Chomsky's trajectory of complexity

I read today an interview with Noam Chomsky in New Scientist.

I have a lot of respect for Chomsky.  Although the interview started on a scientific footing with his academic speciality (language), it was nearly as wide ranging as he is.  What he said was all eminently sensible albeit not especially novel, but there was one comment that was more memorable than the others.

It's rather a throwaway line, but it struck a chord with me, because it coincides with a trajectory that I've been more or less following.  Bar the psychology (which, incidentally, my wife is currently studying).

In your new book, you suggest that many components of human nature are just too complicated to be really researchable.

That’s a pretty normal phenomenon. Take, say, physics, which restricts itself to extremely simple questions. If a molecule becomes too complex, they hand it over to the chemists. If it becomes too complex for them, they hand it to biologists. And if the system is too complex for them, they hand it to psychologists... and so on until it ends up in the hands of historians or novelists.



I don't know where he might place economics... maybe as a voodoo science?

In mitigation, I have to say that much as I'd like to, it's extremely unlikely I'll get around to a novel :)

Gravity and the narrow confines of life

Life on Earth has evolved within a very fine set of parameters.  We are going to find it a challenge to survive outside the sheltering cocoon of this planet, not the least because our atmosphere protects us from several types of radiation, not the least from our friendly sun.

Now there's another limitation.

Our body's physiological processes are to a great extent governed through the triggering of gene expression, which generates proteins that affect metabolic pathways of chemical reactions.  Translated, this means chemical signals trigger the unwrapping and copying of genes (sections of our DNA blueprint) that in turn generate proteins that... make our body work.

For that to happen, amongst other things we need... gravity.

On the one hand, one might intuit that gravity shouldn't be an essential part of our processes.  But we are generally pulled in a single direction: towards Earth, the largest mass at hand.  From an evolutionary perspective, that amount of gravity is an intrinsic part of the environment in which so many successive iterations (generations) successfully mutated and survived.  Our environment tempered the direction of successful mutation.

So it makes sense that our metabolic processes could be so finely tuned that significant change (ie, to zero gravity) could disrupt some of these processes.

And that's what's been found, as reported in New Scientist this week (4 February 2012).  Specifically: "weightless conditions... could disrupt the activity of 200 genes linked with immunity, metabolism and heat tolerance."

There is a slight caveat on that: the study used flies, and simulated weightlessness through magnetic fields.  Still, the researchers are confident of their results, it sounds plausible, and doubtless the result will be tested by others in other experimental contexts.

Still, just as science can bring the science fiction of space travel crashing to Earth, surely technological solutions will be developed.  After all, science fiction has already imagined simulated gravity.  It just hasn't filled in the details.

Narrative ruins history?

Coming from a scientific disposition, I have a scientist's rapacious desire for The Truth.


That's the beauty of science.  We get closer to Truth all the time - and the mis-steps and side alleys are far fewer and less significant than the ascientific (as are many climate change deniers) would have us believe.  Mostly, refinements are built upon refinements, and previous truths are hardly ever gainsaid - at least not significantly.  Quantum and Einsteinian physics don't negate the reality and applicability of Newtonian physics on an everyday, human scale.

 History is unlike science in so many ways, but the one that springs to mind right now is narrative.  In that sense, history is more like shoddy journalism - even good journalism - in that it tries to tell a story.  And the failing is that the whole of the truth is sacrificed: the nuance, the periphery, and the way in which life is not quite like fiction or myth; it doesn't have unity of purpose or theme, or specific point.




True history is messier, and purposes cross, narratives interact without clarity or precision.  Out of all that, historians and journalists are alike with novelists, trying to create a single strand (or multiple strands) where the full story is so much more complex, riddled with irrationality and strewn with different actors' clutter and concealment.  And of course, it's only one person - or peoples' - truth.  And even then, much of the time the truth will simply never be available.  So, from honourable motives or not, the historian as storytellers will attempt to persuade rather than prove.




I read some narrative in science.  Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins are good tellers of short stories.  But their tales are much better corroborated and agreed upon.  And if a single essay tells only part of the much wider discipline of evolution and genetics, the rest of it is there for the taking - not the disputation, disagreement, and ultimate irresolution.

Still, for the scientifically-disposed, at least history is better than fiction: there's more truth in it.  And if we long for a cracking good story, then at least we know there's more to it than we're being told.

