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  1. <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><rss xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:openSearch="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/" xmlns:blogger="http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008" xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" xmlns:gd="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005" xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0" version="2.0"><channel><atom:id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767</atom:id><lastBuildDate>Thu, 09 May 2024 07:57:51 +0000</lastBuildDate><category>philosophy of science</category><category>history of science</category><category>drug discovery</category><category>history of physics</category><category>Nobel Prize</category><category>chemistry</category><category>books</category><category>book review</category><category>nuclear weapons</category><category>physics</category><category>evolution</category><category>science</category><category>drug design</category><category>history of chemistry</category><category>molecular 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science</category><category>world peace</category><category>ß2 AR</category><category>∆G</category><category>∆S</category><title>The Curious Wavefunction</title><description>Musings on science, history, philosophy and literature</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/</link><managingEditor>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</managingEditor><generator>Blogger</generator><openSearch:totalResults>1114</openSearch:totalResults><openSearch:startIndex>1</openSearch:startIndex><openSearch:itemsPerPage>25</openSearch:itemsPerPage><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-4028211449234594032</guid><pubDate>Mon, 29 Apr 2024 21:44:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2024-04-29T16:39:09.834-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">books</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Daniel Dennett</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">evolution</category><title>Daniel Dennett (1942-2024)</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgjoEIlrP8KVyUw_08ugHzyjQDYq_IIYrxLapzR3YsYr0SqEBlyy7kUBin0GzeCA8UoOV6UCW6vhhfuqEkXRtmwQZihDs_dKWgHSSqwYcABPy_mywBp8q_F0auTGjTgDK5aI-4jafKAWTfrcZTx5AVVjfhRLMIL40UYPhRFiqhqhjDpil5icsiMMA&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;430&quot; data-original-width=&quot;713&quot; height=&quot;213&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgjoEIlrP8KVyUw_08ugHzyjQDYq_IIYrxLapzR3YsYr0SqEBlyy7kUBin0GzeCA8UoOV6UCW6vhhfuqEkXRtmwQZihDs_dKWgHSSqwYcABPy_mywBp8q_F0auTGjTgDK5aI-4jafKAWTfrcZTx5AVVjfhRLMIL40UYPhRFiqhqhjDpil5icsiMMA=w352-h213&quot; width=&quot;352&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For a long time there&#39;s been a kind of Cold War with a slow moving front between philosophers and scientists, especially physicists. The scientists accuse the philosophers of being as useful to the theory and practice of science as &quot;ornithologists are to birds&quot;, as a popular saying goes. The philosophers in turn emphasize to the scientists that their disciplines, especially in the 20th and 21st centuries, are so complex and abstract that they cannot be understood without the input of philosophy.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;It is in the light of this debate, especially, that the death of Daniel Dennett hit so hard. Unlike most philosophers, Dennett was someone who tried to seriously grapple with the actual&amp;nbsp;&lt;i&gt;facts&lt;/i&gt; of science - in his case, evolutionary biology and neuroscience - as opposed to the fevered armchair speculation of philosophy. These facts were on full display in the many phenomenal books he wrote, of which my favorites are &quot;Darwin&#39;s Dangerous Idea&quot;, &quot;Breaking the Spell&quot; and &quot;From Bacteria to Bach and Back&quot;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Dennett&#39;s writing was wonderful and brilliant - extremely witty, confident, bold, even stridently so. He was one of only a handful of writers who regularly elicited moments of &quot;Aha!&quot; in my mind. More than almost anyone else from his generation he was unafraid of taking on bold ideas, particularly ones which would make readers uncomfortable. Whether he was arguing that consciousness is a kind of useful delusion in &quot;Consciousness Explained&quot; or exhorting readers to take the scientific study of religion seriously, as in &quot;Breaking the Spell&quot;, Dennett was always provocative. I do not remember a single time when I did not come away from a piece of Dennett&#39;s writing without ideas and questions swirling around in my head.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;This was true irrespective of whether I agreed with him or not, and there was certainly enough in his work for spirited disagreement. But this is something that needs to be pointed out especially today when so many of us are being asked, explicitly or implicitly, to pick sides, to eschew shades of gray, to personify the &quot;with us or against us&quot; ethos. Dennett took his opponents&#39; arguments seriously, before politely demolishing them. Even when he mocked shoddy thinking - and there was no dearth of that kind of incisive analysis in his writings - he did so after careful consideration of their positions. That quality is on full display in &quot;Breaking the Spell&quot; in which he takes on religious proponents with zeal and certainly, but also with careful analysis.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;It was Dennett&#39;s critical take on religion that led him to be pegged as one of the four &quot;horsemen&quot; of the New Atheism movement, along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Part of what made him a member of that group was his sheer delight at the wonders of natural (as opposed to supernatural) evolution by natural selection. In fact, one of the most delightful and brilliant things he wrote showcasing the centrality of a mindless but highly creative process giving the illusion of intelligence was the following from &quot;From Bacteria to Bach and Back&quot;:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjxgAZHj-3bfjW_U629399zcxHZ4iQTyXy0LF7IUUwHu9Oqp3kVRaEw4bnIIAascPKsthVsS6A-eM-PlnjPsRa2RrHugCB_OJo-qdWk8LCB38xsso1gqJj40fNdWV_oTCghdwws7jQKb_AqzkBfDxsNC2DKZ6HC6ZV57U75Ph4-VGhOOFlduf8SOQ&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;514&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1008&quot; height=&quot;241&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjxgAZHj-3bfjW_U629399zcxHZ4iQTyXy0LF7IUUwHu9Oqp3kVRaEw4bnIIAascPKsthVsS6A-eM-PlnjPsRa2RrHugCB_OJo-qdWk8LCB38xsso1gqJj40fNdWV_oTCghdwws7jQKb_AqzkBfDxsNC2DKZ6HC6ZV57U75Ph4-VGhOOFlduf8SOQ=w473-h241&quot; width=&quot;473&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I find that last sentence to be cleverness exemplified. But given his vast oeuvre of writings, I never thought membership in the brotherhood of the horsemen to be a particularly significant part of Dennett&#39;s intellectual identity, and from what I hear, neither did he. Instead it was just one among many facets of a life devoted to reason, understanding and debate. His books were packed with so many things apart from atheism that it would be a disservice to primarily identify him with that movement.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;When I heard about Dennett&#39;s death I was about to spend some quality reading time in a coffee shop. I picked up &quot;Breaking the Spell&quot; and spent the next two hours engaging with that classic Dennettsian blend of provocativeness, wit and wisdom. At the end, just like when I had read his works before, I felt invigorated, as if I had just had a first-class workout in a mental gym. And as before I felt like a slight shift had taken place in my consciousness, my understanding of the world and myself.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The core of Dan Dennett&#39;s identity was devoted to teaching us to question our deepest, most cherished beliefs and to encourage critical thinking, no matter where it led us. In the process he made us think and feel provoked, delighted and yes, uncomfortable. Because through discomfort, whether physical or mental, comes enlightenment.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2024/04/daniel-dennett-1942-2024.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgjoEIlrP8KVyUw_08ugHzyjQDYq_IIYrxLapzR3YsYr0SqEBlyy7kUBin0GzeCA8UoOV6UCW6vhhfuqEkXRtmwQZihDs_dKWgHSSqwYcABPy_mywBp8q_F0auTGjTgDK5aI-4jafKAWTfrcZTx5AVVjfhRLMIL40UYPhRFiqhqhjDpil5icsiMMA=s72-w352-h213-c" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-783500023408374514</guid><pubDate>Tue, 09 Apr 2024 17:27:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2024-04-09T10:33:08.631-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">history of physics</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">nuclear energy</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">samuel glasstone</category><title>Simple, atypical but neat estimation of energy released in fission</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, &amp;quot;system-ui&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;.SFNSText-Regular&amp;quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot; style=&quot;text-align: start;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Simple but neat atypical calculation of energy released in fission (from Glasstone and Sesonske, “Nuclear Reactor Engineering”). It’s a nice illustration of guesstimating based on empirical data.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&quot;The amount of energy released when a nucleus undergoes fission can be calculated by determining the net decrease in mass, from the known isotopic masses, and utilizing the Einstein mass-energy relationship. A simple, but instructive although less accurate, alternative procedure is the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;a style=&quot;color: #385898; cursor: pointer;&quot; tabindex=&quot;-1&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;following. Disregarding the neutrons involved, since they have a negligible effect on the present calculation, the fission reaction may be represented (approximately) by &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Uranium-235 -› Fission product A + Fission product B + Energy.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;In uranium-235, the mean binding energy per nucleon is about 7.6 Mev, so that it is possible to write&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;92 p + 143 n -&amp;gt; Uranium-235 + (235 X 7.6) Mev&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;where p and n represent protons and neutrons, respectively.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The mass numbers of the two fission product nuclei are mostly in the range of roughly 95 to 140, where the binding energy per nucleon is, as in tin-120, for example, about 8.5 Mev; hence, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;92 p + 143 n -› Fission products A and B + (235 X 8.5) Mev&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Upon subtracting the two binding energy expressions, the result is&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Uranium-235 -&amp;gt; Fission products + &lt;b&gt;210 Mev.&lt;/b&gt;&quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2024/04/simple-atypical-but-neat-estimation-of.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-8905632697766779236</guid><pubDate>Sun, 31 Mar 2024 04:08:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2024-03-30T21:08:30.150-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">book review</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">books</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">George Kennan</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">history</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Russia</category><title>Book Review: &quot;Into Siberia: George Kennan&#39;s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia&quot;, by Gregory Wallance</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhEwjRoUKyJl_YtG70XAp3XeJYEWN9tKbrBQk3fYtkhkwCZG07C7TrfzSMoPKNAeWAT1f1T-ge_ivire2-WiS9_fDuFOnIYQaCVzHzJBIoYNZXuD5B20r4xgputwD5Fw_zGLswvZpCt6Z-zYWn1BAAeLgsB_C47-j1np1Ph2a_LUMLwkSlJk_WGNA&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;2048&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1536&quot; height=&quot;400&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhEwjRoUKyJl_YtG70XAp3XeJYEWN9tKbrBQk3fYtkhkwCZG07C7TrfzSMoPKNAeWAT1f1T-ge_ivire2-WiS9_fDuFOnIYQaCVzHzJBIoYNZXuD5B20r4xgputwD5Fw_zGLswvZpCt6Z-zYWn1BAAeLgsB_C47-j1np1Ph2a_LUMLwkSlJk_WGNA=w300-h400&quot; width=&quot;300&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;It may seem hard to believe now, but in 1865, by the time the Civil War ended, Russia was America&#39;s best friend in Europe. The two countries enjoyed a healthy diplomatic relationship, buoyed by trade and a mutual distrust of Great Britain; Russia was the only European nation to support the Union during the war. America sent formal condolences when Tsar Alexander was assassinated; Russia did the same when Lincoln was shot.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;By 1891 it was all over. American &lt;a style=&quot;color: #385898; cursor: pointer;&quot; tabindex=&quot;-1&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;mistrust of Russia was so pronounced that all diplomatic relations had cooled. It has never been the same since. What changed? Many factors played a role, but a significant one was the publication in 1891 of a now forgotten book by the journalist, writer and explorer George Kennan. Titled &quot;Siberia and the Exile System&quot;, it documented in vivid detail the brutal, cruel, unsparing system of Siberia exile, inflicted by Tsarist Russia on its people for the most trivial misdemeanors.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&quot;Into Siberia&quot; is the vivid account by Gregory Wallance of the Ohio-born and raised George Kennan&#39;s two visits to Russia, first in the 1860s as an employee of Western Union with the mammoth goal of laying a trans-Siberian telegraph line that would connect Europe to America, and then again as a journalist formally authorized by the Tsarist regime to document the exile system in Siberia. Ironically, the Russian monarchy and government thought that Kennan&#39;s coverage of the system would invoke sympathy in the rest of the world for its need; little did they know that they were letting a fox in the henhouse.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Wallance excels at two things in particular; firstly at describing the almost unbelievably stark and brutal Russian landscape, populated by neck-deep snow, fatal temperatures well below -40 degrees and fierce indigenous tribes who had hardly had any contact with their more modern countrymen, and second at describing Kennan&#39;s epic journey into this wasteland. He is also exceedingly good at charting the stunningly inhumane treatment of prisoners and their families at the hands of the Tsar and his officials; the book opens with an unforgettable description of a pillar at the border of Siberia at which men and women cried uncontrollably, because the journey past this pillar was almost certainly one from which they would not return.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;It&#39;s hard to not be thoroughly inspired by Kennan, a sickly young man who, determined to prove that he was strong of body and character, undertook the almost impossibly dangerous and exotic journey in 1865 to Siberia. His letters home remind one of other brave explorers staying cheerful in the face of danger or death - Shackleton, Cherry-Garrard, Lewis and Clark. He seems like the epitome of &quot;what does not kill you makes you stronger&quot;, deliberately laughing in the face of the most infernal of natural and human elements, braving bears, deadly storms, an endless land without direction, fierce tribes and meagre to no supplies of essential food and clothing. He had not just genuine curiosity but genuine empathy for the savage-looking tribes he met, learning their ways and their dialects and working together with them to survive, learn, rescue trapped companions. The first book he wrote after coming back, &quot;Tent Life in Siberia&quot;, was an unprecedented account written by a sharp-eyed journalist with a gift for evocative prose which taught Americans about Russia.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&quot;Siberia and the Exile System&quot; was equally vivid. From the pillar at the Siberian border to the innermost reaches of the labor camps, Kennan was given free access by the Tsar and his regime to the prisoners and their families. What Kennan saw horrified him: men with barely anything on their backs marched for hundreds of miles - Bataan death march style - in the most inclement weather, until many of them died on the way; their wives facing an impossible choice of remaining behind and starving to death or accompanying their husbands into conditions so stark that they would starve anyway or would be raped or have to sell themselves into prostitution. The bodies of children in frozen embraces with their parents were not an uncommon sight. Perhaps worst of all were the reasons why these prisoners were condemned to hell in the first place. Most prisoners were condemned to Siberia on trumped up charges based on the flimsiest criticism of the Tsarist regime. Freedom of speech, Kennan saw, was a complete joke in Russia (sounds familiar?).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Everything that we read later about the gulag system had their origin in those horrific exile camps set up by a cruel, indifferent, repressive Russian regime. When Kennan wrote his book, Americans and Russians alike were appalled, albeit for different reasons. For the first time, Americans had their eyes opened to the reality of a country which they had considered their friend. For Russians the book was shocking for the level of detail and the convincing arguments with which Kennan exposed the crudities of their so-called civilization. Reading Kennan&#39;s account 50 years later was the best education that his namesake who was the more famous Kennan - the American diplomat George Kennan of containment fame - could get. In his memoirs and writings, the younger Kennan often credits his lesser-known ancestor for grounding him in the realities of the Soviet Union.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;After Kennan published &quot;Siberia and the Exile System&quot;, Russian-American relations permanently deteriorated. After the murder of Tsar Nicholas, Lenin effectively set up the state as an outlaw state, defined in opposition to the capitalist countries. It is of course impossible to escape a feeling of deja vu reading Kennan&#39;s account. There seems to be an almost unbroken thread from Alexander through Nicholas, Lenin, Stalin and all the way to Putin in the repression exerted by Russian strongmen and their henchmen on their own people. Reading this story of a 139-year-old tragedy, one can be forgiven for feeling pessimistic about the future of Russian democracy and human rights. While the internet and new modes of communication have alerted the rest of the world to Russian leaders&#39; excess, it is time for another hardy soul of George Kennan&#39;s gifts, resilience and unbounded concern for human welfare to again lay bare the soul of this vast, inscrutable land.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2024/03/book-review-into-siberia-george-kennans.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhEwjRoUKyJl_YtG70XAp3XeJYEWN9tKbrBQk3fYtkhkwCZG07C7TrfzSMoPKNAeWAT1f1T-ge_ivire2-WiS9_fDuFOnIYQaCVzHzJBIoYNZXuD5B20r4xgputwD5Fw_zGLswvZpCt6Z-zYWn1BAAeLgsB_C47-j1np1Ph2a_LUMLwkSlJk_WGNA=s72-w300-h400-c" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-4767972732519712076</guid><pubDate>Mon, 18 Mar 2024 16:53:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2024-03-18T09:53:15.865-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">chemistry</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">history of science</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Jack Dunitz</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">science</category><title>Jack Dunitz (1923-2021): Chemist And Writer Extraordinaire</title><description>&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjtM0xPtc3ZZFv_GEnr1ITY-Kkm5F2fnxWiPaMm-oyIHOKGuw-ibtO_xZ2yJnpnA-zpyFBfhtn7VAiE4xJY7DIXj69xqNFQ6TP8dU2dD-yFB6i9YWgsU1-dNmtyZOebmWAn0kK2DebGsy1PmLMiEinR3268iARBdDBJOKu-L6OerJTXvVwzAZdfg&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;605&quot; data-original-width=&quot;768&quot; height=&quot;240&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjtM0xPtc3ZZFv_GEnr1ITY-Kkm5F2fnxWiPaMm-oyIHOKGuw-ibtO_xZ2yJnpnA-zpyFBfhtn7VAiE4xJY7DIXj69xqNFQ6TP8dU2dD-yFB6i9YWgsU1-dNmtyZOebmWAn0kK2DebGsy1PmLMiEinR3268iARBdDBJOKu-L6OerJTXvVwzAZdfg&quot; width=&quot;305&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Every once in a while there is a person of consummate achievement in a field, a person who while widely known to workers in that field is virtually unknown outside it and whose achievements should be known much better. One such person in the field of chemistry was Jack Dunitz. Over his long life of 98 years Dunitz inspired chemists across varied branches of chemistry. Many of his papers inspired me when I was in college and graduate school, and if the mark of a good scientific paper is that you find yourself regularly quoting it without even realizing it, then Dunitz’s papers have few rivals.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Two rare qualities in particular made Dunitz stand out: simple thinking that extended across chemistry, and clarity of prose. He was the master of the semi-quantitative argument. Most scientists, especially in this day and age, are specialists who rarely venture outside their narrow areas of expertise. And it is even rarer to find scientists – in any field – who wrote with the clarity that Dunitz did. When he was later asked in an&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://ojs.chimia.ch/chimia/article/download/2011_440/4335/15020&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;interview&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;what led to his fondness for exceptionally clear prose, his answer was simple: “I was always interested in literature, and therefore in clear expression.” Which is as good a case for coupling scientific with literary training as I can think of.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Dunitz who was born in Glasgow and got his PhD there in 1947 had both the talent and the good fortune to have been trained by three of the best chemists and crystallographers of the 20th century: Linus Pauling, Dorothy Hodgkin and Leopold Ruzicka, all Nobel Laureates. In my personal opinion Dunitz himself could have easily qualified for a kind of lifetime achievement Nobel himself. While being a generalist, Dunitz’s speciality was the science and art of x-ray crystallography, and few could match his acumen in the application of this tool to structural chemistry.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;X-ray crystallography was developed by physicists in the first half of the 20th century to peer inside molecules, the way x-rays and MRI peer inside the human body. Just like those two techniques tell us the locations and structures of various organs in our body, x-ray crystallography tells us where the atoms in a molecule are exactly located, what the lengths of the various bonds are and what the stoichiometry – the exact composition of a complex mixture – is. If you had to point out one technique that has truly revolutionized chemistry, laying the entire chemical universe ranging from rocks and minerals to proteins and nucleic acids bare, it is x-ray crystallography. Dozens of Nobel Prizes for figuring out the structures of increasingly complex molecules, starting with table salt and progressing on through DNA, hemoglobin and the entire ribosome – the multi-component assembly that synthesizes proteins in living organisms – have been awarded through the decades.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;One such Nobel Prize was given to James Watson and Francis Crick for figuring out the structure of DNA, a feat made possible by the world-class x-ray crystallography on DNA done by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling. Dunitz who got his PhD in Glasgow and was working in Oxford in 1953 saw history in the making as he and a colleague drove up to Cambridge to see the ball-and-stick model of DNA using metal plates and tubes that Watson and Crick had constructed. In fact after making a suggestion to Pauling who had figured out the fundamental structure of proteins at Caltech, Dunitz might have contributed an immortal alphabet to the language of life:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;While my own work at Caltech had nothing to do with protein structure, Pauling used to talk to me occasionally about his models and what one could learn from them. In his lecture, he had talked about spirals. In conversation a few days later, I told him that for me the word “spiral” referred to a curve in a plane. As his polypeptide coils were three-dimensional figures, I suggested they were better described as “helices.” Pauling’s erudition did not stop at the natural sciences. He answered, quite correctly, that the words “spiral” and “helix” are practically synonymous and can be used almost interchangeably, but he thanked me for my suggestion because he preferred “helix” and declared that he would always use it henceforth. Perhaps he felt that by calling his structure a helix there would be less risk of confusion with the various other models that had been proposed earlier. In their 1950 short preliminary communication, Pauling and Corey wrote exclusively about spirals, but in the series of papers published the following year the spiral had already given way to the helix. There was no going back. A few years later we had the DNA double helix, not the DNA double spiral.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;After seeing the power of crystallography to crack open the very structure of life, Dunitz spent the rest of his career in that field at the famed ETH in Zurich, capping an incredible 64-year-long career with his death in 2021; his last paper, written when he was 96, was appropriately a critique of certain chemical terminology and titled “&lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30408322/&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;Bad Language&lt;/a&gt;“.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Dunitz was truly unusual in ranging across the broad spectrum of chemical disciplines. Organic, inorganic and biological chemistry all came within his purview, aided by the powerful interdisciplinary generality of the tool of x-ray crystallography which he wielded with aplomb. Over his long career he published more than 350 scientific papers and penned several foundational books. It would be impossible to review his entire corpus, so I now review three of his papers which made a striking impression on me, which I have cited and read many times over the years, and which I think showcase his striking originality in marshaling simple models and arguments across a variety of fields.