In Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28) the eponymous anti-hero is informed of the death of his wife. Shakespeare then gives him one of the classic soliloquiys in all literature. It is a despairing reflection on the brevity and futility of human life. ‘She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such […]
Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins Read More »
Sy Montgomery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sy_Montgomery) is a naturalist, author of 15 books, who specialises in conveying the wonder of the natural world to a wide audience. Since the first dawning realisation with Darwin in 1859 that humans are co-terminus with the natural world, every advance in our understanding of other creatures underscores the fact there is no
The Soul of an Octopus Read More »
Steven Weinberg (born May 3, 1933, https://web2.ph.utexas.edu/~weintech/weinberg.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_weinberg) is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles. He holds the Josey Regental Chair in Science at the University of Texas at Austin,
Dreams of a Final Theory Read More »
David Deutsch (http://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Deutsch) is Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field of quantum computation by formulating a description for a quantum Turing machine, as well as specifying an algorithm designed to
The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch Read More »
Before retirement Richard Fortey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Fortey) was Professor of Palaeontology at the Natural History Museum. He is a world expert on the trilobites, a group of ancient marine arthropods resembling woodlice which roamed the oceans for almost 300 million years. That’s three thousand times longer than Homo Sapiens have so far been on the planet. The study of these creatures has contributed hugely
There is much talk these days about artificial intelligence, and whether advanced computer systems could ever really ‘think’. Might they, after we have birthed them, go on to replicate and take over the world? This is not idle speculation, or the draft plot for a science fiction novel. Stephen Hawking is only one of many
The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence by Margaret Boden Read More »
I’m assuming you don’t spend a lot of time picking out unwanted insects from your best friend’s fur. Yet the function of that activity in apes is exactly what Robin Dunbar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Dunbar) believes language does for us. Apes and monkeys, humanity’s closest kin, differ from other animals in the intensity of their social relationships. All their
Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language by Robin Dunbar Read More »
There is a delightful scene in the film Pretty Woman (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100405/?ref_=nv_sr_1) with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. Roberts plays a hooker who has been hired by Gere as an escort to accompany him to a business meeting dinner. She is beautifully presented in cocktail dress but lacks table manner etiquette. On been presented with escargots she is
The familiar call of the common cuckoo, “cuck-oo,” has been a harbinger of spring ever since our ancestors walked out of Africa many thousands of years ago. However, for naturalist and scientist Nick Davies, the call is an invitation to solve an enduring puzzle: how does the cuckoo get away with laying its eggs in