Rees, Dawkins and Gould: finely picking the cleft between science and religion

I first encountered Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, in the pages of New Scientist last year: a brief interview on occasion of the 350th anniversary of the Society. He talked science, but looked nothing less than an Establishment bastion (and he’s also Astronomer Royal, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and in the House of Lords).


Just recently, I heard him in a brief piece on the ABC Radio Science Show. He was talking on the divide between science and religion – and he rather surprised me with some non-establishment words. His conversation drilled into some finer points of this divide. Inter alia:

“I suspect my beliefs or lack of beliefs are rather similar to Richard Dawkins's…”

Then:

“I agree with Richard Dawkins that fundamentalism… is a real danger, and I think we therefore need all the allies we can muster against it, and I would see the Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury, for instance, as on my side against fundamentalism. Therefore it seems to me counterproductive to rubbish people like that. I'd like to see them on my side, and as a Brit who grew up in that culture, I'm rather supportive of the Church of England.
And I think there's another reason where I think his attitude is also damaging. Suppose you were teaching a group of kids in a London school and a lot were Muslims and you told them that they couldn't have their god and have Darwin. They're going to stick with their god and be lost to science, and that, again, I think is counterproductive. So I believe wherever possible one should have peaceful coexistence with mainstream religions.”

The Templeton Prize was apparently a notable point of departure between Rees and Dawkins. The prize “honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works”.

Rees said Dawkins labelled him a quisling because Rees was “less hostile to the Templeton Foundation than he was.” But then: “I don't go all the way with the Templeton Foundation because they believe in constructive dialogue. I think there's limited scope for constructive dialogue, I think there can be peaceful coexistence, but I don't believe theologians can help with my physics”.

Per se, that’s not too far from the resolution attempted by another scientist, Stephen Jay Gould. He coined the term Non-Overlapping Magisteria (or NOMA): “Science tries to record and explain the factual characteristics of the natural world, whereas religion struggles with spiritual and ethical questions about the meaning and proper conduct of our lives. The facts of nature simply cannot explain correct moral behaviour or spiritual meaning”.*

Of course, that satisfied few who weren’t already satisfied.  And although the two are similar, I rather like Rees' turn of phrase.



Full text of the Rees conversation available here.


*Gould, SJ (2003): The Hedgehog, the Fox and the Magister’s Pox (p87). Jonathan Cape, London.

Issue of the year: intellectual dishonesty and ignorance

Climate change is, of course, the issue of the year. But to say why, it is necessary to look at the reasons for the poor outcomes for the Copenhagen conference.



It is easy to understand why poverty is a significant part of the problem. So easy, in fact, that it loomed large in the conference: even the complacent rich countries could understand this. If I am struggling to survive from day to day, how can I find the luxury to contemplate what the world will look like in fifty years? The necessity to survive can drastically narrow one's focus, as most people throughout history can tell you.



That's the issue writ large. Although it would be dishonest to suggest that it's a life-or-death question for everyone below 'developed nation' status, it remains that the worse off one is, the harder it is to broaden one's focus. Conversely - in theory at least - it is easier to adopt a longer-term perspective where self, heritage, and legacy stand a good chance of persisting.





That's not to say there's no intellectual dishonesty among those who are not so rich, yet have some wiggle room. They will inevitably reach for what they can get. But they do not wield the power of those in rich nations.



But why are the richest nations mired - to a large extent - in inaction? Part of the problem is reflected in what afflicts two of the more recalcitrant (albeit advancing) members of the rich club, Australia and the US. In both countries, it is because the politics of opposition reflects - to far greater an extent than is warranted by the facts - resistance to the very notion of climate change. Ignorance exists, but there is little to comfort such people other than the thought that others are making the decisions, and carrying the debate, for them.



Far greater then, as an issue, is intellectual dishonesty on the part of those whose duty it is to understand better.



I have heard enough recently from such people to make me sick. It is largely political, inasmuch as those who argue the contrarian case are largely politically conservative. And they are doing it wilfully, with no desire to properly understand science, nor how scientific theory and debate works, nor how the massive weight of evidence has accumulated over the past forty years.



It is simply put as follows. Yes, scientific understanding is a matter of constant adaption to changing facts, a revising of theories and, at times, paradigm shifts that are tantamount to revolutionary. But the way this happens is via an accumulation of evidence over time that comes to clearly delineate the new thought. But in this case, the fringe thoughts - and 'evidence' is fragmenting, and slowly dissipating over time, not uniting and increasing in significance. Each piece of 'evidence' on the margins has slowly disintegrated when further evidence arrives.



