It’s the seat of the magic lantern show that you’re privy to every day. It’s where your consciousness is generated. It controls the functions of your body. It’s where your personality and memories reside. It’s your brain. And yet what do we really know about this 3.3 pound gelatinous mass inside our skulls? Quite a […]
There are two suspicions, which are related, about human beings which go back a long way in human thought. One is that we are composed of a myriad of miniscule particles. The other is that our psychology is really fractured, so that the unity of consciousness we normally enjoy is a temporary construct at best.
I Contain Multitudes Read More »
A song lyric from a 1987 album by Sting could be the strapline for this book about science and the environment. ‘How fragile we are, How fragile we are’. More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that have ever lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth’s current species
The World Without Us Read More »
As our knowledge of the natural world deepened from the mid nineteenth century onward it became increasingly implausible to think that humans were in any sense unique or special. Features that had been offered as uniquely human were complex communication, social organisation, capacity for suffering, personality and empathy. These are all now known to be
For my money, June is the finest month. The promise of summer flames out, like shining from shook foil (thank you Gerard Manley Hopkins, (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44395) . Before 9.00 am, heat can stack up into a lazy stillness so that one can happily take morning coffee in the back garden. What mostly makes the month such a ravishing
Six Facets of Light by Ann Wroe Read More »
Not long ago it was thought that the Sun was simply a gigantic ball of burning gas which radiates light and heat out into the solar system. Turns out it’s a lot more complicated than that. Professor Lucie Green, solar physicist at UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, (http://luciegreen.com/) is just the person to offer a packaged
15 Million Degrees Read More »
Robert Trivers (http://roberttrivers.com/Welcome.html, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Trivers) is one of the world’s leading evolutionary biologists. In an extraordinary burst of creativity in the 1970s, Trivers established the basis for our current understanding of how evolution shapes an array of behaviours; his work from this decade alone comprises much of the backbone of today’s evolutionary psychology. Thus, even
Wild Life by Robert Trivers Read More »
It is a proud and correct claim that we can make in these islands that much of the foundational science which underpins the modern world took place in the C17 here. The Royal Society (founded in 1660, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society ) was full of brilliant men whose invention, genius and tenacity guided us out of ignorance and superstition. One
London’s Leonardo by Jim Bennett et al Read More »
It is in line with the perversity of my nature that one of my favourite places in Scotland is Dundee. Aside from its many qualities, one aspect of understanding the city is to know about its history of whaling. (http://www.fdca.org.uk/Whaling_Industry.html) The McManus Galleries (http://www.mcmanus.co.uk/) has excellent displays on the subject, and it was here first in
