tis an astonishing feat of the imagination:

http://www.zompist.com/virtuver.htm

  

‘Current Affairs’

This is a word I detest. My advice is: either read a daily newspaper or spend 15mins a day reading analysis on a news website. You can get the actual info of the headlines but its the analysis what counts. For a daily dose: Guardian, Independent, Herald (in print or online) and Newsnight on BBC2 at 10.30pm. For a weekly dose: the Economist magazine. Moreover, I’d advise getting to grips with A) Economics: Keynesianism, Monetarism, what a recession actually is, what interest rates do; and B) Politics: learn the spectrum, what the parties stand for, appreciate what different governments and ideologies hold sway in the world.

And If you want your own voice heard: http://www.opendemocracy.net/

 

Human History

Not the school subject with its evidence, analysis and sources, important though that be. Instead, make sure you have a general overview in your mind, a historical consciousness, of what happened when and where. Of who conqured whom. A grand sweep of the past. Maps help:

http://www.worldology.com/Europe/europe_history_lg.htm

It’s astonishing how many people believe the Aztecs and the Romans were contemporaneous.

Also, find out about the biggest of Why? of history: what made the West and the Rest. What made Europe overtake everyone else and then conquer them. Jared Diamond is the best and most rigorous if you want answers:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Guns-Germs-Steel-history-everybody/dp/0099302780/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305499063&sr=8-1-spell

Above all, know that America didn’t used to have white people living there and that Jesus did in fact not speak English!*

(*he spoke Aramaic)

 

Biological Anthropology

This is the real “humanities” subject. Learn the order in which the Homos come. Research the debates as to the origins of art, language, culture, etc.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prehistory-Mind-Origins-Religion-Science/dp/075380204X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305499100&sr=1-1

Find out about Chimpanzees, our closes cousins. About human migrations.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Eden-Peopling-Stephen-Oppenheimer/dp/1841198943/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305499134&sr=1-1

Join this with your appreciation of Human History and ‘Current Affairs’ to create a three-pronged attempt at making sense of humanity through time. Use your map skills to evaluate humanity through space. Check out the transcendental values and customs, reported in all societies, and think that they might possibly be there cos of evolution – use to science to test this idea. Realize that the one thing we all have in common, thru space and time, is language.

Appreciate that we begin with language and end with language. It is this which makes us truly human.

Oh, and NEVER use Comic Sans…!

So this is my list from May 2011. To this I think I would now add a knowledge of Statistics and Probabliity. Also I have realized how ignorant so many people are of science so you can’t get away from Basic Physics and Chemistry - maybe the idea of the atom as Feynman said.

selchieproductions:

People always complain about French and how the way the French count makes no sense whatsoever.

Meet Gaelic, Gaelic laughs at you and gives you this;

1. Aon
2. Dà
3. Tri
4. Ceithir
5. Coig
6. Sia
7. Seachd
8. Ochd
9. Naoi
10. Deich

Looks easy enough, right? Yeah, that was the numbers and nothing else. Now if you want to count, you have to use these numbers instead;

1. A h-aon
2. A dhà
3. A tri
4. A ceithir
5. A coig
6. A sia
7. A seachd
8. A h-ochd
9. A naoi
10. A deich

Yes, when you count you need an article in front of the numbers as well. Lovely.

But wait, there is more!

When you count things, as in one horse, two children, three cats, lovely things happen.

1. Aon duine
2. Dhà dhuine
3. Tri daoine

I’ve used the word man in the example above. With one, nothing happens, with two, the noun is mutated but kept in its singular form and with every number from 3 and up, the plural of the noun is used.

And it gets better.

If you’re counting people, you need yet another set of numbers.

1. Aonar
2. Dithis
3. Triùir
4. Ceahtrar
5. Coignear
6. Sianar
7. Seachdnar
8. Ochdnar
9. Naonar
10. Deichnear

And guess what, if you put a word, such as woman, man or child after these words, it has to be in the genitive plural (and lenited when indefinite).

Does it stop there?

You wish.