Why call it intellectual dishonesty? Because these climate change 'sceptics' have usurped the term without reference to how scepticism responds to further evidence. Because these people are mostly of a political bent. Because these people claim the right to deny the substance of the scientific debate, while clinging to the propriety of their own very particular articulation of what constitutes scientific debate. And because these intellectually dishonest people have had an effect on climate change outcomes throughout the world in the past three years that is vastly disproportionate to a) the accumulation of independent evidences; and b) the accumulation of independent analyses and voices.



To them, I ask: what burden do you place on your children and grandchildren with your intellectual dishonesty?

Are you prepared to sign your name to statements of your decisions and their ramifications, so that your descendants will know how to regard their parent and grandparent in years to come? 'Misguided' is one thing, but it is another to wilfully foist such a poor legacy on coming generations. How will your self and heritage be regarded in years to come?



Grow up. Think like an adult.

Shortsightedness in kids: get outside!

There is an answer to the epidemic of short-sightedness - and it's not what you'd expect.


Studies of myopia (short-sightedness) tested children for the amount they read, the amount they watched computer/tv screens, the amount they played sports - none of these were factors.

What mattered was the amount of time they spent outside.

Send your kids outside more, to reduce the likelihood that they'll need glasses.

Reported in New Scientist this month.

Science, the universe, and beauty

Today my seven-year old was reading an article in New Scientist about diamonds, where it discussed alternatives for harder materials, and arrangements of chemical structures.

It was remarkable that he read for more than two pages on a subject - chemistry - for which he clearly had little to no understanding.  Especially since it's only been a few months since he attained sufficient fluidity in reading.

 I have already outlined some of the basics of chemistry to my seven- and eight-year-olds, but since they have no specific interest in it, it will be slow going for a while.

But it got me considering the periodic table.  I'd only done chemistry to sixth form (age 16), and I haven't refreshed systematically since.  So I glanced at the subject in Encyclopedia Britannica - one of their rare shows of colour was the periodic table, page 952 of volume 15.

It was in discussion of the chemical composition of the earth, and the origin of elements in stars, that I realised there was a whole new area of fundamental systematics for me to absorb with adult eyes.

And then I was reminded of a piece in today's Good Weekend: in Stephanie Dowrick's Inner Life column which tends, I guess, to discuss the secular spiritual.  (I'm not generally taken by her, preferring the following columnist, Mark Dapin, who is surprisingly readable for a magazine humour column.)

Dowrick was querying one's "eye for beauty".  Looked like she was focusing on the visually beauty, but she eventually redeemed herself with other examples: children, poetry, music.

Of course, I find beauty in the analytical, in making sense of things that provide an internal logic and coherency.  The more fundamental the better, such as physics, evolutionary biology... and chemistry.  To see natural patterns and logic that are inherent and immutable: they describe a natural rhythm, a joyous music of the universe that is unsullied by human hand.

It takes a particular temperament to find joy in that sort of beauty*.  I feel privileged.





*One who does is someone I've previously mentioned, Daniel Tammet, a savant with Asperger's, who finds beauty in numbers.  That's numbers for themselves, as opposed to beauty in more complex mathematics, for which I have given a wonderful example here.

Size perspective on stars, planets and moons

Here's a rare opportunity to gain some perspective on celestial bodies, courtesy of Wikipedia.

In the first set of pictures, the order of magnitude successively builds up through our planets and different types of stars.

perspectives: Earth, planets, Sun, and other stars

NOTE: to view better, click on the image to expand, or see the original

(1) = Mercury, Mars, Venus, Earth;
(2) = tiny Earth against far larger twins Neptune and Uranus, then gas giants Saturn and Jupiter;
(3) = tiny Jupiter and red dwarf star Wolf 359, next to the Sun (a white main sequence G star), then, white main sequence A star Sirius A, near neighbour (8.6 light years) and our brightest actual star;
(4) = tiny Sirius next to orange giant star Pollux, then red giant Arcturus, then Aldebaran, another orange giant;
(5) = tiny Aldebaran and blue supergiant Rigel, next to red supergiants Betelgeuse and Antares
and finally
(6) = Antares, hypergiant S Doradus, red supergiant KY Cygni, and red hypergiant VV Cephei A*.


