When it comes to the world beyond our direct, ordinary experience, we just don’t have what it takes to understand the differences in scale. If you are given a model Earth and Moon made to scale, for instance, and you’re asked to estimate how far apart they would have to be from each other to … Read more
This famous phrase, made famous by Sir Isaac Newton, and celebrated ever since, may have been a public attempt at modesty and historical gratitude that was sure to endear him to, and inspire, subsequent generations of natural philosophers, but it may also have been a little bit of an underhanded insult to Robert Hooke, just … Read more
We live in a world in which we presuppose as a given that great scientific discoveries require the existence of great, expensive technological equipment: lasers, the Large Hadron Collider, microscopes, computers, the Hubble and Kepler telescopes, synchrotrons, super-duper cameras, you name it… But more than great technology, the real secret to discovery is creativity, because … Read more
Whenever new technologies arise, such as the ability to genetically engineer biological organisms, one of the classic luddite objections is that such novelty represents human hubris as we attempt to “play God” and do something “unnatural.” I’ve never quite understood such objections, since we run the risk of “creating life” whenever we have a few … Read more
What does it mean to be you? How is it that the physical matter making up the many neurons in your brain somehow produce your subjective, conscious experience? Are your neurons themselves conscious? While we’re at it, what exactly is consciousness? Where does your sense of self come from? Do you actually have a self? … Read more
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection provides a wonderful scientific explanation of biological adaptation and diversity. The theory is wonderful. The process of evolution itself is torturous, blind, indifferent, and cruel. And when you take a ruthless process, and mix it up with some extreme political and social ideology, what you get is … Read more