Are we getting physical, then?

The great Oracle at Delphi once told a young Athenian that Socrates was the wisest man in the world.  When the youth asked Socrates why this was, he replied, “I suppose it is because I know nothing, but I do have opinions on many things!” We can see that Socrates was using the word knowledge [...]

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A creature of habit

Man is a creature of habit.  If he did not have habits, he would need to spend a lot of time consciously thinking about what he has to do.  He would have to evaluate every thought before he spoke of it and before he acted upon it.  He would have to evaluate every course of [...]

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Ways of seeing

It’s always fun to analyse things.  We do analysis so readily because it is easy ; synthesis (imaginative thinking) is a lot harder.  Science makes such good progress because it involves mostly analysis. But, easy though it is, the results of analysis are still a puzzle.  For example, we might do a hundred experiments in [...]

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Getting the description right

It cannot be seriously doubted that nowadays people are more scientific than at any previous time.  Despite its obvious shortcomings, the technological successes of science have seduced millions into believing that it is the only way to describe the workings of the world properly. One of the most unfortunate things to emerge from our love [...]

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Causes and reasons

I suppose that, like most people, I grew up largely in a state of wonder.  I wondered constantly at the way the world is and how it came to be and how it might come to be.  Of course, a child does not articulate this wonder consistently, accurately and persistently ; it consists mainly in [...]

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Keeping it simple

Having been in engineering for most of my life, I have also found the attractions of science to be almost irresistible.  There is something neat about it.  The scientist begins by making an observation and proceeds to ascertain the causes of it.  After many such investigations, and when sufficient data has been accumulated, he then [...]

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When is enough enough?

A short while ago, there was a great debate going on about the stupendously expensive CERN experiment, which was about to take a serious turn at that time.  Much was said about many things in the public debate ; but one item that caught my attention was a remark apparently made by Prof. Stephen Hawking.  [...]

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It’s too simple

Almost all science (knowledge) is concerned with abstractions.  The world is too complex for a human mind to grasp in its functioning, dynamic entirety.  So we break it down into manageable chunks ; and most of those chunks are are very small indeed – chunklets – and it is these abstracted bits of the world [...]

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Stars don’t count

Hardly a day passes without some sign of the profound mystery of the world coming to mind.  Thinking of its origins : the universe, in its early stages of evolution, is completely invisible to us. It is known to us only by essentially geometrical expressions and, because the universe had no objects in at that [...]

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The future of technology

Are human beings more than simply machines? What consequences might ensue from thinking that they are?

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Disinheritance

Why are the British so intent on destroying their Christian inheritance of art, science and humanitarian ideals?

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Just a thought

I know a nice lady, Mrs Bradshaw, who once had a real-life adventure. So my short account of her adventure begins like this : “Mrs Bradshaw pulled on her favourite green sweater, ran a comb through her hair, and stepped out of the house to go to her sister’s rather forbidding place in Reading”. This [...]

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Adventures with the occult

I expect there are any number of ways of thinking about ourselves and the universe in which we live.  All of them contain surprises.  Here’s something to ponder. There are at least two universes ; the first is the one that we know ; and the second is the one we believe in. The one [...]

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Science and omniscience

The first half of my working life was profitably and enjoyably spent in engineering ; electronic engineering.  So I am happy about what science can do for technology.  I have certain misgivings about the way that technology is used, but I’ll skip lightly over that for now.  What crossed my mind, and what I’d like [...]

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The man who knew too much?

Sigmund Freud was a remarkable man.  Most people know that he was Jewish and born in Central Europe in the late nineteenth century.  The most productive part of his life was spent in Vienna.   He served in the German Army in WW1 and died in London just before WW2.  The socialists seem to have hated [...]

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