It's a very useful way to represent varying orders of magnitude. Resolution is better in the original, where the names are clearer*.

By contrast, another way of comparing them is by mass - this gives an idea of density rather than size (volume) above - this shows that some of the stars above are relative puffballs.  Solar mass is typically used: one solar mass (M_o is the mass of our sun, or about 2x10³⁰ kg.  Using that measure:
Wolf 359 (red dwarf) = 0.09 M_o
Sun (white G) = 1 M_o
Sirius A (white A) = 2 M_o
Pollux (orange giant) = 1.9 M_o
Arcturus (red giant) = 1.1 M_o
Aldebaran (orange giant) = 1.7 M_o
Rigel (blue supergiant) = 17 M_o
Betelgeuse (red supergiant)  = 18 M_o
Antares (red supergiant) = 15 M_o
S Doradus (hypergiant) = 45 M_o
KY Cygni (red supergiant) = 25 M_o
VV Cephei A (red hypergiant) = uncertain! - 25 - 100 M_o

Update 11-Aug-10:
A new star was announced in July, the most massive found yet.  Called R136a1, its mass is said to be 265 M_o - so that is now the current upper limit for mass.


Our nearest neighbours, Venus and Mars, are quite different from each other, in composition as well as size. Mars' radius is only about twice that of the moon. Venus is closer to the sun than Earth; its oceans were boiled away 4 billion years ago. Mars has traces of ice, but no liquid water, as its atmosphere is (now) too thin.

It's worth scanning through the full originating article on stars, for some points of interest. Our sun is quite small compared to other stars, but there are some that are smaller (and denser), having burnt out and collapsed. The article also lists the various types of star by name, but actual stellar classification is much more complicated.

The other picture shows various moons of the solar system in scale against Earth.

Moons of the solar system, compared to Earth
for better resolution, click on the image to expand, or see the original

This includes the two biggest moons, Jupiter's Ganymede (rock and ice, often featured in science fiction stories) and Saturn's Titan (dense atmosphere, surface liquid), which are both larger than the smallest planet, Mercury (which is slightly larger than the third biggest, Callisto at bottom). Our moon is the largest of any rocky planet in our system, having broken off from Earth early in planetary formation after Earth was hit by an object of about the size of Mars.


*You can also look at the current Wikipedia holding on relative sizes, which shows our system's full planet range.  You can also scan through the Wikipedia list of most massive stars.  Note the discussion there, indicating there remains some uncertainty at the big end (which is largely theoretically inferred), to the extent that the various Wikipedia articles and pictures have inconsistencies.

The dearth of documentaries

When I was a child, documentaries were anathema, getting in the way of the fun stuff of tv. There seemed to be a lot of them.

Now that I'm too old to have time to watch tv, the death knell seems to already have been sounded for documentaries. There are a few, scattered here and there, but the only consistency I can find is the mixed bag that both SBS and ABC run on Sunday nights. Even then, I will not usually have the opportunity to watch, since their timing coincides with the maelstrom of running the kids through the processes of getting them to bed.

By documentary, I seem to be referring to history and science. On reflection. The kids are quite happy with nature programmes, and I'm happy when they learn something of evolution from that, which they do.

Australian regulations mandate a certain number of hours per week to be devoted to "non-fiction" type programming. But that has traditionally allowed the commercial channels to indulge in little more than tabloid journalism. And the market seems to have lurched decidedly towards the tabloid end in more recent times. This became epitomised by the uber-tabloid reality tv programming, which is in vogue not least because it is so cheap to produce. And which, while they may for some provide an able source of material for certain sociological analysis, are not really the stuff of great insight.

This is all quite a pity, as I've found the new technologies are a marvellous way to supplement broadcast documentaries: whenever the narrative veers on a tangent, or moves on while leaving potent questions unanswered, I can immediately explore the topic further on the web.

Unfortunately, the best chance I get for decent documentary tv these days is via videos at the local library.

Kenneth Clark's Civilisation

Kenneth Clark's vision of civilisation had a viscereal effect on me.


Not too long ago, I happened upon the 1973 BBC series The Ascent Of Man, a monumental dissertation by Jacob Bronowski. It is a scientist's view of the history of humanity, and Bronowski is very humanist and thoughtful - in both the philosophical and analytical senses - in his considerations. An intellectual pleasure to watch.

