I asked myself a naive question just the other day: “What is a thought?” I wondered about it when, during a workout, I saw my mind drift, and a chain of unrelated memory fragments were brought to my awareness through spontaneous, even nonsensical associations. Their shared presence was prompted, perhaps, by words or by something […]
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I followed a lead today that came at the end of Clifford Pickover’s The Math Book. The last of Pickover’s 250 milestones in mathematics is Max Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, which Tegmark published in 2007 in both scientific and popular articles. The hypothesis is that “our universe is not just described by mathematics – […] Unfortunately for us, philosophies of science and mathematics are rarely brought to the attention of individuals who are not engaged in these efforts. Yet, while difficult to access, the views of the world provided by mathematics and science are pregnant with meaningful implications for all of us. I have always been struck by the depth […] Hearing about visual processes, from neuroscientists and artists alike, consistently brings mathematical thoughts to mind for me – like Samir Zeki’s descriptions of how visual images are constructed, or the Impressionist painters’ attention to the sensations in the eye rather than the subject of the painting, and, of course, Poincaré’s suggestion that visual space has […] I see mathematics as associated with a searching, instinctual will, whose direction is shaped by our biology. I find some of its roots in the way our visual system constructs what we see, or in the way grid cells (neurons lit by location) tell a rat where it is, or the way ants can find […] Mathematics is usually thought of as a tool that quantifies things in our lives and there is good reason for this. Early in our experience, it is presented to us as a counting and measuring device, not as a way to see something. But this characterization of mathematics is misleading. Quantification alone would not get […] To give shape to this blog, I’ve been jumping around quite a lot through the fields of mathematics, physics, and the neurological and cognitive sciences. I decided today to let more of my weight drop into philosophy. It’s not unusual when reading about 19th century developments in mathematics (the ones that lay the groundwork for […] In another blogging heads interview (and in a related blog), John Horgan explores with David Rothenberg the significance of beauty in scientific thinking. Rothenberg’s new book Survival of the Beautiful, is the subject of much of their discussion. While the conversation centers on questions of beauty (how biology does or does not take it into […] As I talked about in a recent post, string theories, and the multiverse models they imply, have been widely criticized for their lack of testability. Some physicists argue that the problem is that the theory is more mathematics than it is physics. Is the distinction becoming fuzzier? And why isn’t that discussed? Why not bring […] |
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