I've now completed my Pillars of Science series. My goal was to analyze why Science is such an amazingly effective method for discovering new truths about the world. Here are the 6 "Pillars" I identified. Of course, Science is a … Continue reading
In my last post about spacetime, I explained how the geometry of spacetime is determined at each spacetime point by a set of 10 numbers. These 10 numbers are packaged together into a matrix called the metric, which is written … Continue reading
Back in the comments section of my post on Giving Thanks, an old college friend and I are discussing the age-old problem of why God permits suffering and other evils. This is a serious problem; in my view the Argument … Continue reading
Today I went to a talk by Lawrence Krauss entitled “A Universe from Nothing”, which had the following abstract: The question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" has been asked for millenia by people who speculate on the need … Continue reading
Scientific Results are Examined Collaboratively. Scientists do not work alone, but in a particular kind of community. The last stage of a research project is publishing and explaining the results. Assuming these results get noticed, this begins the process of … Continue reading
In Time as the Fourth Dimension?, I explained how to calculate the distance (or duration) squared between any two points of spacetime, using a spin-off of the Pythagorean theorem: Then I explained the Ten Symmetries of Spacetime, i.e. ways to … Continue reading
It is now possible to subscribe by email by clicking on the subscribe link, located at the bottom of the "meta" menu on the right side-bar. Undivided Looking can send you an email notification every time there is a new … Continue reading
Today is Thanksgiving Day (in the United States), a day set aside for us all to remember the things in life we are grateful for. Fortunately, Nicole and I started the process of gratitude earlier this week when we finished … Continue reading
Scientists must have Integrity. Because Science involves an ethical principle, the love of truth, its practice cannot be unmoored from principles of morality. A hypothesis can only be put to a fair test by a person who prefers knowing the … Continue reading
A few weeks ago I started to describe what holiness means, and someone requested that I go into more detail. One way to approach this is through the concept of the numinous, described in the classic work The Idea of … Continue reading
There's been a huge kerfuffle in the quantum gravity community since this summer, when some people here at UCSB published a paper arguing that (old enough) black holes may actually be surrounded by a wall of fire which burns people … Continue reading
Science involves Precise Description. To be capable of being confirmed or ruled out at the high levels of reliability associated with Science, a hypothesis must be stated in a way which is precise enough to do definitive tests. Even if … Continue reading
Recently I ran across a pretty good explanation of the Higgs mechanism (hat tip Siris) by a certain Rob Knopp, which I thought I'd link to because of its connection with my previous post on fields. When I first looked … Continue reading
What is the world made out of? In the most usual formulations of our current best theories of physics, the answer is fields. What are those? Well, if you know what a function is, you're already most of the way … Continue reading
Science requires Approximations. Every kind of professional activity changes the way you think. It rewires your brain so that even when you're off the job, things start looking a certain way. For example, to a computer programmer everything looks like … Continue reading
Tomorrow is election day here in the US, so I'm going to have a post about elections. It's strictly nonpartisan—people seeking bile can look elsewhere. People often say things like "I'm not voting because it's unlikely that one vote could … Continue reading
Previously, I described the main formula of Special Relativity: This formula tells us the amount of distance squared between two points (if ) or the amount of duration squared (if ). (By using some trigonometry we can also use this … Continue reading
Scientific Theories must be Elegant. Since there are always infinitely many different hypotheses which fit any set of data, there must be some prior beliefs which we use to decide between them. Any hypothesis which has an excessive number of … Continue reading
In honor of All Saints Day, here are some links to the saints on my blogroll: St. Anne the Weekend Fisher explains Why Christianity requires us to pray for members of violent Muslim mobs, and the Jewishness of the historical … Continue reading
You've probably heard that time is the fourth dimension. What does it mean? It should seem rather fishy that time should be the same sort of thing as a spatial dimension. We all know that you can only go in … Continue reading