It was made as a complement to Clark's 1969 series Civilisation. Again, I happened on this - at the local library - and was interested in this art historian's view of history - also said to be monumental.

However, I found this work to be disturbing rather than thought-provoking. Clark had ideas and narrative too, and put a lot of thought into it. Yet he quite struck me as fascistic in his view of the progress of history. His was an elitist perspective, whereby the watchword was a specific romantic vision of the "hero" - a unique person in history who by force of will forged a part of civilisation.

This was not Bronowski's gentle but rousing celebration of achievement; more, a Nietzchean tale of the triumph of the spirit over mere mortals, while ignoring all those that provide the milieu in which the individual achieves. Not to decry the achievements of a Shakespeare or a Da Vinci, but a lack of celebration of the synergetics of a society is ignorant at best.


As a scientist, Bonowski knows the scientific dialectic is a marvellous example of the joy of collective achievement and the exciting exchange of ideas. Particularly insightful and imaginative individuals such as Charles Darwin are rightly lauded as leaving a full body of meaningful work. But we learn and foster ideas when we have a culture in which to express. And those who have contributed ideas that languish - such as Mendel - can be resurrected later when those ideas are discovered to contribute anew to the dialectic.


Clark's world is one in which an Albert Speer could have been lauded - if his creations had survived context. Success is its own justification; in this world, Carravagio could be seen as being rightly justified in torturing models to death in search of his muse.


On a personal level, I feel Clark has debased the legacy of some of those whose work I admire, such as Michelangelo and Da Vinci. And better celebrations of history through architecture and art can be found.

rebirth of rationality in America

"Science, science, science" - summary from Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, when asked about priorities in a plan for reviving the US economy (quoted in New Scientist, 24 Jan 2009).

"I believe in evolution, scientific enquiry, and global warming" - Barack Obama, The Audacity Of Hope (p17).

"I refuse to believe the majority of people believe this malarky" - Joe Biden, now Vice President, when asked about intelligent design in 2006.

Science: New science snippets

New Scientist (right), the weekly British science news magazine, is often an embarassment of riches. When I had a weekly subscription, I ended up with rather a backlog of issues to consume my reading space.

The occasional issue is most welcome; this week's had a number of interesting items, some of which appear here today.


Creationism and science teachers
The US is the only western country for which creationism is a significant issue. Most of the rest of the world is accepting of scientific reason; or more correctly, most of the rest of the world doesn't have a powerful fundamentalist christian lobby voice.
A survey of science teachers (presumably secondary level) from Pennsylvania State University has found some interesting statistics - as well as a fair bit of the bleeding obvious. A quarter of the 900-odd respondents taught about creationism, and about half of those presented it as a valid scientific alternative to Darwinism.
Sixteen percent of these science teachers believe humans were created in the last 10,000 years.
So, half of those who raised the concept of creationism didn't teach that it was valid; and there was a number who thought it was valid, but didn't teach it.
Interestingly, it notes that the amount of class time given to evolution was higher, the more science education the science teachers themselves had. Making a rather good case for science teachers to be properly trained.
The study suggested that less-trained teachers felt less confidence engaging in the subject (ie responding to questions).
However, I strongly suspect that even where science is taught properly, a lot of those teachers would have a somewhat weak grasp of the two fundamental tenets of random mutation and natural selection, let alone the myriad implications that stem from them.

Inbreeding and genetic disorder
A review of studies from Murdoch University in Western Australia examined genetic disorders amongst the offspring of first cousins. This would be a rather surrogate measure, of course, of the effects of inbreeding. The study found a 1.2% higher rate of infant mortality of offspring of first cousins, compared to the overall population. Another such (review) study in 2002 found a similar order of magnitude: less than 3%.

Artificial legs as a boost for runners
Recently was shown a prosthetic foot design that enabled high performance sprinting, notably in double amputee Oscar Pistorius. Claims then made that this unfairly boosted performance - which have now been tested.
Again, a proxy measure was used to determine any advantage conferred: the amount of calories burnt per distance - ie whether it was cheaper to fuel the prostheses.
The answer given was no - it wasn't more efficient. So Pistorius is free to compete in the Olympics - unless some other hurdle appears.

Floresiensis claim: ivory tower science

A fresh claim had been made that the putative homo species Floresiensis (the so-called "hobbit" found in Flores in Indonesia) were actually modern humans suffering dwarf cretinism.

