Arguments over whether climate change is real, and if so whether it is man-caused, ignore the elephant in the room. Continue reading
Blog Posts and Writings Tagged: Science
Blog 45. The flow of information and misinformation
The big headline above a 26 column-inch editorial says,
Climate change threat is overblown.
This is in the newspaper of the most science-centered town of the nation? Well, some accounts claim Los Alamos has more science Ph.D.s per unit population than anywhere else. Continue reading
Blog 38. Science and anti-science
Although our lives are dominated by technology, most of the US population is scientifically illiterate. Continue reading
Blog 36. Italian Earthquakes and Scientific Illiteracy
In America, we have a society infused with technology but a populace that is scientifically illiterate. That leads to governance by political correctness rather than by critical evaluation. We’re not alone; similar things happen elsewhere. Continue reading
Blog 17. The Anthropocene: Mankind Overwhelms Geology
Geological forces move mountains, but now people do bigger things faster. Bigger is not always better. Continue reading
Blog 11. Science, Society, and Belief
Science
Science is a method for establishing truth based on observation, experiment, measurement, and syllogistic logic. As the physicist Richard Feynman said, science is a method of organizing your information so as to avoid being fooled. Science offers a reliable way of knowing about the physical world. It can establish facts, but not human values. Is that why much of today’s society—or at least today’s politics—seems to be anti-science?
Continue reading
Blog 8. Was Chicken Little right? An exponential tale
After she* was conked on the head by a falling acorn, Chicken Little ran around in panic, crying that the sky was falling. From that story, our children presumably learn not to exaggerate, not to make conclusions without data. Despite the moral of the story, was Chicken Little right? Is the sky falling? Continue reading
Blog 2. Complex Systems: Definition
What’s a system?
A system is two or more things acting on each other. Like a weight bouncing on a spring. The weight pushes on the spring and the spring pushes back on the weight, with the result that the weight can bounce up and town. That’s a simple system. The scientific concept of complex systems arose during the last twenty years as the advances in computers enabled scientists to investigate nonlinear systems. Continue reading