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Wednesday 18 January 2012

Education education education

I am pursuing the monoist/dualism thing all over the place, both on this blog and on the forum.  Katie kindly put me on to Emergence.  Sadly, Wiki is down today in the UK. So I found this paper.  I am glad that I downloaded this on to my Kindle last week and had already started to read it.

For the record, I got an A in Biology 'O' level in 1981 and a 'B' in maths.

This is tough stuff.

3 comments:

  1. Emergence is great! It turned up in this article recently -
    http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/15/scientists-reveal-favourite-deep-elegant-or-beautiful-scientific-theories/
    Only a short explanation, but it does show the scope of the theory.

    I am a big quantum physics nerd as well - one of my favourite authors on the subject is Brian Greene, who writes accessible but not dumbed down physics books (I particularly like The Fabric of the Cosmos). However, be very wary of people who abuse the scope of quantum physics. There are people out there who insist that it's proof for all sorts, from cosmic ordering to curing cancer through alternative therapies to the existence of God. Poor quantum physics. So far it's only really proved things like the fact that a particle is also a wave (http://bit.ly/yfhag8), and that if you put a cat in a box full of poison it will exist in a state of simultaneous death/life until you observe it (my own flagrant misinterpretation - google Schrodinger's cat! Poor hypothetical cat.)

    It's a bit like those therapists who insist that the neurobiology of mental illness proves that bad parenting is a causative factor in eating disorders, since we can now see how trauma physically affects the brain. The problem is that they are reading waaaay too much into the theory/research, misinterpreting things, cherry picking evidence, disregarding things which don't match their theories and so on. Same applies in every field of science, but the gap between the reality of quantum physics (and oxymoronical phrase in itself, hehe - nerd joke alert!) and the application by every quack in the world and their dogs is staggering.

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  2. Loving Katie's nerdy comment :)

    I did my 'O' levels the same year as you Charlotte....

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  3. I too love Katie's nerdy comment. I just need to read it 15 times!

    ELT - we are the same age. Almost exactly. xx

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