Where is Now? The Paradox of the Present
npr.orgThe night sky is a time machine. Look out and you look back in time. But this “time travel by eyesight” is not just the province of astronomy. It’s as close as the machine on which you are reading these words. Your present exists at the mercy of many overlapping pasts. So where, then, is “now”?
A brief commentary on "Cosmos and Culture: Speaking in Defense of Science" (Marcelo Gleiser, NPR Cosmos and Culture Blog)
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/02/09/133591874/speaking-in-defense-of-science
When I taught freshmen, some of them seemed convinced that academic and federally-funded scientists were part of a conspiratorial cabal making massive profits in exchange for telling us that human-influenced global climate change, and in some cases even fundamental biological principles like evolution, exist. If this were true, I’M convinced that O’Reilly and his ilk would WANT us to believe in science. And wouldn’t there be a glut of scientific literacy, since it would be so profitable?
What DO they teach our children in school these days?
meditations on science
“Science, by its nature, involves enormous hubris: we try to make sense of the world from our limited observations. We expect that what we observe here and now will tell us something about what we haven’t observed and may never observe. Science is all about generalizations.
But science is also modest: it changes in light of new evidence. Science is willing to admit when it’s wrong. And it’s this combination that makes science such a powerful partner…”
from: Science: A Relationship You May Not Understand (by, Tania Lombrazo)