From 10-19, you would think that Gaels would simply go ‘ten plus 1 etc’, but no, we go 1/2/3 etc + 10, only the ten we’re using here is not the ten from or normal numbers, but a new ten.

11. Aon deug
12. Dà dheug
13. Tri deug 
14. Ceithir deug

and so on until twenty, which is incredibly important when counting. 20, you see, is the basis of everything, meaning that if you want to say 30, you would have to say ‘10 on top of 20’. But don’t despair, from 40 onwards you only need to add 1-19 to the multiplied sum of 20 to get your number of choice.

20. Fichead
30. Deich air fhichead (10 on 20)
31. Aon deug air fhichead (1 + 10 on 20)
40. Dàicheach (2*20)
50. Dàichead is deich (2*20 and 10)
60. Tri fhichead (3*20)
70. Tri fhichead is deich (3*20 and 10)
80. Ceithir fhichead (4*20)
90. Ceithir fhichead is deich (4*20 and 10)
100. Còig fhichead OR ceud (5*20 OR 100)

Oh, and when you’re counting things, don’t think it’s as easy as going e.g. dàichead is aon deug brògan (51 shoes), oh god no!

When you’re counting, you need to remember that everything after twenty remains singular AND the noun is always inserted after the twenty and before the rest of the number, so that 51 shoes would be Dàichead bròg is aon deug.

Oh, and what about 11-39? Well, you guessed it, there’s yet another rule to be remembered. Let’s stick with the shoe, which is a feminine noun and see what happens.

Well, when counting you take the first number, i.e. aon etc and add the noun after it; if it’s feminine, it has to be lenited and if the noun is lenited, then deug has to be lenited as well, leaving us with something like this;

31 shoes. Aon bhròg dheug air fhichead.
14 shoes. Ceithir brògan deug.
12 shoes. Dà bhròig deug.

Oh, and why yes, we do have cardinal numbers (first, second etc) as well.

1. A’ chiad
2. An dàrna
3. An treas
4. An ceathramh
5. An coigeamh
6. An siathamh
7. An seachdamh
8. A h-ochdamh
9. An naoitheamh
10. An deicheamh

And, if you went thu Gaidhlig Medium Education, forget learning the tried and tested method of counting used by our ancestors since the time of Adam.* Instead you have to use a bizarre decimal based system no one else understands. So:

30 - trichead, or trithead

31 - trichead ‘s a h-aon

32 - trichead ‘s a dha

etc

40 - ceathrad

41 - ceathrad ‘s a h-aon

etc

50 - caogad

60 - siathad, or seasgad

70 - seachdad

80 - ochdad

90 - naoithead, or naochad, or if you’re from Lewis, NUNG-GUTTD

…

[*Gaidhlig is, after all, the language of Eden**]

[**I have been told this, by a learned man, in all seriousness. There are people in Lewis who believe the Garden of Eden was on Barvas Moor]

…

On another note, have you heard of the theory to explain why some languages use decimal and others a twenty-based system? Obviously counting in tens is explained by the fact we have ten fingers. But, apparently, speaking a langauge that uses 20s correlates with living in warmer climes. The theory says that counting in twenties arose from the fact that when u were done with counting fingers, you could easily turn to toes as it was so warm you weren’t wearing shows. No one told this to the Gaels tho…

Einstein is famous for claiming imagination matters more than mathematics – indeed, he saw himself as only a mediocre mathematician. He seems to be saying that not everything reducible to mathematical analysis is important; and, in fact, that many far more significant aspects of our lives resist elucidation by maths.

Physicists have long been awed by maths’ power to describe and explain the universe. Newton (and Leibnitz’s) discovery of the calculus began this love-affair – differential equations transformed scientists into seers, able to predict future changes in physical systems. Nowadays, in their quest for a theory of everything, physicists would strongly disagree with Einstein’s remark – theirs is the ultimate formula, which will one day encapsulate the universe.

But, as his statement shows, Einstein was different. First, his discovery of relativity, as significant as Newton’s mechanics, was a work of the imagination. He visualized himself riding a beam of light – and from this image, he built a theory. It is a thought-process more poetic than mathematical. Second, Einstein knew mathematics and physics were bounded – he refused the presidency of Israel because he saw himself as no good at human problems. The conflict in the Holy Land will take a different kind of genius to solve it.

