Stephen Jay Gould

Sad given how good Dennett’s writing is, that he has to devote almost a third of “Darwin’s Dangreous Idea” to refuting doubts about Darwinism created by Gould and Lewontin’s original paper and Gould’s high profile public views on evolutionary mechanisms. Burgess Shale – the boy who cried wolf, etc. Gould was someone I read ten … Continue reading “Stephen Jay Gould”

Why People Say The Things They Do

Really just a holding post for two presentations (with some overlapping content) from Brian Josephson thanks to a cross-link on the man himself. A hero of mine, sceptical of sceptics’ motives and abuse of power for rejecting scientific claims. Cold Fusion, The Memory of Water and more examples killed by the cultural spread of scepticism … Continue reading “Why People Say The Things They Do”

EGG (Electro-Gaia-Gram) Project

Or more officially the GCP (Global Consciousness Project). Princeton, serious science (?) with some wonderfully whacky content – Princess Di’s funeral and the O J Simpson trial linked to random events detected in electronic networks apparently arising from the fact that “… a small effect of consciousness on the electronic REG (random event generator) isn’t … Continue reading “EGG (Electro-Gaia-Gram) Project”

Consciousness and Pirsig

Following a search hit I find a source that links many of mine …. Pirsig and VUB/Heilighen, (Einstein Meets Magritte) with Josephson (explaining the paranormal with open minded science) with Dennett, Searle and Chalmers (PoM / Consciousness) in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. A paper in the 1995 JCS reviewing the 1995 Einstein Meets Magritte … Continue reading “Consciousness and Pirsig”

Technology Control Destroys Knowledge

I’ve had an angle for some time (since before the manifesto) that adding technology to a system that is not already reasonably automatic, almost invariably makes matters worse. Introduction of new IT systems for example bring new process constraints whose downside may often outweigh the value of the system itself, since the value of ad-hoc … Continue reading “Technology Control Destroys Knowledge”

It’s in the numbers ?

Well maybe not. I picked-up on this paper on the “Technosophy” site of Terry Alden’s, because of a search hit on the 22 in my Catch-22, only to find a whole culture of synchronicity around the number 22 (and 23 ?). Anyway, some of it is probably too mystic and new age, but the particular … Continue reading “It’s in the numbers ?”

Amazing Brain

Still reading Austin, [here below], [and here], [and again], [and earlier], [and originally], and finding new items all the time. More apparent how he is linking deliberately learned meditative states with other altered brain states achieved by other physical and chemical abnormalities. Two amazing items in one. Looking at the classic view of left- and … Continue reading “Amazing Brain”

Quirks Emerge Beyond Our Quarks

Dr Austin again. “Sperry takes over where William James left off. Neurosciences have rejected reductionism and mechanistic determinism on the one hand, and dualisms on the other…. higher level interactions [of the] brain are presumed to be reducible [only in principle] in terms of fundamental physics. How does it help us to know about quarks, … Continue reading “Quirks Emerge Beyond Our Quarks”