What, Why & How do we Know ?
Mentioned being impressed with Carlo Rovelli’s references in Helgoland to Aleksander Bogdanov. I considered Bogdanov an entirely new source to me just earlier this year. [Holding post – collecting links etc.] I’ve also mentioned previously, as a “social-democratic liberal” type myself, being very impressed with (Marxist) Paul Mason’s “Project Zero” in his Post Capitalism. What … Continue reading “Bogdanov”
Noted only in the past year, after getting very engaged with the work of Whitehead recently that I needed to give credit to a strong link between him and Pirsig that had crossed my path unnoticed back in 2006. With information and computation proving an ever more fundamental part of my agenda since the outset … Continue reading “Linking Links – It’s Already Connected”
Just capturing a link to the AntiMatter blog pages of Cormac O’Rafferty. (Like me he blogs about plenty of current affairs and global politics beyond his academic teaching interest in physics. For me these are in fact deeply connected via human memetics and social decision making – in both science and politics.) Capturing the link … Continue reading “Cormac O’Raifeartaigh / O’Rafferty”
This is a short post to address the additional “eastern” perspective missing from the post note in my previous blog on the London Thinks “How Do We Believe” event. Here on Psybertron, much of the philosophical journey was informed early on by the qualities of Zen / Tao thinking introduced to millions by Robert Pirsig with … Continue reading “Additional “Eastern” Thoughts.”
(Editorial Note : This paper was originally prepared for the 2005 Liverpool Conference on Robert Pirsig and his Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ). It is a personal non-technical view of the MoQ, and indeed the first part of paper is an entirely subjective and naive account of the author’s “thought journey” that led to reading Pirsig … Continue reading “It’s Evolutionary Psychology Stupid”
Finished Unger & Smolin. Having breezed through Roberto Unger’s 2/3, Lee Smolin’s 1/3 was tougher going. As advertised, this is not “popular science” writing and Smolin drops into the mathematical, symbolic and technical weeds of several aspects of many different theories in physics from quanta and string-theories to cosmogeny itself, and he does it in very clipped highlights, referring … Continue reading “Unger & Smolin – an important read for anyone interested in the future of science.”
The political philosopher Roberto Unger and the cosmologist / physicist Lee Smolin have jointly written “The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time” and its release last month had already been promoted as a landmark work. It’s actually two books, one by each of them, with common introduction and index. So far, in addition to … Continue reading “Cosmology in Crisis – Unger & Smolin sweeping away the metaphysical gloss.”
Found myself listening to Rupert Sheldrake last night in the Essex Unitarian Church at Notting Hill Gate in front of a congregation of The Jung Club. Fascinating encounter, despite being really only a 25 minute potted summary of his Morphic Resonance field hypothesis – increasingly elaborated in his later works with more opportunities for empirical … Continue reading “Sheldrake Speaks”
Good job this story has “Quantum Computing” in scare quotes because it’s nothing to do with quantum computing – computing using quantum information in qubits. It’s a computer that uses quantum effects, like every computer – in fact like every device, and indeed everything in the cosmos, you and me included. What it is using specifically … Continue reading “Quantum in “Scare Quotes””
Henry Stapp’s words quoted by Brian Josephson, were one of the first occasions I was turned on to considering that (eastern) mysticism might have something real to add to science. Both serious physicists, the latter a Nobel prizewinner, both interestingly, present at the 2003 Science of Consciousness event in Tucson. At the time (noted in … Continue reading “Henry Stapp”