Einstein, then, seems to dismiss counting in physics in favour of imagining. By the same token, in biology, Linnaeus was a stamp-collector, a categorizer who liked to count, while Darwin dreamt up natural selection by imagining millions of years of competition between organisms in a changing environment. Until Darwin came along, biologists could only gather data and observe. His was a flash of insight, which came not from measuring the beaks of finches, but from comparing them, and imagining their daily life in their habitat.

Nonetheless, maths has undoubtedly played a huge part in developing evolutionary theory. Game theory especially (e.g. ‘tit for tat’) has helped scientists model nature with maths, shedding light on its secrets. Yet there may well be a complexity ceiling whereby the maths of the models becomes more complicated than the system! This could well limit the role of maths in ecology and economics, due to the millions of the agents involved in these systems, leaving us with only our intuitions to go on.

But the power of maths stems from its ability to overcome these intuitions. Newton’s mechanics defeats people’s instinct that widening the radius will slow down a conical pendulum. Probability theory helps us escape the gambler’s fallacy that after four heads we are certainly due a tail. Statistics makes it clear that the fact men tend on average to be better at maths than women doesn’t mean a woman can never win a Nobel Prize for physics.

So is Einstein wrong? Mathematics illuminates our world, saves us from the shadows on the cave wall. But he is right to say that it cannot explain everything. The theory of everything will allow us to make sense of every possible wavelength of sound in every possible order, yet it will be unable to tell us why I like ACDC and you like Mozart. Matters of taste are not mathematical – what makes us happy is not mathematical. Hence, if happiness be deemed important, as it should, not everything important can be counted. And, moreover, to most people in the world, in terms of their own wellbeing, the Theory of Everything really isn’t all that important.

My 844-page Neuroscience textbook came today:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Neuroscience-Exploring-Mark-F-Bear/dp/0781760038/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314464759&sr=8-1

The diagrams are works of art in themselves.

The brain boggles when it realizes that it is doing the realizing…

The brain is the most complex thing in the universe. Why? Because of a curious reflexivity whereby it can store the entire universe as a representation within itself. I’ll let Amy Farrah Fowler of the Big Bang Theory explain -

Sheldon: I brought Amy here to show her some of the work I’m doing.

Amy: It’s very impressive, for theoretical work.

Sheldon: Do I detect a hint of condescension?

Amy: I’m sorry, was I being too subtle? I meant compared to the real-world applications of neurobiology, theoretical physics is, what’s the word I’m looking for? Hmm, cute.

Leonard and Howard together: Oooh!

Sheldon: Are you suggesting the work of a neurobiologist like Babinski could ever rise to the significance of a physicist like Clarke-Maxwell or Dirac?

Amy: I’m stating it outright. Babinski eats Dirac for breakfast and defecates Clarke-Maxwell.

Sheldon: You take that back.

Amy: Absolutely not. My colleagues and I are mapping the neurological substrates that subserve global information processing, which is required for all cognitive reasoning, including scientific inquiry, making my research ipso facto prior in the ordo cognoscendi. That means it’s better than his research, and by extension, of course, yours.

Leonard: I’m sorry, I’m-I’m still trying to work on the defecating Clark Maxwell, so…

Sheldon: Excuse me, but a grand unified theory, insofar as it explains everything, will ipso facto explain neurobiology.

Amy: Yes, but if I’m successful, I will be able to map and reproduce your thought processes in deriving a grand unified theory, and therefore, subsume your conclusions under my paradigm.

Sheldon: That’s the rankest psychologism, and was conclusively revealed as hogwash by Gottlob Frege in the 1890s!

Amy: We appear to have reached an impasse.

Sheldon: I agree. I move our relationship terminate immediately.

Amy: Seconded.

Sheldon: There being no objections…

All: No, uh-uh.

Sheldon: The motion carries. Good day, Amy Farrah Fowler.

Amy: Good day, Sheldon Cooper.