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;figure class=&quot;wp-caption alignright&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; display: inline; float: right; margin: 14px 0px 27px 27px; max-width: 100%; width: 278px;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;Hydrogen Bonding&quot; class=&quot;&quot; decoding=&quot;async&quot; height=&quot;182&quot; src=&quot;https://ib.bioninja.com.au/img/H%20bonding%20mobile.jpg&quot; style=&quot;box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%;&quot; width=&quot;278&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;figcaption class=&quot;wp-caption-text&quot; style=&quot;box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.5675em; margin: 14px 0px; padding: 0px 2.77699px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;em style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Hydrogen bonds in water molecules: the hydrogens of one molecule form fleeting interactions with the oxygens of the other (Image credit: Bioninja)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/figcaption&gt;&lt;/figure&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Perhaps my favorite paper of Dunitz’s is a 1997&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/chem.19970030115&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;titled “Organic Fluorine Hardly Ever Accepts Hydrogen Bonds”. Some explication is needed here. Hydrogen bonds are weak, fleeting bonds between hydrogen and other atoms which, while weak, are absolutely critical in keeping all kinds of molecules including proteins and nucleic acids together. In fact, water would not be a liquid without hydrogen bonds and life as we know it would not exist without them. It is their very transient nature that make hydrogen bonds “on-demand” bonds; they can be formed when needed and rapidly dissolved when no longer needed. Linus Pauling, often considered the most important chemist of the 20th century, had underscored the importance of hydrogen bonds in the 1930s in his seminal book, “The Nature of the Chemical Bond”. Typically hydrogen bonds are formed between hydrogen and what are called ‘electronegative’ atoms, ones like oxygen and nitrogen. Electronegative atoms have a particular affinity for electrons, attracting the electron clouds of atoms like hydrogen; the most common hydrogen bonds therefore are ones between oxygen and nitrogen.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;There is another element on the periodic table, a most unusual one, which should be even more powerful at forming hydrogen bonds, except that it isn’t. That element is fluorine. Fluorine is in fact the most electronegative element on the periodic table, which is why we would expect it to form hydrogen bonds with furious abandon. But while inorganic fluorine found in compounds like hydrofluoric acid – a diabolically corrosive and&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://chemistry.harvard.edu/files/chemistry/files/safe_use_of_hf_0.pdf&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;dangerous&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;substance – does form these hydrogen bonds,&amp;nbsp;&lt;em style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;organic&lt;/em&gt;&amp;nbsp;fluorine (fluorine bonded to carbon, that is) found in compounds like polytetrafluoroethylene – PTFE or Teflon – does not. In fact it is precisely fluorine’s reluctance to form hydrogen bonds with water in Teflon that makes it such an effective coating for non-stick cookware.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;This behavior of fluorine is what the facts indicate, but the facts in this case don’t line up well with chemical theory which expects hydrogen bonding tendencies to increase with electronegativity. Fortunately there is a big database of “solved” crystal structures of organic molecules that includes molecules containing fluorine; it was only waiting for the right person to come along to interpret it. Dunitz’s paper was perhaps the first one to exhaustively analyze this database and then come up with a convincing chemical explanation for the counterintuitive observation that fluorine hardly ever forms hydrogen bonds. He looked at almost 6000 structures with fluorine and determined that hardly a dozen form hydrogen bonds between the fluorine and other hydrogen atoms. The details of why fluorine is reluctant to form hydrogen bonds is beyond the scope of this post (and explained in a further&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cbic.200300801&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;by Dunitz), but the qualitative explanation is simple: imagine that an electronegative element like oxygen has “hands” that pull others toward it. The problem with fluorine is that it is so electronegative that it simply keeps its hands to itself.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Even today I keep meeting chemists who, based on what seems like entirely sound chemical logic, expect fluorine to form hydrogen bonds. They recommend that one make drug molecules with fluorine that would enable them to stick better to and form hydrogen bonds with proteins that they want to block, proteins that have gone haywire in cancer, for instance. It is then that I find myself waving Dunitz’s paper – sometimes literally since I still “believe” in paper copies – with the fervent enthusiasm of a preacher.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The second paper from Dunitz that I often highlight shows Dunitz’s masterful application of simple, semi-quantitative arguments to addressing an important question. One of the most important things that scientists want to know when thinking about biological molecules like proteins is how they interact with water. All biological molecules are swimming in a vast sea of water; in fact water not just ubiquitously surrounds these molecules but is also an intimate participant in their behavior. Knowing the thermodynamics of this system – the strength of binding in particular between proteins and other molecules and water – is critical in engineering better drugs and proteins. Two factors are key in quantifying this binding: enthalpy and entropy. Roughly speaking, enthalpy concerns itself with the strength of the interactions between two molecules and entropy concerns itself with how loosely or tightly they bind, whether they stay in place or whether they jiggle around. While enthalpy is often easy to estimate, entropy is not.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;eaa-wrapper eaa_post_between_content eaa_desktop&quot; id=&quot;eaa_post_between_content&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 0px -20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;eaa-ad  &quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;figure aria-describedby=&quot;caption-attachment-251037&quot; class=&quot;wp-caption alignright&quot; id=&quot;attachment_251037&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; display: inline; float: right; margin: 14px 0px 27px 27px; max-width: 100%; width: 275px;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;wp-image-251037&quot; decoding=&quot;async&quot; height=&quot;350&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 275px) 100vw, 275px&quot; src=&quot;https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-17-at-2.56.05%E2%80%AFPM-804x1024.png&quot; srcset=&quot;https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-17-at-2.56.05 PM-804x1024.png 804w, https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-17-at-2.56.05 PM-283x360.png 283w, https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-17-at-2.56.05 PM-768x978.png 768w, https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-17-at-2.56.05 PM-236x300.png 236w, https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-17-at-2.56.05 PM.png 1002w&quot; style=&quot;box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 100%;&quot; width=&quot;275&quot; /&gt;&lt;figcaption class=&quot;wp-caption-text&quot; id=&quot;caption-attachment-251037&quot; style=&quot;box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.5675em; margin: 14px 0px; padding: 0px 2.74858px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;em style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Image credit: Science&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/figcaption&gt;&lt;/figure&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;In 1994, Dunitz wrote a one-page&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.264.5159.670&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;in the journal ‘Science’ titled “The Entropic Cost of Bound Water Molecules in Crystals and Biomolecules” in which, using the simplest of data and arguments, he came up with a reliable number quantifying the entropy of a single water molecule binding to biological molecules. One of his strengths here which is also showcased in the fluorine paper is his ability to look at old data and come up with new explanations. He starts by looking at data on&amp;nbsp;&lt;em style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;hydrates&lt;/em&gt;, simple salts like zinc sulfate which are surrounded by water molecules. He also looks at old data on the thermodynamics of the melting and freezing of ice which would also gives estimates on the entropy of water molecules; he points out something telling which is now a far more serious problem in our specialized world, namely that&amp;nbsp;&lt;em style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;“this information has been available for a long time, but science has become so specialized that its practitioners in one branch are all too often unaware of what is common knowledge in another.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;How is thermodynamic information on ice, liquid water and hydrate salts relevant to what goes on with proteins? Because, as Dunitz astutely observes, this thermodynamics sets an&amp;nbsp;&lt;em style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;upper limit&lt;/em&gt;&amp;nbsp;on the entropy question for water around proteins: salts bind water molecules most tightly, so surely proteins would bind them more weakly? Using these arguments, Dunitz arrives at a value for the entropy of a bound water molecule which is now commonly used in calculations. The paper demonstrates characteristic Dunitzian strengths which should be widely emulated: scrupulous attention to existing data, including data going back decades, simple back-of-the-envelope calculations, and proof by analogy.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The last paper among Dunitz’s great corpus of works is a paper which exemplifies a particularly fine example of speculative as well as interdisciplinary thinking. It questioned a fact which everyone knows but no one really thinks about: Why is body temperature for animals like humans who can maintain their temperature about 36 degrees celsius, and why is it maintained across such a huge range of organisms? As we know, unless they are sick, homeothermic animals like ourselves are very efficient at regulating body heat. An explanation provided by some previous scientists pointed to the specific heat of water. Specific heat is the amount of heat required to change the temperature of a substance by one degree. Water has a very large specific heat compared to many other substances, which is just one of many of its remarkably unusual properties. But this specific heat happens to reach its lowest value at about 36 degrees celsius, just the optimum temperature mentioned above. The previous explanation said that water at this temperature was least resistant to changes in its temperature and quickly dissipated whatever heat was added to or subtracted from it.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Dunitz and his co-author, Steven Benner, found this argument “appealing, but not correct” in their response,&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nature.com/articles/324418c0&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;published&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;in the journal Nature in 1986. First, they identify what seems to be an obvious but overlooked problem: the smaller the specific heat, the easier it will be to cause fluctuations in temperature, making it harder for an organism to survive, not easier. They also realize that the previous argument only applies to pure water; water in living organisms is a complex aqueous mixture consisting of water, biomolecules like proteins and salts. So what could be responsible for the precise temperature regulation? Dunitz and Benner don’t pretend to know the answer, but they focus on two of water’s unique properties in particular, its hydrophobicity (or tendency to repel greasy, oil-like substances) and its viscosity. As temperature rises, water becomes less viscous and therefore facilitates chemical reactions in it. However, hydrophobicity also lessens with temperature, which could lead to unwanted mingling between water and greasy substances. Dunitz and Benner speculate that a temperature of 36 degrees is a Goldilocks-like zone, one where the viscosity is low enough for chemical reactions to speedily occur but hydrophobicity is high enough to prevent greasy substances from dissolving too easily.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;To me this paper is a superb example of informed speculation, not pretending to solve a problem but offering a tantalizing potential solution and gently but firmly demolishing an existing explanation. It is widely believed that life anywhere in the universe would have to be based on water. Dunitz and Brenner’s analysis of the temperature dependence of water’s unique viscosity and hydrophobicity provides another window on why this substance is so unique for supporting life.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;These three papers may serve to exemplify the range of Dunitz’s contributions, and they are but a slice of his vast corpus. In&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.93.25.14260&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;another analysis&lt;/a&gt;, he used a purely mathematical argument about the geometry of a pentagon to predict the experimentally-verified geometry of cyclopentane, a molecule with five carbon atoms arranged in a ring. His is a textbook name in many ways, none more so than in the eponymous “&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCrgi%E2%80%93Dunitz_angle&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;Bürgi-Dunitz angle&lt;/a&gt;” which describes the angle of attack of a reacting molecule and the precise geometric configuration of the reactants in an important class of organic reactions, one which has yielded great dividends of both academic and industrial interest.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; class=&quot; wp-image-251047 alignright&quot; decoding=&quot;async&quot; height=&quot;341&quot; loading=&quot;lazy&quot; sizes=&quot;(max-width: 256px) 100vw, 256px&quot; src=&quot;https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/IMG_4313-768x1024.jpeg&quot; srcset=&quot;https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/IMG_4313-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/IMG_4313-270x360.jpeg 270w, https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/IMG_4313-1152x1536.jpeg 1152w, https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/IMG_4313-1536x2048.jpeg 1536w, https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/IMG_4313-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/IMG_4313-scaled.jpeg 1920w&quot; style=&quot;box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; float: right; height: auto; margin: 14px 0px 14px 27px; max-width: 100%;&quot; width=&quot;256&quot; /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Apart from scientific papers spanning a remarkable variety of topics, Dunitz also wrote books that are considered foundational in the field. Perhaps my favorite book of his is written for laymen. “&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.com/Reflections-Symmetry-Chemistry-Edgar-Heilbronner/dp/3527284885&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;Reflections on Symmetry: In Chemistry…and Elsewhere&lt;/a&gt;“, written with his co-author Edgar Heilbronner, is a marvelous look at symmetry, perhaps the deepest quality of nature. Symmetry is absolutely fundamental not just for chemistry and biology but in the deepest reaches of physics, including quantum mechanics and particle physics. Dunitz and Heilbronner’s book is a romp through aspects of symmetry in fields as disparate as medieval mathematics, Islamic and modern art and of course, chemistry. It is a beautiful book, filled with illustrations and elegant arguments.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Jack Dunitz was one of those scientists who enrich everything they touch, across a wide range of domains, with insight, revelation and beauty. The simplicity and importance of his arguments, humility as a man and fearlessness in tackling disparate problems will be a candle that will keep lighting the minds of aspiring chemists and other scientists for eons to come.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjUalHAtdu9E4f3PDAZs8WGyKiaMUeqJeFh7xgxo4omeZ4rVdf27-sXAVCwKs_qXPOu9e8SEzNxbshqh5YrMGyGB_CjuKLTQf1VyO4noB1O6t6QbPiEr2XdKZ6MQlZuhcfw5TFwGKHR-u78g0aj9bqOXZbZc6TUirluO5xyLfkthSU2DL5ZLKbJfA&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1152&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1536&quot; height=&quot;480&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjUalHAtdu9E4f3PDAZs8WGyKiaMUeqJeFh7xgxo4omeZ4rVdf27-sXAVCwKs_qXPOu9e8SEzNxbshqh5YrMGyGB_CjuKLTQf1VyO4noB1O6t6QbPiEr2XdKZ6MQlZuhcfw5TFwGKHR-u78g0aj9bqOXZbZc6TUirluO5xyLfkthSU2DL5ZLKbJfA=w640-h480&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh2Z-gPh6BjB0ZxMZWHKIXqffpdl7KaEX8wIUh9agQbOpR_SPqW7S0ykit23ti6bOBzuHPKWGhtiJmg9X8FyMlhow3LsMq3lDFTtSKwWv4ymRdr1opokPHHg9xT7lqAUoDBUUu2kigt1WSxgafwhioNEWpnpBv8Hvphh0cc7otUhQPGoA6Lsoi8GA&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1152&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1536&quot; height=&quot;480&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh2Z-gPh6BjB0ZxMZWHKIXqffpdl7KaEX8wIUh9agQbOpR_SPqW7S0ykit23ti6bOBzuHPKWGhtiJmg9X8FyMlhow3LsMq3lDFTtSKwWv4ymRdr1opokPHHg9xT7lqAUoDBUUu2kigt1WSxgafwhioNEWpnpBv8Hvphh0cc7otUhQPGoA6Lsoi8GA=w640-h480&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2024/03/jack-dunitz-1923-2021-chemist-and.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjtM0xPtc3ZZFv_GEnr1ITY-Kkm5F2fnxWiPaMm-oyIHOKGuw-ibtO_xZ2yJnpnA-zpyFBfhtn7VAiE4xJY7DIXj69xqNFQ6TP8dU2dD-yFB6i9YWgsU1-dNmtyZOebmWAn0kK2DebGsy1PmLMiEinR3268iARBdDBJOKu-L6OerJTXvVwzAZdfg=s72-c" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-1309348863890575488</guid><pubDate>Sat, 20 Jan 2024 02:16:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2024-01-19T18:19:00.877-08:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">history of physics</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">history of science</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Niels Bohr</category><title>How Niels Bohr predicted Rydberg atoms</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgtKJ3-azVSQn92QJkvXYhj0gwVAB1BUif9EDLMHfZeV3j43kN-SRvzNJhc9BdjL58NdBaGjcSLRvyTArjANp1Z4Vg5A0OdODYDB5PKm2M-39uYu-_LhSf_YCxTOOyc2yVCnx-aWCrsNiv8d7C94DpX-e5ZQg10U-kYrLhWUXXWR6jY8yof1lNz2A&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;613&quot; data-original-width=&quot;936&quot; height=&quot;420&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgtKJ3-azVSQn92QJkvXYhj0gwVAB1BUif9EDLMHfZeV3j43kN-SRvzNJhc9BdjL58NdBaGjcSLRvyTArjANp1Z4Vg5A0OdODYDB5PKm2M-39uYu-_LhSf_YCxTOOyc2yVCnx-aWCrsNiv8d7C94DpX-e5ZQg10U-kYrLhWUXXWR6jY8yof1lNz2A=w640-h420&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3&quot; color=&quot;inherit&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space: inherit;&quot;&gt;In Niels Bohr&#39;s original 1913 formulation of the quantum atom, the Bohr radius r was proportional to n^2, n being the principal quantum number. Highly excited states would correspond to very large values of n and Bohr predicted these &quot;giant&quot; atoms would exist. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span color=&quot;inherit&quot; style=&quot;font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: inherit; white-space: inherit;&quot;&gt;Since the volume scales as r^3 or n^6, for n=33 you should see a &quot;hydrogenic&quot; atom a billion times larger than a ground state hydrogen atom. However, no spectral lines corresponding to such atoms were observed. So was Bohr&#39;s theory wrong?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span color=&quot;inherit&quot; style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: inherit; white-space: inherit;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span color=&quot;inherit&quot; style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: inherit; white-space: inherit;&quot;&gt;No! Bohr pointed out that unlike physicists, *astronomers* had observed faint spectral lines in the spectra or stars and nebulae, consistent with his theory. Because of the large proportion of gas and low density, he predicted such highly excited states would exist.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3&quot; color=&quot;inherit&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-family: verdana; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space: inherit;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3&quot; color=&quot;inherit&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-family: verdana; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space: inherit;&quot;&gt;Because of the extremely low densities, these excited states could live for as long as 1 second - a lifetime for an atom. In 1957, astronomers looking for electron-proton recombination in the interstellar medium serendipitously observed spectra from hydrogen atoms for n=110! &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span color=&quot;inherit&quot; style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: inherit; white-space: inherit;&quot;&gt;In the 1970s, after Bohr&#39;s death, the advent of tunable dye lasers finally made it possible to observe these excited states in the lab. Because of their long lifetimes and huge electric dipole moments, these atoms have potential applications in quantum computing.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span color=&quot;inherit&quot; style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: inherit; white-space: inherit;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span color=&quot;inherit&quot; style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: inherit; white-space: inherit;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi-iGJn2Q2bI5hLt4bA1Dl38rDEPijsNg7f993Oliru3MjL53yE2I7OL2U1bl-5JxHVQNV7tbqnV-fUGis2EuUuYvHnFp2njavZsCkpy89wJqEgG8nxZ5ZMXkCVHjq3LoiLwfH4GuIxcS4llyywoZ0iahs7eqyUBwE4B953TNctFS2zYEce-8Gvag&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1280&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1280&quot; height=&quot;400&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi-iGJn2Q2bI5hLt4bA1Dl38rDEPijsNg7f993Oliru3MjL53yE2I7OL2U1bl-5JxHVQNV7tbqnV-fUGis2EuUuYvHnFp2njavZsCkpy89wJqEgG8nxZ5ZMXkCVHjq3LoiLwfH4GuIxcS4llyywoZ0iahs7eqyUBwE4B953TNctFS2zYEce-8Gvag=w400-h400&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3&quot; color=&quot;inherit&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-family: verdana; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space: inherit;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3&quot; color=&quot;inherit&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-family: verdana; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space: inherit;&quot;&gt;These &quot;atoms&quot; are called Rydberg atoms because Johannes Rydberg had hypothesized about these large-quantum-number states in the 19th century. But Bohr provided a physical basis and an explanation, so they should really be called Rydberg-Bohr atoms at the least. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span color=&quot;inherit&quot; style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: inherit; white-space: inherit;&quot;&gt;Today, Rydberg atoms have diverse applications ranging from lasers to quantum computing to plasma physics to radio receivers for military applications. 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padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;a aria-describedby=&quot;id__3evn1v2b7xn&quot; aria-label=&quot;3:03 PM · Mar 23, 2023&quot; class=&quot;css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3 r-xoduu5 r-1q142lx r-1w6e6rj r-9aw3ui r-3s2u2q r-1loqt21&quot; href=&quot;https://twitter.com/curiouswavefn/status/1639025131069792257&quot; role=&quot;link&quot; style=&quot;background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #536471; cursor: pointer; display: inline-flex; flex-shrink: 0; flex-wrap: wrap; font: inherit; gap: 4px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-overflow: unset; white-space: nowrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;border-color: black; border-image: initial; font-size: 15px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;css-175oi2r&quot; style=&quot;align-items: stretch; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;css-175oi2r&quot; style=&quot;align-items: stretch; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;css-175oi2r r-1r5su4o&quot; style=&quot;align-items: stretch; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; font-size: 15px; list-style: none; margin: 16px 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;css-175oi2r r-k4xj1c r-18u37iz r-1wtj0ep&quot; style=&quot;align-items: start; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 0; justify-content: space-between; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;css-175oi2r r-1wbh5a2 r-1b7u577&quot; style=&quot;align-items: stretch; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 1; list-style: none; margin: 0px 12px 0px 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;css-175oi2r r-1d09ksm r-18u37iz r-1wbh5a2 r-1471scf&quot; style=&quot;align-items: baseline; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 1; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; z-index: 0;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;css-1rynq56 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-37j5jr r-a023e6 r-rjixqe r-16dba41&quot; dir=&quot;ltr&quot; style=&quot;background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #536471; display: inline; font-family: TwitterChirp, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: 20px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-overflow: unset; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;a aria-describedby=&quot;id__xiuezp4s39t&quot; aria-label=&quot;3:01 PM · Mar 23, 2023&quot; class=&quot;css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3 r-xoduu5 r-1q142lx r-1w6e6rj r-9aw3ui r-3s2u2q r-1loqt21&quot; href=&quot;https://twitter.com/curiouswavefn/status/1639024656727576576&quot; role=&quot;link&quot; style=&quot;background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #536471; cursor: pointer; display: inline-flex; flex-shrink: 0; flex-wrap: wrap; font: inherit; gap: 4px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-overflow: unset; white-space: nowrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2024/01/how-niels-bohr-predicted-rydberg-atoms.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgtKJ3-azVSQn92QJkvXYhj0gwVAB1BUif9EDLMHfZeV3j43kN-SRvzNJhc9BdjL58NdBaGjcSLRvyTArjANp1Z4Vg5A0OdODYDB5PKm2M-39uYu-_LhSf_YCxTOOyc2yVCnx-aWCrsNiv8d7C94DpX-e5ZQg10U-kYrLhWUXXWR6jY8yof1lNz2A=s72-w640-h420-c" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-8804039624922241592</guid><pubDate>Thu, 02 Nov 2023 21:12:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2023-11-02T14:13:44.256-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">history of science</category><title>Galton&#39;s &quot;Hereditary Genius&quot; (1871)</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHb97ySa_UWOo9XcCiceRYlPsuR1_yUpE87_SlQDv_shoTCFknmXbIu7PU-Qv76n-RDUyMD-71F2c6E59fgD9FA-R76qDQ-tMmIhxA58qtxwJVi_LvdCwiNEEqgIz3T1kNmlziPLv1t-DBGC76UI4DF6hFSN2xcr7VkmbQeugKOQa6rUp3OrVSYQ/s2048/123167591_10102910612381277_4458324826424124479_n.