The Hand of Time

Happy to share this awesome response to Einstein’s Dreams by Amish:The Hand of Time.

The world of the dream: 18 June 1905 – 21 October 2013

You have to love the way Michael takes Lightman’s vision of a world before and after clocks and creates a similar vision of a world before and after tape measures; bringing subjective perceptions of time and space together. Very clever.

The world of the dream: 18 June 1905 – 21 October 2013.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

Here is a nice poetic description of a spiral galaxy image.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

Sugar Coated Cosmos

Great creative description of a nebula from Jet.

Sugar Coated Cosmos.

The warm “Fabric of the Cosmos”

Tags

Brian Greene, science book

Getting cozy with Brian Greene’s Classic

Many of us interested in the big questions of the cosmos will already recognise the face of Professor Brian Greene, who has been our guide in two very popular documentary series: The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of The Cosmos. Perhaps less well-known is that Professor Greene’s rise to become one of the world’s great science communicators began with ambitious books bearing these same titles. I’ve just been engrossed in reading Professor Greene’s second foray into the science writing, The Fabric of the Cosmos (2004) and can report that I have come away from each sitting with my head spinning – in a good way, of course.

Brian Greene snuggled up in the Fabric of the Cosmos

What makes Greene a great communicator is that he knows that many of his readers – me included – are not scientists not mathematicians and that the key to unlocking complex cosmic concepts comes not from difficult equations but from language that enlightens. That he chooses to begin 500-plus pages of explaining the universe with a humble anecdote of him as a boy discovering a dusty book in his father’s library by Nobel laureate (for literature), Albert Camus, gives some indication of the way ahead. Within Camus’ pages he is confronted with the assertion that “There is but one true philosophical problem, and that is suicide…Whether or not the world has three dimensions or the mind nine or twelve categories, come afterward”. Now, for the humble reader turning the front cover expecting to begin learning about the workings of the universe, such an assertion is likely to come as big as a shock and as confronting as it did for the young Brian Greene. It seems that, for the future physics professor, Camus’ provocative statement challenged Greene to understand the point of all this scientific understanding. Years later, we are the beneficiaries of this self-reflection because Greene manages to embed all of his chapters with a relevance for the average cosmic citizen.

Part of Professor Greene’s success in making esoteric cosmological ideas relevant and engaging is his mastery of written communication. With his big budget documentary series, much of the difficult visualising required by unseen natural forces can be accomplished with eye-pleasing special effects – created by experts in CGI. In his books, comprehending massive and miniature natural forces depends on Greene’s ability with words. Indeed, the “fabric” from the book’s title makes its first appearance when Greene introduces the truly mind-boggling world of quantum mechanics where, after he states that “the universe, according to quantum mechanics , participates in a game of chance,” he goes on to say that “probability is deeply woven into the fabric of quantum reality” (p.11) (as opposed to the certainty of physical laws required in classical physics). This “fabric” becomes a motif for Greene to ground the unseeable into something we can relate to.

Greene recognises this style of communicating science for the masses in the preface to the book where he explains, “I’ve stayed close to the core scientific ideas throughout, while stripping away mathematical detail in favor (sic) of metaphors, analogies, stories, and illustrations.” That said, those wanting more meat in their science sandwich will still be satisfied – if not within the main body of the book, at least in the 40 pages of notes appended to the back. So what we’re left with is an intellectually stimulating book that can be, at times, as engaging and thought-provoking as a novel. Maybe even Albert Camus would be impressed.

Are we beyond scientific dogma?

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dawkins, god delusion, science delusion, sheldrake

One of the texts my class has been looking at in some depth is the new publication by Rupert Sheldrake. Its title, The Science Delusion, is an obvious reference to the enormously popular book by Richard Dawkins called The God Delusion. A cynic might be forgiven that this is shameless attempt to cash in on Dawkins’ successful book, especially considering that it isn’t at all anti-science in the way The God Delusion is anti-religion.

Rather, the “delusion” in The Science Delusion refers to science itself suffering from an identity crisis; a crisis stemming from what Sheldrake posits as ten dogmas of scientific belief. Sheldrake, himself, is a scientist isn’t anti-science, therefore, but rather an advocate for a less dogmatic approach to fundamental scientific beliefs (that have become, in his view, unassailable truths). To test this thesis, I attempted a scientific approach myself and surveyed my new science writing class about their views to these so-called dogmas. Here are the results: