Category Archives: Science

AN INSTITUTE TO STUDY HOW RESEARCH IS DONE.

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Philip

AN INSTITUTE TO STUDY HOW RESEARCH IS DONE. I have posted a number of times about research by John Ioannidis on statistical studies that overstate the results of studies that have sample sizes that are too small. (see, for example, … Continue reading →

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THE SCIENCE OF THE WIFFLE BALL.

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Philip

THE SCIENCE OF THE WIFFLE BALL. This article by Bjorn Carey in Popular Science reports on research using a wind tunnel by mechanical engineer Jenn Stroud Rossmann at Lafayette College on the forces that operate on a Wiffle ball. (A … Continue reading →

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HOW THE PHYSICISTS CHECKED THEIR EXPERIMENT.

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Philip

HOW THE PHYSICISTS CHECKED THEIR EXPERIMENT. I posted here on a commencement speech by Richard Feynman, the great physicist, which stressed the importance of of replicating experiments and of eliminating alternative explanations. This article on the Wired site by Adam … Continue reading →

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WHEN I HEARD THE LEARNED ASTRONOMER….

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Philip

WHEN I HEARD THE LEARNED ASTRONOMER…. When I Heard the Learned Astronomer by Walt Whitman When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, … Continue reading →

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LARGE AND SMALL NUMBERS.

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Philip

LARGE AND SMALL NUMBERS. Of course, there is no chance that I can understand what the new findings about the Big Bang mean. What I am left with is amazement at the scale of the scientific work—both large and small. … Continue reading →

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INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED AN INSTANT AFTER THE BIG BANG.

Posted on March 22, 2014 by Philip

INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED AN INSTANT AFTER THE BIG BANG. My first post on this blog was about the marvel that I felt that background radiation in our skies was evidence of the Big Bang. It was amazing to me … Continue reading →

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ANOTHER ARTIST WITH DAMAGED EYESIGHT—CHUCK CLOSE.

Posted on March 9, 2014 by Philip

ANOTHER ARTIST WITH DAMAGED EYESIGHT—CHUCK CLOSE. I have posted, including here, on the theory of Margaret Livingstone, a Harvard neurobiologist, that it is an advantage for an artist to have poor depth perception because the artist sees the world as … Continue reading →

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MARY JANE’S INTUITIONS ABOUT MATHEMATICS.

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Philip

MARY JANE’S INTUITIONS ABOUT MATHEMATICS. When I posted earlier on Tegmark’s theories, Mary Jane commented here that her sister Carol had once said to her “I don’t even know what math is!” And Mary Jane had replied to Carol, “It’s … Continue reading →

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THE EXTERNAL REALITY HYPOTHESIS.

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Philip

THE EXTERNAL REALITY HYPOTHESIS. Tegmark argues from the “external reality hypothesis”, which states that there exists an external physical reality completely independent of humans. This is a philosophical proposition that I agree with. Tegmark’s next step is to argue that … Continue reading →

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A DATA REVOLUTION IN COSMOLOGY.

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Philip

A DATA REVOLUTION IN COSMOLOGY. In my conversations with my nephew Andrew Schaefer, he also mentioned that cosmology has gone from a science in which there was very little data to a science in which there is an enormous amount … Continue reading →

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