Tag: Science
-
Why is Wonder?
Sometimes I am accosted by the strangest questions; they remind me of the unanswerable ‘why’ questions that so often bubble out of 3 year olds -the only difference, I suppose, is that I would no longer be satisfied with the unadorned ‘just because’ answers I’m sure I used to get from my frustrated parents. But […]
-
Words, when there aren’t any
Here’s a thought: What are you thinking – right now? Can you describe what is happening inside your head at any moment you are asked? If you can, is it in a decipherable stream of words… or in something else? And, further, if it is something else, then how could you ever describe it in […]
-
The Me of Science
This is going to sound trite, but have you ever wondered about your role in Science? Really. I mean that of your consciousness in apprehending and interpreting that which is measured: the ‘Me’-ness which separates each of us from whatever we’re doing -or, rather, which joins us to it: joins us to the other? I […]
-
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
I have to admit that I’d never heard of cute-aggression until the other day. Or at least, perhaps with my ageing ears, I’d been hearing acute-aggression all this time and assumed it was just anger flaring out physically during an argument -well, something unexpected anyway. But now that it has been clarified, I feel embarrassed […]
-
He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf
I am an obstetrician, and not a neuropsychiatrist, but I feel a definite uneasiness with the idea of messing with brains –especially from the inside. Talking at it, sure –maybe even tweaking it with medications- but it seems to me there is something… sacrosanct about its boundaries. Something akin to black-boxhood -or pregnant-wombhood, if you […]
-
Noceboes? How Cute.
I have always been fascinated by neologisms –new words that substitute for more commonly used ones. They can be clever, rude, or just plain silly, but often their point is to get noticed –or perhaps draw attention to their inventors. There was a time –before social media, at least- when we used to applaud people […]
-
Scientific Fraud
Science –whose Latin etymology denotes knowledge- started off as a branch of philosophy and gradually morphed into its present form. Recently, however, it seems to be resting on a progressively unstable foundation with the general public. By its very nature, Science accumulates its knowledge by induction: observations elicit explanations which suggest experiments designed to test […]