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHb97ySa_UWOo9XcCiceRYlPsuR1_yUpE87_SlQDv_shoTCFknmXbIu7PU-Qv76n-RDUyMD-71F2c6E59fgD9FA-R76qDQ-tMmIhxA58qtxwJVi_LvdCwiNEEqgIz3T1kNmlziPLv1t-DBGC76UI4DF6hFSN2xcr7VkmbQeugKOQa6rUp3OrVSYQ/s2048/123167591_10102910612381277_4458324826424124479_n.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLTTvVRVjzwE32o53wTLd-KsE3OYaw1zpKPztcn_IYAOZOWQjpJGuPeynSOja158Wqij-50utJrgaZ9N8ESfclnUOh1-gndyhiCmopAC7zmDSpq3-WhLcpwffkRBerOSOKcGyQpCDasgWdNCoTibkVOxl36DfeY6M4MV-gGBY7YSJbngrH-dru0Q/s2048/123187461_10102910612196647_1611586540660876063_n.jpg&quot; 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width=&quot;240&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWbD33YCpoWScGVoyAkzrIVYc_lAoGTthUU7rkRSFSAfu4J_EsNCv2vJB8U8oJWPlqxY2ziDt2sw6ek8C3TWXN1IFX80BE7xSLnGpl99qx4qrsOQlu4VvEHlXY4Ucmvo59txExQ_t9Fqt7T3WIKRF2P-ewwrziNikHhvWWk9wfhT25-Lk1_0bLpw/s2048/123244754_10102910612206627_3896704443108081502_n.jpg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;2048&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1536&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWbD33YCpoWScGVoyAkzrIVYc_lAoGTthUU7rkRSFSAfu4J_EsNCv2vJB8U8oJWPlqxY2ziDt2sw6ek8C3TWXN1IFX80BE7xSLnGpl99qx4qrsOQlu4VvEHlXY4Ucmvo59txExQ_t9Fqt7T3WIKRF2P-ewwrziNikHhvWWk9wfhT25-Lk1_0bLpw/s320/123244754_10102910612206627_3896704443108081502_n.jpg&quot; width=&quot;240&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;As someone who loved collecting vintage books, I was stoked to acquire a first American edition of Francis Galton&#39;s&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;pioneering book “Hereditary Genius” for the bizarrely low price of $25 - most copies in good condition like this one sell for an unaffordable few hundred dollars at the minimum. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;First published in 1869, “Hereditary Genius” is an important book in the history of science as well as a good example of how racist ideas are respectable in their own times. Galton was a statistician, geneticist and brilliant polymath who was one of the founders of statistics (among other ideas, he was the one who developed the concept of regression to the mean) and biometry or biological measurement. He was also Darwin’s cousin and was heavily influenced by Darwin’s ideas on survival of the fittest and natural selection. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;His book was the first to make a serious and fairly exhaustive case that intelligence is inherited and genetic. He made this case almost a quarter century before Gregor Mendel figured out the nature of genes. To do this Galton made a detailed survey of what he called “eminent men” (no women, although he acknowledges this deficiency) and traced their lineage through several generations, making the case that intelligence was preserved. The eminent men included men as diverse as scientists, poets, writers, “divines”, “oarsmen” and “wrestlers from the north country”.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The book is clearly written and argued and was hugely successful both in Europe and the United States. Darwin was smitten by it and wrote:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;“I have only read 50 pages of your book (to Judge), but I must exhale myself, else something will go wrong with my inside. I do not think I ever in all of my life read anything more interesting and original—and how well and clearly you put every point!&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;But the book was a double edged sword. While the hereditary nature of intelligence is now &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.104&quot;&gt;accepted&lt;/a&gt;, Galton ended up making the case for eugenics, social Darwinism and the superiority of certain races (the examples in Galton&#39;s book are all Caucasian), arguments that were unsurprising for the times he lived in. While today his book is considered clearly incomplete and flawed, because of its novelty, clarity and reputation of its author, it became a rallying cry for eugenicists and white supremacists especially in the United States who advocated the culling of “inferior stock” to preserve intelligent races, which in their view naturally meant the Anglo-Saxon race.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;An important and readable book, very much a product of its times, correct in certain fundamental ways but incorrect, incomplete and dangerous in others.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2023/11/galtons-hereditary-genius-1871.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLTTvVRVjzwE32o53wTLd-KsE3OYaw1zpKPztcn_IYAOZOWQjpJGuPeynSOja158Wqij-50utJrgaZ9N8ESfclnUOh1-gndyhiCmopAC7zmDSpq3-WhLcpwffkRBerOSOKcGyQpCDasgWdNCoTibkVOxl36DfeY6M4MV-gGBY7YSJbngrH-dru0Q/s72-c/123187461_10102910612196647_1611586540660876063_n.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-6709709839305853045</guid><pubDate>Wed, 25 Oct 2023 18:18:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2023-10-25T11:18:24.274-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">philosophy of science</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">religion</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">science</category><title>John Polkinghorne&#39;s &quot;Belief in God in an Age of Science&quot;</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;A book I have been enjoying recently is John Polkinghorne&#39;s &quot;Belief in God in an Age of Science.&quot; Polkinghorne who died recently was a noted theoretical physicist who was also a theologian. Unlike Polkinghorne I am an atheist, but he makes a good case for why religion, science, poetry, art, literature should all be welcomed as sources for truth about the universe and about human beings. A quote I particularly like from it:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;&quot;If we are seeking to serve the God of truth then we &lt;a style=&quot;color: #385898; cursor: pointer;&quot; tabindex=&quot;-1&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;should really welcome truth from whatever source it comes. We shouldn’t fear the truth. Some of it will be from science, obviously, but by no means all of it. It will sometimes be perplexing, how this bit of truth relates to that bit of truth; we know that within science itself often enough and we find it outside of science as well. The crucial thing is to be honest.”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I would quibble with the catch-all definition of truth in Polkinghorne&#39;s quote (scientific &quot;truth&quot; by its very nature is tentative) but otherwise agree. In my scientific career I have found this as well. Often Tolstoy or the Bhagavad Gita or Bach have taught me deep truths about human beings that I never saw in any physics or chemistry or mathematics textbook. The great thing about human life is its diversity. Science is the most important thing that enriches it, but it&#39;s not the only one. That&#39;s a good thing. These multiple sources of diversity should keep us busy for as long as there is a human species.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2023/10/john-polkinghornes-belief-in-god-in-age.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-4109080929905236000</guid><pubDate>Sat, 02 Sep 2023 21:58:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2023-09-02T17:54:32.977-07:00</atom:updated><title>Tolman, “The Principles of Statistical Mechanics, Chapter 1, Part 1</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Survey of classical mechanics: Generalized coordinates and momenta. Lagrangian equations. Derivation of Hamilton’s equations from Lagrangian. Poisson brackets. Hamilton as representing invariant E under time for conservative systems.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;“Pull quote”: Something simple and seemingly obvious but actually deep and foundational&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh18lkaqHb6v8YzdhM9kt2tO3f3BivaraWsQCebApOYaGZHDnJAdxuv16JxgwMZOSofYuVPJjtSVKfUEQpxbgYKVcPvrt23EOtXXAeQGYUlK87YTnnUs-zaV9yPrn6dqv4Tok_LtFpW7dthNdk9AT5Xoi0v_g8ysLWpTVhqpkhDZ5UE_5bZfgS_Nw/s3672/2A3F3E4B-1DAC-466A-8766-39CD086AB284.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1140&quot; data-original-width=&quot;3672&quot; height=&quot;192&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh18lkaqHb6v8YzdhM9kt2tO3f3BivaraWsQCebApOYaGZHDnJAdxuv16JxgwMZOSofYuVPJjtSVKfUEQpxbgYKVcPvrt23EOtXXAeQGYUlK87YTnnUs-zaV9yPrn6dqv4Tok_LtFpW7dthNdk9AT5Xoi0v_g8ysLWpTVhqpkhDZ5UE_5bZfgS_Nw/w619-h192/2A3F3E4B-1DAC-466A-8766-39CD086AB284.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;619&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Some notes (not checked for typos!)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlrKtU0EIcxQcBORUGEiO9mJ-BH1Af-2cyHz-QlAQujRelBl82P_8fSQQ8gVllOKAIPMmKvp_VUNnsyISn7Ndewp3j7sry8_3mA8_i_1-fwsG0w43C4uLynyXCECmojTWOs-AMfMIOfoSw_HY5ugUD8vYhxAQFImEmDYbo05_LLSyKiVhf4WMPFA/s4032/78574DA1-ED5B-4E88-8D48-F6FD6CBB2E4F.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;4032&quot; data-original-width=&quot;3024&quot; height=&quot;640&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlrKtU0EIcxQcBORUGEiO9mJ-BH1Af-2cyHz-QlAQujRelBl82P_8fSQQ8gVllOKAIPMmKvp_VUNnsyISn7Ndewp3j7sry8_3mA8_i_1-fwsG0w43C4uLynyXCECmojTWOs-AMfMIOfoSw_HY5ugUD8vYhxAQFImEmDYbo05_LLSyKiVhf4WMPFA/w480-h640/78574DA1-ED5B-4E88-8D48-F6FD6CBB2E4F.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;480&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOLY6j9beSUQJOscWTkMo8j5TRRi9NgNk40NYYa4kdrZ7g-QZ7bq5csMEd17tmKeRyMpltBqQTNLxZt6UhEwtXgf7MrNWYZ3QaDAPY60yso394zyORvwPnq3riUyWbTQdA7DMYHdszOFQjKRb8lNzFAHgG78xi0ljvyaQEf7RMo01ZKphPQeTV5A/s4032/E1B304CD-3A48-49DF-9FC5-3067295378F8.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;4032&quot; data-original-width=&quot;3024&quot; height=&quot;640&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOLY6j9beSUQJOscWTkMo8j5TRRi9NgNk40NYYa4kdrZ7g-QZ7bq5csMEd17tmKeRyMpltBqQTNLxZt6UhEwtXgf7MrNWYZ3QaDAPY60yso394zyORvwPnq3riUyWbTQdA7DMYHdszOFQjKRb8lNzFAHgG78xi0ljvyaQEf7RMo01ZKphPQeTV5A/w480-h640/E1B304CD-3A48-49DF-9FC5-3067295378F8.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;480&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu4CIj2dsolexlTnM8mA2Wv1JMFiov9QuomYRIWkF3t1uElkXT6K8a7n3PGC0ru8A9VuKmsNCWmSIkxeTP_g3Bk32N7afsskOtd6g5vZ80fRcFo0NfnBy9WnVh352yFT5XHYY3KNy3CVTPOXQw6xz4F-OJuYt9LBqXk7f6GBpXfn-mlNgnBxB69w/s4032/BE4B8265-7153-4AFD-B4AE-F4B2653D6AB4.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;4032&quot; data-original-width=&quot;3024&quot; height=&quot;640&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu4CIj2dsolexlTnM8mA2Wv1JMFiov9QuomYRIWkF3t1uElkXT6K8a7n3PGC0ru8A9VuKmsNCWmSIkxeTP_g3Bk32N7afsskOtd6g5vZ80fRcFo0NfnBy9WnVh352yFT5XHYY3KNy3CVTPOXQw6xz4F-OJuYt9LBqXk7f6GBpXfn-mlNgnBxB69w/w480-h640/BE4B8265-7153-4AFD-B4AE-F4B2653D6AB4.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;480&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2023/09/tolman-statistical-mechanics-chapter-1.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh18lkaqHb6v8YzdhM9kt2tO3f3BivaraWsQCebApOYaGZHDnJAdxuv16JxgwMZOSofYuVPJjtSVKfUEQpxbgYKVcPvrt23EOtXXAeQGYUlK87YTnnUs-zaV9yPrn6dqv4Tok_LtFpW7dthNdk9AT5Xoi0v_g8ysLWpTVhqpkhDZ5UE_5bZfgS_Nw/s72-w619-h192-c/2A3F3E4B-1DAC-466A-8766-39CD086AB284.jpeg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-6985599197547136759</guid><pubDate>Tue, 20 Jun 2023 05:06:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2023-06-19T22:06:59.770-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">books</category><title>100 Desert Island Books</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJfWCMwFE7lcBHFIAXBzOPN-KRtEuDYtfNrVaylIVmkv-wice_Iimn8ilgN2LAAHPET-pCMLAnX06kIJWLES8A_Tul8QbhbRCl867d7NkMLJmVff0c5R6Z3DuXVM_wOF7vVeUzBd4Zhx3EJwGT9tPdfcPRNqAVzfZY8qo5M-DrnbUdEVHF8yJ2-Q/s1600/168917.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1600&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1112&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJfWCMwFE7lcBHFIAXBzOPN-KRtEuDYtfNrVaylIVmkv-wice_Iimn8ilgN2LAAHPET-pCMLAnX06kIJWLES8A_Tul8QbhbRCl867d7NkMLJmVff0c5R6Z3DuXVM_wOF7vVeUzBd4Zhx3EJwGT9tPdfcPRNqAVzfZY8qo5M-DrnbUdEVHF8yJ2-Q/s320/168917.jpg&quot; width=&quot;222&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Finally got around to making that &quot;100 books I would want on a desert island&quot; list. Another title would be &quot;100 books that I consider essential reading for *my* life&quot;: thus, this is a personal selection. I don&#39;t claim to have this list cover the most important aspects of human life or the universe, nor do I expect &quot;famous&quot; books to be on this list (although some of them are). The list just reflects my personal traditional interests - history and philosophy of science has the most numbers, followed by science textbooks, general history, philosophy and theology and a tiny sliver of fiction (I started reading fiction seriously quite recently). One condition in listing these books was that I should have read them in their entirety: this is true of all of them except &quot;Gödel, Escher, Bach&quot; which I think I am going to keep soldiering through my whole life. I am very privileged to call some of the authors here my friends.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One common thread running through most of these books is that I discovered them early, when I was in high school, college and graduate school, in most cases in either the college or university library or the British Library which was a stone&#39;s throw from where I grew up. Early impressions are often the strongest, so I keep coming back to these volumes and they keep inspiring and instructing me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have thousands of books on my shelf and I always find it hard to give any away. There are many others I haven&#39;t listed here which I love, but if I actually had just these 100 (110 to be precise), I wouldn&#39;t be entirely depressed (just don&#39;t tell my significant other...).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE (INCLUDING BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Richard Rhodes - The Making of the Atomic Bomb&lt;br /&gt;Richard Rhodes - Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb&lt;br /&gt;Freeman Dyson - Disturbing the Universe&lt;br /&gt;Freeman Dyson - Infinite in All Directions&lt;br /&gt;George Dyson - Turing’s Cathedral&lt;br /&gt;George Dyson - Darwin Among the Machines&lt;br /&gt;Edward Wilson - Naturalist&lt;br /&gt;Edward Wilson - Consilience&lt;br /&gt;James Gleick - Chaos&lt;br /&gt;John Horgan - The End of Science&lt;br /&gt;Robert Serber - Peace and War&lt;br /&gt;Jeremy Bernstein - Hans Bethe: Prophet of Energy&lt;br /&gt;Silvan Schweber - In the Shadow of the Bomb&lt;br /&gt;Silvan Schweber - QED and the Men Who Made It&lt;br /&gt;David Kaiser - Drawing Theories Apart&lt;br /&gt;Kip Thorne - Black Holes and Time Warps&lt;br /&gt;Robert Kanigel - The Man Who Knew Infinity&lt;br /&gt;Robert Hoffman - The Man Who Loved Only Numbers&lt;br /&gt;Robert Crease and Charles Mann - The Second Creation&lt;br /&gt;Douglas Hofstadter - Gödel, Escher, Bach&lt;br /&gt;Alice Kimball-Smith and Charles Weiner - Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections&lt;br /&gt;Peter Galison - Image and Logic&lt;br /&gt;Emanuel Derman - My Life as a Quant&lt;br /&gt;Kameshwar Wali - Chandra&lt;br /&gt;John Gribbin - In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat&lt;br /&gt;John Casti - Paradigms Lost&lt;br /&gt;John Casti - The Cambridge Quintet&lt;br /&gt;John Casti - Gödel: A Life in Logic&lt;br /&gt;George Johnson - Strange Beauty&lt;br /&gt;Roger Penrose - The Emperor’s New Mind&lt;br /&gt;Roger Penrose - The Road to Reality&lt;br /&gt;Richard Dawkins - Climbing Mount Improbable&lt;br /&gt;Gerald Durrell - My Family and Other Animals&lt;br /&gt;Konrad Lorenz - King Solomon’s Ring&lt;br /&gt;Robert Laughlin - A Different Universe&lt;br /&gt;Horace Freeland Judson - The Eighth Day of Creation&lt;br /&gt;Peter Michelmore - The Swift Years: The Robert Oppenheimer Story&lt;br /&gt;Richard Feynman - Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman&lt;br /&gt;Stanislaw Ulam - Adventures of a Mathematician&lt;br /&gt;Laura Fermi - Atoms in the Family&lt;br /&gt;Werner Heisenberg - Physics and Philosophy&lt;br /&gt;Ronald Clark - Einstein&lt;br /&gt;Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate&lt;br /&gt;David Deutsch - The Beginning of Infinity&lt;br /&gt;Steven Weinberg - Dreams of a Final Theory&lt;br /&gt;J. Robert Oppenheimer - The Open Mind&lt;br /&gt;Stuart Kauffman - Reinventing the Sacred&lt;br /&gt;Barry Werth - The Billion Dollar Molecule&lt;br /&gt;Oliver Sacks - On the Move&lt;br /&gt;Carl Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World&lt;br /&gt;Max Perutz - I Wish I’d Made You Angry Earlier&lt;br /&gt;Jonathan Allday - Quarks, Leptons and the Big Bang&lt;br /&gt;Philip Ball - H2O: A Biography of Water&lt;br /&gt;Philip Ball - The Self-Made Tapestry&lt;br /&gt;Alan Lightman - Einstein’s Dreams&lt;br /&gt;Alan Lightman - The Accidental Universe&lt;br /&gt;Brown, Pais and Pippard - Twentieth Century Physics (3 volumes)&lt;br /&gt;Ed Regis - Who Got Einstein’s Office?&lt;br /&gt;C. P. Snow - The Physicists&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;TEXTBOOKS&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ira Levine - Quantum Chemistry&lt;br /&gt;Peter Atkins - Molecular Quantum Mechanics&lt;br /&gt;Lubert Stryer - Biochemistry&lt;br /&gt;Albert Lehninger - Biochemistry&lt;br /&gt;George Simmons - Introduction to Topology and Modern Analysis&lt;br /&gt;George Simmons - Differential Equations&lt;br /&gt;Richard Feynman - The Feynman Lectures on Physics&lt;br /&gt;David Griffiths - Introduction to Electrodynamics&lt;br /&gt;John Lee - Inorganic Chemistry&lt;br /&gt;Samuel Glasstone - Sourcebook on Atomic Energy&lt;br /&gt;Samuel Glasstone - Thermodynamics for Chemists&lt;br /&gt;Arthur Beiser - Concepts of Modern Physics&lt;br /&gt;Gautam Desiraju - The Weak Hydrogen Bond&lt;br /&gt;Linus Pauling - The Nature of the Chemical Bond&lt;br /&gt;Linus Pauling and Edward Bright Wilson - Introduction to Quantum Mechanics&lt;br /&gt;Clayden, Warren, Reeves and Wothers - Organic Chemistry&lt;br /&gt;Eric Anslyn and Dennis Dougherty - Modern Physical Organic Chemistry&lt;br /&gt;Wells, Wells and Huxley - The Science of Life&lt;br /&gt;Goodman and Gilman - The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics&lt;br /&gt;Jerry March - Advanced Organic Chemistry&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;HISTORY&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Barbara Tuchman - The Guns of August&lt;br /&gt;William Shirer - The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich&lt;br /&gt;James Swanson - Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer&lt;br /&gt;David McCullough - Truman&lt;br /&gt;James Scott - Against the Grain&lt;br /&gt;James McPherson - Battle Cry of Freedom&lt;br /&gt;Gordon Wood - Empire of Liberty&lt;br /&gt;John Barry - Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul&lt;br /&gt;Bernard Bailyn - The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution&lt;br /&gt;Robert Caro - The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Vols. 1-4)&lt;br /&gt;Rick Atkinson - An Army at Dawn&lt;br /&gt;Will Durant - Our Oriental Heritage&lt;br /&gt;Russell Shorto - The Island at the Center of the World&lt;br /&gt;Nick Bunker - An Empire on the Edge&lt;br /&gt;Brad Gregory - Rebel in the Ranks&lt;br /&gt;Cornelius Ryan - The Longest Day&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sam Harris - The End of Faith&lt;br /&gt;David Edmonds and John Eidinow - Wittgenstein&#39;s Poker&lt;br /&gt;Plato - The Republic&lt;br /&gt;Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic&lt;br /&gt;Isaiah Berlin - The Proper Study of Mankind&lt;br /&gt;Bertrand Russell - Unpopular Essays&lt;br /&gt;Bertrand Russell - Why I am Not a Christian&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;FICTION&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Vasily Grossman - Life and Fate&lt;br /&gt;Haruki Murakami - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running&lt;br /&gt;Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian&lt;br /&gt;Cormac McCarthy - The Road&lt;br /&gt;Isaac Asimov - Asimov’s Mysteries&lt;br /&gt;Cordwainer Smith - No, No, Not Rogov! (this is a single story but it is very striking in its vividness and poetry and made a deep impression)&lt;br /&gt;Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace&lt;br /&gt;Fyodor Dostoevsky - Notes from the Underground&lt;br /&gt;William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying&lt;br /&gt;H. G. Wells - The Time Machine&lt;br /&gt;Chekhov - Stories&lt;/span&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2023/06/100-desert-island-books.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJfWCMwFE7lcBHFIAXBzOPN-KRtEuDYtfNrVaylIVmkv-wice_Iimn8ilgN2LAAHPET-pCMLAnX06kIJWLES8A_Tul8QbhbRCl867d7NkMLJmVff0c5R6Z3DuXVM_wOF7vVeUzBd4Zhx3EJwGT9tPdfcPRNqAVzfZY8qo5M-DrnbUdEVHF8yJ2-Q/s72-c/168917.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>3</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-3078850887370674697</guid><pubDate>Tue, 16 May 2023 16:08:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2023-05-16T09:08:21.461-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">biology</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Freeman Dyson</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">history of science</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">John von Neumann</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Schrodinger</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">sydney brenner</category><title>Brenner, von Neumann and Schrödinger</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgobQIBx8hC4K2iA9USuz4vjGIpqnQISqAh43EYNX1uUaU9qgfzTmtoMxVvfBRJrbAiMq0VdA2iJUAw9nuPH37-TepWWo7YmHcgs99ssPfHk9w9fCLopVhiYZazWLcDbPDJ40jK5uYhCJFqVxPneNZzisqgQj5xQWmNqhsex7Azu0Iq774uv9I/s2000/1140732.webp&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;2000&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1590&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgobQIBx8hC4K2iA9USuz4vjGIpqnQISqAh43EYNX1uUaU9qgfzTmtoMxVvfBRJrbAiMq0VdA2iJUAw9nuPH37-TepWWo7YmHcgs99ssPfHk9w9fCLopVhiYZazWLcDbPDJ40jK5uYhCJFqVxPneNZzisqgQj5xQWmNqhsex7Azu0Iq774uv9I/s320/1140732.webp&quot; width=&quot;254&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;Erwin Schrödinger&#39;s book, &quot;What is Life&quot;?, inspired many scientists like Crick, Watson and Perutz to go into molecular biology. While many of the details in the book were wrong, the book&#39;s central message that the time was ripe for a concerted attack on the structure of the genes based on physical principles strongly resonated.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;However, influence and importance are two things, and unfortunately the two aren&#39;t always correlated. As Sydney Brenner &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ictxz1XCiY&quot;&gt;recounts in detail here&lt;/a&gt;, the founding script for molecular biology should really have been John von Neumann&#39;s 1948 talk at Caltech as part of the Hixon Symposium, titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vordenker.de/ggphilosophy/jvn_the-general-and-logical-theory-of-automata.pdf&quot;&gt;The General and Logical Theory of Automata&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. In retrospect this talk was seminal and far-reaching.&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;Brenner is one of the very few scientists who seems to have appreciated that von Neumann&#39;s influence on biology was greater than Schrödinger&#39;s and that &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4_JfLpZpnI&amp;amp;fbclid=IwAR0KpR2DoUmK6L4fFt4N4Zb9YGyTK8ycyx9kwm4X6S2peC2KOQ6q6rk8-3k&quot;&gt;von Neumann was right and Schrödinger wrong&lt;/a&gt;. Part of the reason was that while many biologists like Crick and Watson had read Schrödinger&#39;s &quot;What is Life?&quot;, almost nobody had read von Neumann&#39;s &quot;General and Logical Theory of Automata&quot;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;As Brenner puts it, Schrödinger postulated that &lt;a style=&quot;color: #385898; cursor: pointer;&quot; tabindex=&quot;-1&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;the machinery for replication (chromosomes) also included the means of reproducing it. Von Neumann realized that the machinery did not include the means themselves but only the *instructions* for those means. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;That&#39;s a big difference; the instructions are genes, the means are proteins. In fact as Freeman Dyson says in his &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Life-Freeman-Dyson/dp/0521626684&quot;&gt;Origins of Life&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, von Neumann was the first to clearly realize the distinction between software (genes) and hardware (proteins). Why? Because as a mathematician and a generalist (and pioneer of computer science), he had a vantage point that was unavailable to specialist biologists and chemists in the field.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;Unfortunately abstract generalists are often not recognized as the true originators of an idea. It&#39;s worth noting that in his lecture, von Neumann laid out an entire general program for what we now call translation, five years before Watson, Crick, Franklin and others even solved the structure of DNA. The wages of the theoretician are sparse, especially those of the one, as mathematician John Casti put it, who solves &quot;only&quot; the general case.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2023/05/brenner-von-neumann-and-schrodinger.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgobQIBx8hC4K2iA9USuz4vjGIpqnQISqAh43EYNX1uUaU9qgfzTmtoMxVvfBRJrbAiMq0VdA2iJUAw9nuPH37-TepWWo7YmHcgs99ssPfHk9w9fCLopVhiYZazWLcDbPDJ40jK5uYhCJFqVxPneNZzisqgQj5xQWmNqhsex7Azu0Iq774uv9I/s72-c/1140732.webp" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>4</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-831025464084554309</guid><pubDate>Mon, 20 Mar 2023 17:31:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2023-03-20T10:32:27.571-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">personal</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">philosophy of science</category><title>On change</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #333333;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW7PdD9N9RyBzHRsN4SnHx9jToOgExWK1jAQN9uCNjE7GEIe72SD2ST6-CtYx5huuup8UoI9PdrCVDhUdTAH5otZbG3vnf8xVZAT62aq37crQGV_JQC_DvbgdhLdp9LrOb-KoEBSks6Aazw6Lmraf8JvL6z7jALRFukVsr75hvymJlZhWnuEg/s4032/IMG_0874.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;4032&quot; data-original-width=&quot;3024&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW7PdD9N9RyBzHRsN4SnHx9jToOgExWK1jAQN9uCNjE7GEIe72SD2ST6-CtYx5huuup8UoI9PdrCVDhUdTAH5otZbG3vnf8xVZAT62aq37crQGV_JQC_DvbgdhLdp9LrOb-KoEBSks6Aazw6Lmraf8JvL6z7jALRFukVsr75hvymJlZhWnuEg/s320/IMG_0874.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;240&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Two weeks ago, outside a coffee shop near Los Angeles, I discovered a beautiful creature, a moth. It was lying still on the pavement and I was afraid someone might trample on it, so I gently picked it up and carried it to a clump of garden plants on the side. Before that I showed it to my 2-year-old daughter who let it walk slowly over her arm. The moth was brown and huge, almost about the size of my hand. It had the feathery antennae typical of a moth and two black eyes on the ends of its wings. It moved slowly and gradually disappeared into the protective shadow of the plants when I put it down.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Later I looked up the species on the Internet and found that it was a male Ceanothus silk moth, very prevalent in the Western United States. I found out that the reason it’s not seen very often is because the males live only for about a week or two after they take flight. During that time they don’t eat; their only purpose is to mate and die. When I read about it I realized that I had held in my hand a thing of indescribable beauty, indescribable precisely because of the briefness of its life. Then I realized that our lives are perhaps not all that long compared to the Ceanothus moth’s. Assuming that an average human lives for about 80 years, the moth’s lifespan is about 2000 times shorter than ours. But our lifespans are much shorter than those of redwood trees. Might not we appear the same way to redwood trees the way Ceanoth moths or ants appear to us, brief specks of life fluttering for an instant and then disappearing? The difference, as far as we know, is that unlike redwood trees we can consciously understand this impermanence. Our lives are no less beautiful because on a relative scale of events they are no less brief. They are brief instants between the lives of redwood trees just like redwood trees’ lives are brief instants in the intervals between the lives of stars.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I have been thinking about change recently, perhaps because it’s the standard thing to do for someone in their forties. But as a chemist I have thought about change a great deal in my career. The gist of a chemist’s work deals with the structure of molecules and their transformations into each other. The molecules can be natural or synthetic. They can be as varied as DNA, nylon, chlorophyll, rocket fuel, cement and aspirin. But what connects all of them is change. At some point in time they did not exist and came about through the union of atoms of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus and other elements. At some point they will cease to be and those atoms will become part of some other molecule or some other life form.&lt;span id=&quot;more-230087&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Sometimes popular culture can capture the essence of science and philosophy well. In this case, chemistry as change was captured eloquently by the character of Walter White in the TV show “Breaking Bad”. In his first lecture as a high school chemistry teacher White&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDPad7BIQpU&amp;amp;ab_channel=BreakingBad%26BetterCallSaul&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;em style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;“Chemistry is the study of matter. But I prefer to think of it as the study of change. Now, just think about this. Electrons change their energy levels. Elements, they change and combine into compounds. Well, that’s…that’s all of life, right? It’s the constant, it’s the cycle, it’s solution, dissolution, just over and over and over. It’s growth, then decay, then transformation. It is fascinating, really.”&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Changes in the structure of atoms and molecules are ultimately dictated by the laws of atomic physics and the laws of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics which loosely states that disorder is more likely than order guarantees that change will occur. At its root the second law is an argument from probability: there are simply many more ways for a system to be disordered than to be ordered. The miracle of life and the universe at large is that complex systems like biological systems can briefly defy the second law, assembling order from disorder, letting it persist for a few short decades during which that order can do astonishing things like make music and art and solve mathematical equations enabling it to understand where it came from. The biologist Carl Woese once gave an enduringly beautiful metaphor for life, comparing it to a child playing in a stream.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;em style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;“If not machines, what are organisms? A metaphor far more to my liking is this. Imagine a child playing in a woodland stream, poking a stick into an eddy in the flowing current, thereby disrupting it. But the eddy quickly reforms. The child disperses it again. Again it reforms, and the fascinating game goes on. There you have it! Organisms are resilient patterns in a turbulent flow—patterns in an energy flow.”&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Woese’s metaphor perfectly captures both the permanence and impermanence of life. The structure is interrupted, but over time its essence persists. It changes and yet stays the same.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;eaa-wrapper eaa_post_between_content eaa_desktop&quot; id=&quot;eaa_post_between_content&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0px -20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;eaa-ad&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Although thermodynamics and Darwin’s theory of evolution help us understand how ordered structures can perform these complex actions, ultimately we don’t really understand it at the deepest level. The best illustration of our ignorance is the most complex structure in the universe – the human brain. The brain is composed of exactly the same elements as my table, my cup of coffee and the fern plant growing outside my window. Yet the same elements, when assembled together to create a fern, somehow when assembled in another, very specific way, create a 3-pound, jellylike structure that can seemingly perform miracles like writing ‘Hamlet’, finding the equations of spacetime curvature and composing the Choral Symphony. We have loose terminology like ’emergence’ to describe the unique property of consciousness that arises when human brains are assembled together from inanimate elements, but if we were to be honest as scientists, we must admit that we don’t understand how exactly that happens. The ultimate example of change that makes the essence of us as humans possible is still an enduring mystery. Will we ever solve that mystery? Even some of the smartest scientists on the planet, like the theoretical physicist Edward Witten, think we may not. As Witten&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2016/08/physicist-ed-witten-on-consciousness-i.html&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;puts it&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;em style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;“I think consciousness will remain a mystery. Yes, that’s what I tend to believe. I tend to think that the&amp;nbsp;workings&amp;nbsp;of the conscious brain will be elucidated to a large extent. Biologists and perhaps physicists will understand much better how the brain works.&amp;nbsp;But why something that we call consciousness goes with those workings, I think that will remain mysterious.&amp;nbsp;I have a much easier time imagining how we understand the Big Bang than I have imagining how we can understand consciousness…”&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;In other words, what Witten is saying is that even if someday we may understand the how and the what of consciousness, we may never understand the why. One of the biggest examples of change in the history of the universe may well remain hidden behind a veil.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I think about change a lot not just because I am a chemist but because I am a parent. Sometimes it feels like our daughter who is now two and a half years old has changed more in that short time than a caterpillar changes into a butterfly. Her language, reasoning, social and motor skills have undergone an amazing change since she was born. And this is, of course, a change that is observed by every parent: children change an incredible amount during their first few years. Some of that change can be guided by parents, but other change is genetic as well as idiosyncratic and unpredictable. Just like you can coax simple arrangements of atoms into certain compounds but not others, as a parent you have to make peace with the fact that you will be able to mold your child’s temperament, personality and trajectory in life to a certain extent but not beyond that. As the old alchemists figured out, you cannot change mercury into gold or gold into mercury no matter how hard you try. And that’s ultimately for the better because, just like the diversity of elements, we then get a diversity of novel and surprising life trajectories for our children.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Children undergo change but they are are also often the best instruments for causing it. Recently I finished reading Octavia Butler’s remarkable “Parable of the Sower” which is set in a 2024 California that is racked by violence and arson by desperate, homeless people who break into gated communities and burn, murder and rape. The protagonist of the story is a clear-eyed, determined 18-year-old named Lauren Olamina who, after her family is murdered, starts out by herself with the goal of starting a new religion called Earthseed amidst the madness surrounding her. Earthseed sees God as a changeable being and embraces change as the essence of living. Lauren thinks that in a world where people have to deal with unpredictable, seismic, sometimes violent change, a religion that makes the very nature of change a blueprint for God’s work can not just survive but thrive. For an atheist like myself, Earthseed seems as good a religion as any for us to believe in if we want to thrive in an uncertain world. Butler’s story tells us that just like they always have, our children exist to fix the problems our generation has created.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Change permeates the largest scales of the universe as much as it does ourselves, our children and our bodies and brains. One of the most philosophically shattering experiences in the development of science was the realization by Galileo, Brahe, Newton and others that the perfect, crystalline, quiet universe of Aristotle and other ancients was in fact a dynamic, violent universe. In the mid 20th century, astrophysicists worked out that stars go through a life sequence much like we do. When they are born they furiously burn hydrogen into helium and form the lighter elements. As they age they can go in one of several directions. Stars the size of the sun will first blow up into red giants and then quietly settle into the life of a white dwarf. But stars much more massive than the sun can turn into supernovae and black holes, ending their lives in a cosmic show of spectacular explosion or fiery gravitational contraction.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;When our sun turns into a red giant, about 6 billion years from now, its outer shell will expand and embrace the orbits of Mercury, Venus and Earth. There is no reason to believe that those planets will survive that encounter. By that time the human race would either be extinct or would have migrated to other star systems; the worst thing that it could do would be to stay put. Even after that we will not escape change. The science of eschatology, the study of the ultimate fate of the universe, has mapped out many changes that will be unstoppable in the far future. At some point the Andromeda galaxy will collide with our Milky Way galaxy. Eventually the stars in the universe will run out of fuel and cease to shine; the universe will become a quieter and darker place. Soon it will only contain black holes and at a further point even black holes will evaporate through the process of Hawking radiation. And way beyond that, the laws of quantum mechanics will ensure that the proton, usually considered a stable particle, will decay. Matter as we know it will dissolve into nothingness. The accelerated expansion of our universe will ensure that most of these processes will inevitably take place. The exact fate of the universe is too uncertain to predict beyond these unimaginable gulfs of time, but there is little doubt that the universe will be profoundly different from what it is now and what it has been before.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The elements from which my body and brain are composed will one day be given back to the universe (I like to think that they will perhaps become part of a redwood tree). That fact does not fill me with a feeling of dread or sadness but instead feels me with peace, joy and gratitude. The ultimate death of the universe described above causes similar feelings to arise. Sometimes I like to sit back, close my eyes and imagine a peaceful, lifeless universe, the galaxies receding past the cosmic horizons, the occasional supernova going off. The carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and other heavier elements in my body came from such supernova explosions a long time ago; the hydrogen came from the Big Bang. Those are astounding facts that science has discovered in the last few decades. Of all the things that could have happened to those elements forged in the furnace of a far off supernova, what were the chances that they would assemble into the exact specific arrangements that would be me? While we understand now how that happens, it could well have gone countless other ways. I feel privileged to exist as part of that brief interval between supernova explosions, to be able to understand, in my own modest way, the workings of our universe. To be a tiny part of the change that makes the universe what it is.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2023/03/on-change.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW7PdD9N9RyBzHRsN4SnHx9jToOgExWK1jAQN9uCNjE7GEIe72SD2ST6-CtYx5huuup8UoI9PdrCVDhUdTAH5otZbG3vnf8xVZAT62aq37crQGV_JQC_DvbgdhLdp9LrOb-KoEBSks6Aazw6Lmraf8JvL6z7jALRFukVsr75hvymJlZhWnuEg/s72-c/IMG_0874.jpeg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>3</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-6315238256124433415</guid><pubDate>Wed, 25 Jan 2023 17:54:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2023-01-25T09:56:08.951-08:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">book review</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">technology</category><title>Book Review: Chip War: The Fight for the World&#39;s Most Critical Technology</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTm7G0riDmHxyuRLprJ-7EhH9qOjlOX15ErKJ6UkKaIgRxPZnJ_JEDL0C8s_x7OmQuwymz6z-GS2NKxXVNpM-Bm2TLb1VKT4N7e_QSRKbCKvyob2YQmTNNlxLBPbLM85O1QrostvorjsKdPVYVQXmIm4_FNFZ0mLdExNxbl7WWeJ4oKq_OD40/s500/41TjmwjwcYL._AC_SY780_.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;500&quot; data-original-width=&quot;331&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTm7G0riDmHxyuRLprJ-7EhH9qOjlOX15ErKJ6UkKaIgRxPZnJ_JEDL0C8s_x7OmQuwymz6z-GS2NKxXVNpM-Bm2TLb1VKT4N7e_QSRKbCKvyob2YQmTNNlxLBPbLM85O1QrostvorjsKdPVYVQXmIm4_FNFZ0mLdExNxbl7WWeJ4oKq_OD40/s320/41TjmwjwcYL._AC_SY780_.jpg&quot; width=&quot;212&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;n the 19th century it was coal and steel, in the 20th century it was oil and gas, what will it be in the 21st century? The answer, according to Chris Miller in this lively and sweeping book, is semiconductor chips.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;There is little doubt that chips are ubiquitous, not just in our computer and cell phones but in our washers and dryers, our dishwashers and ovens, our cars and sprinklers, in &lt;a style=&quot;color: #385898; cursor: pointer;&quot; tabindex=&quot;-1&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;hospital monitors and security systems, in rockets and military drones. Modern life as we know it would be unimaginable without these marvels of silicon and germanium. And as Miller describes, we have a problem because much of the technology to make these existential entities is the province of a handful of companies and countries that are caught in geopolitical conflict.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Miller starts by tracing out the arc of the semiconductor industry and its growth in the United States, driven by pioneers like  William Shockley, Andy Grove and Gordon Moore and fueled by demands from the defense establishment during the Cold War. Moore&#39;s Law has guaranteed that the demand and supply for chips has exploded in the last few decades; pronouncements of its decline have often been premature. Miller also talks about little-known but critically important people like Weldon Ward who designed chips that made precision missiles and weapons possible, secretary of defense Bill Perry who pressed the Pentagon for funding and developing precision weapons and Lynn Conway, a transgender scientist who laid the foundations for chip design. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Weldon Ward&#39;s early design for a precision guided missile in Vietnam was particularly neat: a small window in the tip of the warhead shined laser back to a chip that was divided into four quadrants. If one quadrant started getting more light than the other you would know the missile was off-course and would adjust it. Before he designed the missile, Ward was shown photos of a bridge in Vietnam that was surrounded by craters that indicated where the missile had hit. After he designed his missile, there were no more craters, only a destroyed bridge.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;There are three kinds of chips: memory chips which control the RAM in your computer, logic chips which control the CPU and analog chips which control things like temperature and pressure sensing in appliances. While much of the pioneering work in designing transistors and chips was spearheaded by American scientists at companies like Intel and Texas Instruments, soon the landscape shifted. First the Japanese led by Sony&#39;s Akio Morita captured the market for memory or DRAM chips in the 80s before Andy Grove powerfully brought it back to the US by foreseeing the personal computer era and retooling Intel for making laptop chips. The landscape also shifted because the U.S. found cheap labor in Asia and outsourced much of the manufacturing of chips.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;But the real major player in this shift was Morris Chang. Chang was one of the early employees at Texas Instruments and his speciality was in optimizing the chemical and industrial processes for yielding high-quality silicon. He rose through the ranks and advised the defense department. But, in one of those momentous quirks of history that at the time sound trivial, he was passed over for the CEO position. Fortunately he found a receptive audience in the Taiwanese government who gave him a no-strings-attached opportunity to set up a chip manufacturing plant in Taiwan. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The resulting company, TSMC, has been both the boon and the bane of the electronics age. If you use a device with a chip in it, it has most probably been made by TSMC. Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Intel, all design their own chips but have them made by TSMC. However it does not help that TSMC is located in a company that both sits on top of a major earthquake fault and is the target for invasion or takeover by a gigantic world power. The question of whether our modern technology that is dependent on chips can thrive is closely related to whether China is going to invade Taiwan.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The rest of the supply chain for making chips is equally far flung. But although it sounds globalized, it&#39;s not. For instance the stunningly sophisticated process of extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) that etches designs on chips is essentially monopolized by one company - ASML in the Netherlands. The machines to do this cost more than $100 million each and have about 500,000 moving parts. If something were to happen to ASML the world&#39;s chip supply would come to a grinding halt.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The same goes for the companies that make the software for designing the chips. Three companies in particular - Cadence, Synopsys and Mentor - make 90% of chip design software. There are a handful of other companies making specialized software and hardware, but they are all narrowly located.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Miller makes the argument that the future of chips, and therefore of modern technology at large, is going to depend on the geopolitical relationship especially between China and the United States. The good news is that currently China lags significantly behind the U.S. in almost all aspects of chip design and manufacturing; the major centers for these processes are either in the U.S. or in countries which are allies of the U.S. In addition, replicating machinery of the kind used for etching by ASML is hideously complicated. The bad news is that China has a lot of smart scientists and engineers and uses theft and deception to gain access to chip design and making technology. Using front companies and legitimate buyouts, they have already tried to gain such access. While it will still take years for them to catch up, it is more a question of when than if.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;If we are to continue our modern way of life that depends on this critical technology, it will have to be done through multiple fronts, some of which are already being set in motion. Intel is now setting up its own foundry and trying to replicate some of the technology that ASML uses. China will have to be brought to the bargaining table and every attempt will have to be made to ensure that they play fair. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;But much of the progress also depends on funding basic science. It&#39;s worth remembering that much of the early pioneering work in semiconductors was done by physicists and chemists at places like Bell Labs and Intel, a lot of it by immigrants like Andy Grove and Morris Chang. Basic research at national labs like Los Alamos and Sandia laid the foundations for ASML&#39;s etching technology. Attempts to circumvent Moore&#39;s Law will also have to be continued to be made; as transistors shrink down to single digit nanometer sizes, quantum effects make their functioning more uncertain. However there are plans to avoid these issues through strategies like stacking them together. All these strategies depend on training the next generation of scientists and engineers, because progress on technology ultimately depends on education.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2023/01/review-chip-war-fight-for-worlds-most.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTm7G0riDmHxyuRLprJ-7EhH9qOjlOX15ErKJ6UkKaIgRxPZnJ_JEDL0C8s_x7OmQuwymz6z-GS2NKxXVNpM-Bm2TLb1VKT4N7e_QSRKbCKvyob2YQmTNNlxLBPbLM85O1QrostvorjsKdPVYVQXmIm4_FNFZ0mLdExNxbl7WWeJ4oKq_OD40/s72-c/41TjmwjwcYL._AC_SY780_.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-7881890304452265486</guid><pubDate>Mon, 28 Nov 2022 17:55:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2022-11-28T09:55:51.661-08:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">philosophy of science</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">Thanksgiving</category><title>A Science Thanksgiving</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white;&quot;&gt;It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in the U.S., and there’s an informal tradition on Thanksgiving to give thanks for all kinds of things in our lives. Certainly there’s plenty to be thankful for this year, especially for those of us whose lives and livelihoods haven’t been personally devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. But I thought I would do something different this year. Instead of being thankful for life’s usual blessings, how about being thankful for some specific facts of nature and the universe that are responsible for our very existence and make it wondrous? Being employed and healthy and surrounded by family and friends is excellent, but none of that would be possible without the amazing unity and diversity of life and the universe. So without further ado and in no particular order, I present an entirely personal selection of ten favorites for which I am eternally thankful.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I am thankful for the value of the resonance level energy of the excited state of carbon-12: carbon-12 which is the basis of all organic life on earth is formed in stars through the reaction of beryllium-8 with helium-4. The difference in energies between the starting materials (beryllium + helium) and carbon is only about 4%. If this difference had been even slightly higher, the unstable beryllium-8 would have disappeared long before it had transmuted into carbon-12, making life impossible.&lt;span id=&quot;more-224134&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I am thankful for the phenomenon of horizontal gene transfer (HGT): it allowed bacteria during early evolution to jump over evolutionary barriers by sharing genetic material between themselves instead of just with their progeny. The importance of HGT for evolution may be immense since regular HGT early on might have led to the universality of the genetic code. HGT mixed and matched genetic material in the cauldron of life, eventually leading to the evolution of multicellular organisms including human beings.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I am thankful for the pistol shrimp: an amazing creature that can “clap” its pincers and send out a high-pressure bubble with lightning speed to kill its prey. This sonication bubble can produce light when it collapses, and the speed of collapse is such that temperature inside the bubble can briefly approach the surface temperature of the sun. The pistol shrimp shows us that nature hides phenomena that are not dreamt of in our philosophy, leading to an inexhaustible list of natural wonders for us to explore.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I am thankful to the electron: an entire universe within a point particle that performs the subtlest and most profound magic, making possible the chemistry of life; giving rise to the electromagnetic force that holds ordinary matter together; ultimately creating minds that can win prizes for studying electrons.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;eaa-wrapper eaa_post_between_content eaa_desktop&quot; id=&quot;eaa_post_between_content&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0px -20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;eaa-ad&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I am thankful to the cockroach: may humanity have the resilience to survive the long nights of our making the way you have.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I am thankful to the redwoods: majestic observers and guardians of nature who were here before us, who through their long, slow, considered lives have watched us live out our frantic, anxious lives the way we watch ants live out theirs, and whose survival is now consequentially entwined with our own.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I am thankful to the acetyl group, a simple geometric arrangement of two carbon and one oxygen atoms whose diverse, myriad forms fueling life and alleviating pain – acetylcholine, acetyl-coenzyme A, acetaminophen – are tribute to the ingenuity of both human minds and nature.