This from Peter Obendorf, Charles Oxnard, Ben Kefford, of Melbourne's RMIT and the University of Western Australia, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

The claim is that the dimensions of the fossil specimens were exactly equivalent to those of dwarf cretins, and thus displayed iodine deficiencies [resulting in thyroid malfunction]. "Dwarf cretins grow not much more than one metre and their bones have distinctive characteristics very similar to those of the Flores hobbits," according to Obendorf.

skull size relative to human

The immediate impression from the article in today's Herald is that these are scientists from other disciplines, not paleontology. The suspicion that they're taking the evidence out of context is borne out by the fact that they haven't studied the actual relics, and they misconstrue aspects of the fossils including, an area of skull that was actually excavation damage, rather than evidence supporting the new thesis. (From the paper's abstract:"We find that the null hypothesis (that LB1 is not a cretin) is rejected by the pituitary fossa size of LB1, and by multivariate analyses of cranial measures.")

The press release on RMIT's own site illustrates how much of a speculative exercise it was, initiated by Obendorf spotting a superficial link between floresiensis and historical pictures of cretins(!) Obendorf is hard to find at RMIT, but he's described as a human ecologist, which can be somewhat helpful but ultimately not too encouraging from a paleontological perspective.

Amongst other things, Colin Groves from ANU said the new paper "also ignored the fact the hobbits had primitive chins unlike those of modern humans".


Incidentally, the Herald article seems to be sourced from two separate reports, one of which refers to Floresiensis descent from Homo erectus; the other from australopithecines. The former, from AFP, is the more usual lineage description. The latter, from the Herald's own reporting, is not really sufficiently precise: australopithecines are much older ancestors of erectus. Reporters are not usually trained in anthropology.

One curiosity: the abstract also says, inter alia: "We show... how remains of cretins but not of unaffected individuals could be preserved in caves." That's quite a claim, if it's based on chemical science. It could easily, however, be based on speculation of social circumstance. I don't know, not having read the full article, but since the paper somewhat reeks of speculative application of anotomical science, I'm not going to hold my breath on the outcome.

Evolution: rivalry between the sciences

The advancement of evolutionary thought is most definitely a multidisciplinary affair. At its core, it requires an understanding of natural history (paleontology) and genetics - the macro and the micro, if you will.


They're all meant to be united in a detailed understanding of biology, but writings on the subject often betray the specialist's perspective on the other scientists involved in the quest for knowledge.


What I have read sometimes reveals the bias of the particular discipline. If I personally have a bias, it would be towards the sweeping overview of natural history. I find geneticists (such as John Maynard Smith and George C Williams), to paraphrase Mark Twain, all seem to talk about sex but not do anything about it. This apparently places me around the middle rung in the hierarchy.


I think it was Stephen Jay Gould who revealed that a traditional bias of paleontologists was that taxonomists (those essential scientists who analyse similarities and differences between species) are sometimes disparaged as being akin to stamp collectors.


John Maynard Smith in turn revealed that a traditional attitude to paleontologists had been to wish they would "go away and find another fossil, and stop bothering the grownups".
Smith bookended this with context. By way of introduction, he claimed that in the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory that emerged in the 1940s, paleontologists took part, but essentially only to confirm the facts uncovered by "the rest of us", and not to propose any new theory.


This at the beginning of an essay that ultimately praised paleontologists, and Gould in particular for advancing theory in recent times. Then again, Smith admitted to some surprise at the knowledge revealed in the narratives of paleontologists (ably assisted by geologists, climatologists and the like). Genetic analysis is relatively silent on major events such as mass extinctions.


Paleontology is often regarded as being insufficiently hard a science specifically because it often inclines to persuasive narratives, whereas geneticists would have you believe they own the realm of detailed analysis and logic.




Yet the geological and fossil records are thoroughly essential for an understanding of the origins, history and direction of life.





References

Maynard Smith, J (1984): Did Darwin Get It Right? Penguin, London.

Williams, G.C. 1996. Plan and Purpose in Nature. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London.

Tech: Science Fiction becomes reality – 3 ways

It’s a coincidence. But recently I’ve read of three scientific developments which each touch on a core science fiction premise:

• Invisibility
• Teleportation
• Time travel
  

When you put those together, it’s dynamite.


Unfortunately, the reality is a little more mundane. Mostly we’re talking about quantum-level experiments; and the quantum world operates under a different set of laws than ours.

Still, interesting to see if anything useful comes of any of it.