This page is a kind of a blog that I will probably only get around to updating every few months or so. It is planned to contain things like my comments on what I regard to be inspiring books or films etc.
Some very interesting books
- I strongly recommend the following book on Information & Network Science
Arbesman S (2012) The Half-Life of Facts: Why everything we know has an expiration date. Current / Penguin Books, London
This book discusses how things we feel absolutely certain about - facts - actually change all the time. Knowledge is not unlike a substance which can be created, spread out across the globe, and even decay with a half-life like a radioactive element until finally becoming obsolete. Here we also find out about a lot of other interesting things like:
- Stanley Milgram's idea of how everyone on Earth is linked to everyone else by about six degrees of separation
- John Ioannidis's argument that most published research findings are false (Ioannidis JP (2005) Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Med 2(8):e124)
- the ways that DNA and hand-written manuscripts are copied incorrectly are often quite "similar, despite the large differences between how scribes and enzymes work." Systematic errors in copying texts and mutating DNA can be grouped into the same categories in both cases: homeoteleutons (slipped-strand mispairing mutations), dittographies (insertions), metatheses (chromosomal transpositions) and point errors (point mutations). And "each type of error occurs with different yet predictable frequencies" which can be used to judge the ages of documents and DNA sequences.
- the tendency to ignore information simply because it doesn't fit within one's own worldview. This is known as the Semmelweis Reflex, Confirmation Bias, Change Blindness and Dianiel Kahneman's idea of Theory Induced Blindness which, by the way, are all akin to Eugen Bleuler's (the father of the diagnosis Schizophrenia) ideas about Autistic, Undisciplined Thinking (Bleuler E (1912) Das autistische Denken (Vol. 4). Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, Leipzig & Wien; Bleuler E (1919) Das autistisch-undisziplinierte Denken in der Medizin und seine Überwindung. Berlin)
and much, much more! For example, Samuel Arbesman discusses certain computer programs like the Automated Mathematician created by Doug Lenat in the 1970s and which "provided a foundation for other automated proof systems, such as TheoryMine - see link below - which names a novel, computationally created and proved theorem after oneself or a friend, for a small price."
Here is a list of fascinating, useful websites for your reading pleasure:
all of which are worth looking at.
- For an extremely important reference to magical thinking I recommend:
Frazer JG (1928) The Golden Bough. Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London
Frazer JG (1928) Der Goldene Zweig: Das Geheimnis von Glauben und Sitten der Völker (Berlin DpHvB, Trans.). C.L. Hirschfeld-Verlag, Leipzig
- And now, back to magical thinking again, football and voodoo
I imagine that few people realize that magic still plays a major role in the lives of millions of people in the world today as evidenced by the following book about football and voodoo:
Becker OG (2010) Voodoo im Strafraum: Fussball und Magie in Afrika. Verlag C.H. Beck, München
In addition to the question of which team will prove to be the better sportsmen and the success and prestige which winning brings, there is belief in a parallel competition of magical forces going on during an African football match, namely, which team will prove to be in possession of the more powerful "medicine" by having the more powerful witchdoctor on their side. And this kind of thinking is just as present in modern sports outside Africa when we realize how many sportsmen in both agrarian and nonagrarian societies are superstitious. In fact, I believe that the widespread use of all kinds of crazy doping methods is simply the way sportsmen in the industrial world resort to magical thinking for help.
- Did you know that the history of mankind is actually a history of slavery?
Indeed, we can all be extremely happy that we are living (for how long yet?) for the very first time in recorded history at a time when slavery is no longer an accepted political form of state? For more information I recommend:
Flaig E (2009) Weltgeschichte der Sklaverei. Verlag C.H. Beck, München
- That the human animal loves violence should come as no surprise and is well documented in the following work:
Sorg E (2011) Die Lust am Bösen: Warum Gewalt nicht heilbar ist. Carl Hanser Verlag / Nagel & Kimche, München
- Did you know that since the beginning of recorded history, we have been treating our children ever better?
In spite of our history of slavery and our enjoyment of violence, there's still hope for us in view of the fact that, as far as we know since the beginning of recorded history, we have been treating our children ever better: the ones we used to kill like too many dogs or cats on a farm many thousands of years ago, we slowly decided to just abandon in the woods (Moses, Romulus and Remus ...) and, over time, the ones we used to abandon in the woods, we gradually decided to just let fight it out with the dogs and cats for scraps of food in the court yard (Johannes Kepler and colleagues ...) until, as a result of the industrial revolution, we eventually realized that we can use the little buggers to work for us if we go ahead and feed them and teach them how to use machines. Indeed, it's only been since about the Second World War that human consciousness and empathy have evolved to the point where parents care for and raise their children for the pure sake of having it better than they themselves have had it in life. For evidence as to this trend, I suggest reading:
deMause L (Ed.) (1980) Hört ihr die Kinder weinen: Eine psychogenetische Geschichte der Kindheit (suhrkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft 339 ed.). Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main
- Imagine you and I and everyone else were living in a two-dimensional world as flat geometrical beings
in the shape of lines, circles, triangles, squares, rectangles and so on. In this world, our individual personalities - the ways we each behave - would depend upon our shape and size and rate of rotation in the plane, but all we would be able to see of each other would be nothing more than a line in the plane of our flat land. However, voluminous beings from a three-dimensional world would be able to hover above Flatland and observe and understand everything from the (transcendental) perspective of their third dimension. A wonderful mythopoetical "mathephilosophical" way to understand that there may be more to our own world than meets the eye...
Abbott EA (1952) Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (6 ed.). Dover Publications, Inc., New York
See also the "Dr Quantum - Flatland" cartoon on my website via the link: Links & Flicks under the heading SCIENCE.
Some very interesting pictures
- On this color composite of the UltraVISTA image (click for full-screen view), the large white objects with haloes are foreground stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy. A host of other galaxies can be seen, from relatively nearby galaxies which appear large enough to discern their structures, to the most distant galaxies which appear as red dots in this image. (Credit: UltraVISTA/Terapix/CNRS/CASU / See also: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/120322_vista.htm)