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I am thankful to i, the square root of minus one: who knew that this diabolical creature, initially alien to even the abstract perception of mathematicians, would be as “real” as real numbers and more importantly, underlie the foundation of our most hallowed descriptions of nature such as quantum theory.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I am thankful to the black hole: an endless laboratory of the most bizarre and fantastic wonders; trapping light but letting information escape; providing the ultimate playground for spacetime curvature; working relentlessly over billions of years as a clearinghouse and organizing principle for the universe’s wayward children; proving that the freaks of the cosmos are in fact the soul food of its very existence.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I am thankful for time: that elusive entity which, in the physicist John Wheeler’s words, “keeps everything from happening all at once”; which waits for no one and grinds kings and paupers into the same ethereal dust; whose passage magically changes children every day before our very eyes; whose very fleeting nature makes life precious and gives us the most to be thankful for.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2022/11/a-science-thanksgiving.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-4216744949246175175</guid><pubDate>Tue, 01 Nov 2022 00:47:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2022-10-31T17:51:10.646-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">mathematics</category><title>Book review: A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age, by Alec Wilkinson</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitSxmJBX-wqYI4zsIb3CVGTbVPnNuuLGtfCoqh8w0c7paULQtm3qNa-T80DasTO6qEuRaAv_EBloZFm4mgOfMoRF0Di8uc1jr9qtAML9IPXwCIMR0a4eSu4OeNxh4wF-Y16HfCHBtYUAjQPkJhpahwsHz2oHZXae5Q7C0QaCzqtpL7vVcwrTU/s500/416v53J5c9L._AC_SY780_.jpg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;500&quot; data-original-width=&quot;324&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitSxmJBX-wqYI4zsIb3CVGTbVPnNuuLGtfCoqh8w0c7paULQtm3qNa-T80DasTO6qEuRaAv_EBloZFm4mgOfMoRF0Di8uc1jr9qtAML9IPXwCIMR0a4eSu4OeNxh4wF-Y16HfCHBtYUAjQPkJhpahwsHz2oHZXae5Q7C0QaCzqtpL7vVcwrTU/s320/416v53J5c9L._AC_SY780_.jpg&quot; width=&quot;207&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;A beautifully written &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Language-Learning-Geometry-Calculus/dp/1250168570/ref=sr_1_1?crid=WPVW0ODR01JO&amp;amp;keywords=alec%20wilkinson&amp;amp;qid=1667262260&amp;amp;qu=eyJxc2MiOiIyLjMzIiwicXNhIjoiMS4zMiIsInFzcCI6IjEuMzUifQ%3D%3D&amp;amp;s=books&amp;amp;sprefix=alec%20wilkinson%2Cstripbooks%2C141&amp;amp;sr=1-1&amp;amp;fbclid=IwAR0kP2WZyq6_SSRA3aqvccWy1Hp_sNFGlX6e0aaaXJ7WtvfSiWxlQ-Rxb-4&quot;&gt;account&lt;/a&gt; of mathematics lost and found. The author got &quot;estranged&quot; from mathematics in school and now, at the age of 65 and after a distinguished writing career, has taken it upon himself to learn the fundamentals of algebra, geometry and calculus. The book is by turns funny and sad even as Wilkinson recounts his struggling attempts to master material that would be child&#39;s play for many bright teenagers. He is helped in his efforts by his niece Amie Wilkinson, an accomplished mathematician at the University of Chicago. I myself could empathize with the author since I too had an estrangement of sorts with the subject in high school because of a cruel, vindictive teacher, and it took me until college when, thanks to brilliant and empathetic teachers, I clawed myself back up to start appreciating it.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;49iun&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;cno3t-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;cno3t-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;cno3t-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;But while he may struggle even with high school mathematical skills (and he I share a particular loathing for word problems), Wilkinson brings a poetic, philosophical sensibility acquired through a long career to bear on the topic that no young 15-year-old whippersnapper genius in math could commit to paper. He ruminates on the platonic beauty of math and wonders whether and how some people&#39;s minds might be wired differently for it. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;fpogt-0-0&quot;&gt;He &lt;/span&gt;does&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;fpogt-2-0&quot;&gt; not always understand how his brilliant mathematical niece Amie always &quot;gets it&quot; and she in turn doesn&#39;t always understand why her uncle has trouble with ideas that are second nature to her.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;cvv8c&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;1squp-0-0&quot; style=&quot;font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, &amp;quot;system-ui&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;.SFNSText-Regular&amp;quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;49iun&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;410ue-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;410ue-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;410ue-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br data-text=&quot;true&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;49iun&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;fq356-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;fq356-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;fq356-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Often quoting from eloquent mathematicians and physicists like Bertrand Russell, G. H. Hardy and Roger Penrose, Wilkinson brings a fresh, beautiful perspective to the utility and beauty of mathematics; to the struggle inherent in mastering it and the rewards that await those who persevere. I would highly recommend the book to those who may have lost faith in mathematics in high school and want to pick up some of the concepts later, or even to young students of math who may be wizards at solving equations but who might want to acquire a broader, more philosophical perspective on this purest of human endeavors.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2022/10/book-review-divine-language-learning.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitSxmJBX-wqYI4zsIb3CVGTbVPnNuuLGtfCoqh8w0c7paULQtm3qNa-T80DasTO6qEuRaAv_EBloZFm4mgOfMoRF0Di8uc1jr9qtAML9IPXwCIMR0a4eSu4OeNxh4wF-Y16HfCHBtYUAjQPkJhpahwsHz2oHZXae5Q7C0QaCzqtpL7vVcwrTU/s72-c/416v53J5c9L._AC_SY780_.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-2073746698727563219</guid><pubDate>Tue, 18 Oct 2022 22:12:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2022-10-18T15:16:50.979-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">education</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">mathematics</category><title>Temple Grandin vs algebra</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;There&#39;s a rather strange &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/against-algebra/671643/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; by Temple Grandin in the Atlantic, parts of which had me vigorously nodding my head and parts of which had my eyebrows crawling straight up. It&#39;s a critique of how our school system tries a one-size-fits-all approach that does a lot of students disservice, but more specifically takes aim at algebra.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;First, let me say how much I admire Temple Grandin. A remarkable woman who had severe autism for most of her childhood (there&#39;s a very good profile of her in Oliver Sacks&#39;s &quot;An Anthropologist On Mars&quot;), she rose above her circumstances and channeled her unusual abilities into empathy for animals, becoming one of the world&#39;s leading experts in the design of humane housing and conditions for livestock. She has without a doubt demonstrated the value of what we can call &#39;non-standard&#39; modes of thinking, teaching and learning that utilize visual and tactile ability. So she starts off strong enough here:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;As a professor of animal science, I have ample opportunity to observe how young people emerge from our education system into further study and the work world. As a visual thinker who has autism, I often think about how education fails to meet the needs of our very diverse minds. We are shunting students into a one-size-fits-all curriculum instead of nurturing the budding builders, engineers, and inventors that our country needs.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;So far so good. In fact let me digress a bit here. When I was in high school I was very good at geometry but terrible at algebra; I still remember this one midterm where I got an A and in fact the highest points-based grade in the class in geometry but almost flunked algebra. It took me a long time to claw back to a position where algebra made sense to me. In fact this appreciation of visual explanations was what drew me in part to chemistry, so I perfectly appreciate what Grandin is saying about being sympathetic to students who might have more of a visual capacity.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;But further down the pages she takes a detour into the evils of algebra that doesn&#39;t make sense to me. Again, some of what she says is spot on; for instance the fact that algebra (and math in general) can be taught much better if you can relate it to the real world. Too often it&#39;s presented simply as abstraction and symbol manipulation. But then there&#39;s this:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;ArticleParagraph_root__wy3UI&quot; style=&quot;box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px auto 30px; max-width: 665px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Cognitive skills may simply not be developed enough to handle abstract reasoning before late adolescence, which suggests that, at the very least, we’re teaching algebra too early and too fast. But abstract reasoning is also developed&amp;nbsp;&lt;span style=&quot;box-sizing: inherit;&quot;&gt;through&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp;experience, which is a good argument for keeping all those extracurriculars.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;This part may make more of a case for tying algebra to specific real-world applications than doing away with the abstractions per se. The fact of the matter is that math is abstract; in fact it&#39;s precisely this abstraction that makes it a powerful general tool. And there are good and bad ways of teaching that abstraction, but the solution isn&#39;t to get rid of it or delay it. In fact, that kind of thinking feeds into the popular belief seen in some quarters these days that algebra and calculus both need to be optional classes.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;It&#39;s when she gets to the end of the piece, however, that Grandin completely loses me:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;&quot;No two people have the same intelligence, not even identical twins. And yet we persist in testing—and teaching—people in the same way. We don’t need Americans to be better at algebra, per se. We need future generations that can build and repair infrastructure, overhaul energy and agriculture, develop robotics and AI. We need kids who grow up with the imagination to invent the solutions to pandemics and climate change. When school fails them, it fails all of us.&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Say what? Building and repairing infrastructure, overhauling energy and agriculture and - especially - developing robotics and AI do not need algebra? In fact most of these professions involve a very solid grounding in abstract aspects of algebra and calculus. I think Grandin is treading very handily from saying that algebra should be taught better to saying that we should get rid of it or make it optional. Two very different things.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;My concern based on this article and others I am reading these days is that, in our drive to reform the system, we want to consider it unnecessary. That is a grave mistake. Algebra and calculus and for that matter music and art are things that, even beyond the practical utility of the first two, help us appreciate our place in society and the cosmos better and in general teach us to be more human. Make them better we certainly should, but let&#39;s not burn the building down in our zeal.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2022/10/temple-grandin-vs-algebra.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-6307360499476830364</guid><pubDate>Sun, 25 Sep 2022 23:19:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2022-09-25T16:19:16.325-07:00</atom:updated><title>David McCullough (1933-2022)</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTCUWWVX3xFUJmeIYafAe81PLBrl2fGDPEPzcyWpj2-B2TO3ZdmN73oUoWGDpwvvY-mIW2g0qwpHA93Q3wf6hrWiS2AnzhAiOasb2g2ldjPde3eNoqS2jVEexL0-t3sQbQwvppetHy69xYoNwR6cmZSpRZzAjA_beodB9NJp11x_SJDP-qWS4/s1000/mccullough.jpeg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1000&quot; data-original-width=&quot;660&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTCUWWVX3xFUJmeIYafAe81PLBrl2fGDPEPzcyWpj2-B2TO3ZdmN73oUoWGDpwvvY-mIW2g0qwpHA93Q3wf6hrWiS2AnzhAiOasb2g2ldjPde3eNoqS2jVEexL0-t3sQbQwvppetHy69xYoNwR6cmZSpRZzAjA_beodB9NJp11x_SJDP-qWS4/s320/mccullough.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;211&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I have been wanting to write about David McCullough who passed away recently and whose writings I always enjoyed. McCullough was admittedly one of the finest popular historians of his generation. His biographical portraits and writings were wide-ranging, covering a variety of eras; from &quot;1776&quot; and &quot;John Adams&quot; about the revolutionary period through &quot;The Great Bridge&quot; about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge in the 1860s to &quot;Truman&quot; about Harry Truman&#39;s life and presidency. &quot;Truman&quot; is in fact the best presidential biography I have read. In spite of its size it never bogs down and paints a fair and balanced portrait of the farmer from Missouri who became the unlikely and successful president.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;McCullough&#39;s writing style and approach to history warrant some discussion. He was what you would call a gentleman writer: amiable, avuncular, genteel, not one to kick up dust or to engage in hard-hitting journalism; the opposite of Howard Zinn. Although his writing was balanced and he stayed away from hagiography, it was also clear that he was fond of his subjects, and that fondness might have made him sometimes avert a completely objective, critical approach.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;That style opened him up to criticism. For instance, his &quot;The Pioneers&quot; that described the opening up of the Ohio country and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 engineered by Manasseh Cutler came under scrutiny for its omission of the brutal and unfair treatment of Native Americans in the new territory. The ordinance was actually quite revolutionary for its time since it outlawed slavery and effectively laid the fuse for developments sparking division between slave and free states in the 1850s and the ensuing Civil War. McCullough did emphasize this positive aspect of the ordinance, but not the negative repercussions for Indians.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;That streak is emblematic of his other writings. He never shied away from the evils of slavery, treatment of Native Americans or oppression of women, but his gaze was always upward, toward the better angels of our nature. Most characteristic of this style is his &quot;The American Spirit&quot;, written at a fraught time in this country&#39;s history. As I mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RAZ3BCXKNX7AK/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;ASIN=B01NBVG0IW&quot;&gt;my review&lt;/a&gt; of the book, McCullough&#39;s emphasis is on the positive aspects of this country&#39;s founding and the founders&#39; emphasis on individual rights and education, even if some of them personally fell short of observing those rights for others.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;While I understand that McCullough might have had a bias toward the better parts of this country&#39;s history, I think that&#39;s the right approach especially today. That is because I think that a lot of Americans on both sides have acquired a strangely and fundamentally pessimistic approach toward both our past and our future. They seem to think that the country was born and steeped in sin that cannot be expiated. This is a very flawed perspective in my opinion. Perhaps as an immigrant I am more mindful of the freedoms and gifts that this country has bestowed on me, freedoms that are still unique compared to many other countries, but I share McCullough&#39;s view that whatever the substantial sins that this country was born in and perpetuated, its moral arc, as Martin Luther King would say, has always been upward and toward justice. In many ways the United States through its constitution laid the foundations for democracy and freedom that been emulated, in big and small ways, by most of the world&#39;s successful democracies. The leaders and activists of this country themselves were mindful that their country was not conforming to that perfect union described in its founding documents.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Progress has not been linear, certainly, but it has been steady throughout the ages. I think it&#39;s appropriate to complain that some aspects of progress should have taken much less time than what they did - unlike many other countries, the United States still has not had a female president, for instance - but that&#39;s different from saying that progress was made only by certain groups of people or that it wasn&#39;t made at all. As just one example, while African-Americans took the lead in the civil rights movement, there was no dearth of white Americans including religious activists like Benjamin Lay, firebrand speakers like William Lloyd Garrison and women suffragists who also wanted to end slavery. In addition, as David Hackett Fischer details in his monumental new study of black Africans&#39; contribution to the country&#39;s early years, black and white people often worked hand in hand to make big and small achievements for slaves and freedmen alike. Recognizing this unity in diversity - E pluribus unum - is central to recognizing the essence of America.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The United States was a melting pot of different kinds and dimensions since before its founding, and all elements of this melting pot helped shape progressive views in this country. To privilege only certain elements does a disservice to the diversity that this country has exemplified. David McCullough knew this. He distinguished himself by telling us in his many writings how there was a constant stream of progressive forces emerging from all quarters of society, including all races and economic classes, that helped this country implement its founding ideals of liberty and equality. Even when the sky appeared darkest, as happened often in our history, the forces provided the proverbial silver lining for all of us to aspire to. We need more of that sentiment today. McCullough will be missed, but his writings should provide a sure guide.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2022/09/david-mccullough-1933-2022.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTCUWWVX3xFUJmeIYafAe81PLBrl2fGDPEPzcyWpj2-B2TO3ZdmN73oUoWGDpwvvY-mIW2g0qwpHA93Q3wf6hrWiS2AnzhAiOasb2g2ldjPde3eNoqS2jVEexL0-t3sQbQwvppetHy69xYoNwR6cmZSpRZzAjA_beodB9NJp11x_SJDP-qWS4/s72-c/mccullough.jpeg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-2686184846161064077</guid><pubDate>Wed, 14 Sep 2022 05:58:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2022-09-14T08:59:39.448-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">book review</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">history of physics</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">nuclear weapons</category><title>Book review: &quot;The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age&quot;, by Steve Olson</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrK_ekE73ZWZXmMKazF2a3GD09yvkDToMGJpfSp0Ft9Wb2j0uATyTZ4mk11nfNYjNjogDKu3ZPLF_4QGS418K28LxgUKEnA-KZ9HaDak3aDxdpfZUNrPdE84aUMePzD_XtHf4nc9oLYKe3KJXCc-uXEU9UuQsIntVK_DKSvST31YN45I8rOOg/s499/51u0RCbF+ZL._SX328_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;499&quot; data-original-width=&quot;330&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrK_ekE73ZWZXmMKazF2a3GD09yvkDToMGJpfSp0Ft9Wb2j0uATyTZ4mk11nfNYjNjogDKu3ZPLF_4QGS418K28LxgUKEnA-KZ9HaDak3aDxdpfZUNrPdE84aUMePzD_XtHf4nc9oLYKe3KJXCc-uXEU9UuQsIntVK_DKSvST31YN45I8rOOg/s320/51u0RCbF+ZL._SX328_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg&quot; width=&quot;212&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;In the history of the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos has always been the star, and Hanford and Oak Ridge where plutonium and uranium respectively were created have been supporting actors. Steve Olson&#39;s goal is to resurrect Hanford as the most important site in retrospect. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;a style=&quot;color: #385898; cursor: pointer;&quot; tabindex=&quot;-1&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;Its product, plutonium, is now the element of choice in the vast majority of the world&#39;s nuclear arsenals. And the product of that creation has created an environmental catastrophe beyond reason.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: black; white-space: normal;&quot;&gt;Olson has written a&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #050505;&quot;&gt; lively and thought-provoking book about the &quot;devil&#39;s element&quot; and the global catastrophe and promise it has bred. &lt;/span&gt;Olson&#39;s account especially shines in the first half as he describes Glenn Seaborg, Joseph Kennedy and Arthur Wahl discovering plutonium-239 at Berkeley in February, 1942. Very quickly plutonium&#39;s promise became clear - unlike uranium whose rare fissionable isotope (uranium-235) it would take herculean efforts to separate from its more copious cousin (uranium-238), plutonium, being a different element from uranium, could be separated using relatively simple chemical means from its parent uranium-238. It was also clear that plutonium could be more efficiently fissioned than uranium and so less of it was needed to build bombs; if this elementary fact of nature had not been true, enough plutonium would never have been produced in time for the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, and the world&#39;s nuclear arsenals might have looked very different. As it turned out, while the Hiroshima bomb needed about 140 pounds (63 kilograms) of uranium, the Nagasaki bomb needed only about 13 pounds (6 kilograms) of plutonium. It is still stupendous and terrifying to think that an amount of plutonium that can be carried as a cube that&#39;s about 3 inches on one side can destroy an entire city.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;The first hulking reactor at Hanford (Reactor B) went up soon under the watchful eyes of Enrico Fermi, Eugene Wigner and the DuPont company; the first batch of plutonium from Hanford was produced at the beginning of 1945. Olson&#39;s book has amusing accounts of the differences in philosophy between the DuPont engineers and the physicists; the engineers thought the physicists considered everything too simple, the physicists thought the engineers made everything too complex. Of special note was Crawfort Greenewalt, a bright young engineer who had married into the DuPont family and who orchestrated DuPont&#39;s building of the reactor. Somehow peace was brokered and the warring functions worked well during the rest of the war. The plutonium in the Nagasaki bomb came from Hanford, its high spontaneous fission rate necessitating a revolutionary new design - implosion - used in that bomb and pretty much all its successors. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;Olson&#39;s account of the Nagasaki mission is gripping. The poor city was the third choice after Hiroshima. Kokura which was the second choice turned out to have significant cloud cover. So did Nagasaki, but at that point the &#39;Bockscar&#39;, the B-29 bomber that was delivering the bomb, made a last-minute decision to bomb in spite of lack of the visual bombing requirement which had been mandated. After the war, even Manhattan Project chief General Leslie Groves who never publicly regretted the bombings said privately that he did not think Nagasaki was necessary.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;As the Cold War heated up, the Hanford site became the principal site of production of plutonium for the tens of thousand of nuclear weapons that were to fill the missiles, bombers and submarines of the United States, a number that was many fold that necessary to bring about the destruction of the entire planet in a nuclear exchange between the two superpowers. The reactors were powered down in the 60s and early 70s, only to be powered up again during the hawkish administration of Ronald Reagan. There was another kind of destruction wrought during their operation. In their haste to make plutonium: billions of gallons and pounds of toxic radioactive and chemical sludge and waste were stored in makeshift steel tanks underground; some of this effluent was released into the mighty Columbia River. The scientists and engineers and politicians who made Hanford did not quite understand the profoundly difficult long-term problem for humanity that these long-lived radioactive materials would face. Even today, the Hanford site is often referred to as the most contaminated site in the world, and it is estimated that it could take up to $640 billion to clean up the site.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;With plutonium also came jobs and families and hospitals and schools. Olson who grew up in the area talks about the complicated relationship people whose fathers and grandfathers and grandmothers worked on the reactors have with the site. On one hand, they are proud that their work contributed to the end of World War 2 and preserved America&#39;s edge and possibly survival during the Cold War; on the other hand, they worry about the bad reputation that the site has gotten as the principal protagonist in creating weapons of mass destruction. Most of all, they worry about the potential cancers that they think the contaminated site might have caused. As Olson documents, studies have found tenuous links at best between the radiation at the site and the rate of cancers, but it&#39;s hard to convince people who believe that any amount of radiation must be bad.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;&quot;&gt;Today the Hanford site is part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park that encompasses Oak Ridge and Los Alamos (I have been wanting to go on a tour for a long time). The B reactor no longer produces the devil&#39;s element. Instead it is a mute testament to humankind&#39;s discovery of the means of its own destruction. That nuclear weapons have never been used in anger since August, 1945 might elevate it in the future to an importance that we cannot yet gauge. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2022/09/book-review-apocalypse-factory.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrK_ekE73ZWZXmMKazF2a3GD09yvkDToMGJpfSp0Ft9Wb2j0uATyTZ4mk11nfNYjNjogDKu3ZPLF_4QGS418K28LxgUKEnA-KZ9HaDak3aDxdpfZUNrPdE84aUMePzD_XtHf4nc9oLYKe3KJXCc-uXEU9UuQsIntVK_DKSvST31YN45I8rOOg/s72-c/51u0RCbF+ZL._SX328_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-5880544114688660709</guid><pubDate>Mon, 05 Sep 2022 20:22:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2022-09-05T13:22:37.105-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">religion</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">science</category><title>The root of diverse evil</title><description>&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;It wasn’t very long ago that I was rather enamored with the&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atheism&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;New Atheist&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;movement, of which the most prominent proponent was Richard Dawkins. I remember having marathon debates with a religious roommate of mine in graduate school about religion as the “root of all evil”, as the producers of a documentary by Dawkins called it. Dawkins and his colleagues made the point that no belief system in human history is as all-pervasive in its ability to cause harm as religion.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;My attitude toward religion started changing when I realized that what the New Atheists were criticizing wasn’t religion but a caricature of religion that was all about faith. Calling religion the&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Root_of_All_Evil%3F&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;“root of all evil”&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;was also a bad public relations strategy since it opened up the New Atheists to obvious criticism – surely not&amp;nbsp;&lt;i style=&quot;box-sizing: border-box;&quot;&gt;all&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;evil in history has been caused by religion? But the real criticism of the movement goes deeper. Just like the word ‘God’, the word ‘religion’ is a very broad term, and people who subscribe to various religions do so with different degrees of belief and fervor. For most moderately religious people, faith is a small part of their belonging to a religion; rather, it’s about community and friendship and music and literature and what we can broadly call culture. Many American Jews and American Hindus for instance call themselves cultural Jews or cultural Hindus.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;My friend&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2020/02/freeman-dyson-1923-2020-remembrance.html?m=1&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;Freeman Dyson&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;made this point especially well, and he strongly disagreed with Dawkins. One of Freeman’s arguments, with which I still agree, was that people like Dawkins set up an antagonistic relationship between science and religion that makes it seem like the two are completely incompatible. Now, irrespective of whether the two are&amp;nbsp;&lt;i style=&quot;box-sizing: border-box;&quot;&gt;intellectually&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;compatible or not, it’s simply a fact that they aren’t so in practice, as evidenced by scores of scientists throughout history like Newton, Kepler and Faraday who were both undoubtedly great scientists and devoutly religious. These scientists satisfied one of the popular definitions of intelligence – the ability to simultaneously hold two opposing thoughts in one’s mind.&lt;span id=&quot;more-219501&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Dyson thought that Dawkins would make it hard for a young religious person to consider a career in science, which would be a loss to the field. My feeling about religion as an atheist are still largely the same: most religion is harmless if it’s practiced privately and moderately, most religious people aren’t out to convert or coerce others and most of the times science and religion can be kept apart, except when they tread into each other’s territory (in that case, as in the case of young earth creationism, scientists should fight back as vociferously as they can).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;But recently my feelings toward religion have soured again. A reference point for this change is a particularly memorable quote by&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Weinberg&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;Steven Weinberg&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;who said,&amp;nbsp;&lt;i style=&quot;box-sizing: border-box;&quot;&gt;“Without religion good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things, that takes religion.”&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;Weinberg got a lot of flak for this quote, and I think it’s because of a single word in it that causes confusion. That word is “good”. If we replace that word by “normal” or “regular” his quote makes a lot of sense.&amp;nbsp;&lt;i style=&quot;box-sizing: border-box;&quot;&gt;“For normal people to do evil or harm, that takes religion.”&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;What Weinberg is saying that people who are otherwise reasonable and uncontroversial and boring in their lives will do something exceptionally bad because of religion. This discrepancy is not limited to religious ideology – the Nazis at Auschwitz were also otherwise “normal” people who had families and pets and hobbies – but religious ideology, because of its unreason and reliance on blind faith, seems to pose a particularly all-pervading example. Religion may not be the root of all evil, but it certainly may be the root of the most diverse evil.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I was reminded of Weinberg’s quote when I read about the shocking attack on&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;Salman Rushdie&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;a few weeks ago. Rushdie famously had to go into hiding for a long time and abandon any pretense of a normal life because of an unconscionable death sentence or&amp;nbsp;&lt;i style=&quot;box-sizing: border-box;&quot;&gt;fatwa&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;to kill him issued by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. Rushdie’s attacker is a 24-year-old man named Hadi Matar who was born in the United States but was radicalized after a trip to Lebanon to see his father. By many accounts, Matar was a loner but otherwise a normal person. The single enabling philosophy that motivated him to attack and almost kill Rushdie was religious. As Weinberg would say, without religion, he would have just been another disgruntled guy, but it was religion that gave him a hook to hang his toxic hat on. Even now Matar&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/17/salman-rushdie-survive-attacker-00052549&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;he is “surprised” that Rushdie survived. He also says that he hasn’t even read the controversial ‘Satanic Verses’ which led to the edict, which just goes to show how intellectually vacuous, mindless sheep the religiously motivated can be.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I had the same feelings, even more strongly felt, when I looked up the stories of the Boston marathon bomber brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. By any account theirs should have been the quintessential American success story: both were brought to this country from war-torn Chechnya, placed in one of the most enlightened and progressive cities in the United States (Cambridge, MA) and given access to great educational resources. What, if not religious ideology, would lead them to commit such mindless, horrific acts against innocent people? Both Matar and the marathon bombers are a perfect example of Weinberg’s adage – it was religion that led them down a dark path and made the crucial difference.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;eaa-wrapper eaa_post_between_content eaa_desktop&quot; id=&quot;eaa_post_between_content&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 0px -20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;eaa-ad  &quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The other recent development that has made me feel depressed about the prospects for peace between religion and secularism is the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the United States Supreme Court. In doing so, the Supreme Court has overturned a precedent with which a significant majority (often cited to be at least 60%) of Americans agree. Whatever the legal merits of the court’s decision, there is little doubt that the buildup to this deeply regressive decision was driven primarily by a religious belief that considers life to begin at conception. It’s a belief without any basis in science; in fact, as Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/society/on-abortion-carl-sagan-ann-druyan/&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;wrote&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;many years, if you factored in science, then Roe v. Wade would seem to have drawn the line at the right point, when the fetus develops a nervous system and really distinguishes itself as a human. In fact one of the tragedies of overturning Roe v. Wade is that the verdict struck a good balance between respecting the wishes of religious moderates and taking rational science into account.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;But Evangelical Christians in the United States, of which there has a been dwindling and therefore proportionately bitter and vociferous number in recent years, don’t care about such lowly details as nervous systems (although they do seem to care about heartbeats which ironically aren’t unique to humans). For them, all there is to know about when life begins has been written in a medieval book. Lest there be any doubt that this consequential decision by the court was religiously motivated, it’s worth reading a recent, detailed&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/09/01/laurence-tribe-on-why-the-dobbs-decision-was-wrong-and-based-on-religion/&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;analysis&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;by Laurence Tribe, a leading constitutional scholar. Lessig convincingly argues that the Catholic justices’ arguments were in fact rooted in the view that life begins at conception, a view on which the constitution is silent but religion has plenty to say.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The grim fact that we who care about things like due process and equality are dealing with here is that a minority of religious extremists continues to foist extremely regressive views on the majority of us who reject those views to different degrees. For a while it seemed that religiosity was&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;declining&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;in the United States. But now it appears that those of us who found this trend reassuring were too smug; it’s not the numbers of the religious that have mattered but the strength of their convictions, crucially applied over time like water dripping on a stone to wear the system down. And that’s exactly what they have wanted.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The third reason why I am feeling rather bitter about religion is a recent personal experience. I was invited to a religious event at an extremely devout friend’s place. I will not note the friend’s religion or denomination to keep the story general and to avoid bias; similar stories could be told about any religion. My friend is a smart, kind and intelligent man, and while I usually avoid religious events, I made an exception this time because I like him and also because I wanted to observe the event, much like an anthropologist would observe the customs of another tribe. What struck me from the beginning was the lack of inclusivity in the event. We were not supposed to go into certain rooms, touch certain objects or food, take photos of them or even point at them. We were supposed to speak in hushed tones. Most tellingly, we weren’t supposed to shake hands with my friend or touch him in any way because he was conducting the event in a kind of priestly capacity. What social or historical contexts in more than one society this behavior evokes I do not need to spell out.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Now, my friend is well-meaning and was otherwise very friendly and generous, but all these actions struck me as emblematic of the worst features of religion, features meant to draw boundaries and divide the world into “us” and “them”. And the experience was again emblematic of Weinberg’s quote – an otherwise intelligent, kind and honest person was practicing strange, exclusionary customs because his holy book told him to do so, customs that otherwise would have been regarded as odd and even offensive. For normal people to do strange things, that takes religion.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Fortunately, these depressing thoughts about religion have, as their counterpart, hopeful thoughts about science. Everything about science makes it a different system. Nobody will issue a fatwa in science because a scientist says something that others disagree with or even find offensive, because if the scientist is wrong, the facts will decide one way or another. Nobody will carry out a decades-long vendetta to overturn a rule or decision which the majority believes as shown by the data. And certainly nobody will try to exclude anyone from doing a scientific experiment or proposing a theory just because they don’t belong to their particular tribe. All this is true even if science has its own priesthoods and has historically practiced forms of exclusion at one time or another. Scientists have their own biases as much as any other human people – witness the right’s opposition to climate change and the left’s opposition to parts of genetics research – but the great thing about science is that slowly but surely, it’s the facts about the world that decide truths, not authority or majority or minority opinion. Science is the greatest self-correcting system discovered by human beings, while religion keeps on allowing errors to propagate for generations and centuries by invoking authority and faith.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Sadly, these recent developments have shown us that the destructive passions unleashed by religious faith continue to proliferate. Again and again, when those of us who value rationality and science think we have reached some kind of understanding with the religious or think that the most corrosive effects of religion are waning, along comes a Hadi Matar to try to end the life of a Salman Rushdie, and along comes a cohort of religious extremists to end the will of the majority. Religion may not be the root of all evil, but it’s the root of a lot of evil, and undoubtedly of the most diverse evil. That’s reason enough to oppose it with all our hearts and minds. It’s time to loudly sound the trumpets of rationalism and the scientific worldview again.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;First &lt;a href=&quot;https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2022/09/the-root-of-diverse-evil.html?fbclid=IwAR2-xUXb3MgOF2_vdH7W9c_xwesQ03fINMmWCUONM-xIKbcEitMgmlO_ANk&quot;&gt;published&lt;/a&gt; on 3 Quarks Daily.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2022/09/the-root-of-diverse-evil.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><thr:total>1</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-2772366758975198780</guid><pubDate>Mon, 01 Aug 2022 05:47:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2022-07-31T22:47:56.291-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">biology</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">book review</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">books</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">genetics</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">history of science</category><title>Book review: &quot;Unraveling the Double Helix: The Lost Heroes of DNA&quot;, by Gareth Williams.</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh4GEvFvCwwHrDOp8yMG-sfuHoGaUimN9M0NsOkpOcnIgE8FL1scy4nq0hbEhbBP8VxOXfc1Y0ilNw8Wi5XXktcYmbqakJX7NkKJzsAvL07rKynR6R2TzR-dT7_pEFieDyOAOEQl0ubWlBuqHBN0LwoNE1KzCQvywF4W_9LdFQO5H7e_b4fX0/s900/unravelling-the-double-helix-9781643132150_xlg.jpeg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;900&quot; data-original-width=&quot;589&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh4GEvFvCwwHrDOp8yMG-sfuHoGaUimN9M0NsOkpOcnIgE8FL1scy4nq0hbEhbBP8VxOXfc1Y0ilNw8Wi5XXktcYmbqakJX7NkKJzsAvL07rKynR6R2TzR-dT7_pEFieDyOAOEQl0ubWlBuqHBN0LwoNE1KzCQvywF4W_9LdFQO5H7e_b4fX0/s320/unravelling-the-double-helix-9781643132150_xlg.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;209&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Newton rightly decried that science progresses by standing on the shoulders of giants. But his often-quoted statement applies even more broadly than he thought. A case in point: when it comes to the discovery of DNA, how many have heard of Friedrich Miescher, Fred Griffith or Lionel Alloway? Miescher was the first person to isolate DNA, from pus bandages of patients. Fred Griffith performed the crucial experiment that proved that a ‘transforming principle’ was somehow passing from a virulent dead bacterium to a non-virulent live bacterium, magically rendering the non-virulent strain virulent. Lionel Alloway came up with the first expedient method to isolate DNA by adding alcohol to a concentrated solution.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;In this thoroughly engaging book, Gareth Williams brings these and other lost heroes of DNA. The book spans the first 85 years of DNA and ends with Watson and Crick&#39;s discovery of the structure. There are figures both well-known and obscure here. Along with those mentioned above, there are excellent capsule histories of Gregor Mendel, Thomas Hunt Morgan, Oswald Avery, Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins and, of course, James Watson and Francis Crick. The book traces a journey through a variety of disciplines, most notably the fields of biochemistry and genetics, that were key in deciphering the structure of DNA and its role in transmitting hereditary characteristics.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Williams’s account begins with Miescher’s isolation of DNA from pus bandages in 1869. At that point in time, proteins were well-recognized, and all proteins contained a handful of elements like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur. The one element they did not contain was phosphorus. It was Miescher’s discovery of phosphorus in his extracts that led him and others to propose the existence of a substance they called ‘nuclein’ that seemed ubiquitous in living organisms. The two other towering figures in the biochemical history of DNA are the German chemist Albrecht Kossel and the Russian-born American chemist Phoebus Levene. They figured out the exact composition of DNA and identified its three key components: the sugar, the phosphate and most importantly, the four bases (adenine, cytosine, thymine and guanine). Kossel was such a revered figure that his students led a torchlight procession through the streets from the train station to his lab when he came back to Heidelberg with the Nobel Prize.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: #050505;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;Levene’s case is especially interesting since his identification of the four bases set DNA research back by years, perhaps decades. Because there were only four bases, he became convinced that DNA could never be the hereditary material because it was too simple. His ‘tetra-nucleotide hypothesis’ which said that DNA could only have a repeating structure of four bases doomed its candidacy as a viable genetic material for a long time. Most scientists kept on believing that only proteins could be complex enough to be the stuff of heredity.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Meanwhile, while the biochemists were unraveling the nature of DNA in their own way, the geneticists paved the way. Williams has a brisk but vivid description of the lone monk Gregor Mendel toiling away with thousands of meticulous experiments on pea plants in his monastery in the Moravian town of Brünn. As we now know, Mendel was fortunate in picking the pea plant since it’s a purebred species. Mendel’s faith in his own work was shaken toward the end of his life when he tried to duplicate his experiments using the hawkweed plant whose genetics are more complex. Tragically, Mendel’s notebooks and letters were burnt after his death and his work was forgotten for thirty years before it was resurrected independently by three scientists, all of whom tried to claim credit for the discovery. The other major figure in genetics during the first half of the 20th century was Thomas Hunt Morgan whose famous ‘fly room’ at Columbia University carried our experiments showing the presence of hundreds of genes are precise locations on chromosomes. In his lab, there was a large pillar on which Morgan and his students drew the locations of new genes.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;From the work of Mendel, Morgan, Levene and Kossel we move on to New York City where Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty at the Rockefeller University and the sharp-tongued, erudite Erwin Chargaff at Columbia made two seminal discoveries about DNA. Avery and his colleagues showed that DNA is in fact the ‘transforming principle’ that Fred Griffith had identified. Chargaff showed that the proportions of A and T and G and C in DNA were similar. Williams says in the epilogue that of all the people who were potentially robbed of Nobel Prizes for DNA, the two most consequential were Avery and Griffith.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;By this time, along with biochemistry and genetics, x-ray crystallography had started to become very prominent in the study of molecules: by shining x-rays on a crystal and interpreting the resulting diffraction pattern, scientists could potentially figure out the structure of the molecule on an atomic level. Williams provides an excellent history of this development, starting with the Nobel Prize-winning father-son duo of William Henry and William Lawrence Bragg (who remains the youngest Nobel Laureate at age 25) and continuing with other pioneering figures like J. D. Bernal, William Astbury, Dorothy Hodgkin and Linus Pauling.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Science is done by scientists, but it’s made possible by science administrators. Two major characters star in the DNA drama as science administrators par excellence. Both had their flaws, but without the institutions they set up to fund and encourage biological work, it is doubtful whether the men and women who discovered DNA and its structure would have made the discoveries when and where they did. William Lawrence Bragg repurposed the famed Cavendish Laboratories at Cambridge University – where Ernest Rutherford had reigned supreme - for crystallographic work on biological molecules. A parallel effort was started by John Randall, a physicist who had played a critical role in Britain’s efforts to develop radar during World War 2, at King’s College in London. While Bragg recruited Max Perutz, Francis Crick and James Watson for his group, Randall recruited Maurice Wilkins, Ray Gosling and Rosalind Franklin.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;One of the strengths of Williams’s book is that it resurrects the role of Maurice Wilkins who is often regarded as the least important of the Nobel Prize-winning triplet of Watson, Crick and Wilkins. In fact, it was Wilkins and Gosling who took the first x-ray photographs of DNA that seemed to indicate a helical structure. Wilkins was also convinced that DNA and not protein was the genetic material when that view was still unfashionable; he passed on his infectious enthusiasm to Crick and Watson. But even before his work, the Norwegian crystallographer Sven Furberg had been the first to propose a helix – although a single one – as the structure of DNA based on his density and other important features. A key feature of Furberg’s model was that the sugar and the base were perpendicular, which is in fact the case with DNA.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The last third of the book deals with the race to discover the precise structure of DNA. This story has been told many times, but Williams tells it exceptionally well and especially drives home how Watson and Crick were able to stand on the shoulders of many others. Rosalind Franklin comes across as a fascinating, complex, brilliant and flawed character. There was no doubt that she was an exceptional scientist who was struggling to make herself heard in a male-dominated establishment, but it’s also true that her prickly and defensive personality made her hard to work with. Unlike Watson, she was especially reluctant to build models, perhaps because she had identified a fatal flaw in one of the pair’s earlier models. It’s not clear how close Franklin came to identifying DNA as a helix; experimentally she came close, but psychologically she seemed reluctant and bounced back and forth between helical and non-helical structures.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;So what did Watson and Crick have that the others did not? As I have described in a post written a few years ago on the 70th anniversary of the DNA structure, many others were in possession of key parts of the evidence, but only Watson and Crick put it all together and compulsively built models. In this sense it was very much like the blind men and the elephant; only Watson and Crick bounced around the entire animal and saw how it was put together. Watson’s key achievement was recognizing the precise base pairing: adenine with thymine and guanine with cytosine. Even here he was helped by the chemist Jerry Donohue who corrected a key chemical feature of the bases (organic chemists will recognize it as what’s called keto-enol tautomerism). Also instrumental were Alec Stokes and John Griffith. Stokes was a first-rate mathematician who, using the theory of Bessel functions, figured out the diffraction pattern that would correspond to a helix; Crick who was a physicist well-versed with the mathematics of diffraction, instantly understood Stokes’s work. Griffith was a first-rate quantum chemist who figured out, independently of Donohue, that A would pair with T and G with C. Before the advent of computers and what are called ab initio quantum chemical techniques, this seems like a remarkable achievement.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;With Chargaff’s knowledge of the constancy of base ratios, Donohue’s precise base structures, Franklin and Gosling’s x-ray measurements and Stokes’s mathematics of helix diffraction patterns, Watson and Crick had all the information they needed to try out different models and cross the finish line. No one else had this entire map of information at their disposal. The rest, as they say, is history.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I greatly enjoyed reading Williams’s book. It is, perhaps, the best book on the DNA story that I have read since Horace Freeland Judson’s “The Eighth Day of Creation”. Even characters I was familiar with newly come to life as flawed, brilliant human beings with colorful lives. The account shows that many major and minor figures made important discoveries about DNA. Some came close to figuring out the structure but never made the leap, either because they lacked data or because of personal prejudices. Taken as a whole, the book showcases well the intrinsically human story and the group effort, playing out over 85 years, at the heart of the one of the greatest discoveries that humanity has made. I highly recommend it.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2022/07/book-review-unraveling-double-helix.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh4GEvFvCwwHrDOp8yMG-sfuHoGaUimN9M0NsOkpOcnIgE8FL1scy4nq0hbEhbBP8VxOXfc1Y0ilNw8Wi5XXktcYmbqakJX7NkKJzsAvL07rKynR6R2TzR-dT7_pEFieDyOAOEQl0ubWlBuqHBN0LwoNE1KzCQvywF4W_9LdFQO5H7e_b4fX0/s72-c/unravelling-the-double-helix-9781643132150_xlg.jpeg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-104611241658513113</guid><pubDate>Sun, 17 Jul 2022 23:34:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2022-07-17T16:49:38.618-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">history of science</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">physics</category><title>Brian Greene and John Preskill on Steven Weinberg</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;iframe allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot; class=&quot;BLOG_video_class&quot; height=&quot;266&quot; src=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/embed/zyaveVWKniw&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; youtube-src-id=&quot;zyaveVWKniw&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There&#39;s a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyaveVWKniw&amp;amp;t=2000s&amp;amp;ab_channel=WorldScienceFestival&quot;&gt;very nice tribute&lt;/a&gt; to Steven Weinberg by Brian Greene and John Preskill that I came across recently that is worth watching. Weinberg was of course one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the later half of the 20th century, winning the Nobel Prize for one of the great unifications of modern physics, which was the unification of the electromagnetic and the weak forces. He was also a prolific author of rigorous, magisterial textbooks on quantum field theory, gravitation and other aspects of modern physics. And on top of it all, he was a true scholar and gifted communicator of complex ideas to the general public through popular books and essays; not just ideas in physics but ones in pretty much any field that caught his fancy. I had the great pleasure and good fortune to &lt;a href=&quot;http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2021/07/steven-weinberg-1933-2021.html&quot;&gt;interact with him &lt;/a&gt;twice.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The conversation between Greene and Preskill is illuminating because it sheds light on many underappreciated qualities of Weinberg that enabled him to become a great physicist and writer, qualities that are worth emulating. Greene starts out by talking about when he first interacted with Weinberg when he gave a talk as a graduate student at the physics department of the University of Texas at Austin where Weinberg taught. He recalls how he packed the talk with equations and formal derivations, only to have the same concepts explained by Weinberg more clearly later. As physicists appreciate, while mathematics remains the key to unlock the secrets of the universe, being able to understand the physical picture is key. Weinberg was a master at doing both.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Preskill was a graduate student of Weinberg&#39;s at Harvard and he talks about many memories of Weinberg. One of the more endearing and instructive ones is from when he introduced Weinberg to his parents at his house. They were making ice cream for dinner, and Weinberg wondered aloud why we add salt while making the ice cream. By that time Weinberg had already won the Nobel Prize, so Preskill&#39;s father wondered if he genuinely didn&#39;t understand that you add the salt to lower the melting point of the ice cream so that it would stay colder longer. When Preskill&#39;s father mentioned this Weinberg went, &quot;Of course, that makes sense!&quot;. Now both Preskill and Greene think that Weinberg might have been playing it up a bit to impress Preskill&#39;s family, but I wouldn&#39;t be surprised if he genuinely did not know; top tier scientists who work in the most rarefied heights of their fields are sometimes not as connected to basic facts as graduate students might be.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;More importantly, in my mind the anecdote illustrates an important quality that Weinberg had and that any true scientist should have, which is to never hesitate to ask even simple questions. If, as a Nobel Prize winning scientist, you think you are beyond asking simple questions, especially when you don&#39;t know the answers, you aren&#39;t being a very good scientist. The anecdote demonstrates a bigger quality that Weinberg had which Preskill and Greene discuss, which was his lifelong curiosity about things that he didn&#39;t know. He never hesitated to pump people for information about aspects of physics he wasn&#39;t familiar with, not to mention another disciplines. Freeman Dyson who I &lt;a href=&quot;http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2020/02/freeman-dyson-1923-2020-remembrance.html?m=1&quot;&gt;knew well&lt;/a&gt; had the same quality: both Weinberg and Dyson were excellent listeners. In fact, asking the right question, whether it was about salt and ice cream or about electroweak unification, seems to have been a signature Weinberg quality that students should take to heart.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Weinberg became famous for a seminal 1967 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hep.uiuc.edu/lc/pdf_docs/weinberg.pdf&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; that unified the electromagnetic and weak force (and used ideas developed by Peter Higgs to postulate what we now call the Higgs boson). The title of the paper was &quot;A Model of Leptons&quot;, but interestingly, Weinberg wasn&#39;t much of a model builder. As Preskill says, he was much more interested in developing general, overarching theories than building models, partly because models have a limited applicability to a specific domain while theories are much more general. This is a good point, but of course, in fields like my own field of computational chemistry, the problem isn&#39;t that there are no general theoretical frameworks&amp;nbsp; - there are, most notably the frameworks of quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics - but that applying them to practical problems is too complicated unless we build specific models. Nevertheless, Weinberg&#39;s attitude of shunning specific models for generality is emblematic of the greatest scientists, including Newton, Pauling, Darwin and Einstein.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Weinberg was also a rather solitary researcher; as Preskill points out, of his 50 most highly cited papers, 42 are written alone. He admitted himself in a talk that he wasn&#39;t the best collaborator. This did not make him the best graduate advisor either, since while he was supportive, his main contribution was more along the lines of inspiration rather than guidance and day-to-day conversations. He would often point students to papers and ask them to study them themselves, which works fine if you are Brian Greene or John Preskill but perhaps not so much if are someone else. In this sense Weinberg seems to be have been a bit like Richard Feynman who was a great physicist but who also wasn&#39;t the best graduate advisor.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Finally, both Preskill and Greene touch upon Weinberg&#39;s gifts as a science writer and communicator. More than many other scientists, he never talked down to his readers because he understood that many of them were as smart as him even if they weren&#39;t physicists. Read any one of his books and you see him explaining even simple ideas, but never in a way that assumes his audience are dunces. This is a lesson that every scientist and science writer should take to heart.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Greene especially knew Weinberg well because he invited him often to the World Science Festival which he and his wife had organized in New York over the years. The tribute includes snippets from Weinberg talking about the current and future state of particle physics. In the last part, an interviewer asks him about what is arguably the most famous sentence from his popular writings. In the last part of his first book, &quot;The First Three Minutes&quot;, he says, &quot;The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.&quot; Weinberg&#39;s eloquent response when he was asked what this means sums up his life&#39;s philosophy and tells us why he was so unique, as a scientist and as a human being:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;&quot;Oh, I think everything&#39;s pointless, in the sense that there&#39;s no point out there to be discovered by the methods of science. That&#39;s not to say that we don&#39;t create points for our lives. For many people it&#39;s their loved ones; living a life of helping people you love, that&#39;s all the point that&#39;s needed for many people. That&#39;s probably the main point for me. And for some of us there&#39;s a point in scientific discovery. But these points are all invented by humans and there&#39;s nothing out there that supports them. And it&#39;s better that we not look for it. In a way, we are freer, in a way it&#39;s more noble and admirable to give points to our lives ourselves rather than to accept them from some external force.&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2022/07/brian-greene-and-john-preskill-on.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/zyaveVWKniw/default.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-3044955583300016048</guid><pubDate>Fri, 15 Jul 2022 17:50:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2022-07-15T11:22:13.862-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">astronomy</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">JWST</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">space</category><title>A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjznhAqUhGdpejmCVXA7EexawSP-7MzCf1_y2v3bfjEngVYkqswwkZDq7q5uWboHn9cImrIREihImW4LSCgKkNjihfcev3ep9XamjWDV1MIfABiwpA8Vqx_Zt3bqK3Fvdg1uPOMPD7HyyqKJv_W_WZnmAjSoUpFVJOhLh0KStlVHlPieokrHaw/s895/3C6BF9FE-6883-422B-AB54-10632E552007_1_105_c.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;895&quot; data-original-width=&quot;877&quot; height=&quot;640&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjznhAqUhGdpejmCVXA7EexawSP-7MzCf1_y2v3bfjEngVYkqswwkZDq7q5uWboHn9cImrIREihImW4LSCgKkNjihfcev3ep9XamjWDV1MIfABiwpA8Vqx_Zt3bqK3Fvdg1uPOMPD7HyyqKJv_W_WZnmAjSoUpFVJOhLh0KStlVHlPieokrHaw/w629-h640/3C6BF9FE-6883-422B-AB54-10632E552007_1_105_c.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;629&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihmWPGcOlA7rR4-956sQ1am-T2lb72gQblv0AOjizKrHCafhoLkuSAiGEC7i028uDUnefDhvz4JoAlxmfK-XIDIzoJ3ra0zz8yKnO2Nyhy3CeJN6prfL8j8V3A7HoEvPz09-eEymxr3HK7XYtlviOFXF9q4xV9nb8FPaQENWPqdCeMGTBAvys/s1302/5B45E247-C0C7-4DE0-91B9-622B1A575B5D_1_105_c.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;604&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1302&quot; height=&quot;296&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihmWPGcOlA7rR4-956sQ1am-T2lb72gQblv0AOjizKrHCafhoLkuSAiGEC7i028uDUnefDhvz4JoAlxmfK-XIDIzoJ3ra0zz8yKnO2Nyhy3CeJN6prfL8j8V3A7HoEvPz09-eEymxr3HK7XYtlviOFXF9q4xV9nb8FPaQENWPqdCeMGTBAvys/w640-h296/5B45E247-C0C7-4DE0-91B9-622B1A575B5D_1_105_c.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0vqZVUNvkD0nCZtRo5eMWkddrhUQ3PcNsz8gZ7_9vpo2_r2wAGVldIzzvkT30SKs1RAUpvMBqCg_5May9cLdLxtTTSeD-OAmpHBefXD5bUKKr4OWAM-XJjuxAtYNE8rsh7VgyUYdTH9HupeGeFNZ09-fcgDu0YIh3OcGVzZ7LBRhZh48G9vk/s1165/881F6D6E-82B1-44E0-81C3-EA2F7654508F_1_105_c.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;675&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1165&quot; height=&quot;370&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0vqZVUNvkD0nCZtRo5eMWkddrhUQ3PcNsz8gZ7_9vpo2_r2wAGVldIzzvkT30SKs1RAUpvMBqCg_5May9cLdLxtTTSeD-OAmpHBefXD5bUKKr4OWAM-XJjuxAtYNE8rsh7VgyUYdTH9HupeGeFNZ09-fcgDu0YIh3OcGVzZ7LBRhZh48G9vk/w640-h370/881F6D6E-82B1-44E0-81C3-EA2F7654508F_1_105_c.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM4-qWvVvyeLqYPdb73ZrUnz1GZ-6T_5pNpRlrwBgF3M4Xd8WQHEJ2gYXlmXugW9ZTWjgwFW6meixhY-94k7HQjv3fIzegxZT8D2QKftYP6y1_5ekXR9ofXH1d4qln278xYS3tEFFhK-K8eOuztGRZVtSl05ecZTx4NvALdWLvXrHUfxaSk3c/s1812/BD2ED2E4-FE27-47B2-A567-14D5AE4694D9_1_102_o.jpeg&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1737&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1812&quot; height=&quot;614&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM4-qWvVvyeLqYPdb73ZrUnz1GZ-6T_5pNpRlrwBgF3M4Xd8WQHEJ2gYXlmXugW9ZTWjgwFW6meixhY-94k7HQjv3fIzegxZT8D2QKftYP6y1_5ekXR9ofXH1d4qln278xYS3tEFFhK-K8eOuztGRZVtSl05ecZTx4NvALdWLvXrHUfxaSk3c/w640-h614/BD2ED2E4-FE27-47B2-A567-14D5AE4694D9_1_102_o.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For a brief period earlier this week, social media and the world at large seemed to stop squabbling about politics and culture and united in a moment of wonder as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) released its first stunning images of the cosmos. These &quot;extreme deep field&quot; images represent the farthest and the oldest that we have been able to see in the universe, surpassing even the amazing images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope that we have become so familiar with. We will soon see these photographs decorating the walls of classrooms and hospitals everywhere.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The scale of the JWST images is breathtaking. Each dot represents a galaxy or nebula from far, far away. Each galaxy or nebula is home to billions of stars in various stages of life and death. The curved light in the image comes from a classic prediction of Einstein&#39;s general theory of relativity called gravitational lensing - the bending of light by gravity that makes spacetime curvature act like a lens.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Some of the stars in these distant galaxies and nebulae are being nurtured in stellar nurseries; others are in their end stages and might be turning into neutron stars, supernovae or black holes. And since galaxies have been moving away from us because of the expansion of the universe, the farther out we see, the older the galaxy is. This makes the image a gigantic hodgepodge of older and newer photographs, ranging from objects that go as far back as 100 million years after the Big Bang to very close (on a cosmological timescale) objects like Stephan&#39;s Quintet and the Carina Nebula that are only a few tens of thousands of light years away.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;It is a significant and poignant fact that we are seeing objects not as they are but as they were. The Carina Nebula is 8,500 light years away, so we are seeing it as it looked like 8,500 years ago, during the Neolithic Age when humanity had just taken to farming and agriculture. On the oldest timescale, objects that are billions of light years away look the way did during the universe&#39;s childhood. The fact that we are seeing old photographs or stars, galaxies and nebulae gives the photo a poignant quality. For a younger audience who has always grown up with Facebook, imagine seeing a hodgepodge of images of people from Facebook over the last fifteen years presented to you: some people are alive and some people no longer so, some people look very different from what they did when their photo was last taken. It would be a poignant feeling. But the JWST image also fills me with joy. Looking at the vast expanse, the universe feels not like a cold, inhospitable place but like a living thing that&#39;s pulsating with old and young blood. We are a privileged part of this universe.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;There&#39;s little doubt that one of the biggest questions stimulated by these images would be whether we can detect any signatures of life on one of the many planets orbiting some of the stars in those galaxies. By now we have discovered thousands of extrasolar planets around the universe, so there&#39;s no doubt that there will be many more in the regions the JWST is capturing. The analysis of the telescope data already &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-reveals-steamy-atmosphere-of-distant-planet-in-detail&quot;&gt;indicates&lt;/a&gt; a steamy atmosphere containing water on a planet about 1,150 light years away. Detecting elements like nitrogen, carbon, sulfur and phosphorus is a good start to hypothesizing about the presence of life, but much more would be needed to clarify whether these elements arise from an inanimate process or a living one. It may seem impossible that a landscape as gargantuan as this one is completely barren of life, but given the improbability of especially intelligent life arising through a series of accidents, we may have to search very wide and long.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I was gratified as my twitter timeline - otherwise mostly a cesspool of arguments and ad hominem attacks punctuated by all-too-rare tweets of insight - was completely flooded with the first images taken by the JWST. The images proved that humanity is still capable of coming together and focusing on a singular achievement of science and technology, how so ever briefly. Most of all, they prove both that science is indeed bigger than all of us and that we can comprehend it if we put our minds and hands together. It&#39;s up to us to decide whether we distract ourselves and blow ourselves up with our petty disputes or explore the universe as revealed by JWST and other feats of human ingenuity in all its glory.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Image credits: NASA, ESA, CSA and STScl&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2022/07/a-long-time-ago-in-galaxy-far-far-away.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjznhAqUhGdpejmCVXA7EexawSP-7MzCf1_y2v3bfjEngVYkqswwkZDq7q5uWboHn9cImrIREihImW4LSCgKkNjihfcev3ep9XamjWDV1MIfABiwpA8Vqx_Zt3bqK3Fvdg1uPOMPD7HyyqKJv_W_WZnmAjSoUpFVJOhLh0KStlVHlPieokrHaw/s72-w629-h640-c/3C6BF9FE-6883-422B-AB54-10632E552007_1_105_c.jpeg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-5612185006233827689</guid><pubDate>Fri, 15 Jul 2022 04:22:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2022-07-14T21:22:02.709-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">biology</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">book review</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">evolution</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">paleontology</category><title>Book Review: &quot;The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, From the Shadows of the Dinosaurs to US&quot;, by Steve Brusatte</title><description>&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjufokefSZU1oVK2F_6ftMzCaenK49Qsrwe5cE-14ZAwdixAH8sSMyHQqT8wlv0kVJokOG0TtHK5pgssW1aKA79TZDhBsVBTIyc60Siu5vfSGX1tcfr-SPbsWipjBtFSkD8dyfByLe6ueQjzSK37bnSJRMyMK47nJeEazjSy0RzFdjSKHCU3Js/s4032/IMG_2843.HEIC&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;4032&quot; data-original-width=&quot;3024&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjufokefSZU1oVK2F_6ftMzCaenK49Qsrwe5cE-14ZAwdixAH8sSMyHQqT8wlv0kVJokOG0TtHK5pgssW1aKA79TZDhBsVBTIyc60Siu5vfSGX1tcfr-SPbsWipjBtFSkD8dyfByLe6ueQjzSK37bnSJRMyMK47nJeEazjSy0RzFdjSKHCU3Js/s320/IMG_2843.HEIC&quot; width=&quot;240&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;A terrific book by Edinburgh paleontologist Steve Brusatte on the rise of the mammals. Engaging, personal and packed with simple explanations and analogies. Brusatte tracks the evolution of mammals from about 325 million years ago when our reptilian answers split off into two groups - the synapsids and the diapsids. The diapsids gave rise to reptiles like crocodiles and snakes while the synapsids eventually gave rise to us. The synapsids evolved with a hole behind their eye socket: it’s now covered with a set of muscles which you can feel if you touch your cheek while chewing.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Much of the book is focused on how mammals evolved different anatomical and physiological functions against the backdrop of catastrophic and gentle climate change, including the shifting of the continents and major extinctions driven by volcanic eruptions, meteors (during the K-T extinction event that killed the dinosaurs) sea level rises and ice ages. That mammals survived these upheavals is partly a result of chance and partly a result of some remarkable adaptations which the author spends considerable time describing. These adaptations include milk production, temperature regulation, hair, bigger brains and stable locomotion, among others. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Some these changes were simple but significant - for instance, a law named Carrier’s law limits lung capacity in slithering reptiles because each lung alternately gets compressed during sidewinding motions. When mammalian ancestors were able to lift their body upward from the ground and able to install a set of bones that constrained the rib cage, it allowed their lungs to be able to breathe and expel oxygen during movement and when the animal was eating. Needless to say, the ability to breathe and move while eating was momentous for survival in an environment in which predators abounded.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Another adaptation was the development of a specialized set of teeth that mark all mammals including humans - the incisors, canines, pre-molars and molars. Because these teeth form a specialized, complex apparatus, they emerge only twice in mammals - once during infancy and one more time during adulthood. But out chewing apparatus gave rise to another remarkable adaptation - in an evolutionary migration spread out over millions of years, bones of the jaw became the bones of the ear. The ear bones are a set of finely orchestrated and sensitive sound detectors that gave mammals an acute sense of hearing and enabled them to seek out mates and avoid predators.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Quite naturally, the book spends a good amount of time describing the mystery of why mammals survived the great meteor extinction of dinosaurs and much of other life on the planet. Except that it’s no mystery. Dinosaurs were bulky and specialized cold-blooded eaters which were exposed. Mammals were furry, rodent-like warm-blooded omnivores which could hide out underground and eke out an existence on charred vegetation and dead flesh in the post-apocalyptic environment. After the K-T event, there was no turning back for mammals.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The rest of the book spends time discussing particular features of mammalian evolution like flight in bats and the odd monotremes like the duck-billed platypus which lay eggs. A particularly memorable discussion is of the whales, the biggest mammals which have ever lived, which actually evolved from land mammals that would occasionally take to water to escape predators and seek out new food. With their exceptionally big brains and bat-like echolocation, whales remain a wonder of nature.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Brusatte also spices up his account with adventurous stories of intrepid paleontologists and archeologists who have dup up pioneering fossils in extreme environments ranging from the blistering tropical forests of Africa to the Gobi desert of Mongolia. Paleontology comes across as a truly international endeavor, with Chinese paleontologists especially making significant contributions; they were among the first for instance to discover a feather dinosaur, attesting to the reptile to bird evolutionary transition. Unlike old times when Victorian men did most of the digging, women are now a healthy percentage of the field.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Human evolution occupies only a few chapters of Brusatte’s book, and for good reason. While humans occupy a unique niche because of their intelligence, evolutionarily they are no more special or fascinating than whales, bats, platypuses, elephants or indeed the earliest synapsids. What we can take heart from is the fact that we are part of an unbroken thread of evolution ranging across all these creatures. Mammals have survived catastrophic extinctions and climate change events. Humans are now being responsible for one. Whether they are responsible for their own extinction or show the kind of adaptability that their ancestors showed is a future state only they are responsible for.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2022/07/book-review-rise-and-reign-of-mammals.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjufokefSZU1oVK2F_6ftMzCaenK49Qsrwe5cE-14ZAwdixAH8sSMyHQqT8wlv0kVJokOG0TtHK5pgssW1aKA79TZDhBsVBTIyc60Siu5vfSGX1tcfr-SPbsWipjBtFSkD8dyfByLe6ueQjzSK37bnSJRMyMK47nJeEazjSy0RzFdjSKHCU3Js/s72-c/IMG_2843.HEIC" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-2609078970878974495</guid><pubDate>Tue, 21 Jun 2022 04:26:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2022-06-20T21:26:04.286-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">book review</category><title>Book Review: &quot;Don&#39;t Tell Me I Can&#39;t: An Ambitious Homeschooler&#39;s Journey&quot;, by Cole Summers (Kevin Cooper)</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEifIXRkAMVyfFDxKx8yGe0ZQRgiOnNCpDFtIoUbWKxVwWIP0zUtwVxDy97WHzJbQNmvTkR3f6HNF9Ad3NunuMwHk6odZOxPtFL-luCh9-pcWfNR2kFHQL1ivvKuyOX3wRyQl91N8Rt6qRx4RS8amcXQNtbX5hMW5XgSZBGSmg8ivQoeqoT_UAE&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; data-original-height=&quot;1528&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1528&quot; height=&quot;240&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEifIXRkAMVyfFDxKx8yGe0ZQRgiOnNCpDFtIoUbWKxVwWIP0zUtwVxDy97WHzJbQNmvTkR3f6HNF9Ad3NunuMwHk6odZOxPtFL-luCh9-pcWfNR2kFHQL1ivvKuyOX3wRyQl91N8Rt6qRx4RS8amcXQNtbX5hMW5XgSZBGSmg8ivQoeqoT_UAE&quot; width=&quot;240&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I finished &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Tell-Cant-Ambitious-Homeschoolers/dp/B0B1HN84HL/ref=sr_1_1?crid=49N336MIXL1F&amp;amp;keywords=cole%20summers&amp;amp;qid=1655784742&amp;amp;s=books&amp;amp;sprefix=cole%20summer%2Cstripbooks%2C137&amp;amp;sr=1-1&amp;amp;fbclid=IwAR0IYRWfk15_r2GxW2p7GNQV-pVGw680hk4Vy9jXIkNqL-18QZqT1lBqmJM&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt; with a profound sense of loss combined with an inspired feeling of admiration for what young people can do. Cole Summers grew up in the Great Basin Desert region of Nevada and Utah with a father who had tragically become confined to a wheelchair after an accident in military training. His parents were poor but they wanted Cole to become an independent thinker and doer. Right from when he was a kid, they never said &quot;No&quot; to him and let him try out everything that he wanted to. When four-year-old Cole wanted to plant and grow a garden, they let him, undeterred by the minor cuts and injuries on the way.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;5cge6&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;9502k-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;9502k-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;9502k-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br data-text=&quot;true&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;5cge6&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;6drd3-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;6drd3-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;6drd3-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Partly because of financial reasons and partly because there were no good schools available in their part of town, Cole&#39;s parents decided to homeschool him. But homeschooling for Cole happened on his terms. When they saw him watching Warren Buffet, Charlie Munger and Bill Gates videos on investing and business, they told him it was ok to learn practical skills by watching YouTube videos instead of reading school books. Cole talks about many lessons he learnt from Munger and Buffet about patience and common mistakes in investing. When other kids were reciting the names of planets, Cole was reading company balance sheets and learning how to write off payroll expenses as tax deductions through clever investing.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;5cge6&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;5a895-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;5a895-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;5a895-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br data-text=&quot;true&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;5cge6&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;f2quv-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;f2quv-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;f2quv-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;This amazing kid had, by the age of fourteen, started two businesses - one raising rabbits and one farming. He parlayed his income into buying a beat up house and a sophisticated John Deere tractor. He fixed up the house from scratch, learning everything about roofing, flooring, cabinet installation and other important aspects of construction from YouTube videos and from some local experts. He learnt, sometimes through hard experience, how to operate a tractor and farm his own land. He made a deep study of the Great Basin desert water table which is dropping a few feet every year and came up with a novel and detailed proposal to prevent water levels from declining by planting low-water plants. He came up with solutions to fix the supply chain problems with timber and farm equipment.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;5cge6&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;ceccc-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;ceccc-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;ceccc-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br data-text=&quot;true&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;5cge6&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;kn6a-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;kn6a-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;kn6a-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;A week or two ago, Cole and his brother were kayaking and horsing around in a local reservoir when Cold &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2022/06/13/jmr-teen-who-drowned-in-newcastle-reservoir-described-as-entrepreneur-author-farmer-familys-rock/&quot;&gt;drowned&lt;/a&gt; and died. He leaves behind a profound sense of loss at an incredible life snuffed out too young and some deep wisdom that most of us who have lived our entire lives still don&#39;t appreciate.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;5cge6&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;2v9et-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;2v9et-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;2v9et-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br data-text=&quot;true&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;5cge6&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;fc9gj-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;fc9gj-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;fc9gj-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The main lesson in the book that Cole wants to leave us with is to let kids do what they want, not tell them they can&#39;t do things and give them the freedom to explore and spend leisurely time learning things in an unconventional manner. He rightly says that we have structured parenting in a such a way that every minute of a kid&#39;s day is oversubscribed. He is also right that many modern parents err on the side of caution. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;5cge6&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;f6chc-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;f6chc-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;f6chc-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br data-text=&quot;true&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;5cge6&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;f121h-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;f121h-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;f121h-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;It was certainly not the way my parents let me use my time when I was growing up, and I was free to explore the local hills looking for insects and libraries reading books and do dangerous experiment in my home lab from an early age; there is little doubt that this relaxed style of parenting on my parents&#39; part significantly contributed to who I am.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;5cge6&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;eshqf-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;eshqf-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;eshqf-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br data-text=&quot;true&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;5cge6&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;5r8os-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;_1mf _1mj&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;5r8os-0-0&quot; style=&quot;direction: ltr; position: relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;span data-offset-key=&quot;5r8os-0-0&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;I strongly believe that if you let kids do what they want (within some limits, of course), not only will they turn out ok but they will do something special. Cole Summers seems to me to be the epitome of this ideal. May we all, parents and kids, learn from his extraordinary example and memory.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;&quot; data-block=&quot;true&quot; data-editor=&quot;5cge6&quot; data-offset-key=&quot;1i3fp-0-0&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, &amp;quot;system-ui&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;.SFNSText-Regular&amp;quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2022/06/book-review-dont-tell-me-i-cant.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEifIXRkAMVyfFDxKx8yGe0ZQRgiOnNCpDFtIoUbWKxVwWIP0zUtwVxDy97WHzJbQNmvTkR3f6HNF9Ad3NunuMwHk6odZOxPtFL-luCh9-pcWfNR2kFHQL1ivvKuyOX3wRyQl91N8Rt6qRx4RS8amcXQNtbX5hMW5XgSZBGSmg8ivQoeqoT_UAE=s72-c" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-5790079985301028049</guid><pubDate>Mon, 18 Apr 2022 15:25:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2022-04-18T08:25:13.343-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">history of science</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">philosophy of science</category><title>Should a scientist have &quot;faith&quot;?</title><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #333333;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizfOsqj_NEfiJhap4Er0ElNjkfUsfz6O49pxe_lbMJQdSgsOuupQXzbOUWSn4g0vsZbztKDtL1FYnocu_gUdNC9BP4ODnh4jOi-4mESIilzlUjVdTNGfIx88F2ViD-2QRuUjHKlbobNxhm1RBaayt4jBpJJHw_sfzHH3EXrWi-q3CRn7w2_Jw/s766/Niels_Bohr_Date_Unverified_LOC_0%20(1).jpeg&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;766&quot; data-original-width=&quot;638&quot; height=&quot;320&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizfOsqj_NEfiJhap4Er0ElNjkfUsfz6O49pxe_lbMJQdSgsOuupQXzbOUWSn4g0vsZbztKDtL1FYnocu_gUdNC9BP4ODnh4jOi-4mESIilzlUjVdTNGfIx88F2ViD-2QRuUjHKlbobNxhm1RBaayt4jBpJJHw_sfzHH3EXrWi-q3CRn7w2_Jw/s320/Niels_Bohr_Date_Unverified_LOC_0%20(1).jpeg&quot; width=&quot;267&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Scientists like to think that they are objective and unbiased, driven by hard facts and evidence-based inquiry. They are proud of saying that they only go wherever the evidence leads them. So it might come as a surprise to realize that not only are scientists as biased as non-scientists, but that they are often driven as much by belief as are non-scientists. In fact they are driven by more than belief: they are driven by&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #333333;&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;em style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;faith&lt;/em&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #333333;&quot;&gt;. Science. Belief. Faith. Seeing these words in a sentence alone might make most scientists bristle and want to throw something at the wall or at the writer of this piece. Surely you aren’t painting us with the same brush that you might those who profess religious faith, they might say?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;But there’s a method to the madness here. First consider what faith is typically defined as – it is belief in the absence of evidence. Now consider what science is in its purest form. It is a leap into the unknown, an extrapolation of what is into what can be. Breakthroughs in science by definition happen “on the edge” of the known. Now what sits on this edge? Not the kind of hard evidence that is so incontrovertible as to dispel any and all questions. On the edge of the known, the data is always wanting, the evidence always lacking, even if not absent. On the edge of the known you have wisps of signal in a sea of noise, tantalizing hints of what may be, with never enough statistical significance to nail down a theory or idea. At the very least, the transition from “no evidence” to “evidence” lies on a continuum. In the absence of good evidence, what does a scientist do? He or she believes. He or she has faith that things will work out. Some call it a sixth sense. Some call it intuition. But “faith” fits the bill equally.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;If this reliance on faith seems like heresy, perhaps it’s reassuring to know that such heresies were committed by many of the greatest scientists of all time. All major discoveries, when they are made, at first rely on small pieces of data that are loosely held. A good example comes from the development of theories of atomic structure.&lt;span id=&quot;more-211582&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;When Johannes Balmer came up with his formula for explaining the spectral lines of hydrogen, he based his equation on only four lines that were measured with accuracy by Anders Ångström. He then took a leap of faith and came up with a simple numerical formula that predicted many other lines emanating from the hydrogen atom and not just four. But the greatest leap of faith based on Balmer’s formula was taken by Niels Bohr. In fact Bohr did not even hesitate to call it anything but a leap of faith. In his case, the leap of faith involved assuming that electrons in atoms only occupy certain discrete energy states, and that figuring out the transitions between these states somehow involved Planck’s constant in an important way. When Bohr could reproduce Balmer’s formula based on this great insight, he knew he was on the right track, and physics would never be the same. One leap of faith built on another.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;To a 21st century scientist, Bohr’s and Balmer’s thinking as well as that of many other major scientists well through the 20th century indicates a manifestly odd feature in addition to leaps of faith – an absence of what we call statistical significance or validation. As noted above, Balmer used only four data points to come up with his formula, and Bohr not too many more. Yet both were spectacularly right. Isn’t it odd, from the standpoint of an age that holds statistical validation sacrosanct, to have these great scientists make their leaps of faith based on paltry evidence, “small data” if you will? But that in fact is the whole point about scientific belief, that it originates precisely when there isn’t copious evidence to nail the fact, when you are still on shaky ground and working at the fringe. But this belief also supremely echoes a famous quote by Bohr’s mentor Rutherford – “If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” Resounding words from the greatest experimental physicist of the 20th century whose own experiments were so carefully chosen that he could deduce from them extraordinary truths about the structure of matter based on a few good data points.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;The transition between belief and fact in science in fact lies on a continuum. There are very few cases where a scientist goes overnight from a state of “belief” to one of “knowledge”. In reality, as evidence builds up, the scientist becomes more and more confident until there are not enough grounds for believing otherwise. In many cases the scientist may not even be alive to see his or her theory confirmed in all its glory: even the Newtonian model of the solar system took until the middle of the 19th century to be fully validated, more than a hundred years after Newton’s death.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;A good example of this gradual transition of a scientific theory from belief to confident espousal is provided by the way Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, well, evolved. It’s worth remembering that Darwin took more than twenty years to build up his theory after coming home from his voyage on the&amp;nbsp;&lt;em style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;HMS Beagle&lt;/em&gt;&amp;nbsp;in 1836. At first he only had hints of an idea based on extensive and yet uncatalogued and disconnected observations of flora and fauna from around the world. Some of the evidence he had documented – the names of Galapagos finches, for instance – was wrong and had to be corrected by his friends and associates. It was only by arduous experimentation and cataloging that Darwin – a famously cautious man – was able to reach the kind of certainty that prompted him to finally publish his magnum opus,&amp;nbsp;&lt;em style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;Origin of Species&lt;/em&gt;, in 1859, and even then only after he was threatened to be scooped by Alfred Russell Wallace. There can be said to be no one fixed eureka moment when Darwin could say that he had transitioned from “believing” in evolution by natural selection to “knowing” that evolution by natural selection was true. And yet, by 1859, this most meticulous scientist was clearly confident enough in his theory that he no longer simply believed in it. But it certainly started out that way. The same uncertain transition between belief and knowledge applies to other discoveries. Einstein often talked about his faith in his general theory of relativity before observations of the solar eclipse of 1919 confirmed its major prediction, the bending of starlight by gravity, remarking that if he was wrong it would mean that the good lord had led him down the wrong garden path. When did Watson and Crick go from believing that DNA is a double helix to knowing that it is? When did Alfred Wegener go from believing in plate tectonics to knowing that it was real? In some sense the question is pointless. Scientific knowledge, both individually and collectively, gets cemented with greater confidence over time until the objections simply cannot stand up to the weight of the accumulated evidence.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;eaa-wrapper eaa_post_between_content eaa_desktop&quot; id=&quot;eaa_post_between_content&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 0px -20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;eaa-ad  &quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Faith, at least in one important sense, is thus an important part of the mindset of a scientist. So why should scientists not nod in assent if someone then tells them that there is no difference, at least in principle, between their faith and religious faith? For two important reasons. Firstly, the “belief” that a scientist has is still based on physical and not supernatural evidence, even if all the evidence may not yet be there. What scientists call faith is still based on data and experiments, not mystic visions and pronouncements from a holy book. More importantly, unlike religious belief, scientific belief can wax and wane with the evidence; it importantly is tentative and always subject to change. Any good scientist who believes X will be ready to let go of their belief in X if strong evidence to the contrary presents itself. That is in fact the main difference between scientists on one hand and clergymen and politicians on the other; as Carl Sagan once asked, when was the last time you heard either of the latter say, “You know, that’s a really good counterargument. Maybe what I am saying is not true after all.”&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Faith may also interestingly underlie one of the classic features of great science – serendipity. Unlike what we often believe, serendipity does not always refer to pure unplanned accident but to deliberately planned accident; as Alexander Fleming memorably put it, chance favors the “prepared mind”. A remarkable example of deliberate serendipity comes from an anecdote about his discovery of slow neutrons that Enrico Fermi narrated to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Slow neutrons unlocked the door to nuclear power and the atomic age. Fermi told Chandrasekhar how he came to make this discovery which he personally considered – among a dozen seminal ones – to be his most important one (From Mehra and Rechenberg, “The Historical Development of Quantum Theory, Vol. 6”):&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;separator&quot; style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0qq07ia9LpGR8c5qgYNnqxT0LZF-gdBesOgrbdWhuWottmEpAeBCnECA4TF1VhWoN4BROUb6_VLk9LzFMVsbU3HwMvcQNu37v-crAsZ7CA1cH8BbsVz3ZbBgh-T_6WPkMrFno1Y4c-h7gjCCzWbjZ31Uo6G8DNSuzR-8Xp8EZacOW069O84c/s1510/FOL2QgnVQA0A8q0%20(1).png&quot; imageanchor=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=&quot;0&quot; data-original-height=&quot;936&quot; data-original-width=&quot;1510&quot; height=&quot;396&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0qq07ia9LpGR8c5qgYNnqxT0LZF-gdBesOgrbdWhuWottmEpAeBCnECA4TF1VhWoN4BROUb6_VLk9LzFMVsbU3HwMvcQNu37v-crAsZ7CA1cH8BbsVz3ZbBgh-T_6WPkMrFno1Y4c-h7gjCCzWbjZ31Uo6G8DNSuzR-8Xp8EZacOW069O84c/w640-h396/FOL2QgnVQA0A8q0%20(1).png&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Chandrasekhar’s invocation of Hadamard’s thesis of unconscious discovery might provide a rational underpinning for what we are calling faith. In this case, Fermi’s great intuitive jump, his seemingly irrational faith that paraffin might slow down neutrons, might have been grounded in the extensive body of knowledge about physics that was housed in his brain, forming connections that he wasn’t even aware of. Not every leap of faith can be explained this way, but some can. In this sense a scientist’s faith, unlike religious faith, is very much rational and based on known facts.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Ultimately there’s a supremely important guiding role that faith plays in science. Scientists ignore believing at their own peril. This is because they have to constantly tread the tightrope of skepticism and wonder. Shut off your belief valve completely and you will never believe anything until there is five-sigma statistical significance for it. Promising avenues of inquiry that are nonetheless on shaky grounds for the moment will be dismissed by you. You may never be the first explorer into rich new scientific territory. But open the belief valve completely and you will have the opposite problem. You may believe anything based on the flimsiest of evidence, opening the door to crackpots and charlatans of all kinds. So where do you draw the line?&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;In my mind there are a few logical rules of thumb that might help a scientist to mark out territories of non-belief from ones where leaps of faith might be warranted. In my mind, plausibility based on the known laws of science should play a big role. For instance, belief in homeopathy would be mistaken based on the most elementary principles of physics and chemistry, including the laws of mass action and dose response. But what about belief in extraterrestrial intelligence? There the situation is different. Based on our understanding of the laws of quantum theory, stellar evolution and biological evolution, there is no reason to believe that life could not have arisen on another planet somewhere in the universe. In this sense, belief in extraterrestrial intelligence is justified belief, even if we don’t have a single example of life existing anywhere else. We should keep on looking. Faith in science is also more justified when there is a scientific crisis. In a crisis you are on desperate grounds anyway, so postulating ideas that aren’t entirely based on good evidence isn’t going to make matters worse and are more likely to lead into novel territory. Planck’s desperate assumption that energy only comes in discrete packets was partly an act of faith that resolved a crisis in classical physics.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;Ultimately, though, drawing a firm line is always hard, especially for topics on the fuzzy boundary.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/freeman-dyson-global-warming-esp-and-the-fun-of-being-bunkrapt/&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;Extra-sensory perception&lt;/a&gt;, the&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1701266114&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;deep hot biosphere&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;and a viral cause for&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16903139/&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e80004; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;mad cow disease&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;are three theories which are implausible although not impossible in principle; there is little in them that flies against the basic laws of science. The scientists who believe in these theories are sticking their necks out and taking a stand. They are heretics who are taking the risk of being called fools; since most bold new ideas in science are usually wrong, they often will be. But they are setting an august precedent.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;If science is defined as the quest into the unknown, a foray into the fundamentally new and untested, it is more important than ever especially in this age of conformity, for belief in science to play a more central role in the practice of science. The biggest scientists in history have always been ones who took leaps of faith, whether it was Bohr with his quantum atom, Einstein with his thought experiments or Noether with her deep feeling for the relationship between symmetry and conservation laws, a feeling felt but not seen. For creating minds like these, we need to nurture an environment that not just allows but actively encourages scientists, especially young ones, to tread the boundary between evidence and speculation with aplomb, to exercise their rational faith with abandon. Marie Curie once said, “Now is the time to fear less, so that we may understand more.” To which I may add, “Now is the time to believe more, so that we may understand even more.”&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 27px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;First published on &lt;a href=&quot;https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2022/04/should-a-scientist-have-faith.html&quot;&gt;3 Quarks Daily&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2022/04/should-scientist-have-faith.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizfOsqj_NEfiJhap4Er0ElNjkfUsfz6O49pxe_lbMJQdSgsOuupQXzbOUWSn4g0vsZbztKDtL1FYnocu_gUdNC9BP4ODnh4jOi-4mESIilzlUjVdTNGfIx88F2ViD-2QRuUjHKlbobNxhm1RBaayt4jBpJJHw_sfzHH3EXrWi-q3CRn7w2_Jw/s72-c/Niels_Bohr_Date_Unverified_LOC_0%20(1).jpeg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></item><item><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-4616084425426098420</guid><pubDate>Sat, 02 Apr 2022 03:16:00 +0000</pubDate><atom:updated>2022-04-01T20:24:00.044-07:00</atom:updated><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">ants</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">artificial intelligence</category><category domain="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#">biology</category><title>Man as a &quot;machine-tickling aphid&quot;</title><description>&lt;div class=&quot;kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;May be a close-up of nature&quot; height=&quot;437&quot; src=&quot;https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/277756477_10103276360519077_4376044542253284959_n.jpg?_nc_cat=109&amp;amp;ccb=1-5&amp;amp;_nc_sid=730e14&amp;amp;_nc_ohc=ZYc2wQvbXZIAX9wjq-V&amp;amp;_nc_oc=AQncRGGyg8IaUKUVnskH2RHI6EmIhHDeaOH0O6nlLzLMEZroeQmRp5OIPmkW_IelKRE&amp;amp;_nc_ht=scontent-sjc3-1.xx&amp;amp;oh=00_AT_0LNGmQR9CKRDjoYFAxFn_HvvPXyfzJS2DzD4IY89rMA&amp;amp;oe=624BFA03&quot; style=&quot;caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; white-space: normal;&quot; width=&quot;640&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot; style=&quot;font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;On the playground in the park today, my daughter and I played with some carpenter ants and the aphids they were farming. The phenomenon never ceases to fascinate me - the aphids being sheltered from natural predators under leaves and sap-rich areas of trees by the ants; the ants milking the aphids for their tasty, sugary honeydew in turn by gently stroking them.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;It&#39;s doubly fascinating because as recounted in George Dyson&#39;s &quot;Darwin Among the Machines&quot;, in his groundbreaking 1872 book &quot;Erewhon&quot;, Victorian writer and polymath Samuel Butler wondered whether human relationships with machines will one day become very similar to those between ants and aphids, with humans essentially becoming dependent on machines to provide them with constant, nurturing stimulation and feeding: &quot;May not man himself become a sort of parasite upon the machines? An affectionate machine-tickling aphid?&quot;, wrote Butler. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q&quot; style=&quot;background-color: white; color: #050505; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;&quot;&gt;&lt;div dir=&quot;auto&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-family: verdana;&quot;&gt;In this scenario, there&#39;s no need to imagine a Terminator-style takeover of human society by computers; instead, humans will willingly give themselves over to the illusions of tender, loving care provided by machines, becoming permanently dependent and parasitic on them and becoming, in effect, code&#39;s way to replicate itself. Clearly, Butler&#39;s vision was incredibly prescient and ahead of its time, and resoundingly true as indicated by the medium in which I am typing these words.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description><link>http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2022/04/man-as-machine-tickling-aphid.html</link><author>noreply@blogger.com (Wavefunction)</author><thr:total>2</thr:total></item></channel></rss>

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