Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Science

  • Stage Magic and Neuroscience

    Stage magic relies a lot on the fact that human perception is not foolproof. Here’s a great article from Wired on the subject, and if you want to really go into depth, here’s a peer-reviewed paper from Nature on the topic.

  • Eavesdropping On Bacteria

    Here’s Bonnie Bassler at TED outlining one of the most mind-blowing concepts that I’ve recently come across: bacteria communicate with each other.
     
     
     
    The implications, it seems to me, are quite staggering in all sorts of potential arenas.

  • Bad Science: Matthias Rath

    If you do nothing else today, please go to Bad Science and read Ben Goldacre’s article on Matthias Rath. The article was supposed to be a chapter in Goldacre’s excellent book: Bad Science, but had to be removed because at the time of original publication, Rath was pursuing legal action against Goldacre and the Guardian newspaper. Rath has now dropped the action and the missing chapter can now be published.
     
    I have posted before on the human disaster that is the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, but Goldacre’s meticulous setting out of the exacerbation of the scale of the disaster brought about by Rath, Brink, Mbeki, and Tshabalala-Msimang is essential reading.
     
    A truly damning indictment of a shameful episode in South Africa’s history.

  • An Open and Shut Case

    Here’s a nice little video about open- and closed-mindedness. Good advice in under 10 minutes.
     
     
     
    (hat tip to RichardDawkins.net)

  • Pot, Kettle, Black…

    I caught the last forty-five minutes of a one-hour programme on BBC 2 last night: Did Darwin Kill God? In it, Dr. Conor Cunningham, of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at Nottingham University, argued that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is completely compatible with Christianity. His thesis, according to the BBC’s blurb, is that the theory has been

    “hijacked by extremists: …fundamentalist believers who reject evolution, and … fundamentalist atheists who claim that Darwin’s theory rules out the possibility of God”.

    I’m not really sure what a fundamentalist atheist is, it sounds like a category error to me. Things are not much better over at the Centre of Theology and Philosophy’s news site – the programme is spun as:

    “The main purpose of the documentary is to offer a critique of both Christian fundamentalists who reject evolution, doing so, Conor argues, because they display a complete lack of understanding about the Christian tradition, and Darwinian fundamentalists – those such as Dawkins who take Darwin’s theory beyond the domain of science and apply it to all aspects of life, and is so doing undermine the very cogency of evolution as a science”.

    Oh gawd, I get extremely worked up about strawmen such as “those such as Dawkins who take Darwin’s theory beyond the domain of science and apply it to all aspects of life”. It’s a travesty of Dawkins’ views and writings, and Dr. Cunningham is being disingenuous in suggesting this. Well of course, it could be that the writer of the blurb on the Centre’s web site is as guilty of over-egging the pudding as the Beeb’s writer. However, from what I saw of the programme, Dr. Cunningham himself was furiously erecting strawmen and making non sequiturs throughout much of it. I found myself shouting “nonsense” and “category error” at the screen much of the time. As far as I am aware, Dawkins and Dennett have never stated that the Theory of Evolution has “ruled out the possibility of God”. It is simply that God is not required in the process. And while Cunningham may claim that it impossible to accept both the implications of memes and the theory of evolution, I fear he’s missed the point completely. A meme can be both itself and an objective truth (e.g. 1+1=2) simultaneously. As an aside, I rather like meme theory – it’s Zen for rationalists. It may even have some truth to it.

    Dr. Cunningham is a Christian, and he sees no conflict between the Theory of Evolution and Christianity. That conviction was supported in his interviews with Francis Collins and Michael Ruse. Charles Darwin, on the other hand, would have disagreed. I’m with Darwin on this one. I see no evidence in this world whatsoever of the workings of the god of the Christians. What I did observe in last night’s programme was an awful lot of cognitive dissonance. It was truly awe-inspiring.

    Update: Over at Mark Vernon’s blog, Mark thought the programme was wonderful. Sometimes I wonder about Mark. As an ex-priest turned agnostic, he often strikes me as being rather reluctant to let go of his woo-filled roots.

    Update II: Now the fun begins. The programme has been cited on RichardDawkins.net. Stand by for fireworks. I have to say though that the programme struck me as a particularly meretricious piece of work. Just reading the transcript of the subtitles makes me want to whack Dr. Cunningham around the chops with a wet fish a few times.

  • Mapping The Brain

    A terrific article by Jonah Lehrer in Wired about the work of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. Worth reading.

  • Where Is My Mind?

    Here’s a great video of science writer Jonah Lehrer talking about the material of his latest book – about how the human mind makes decisions. There is some really interesting research going on at the moment that he draws our attention to.
     
    I see that Lehrer has also reviewed the philosopher Alva Noë’s book "Out of Our Heads", in which Noë argues that our consciousness arises not solely within our brain but in the interplay of the brain with our environment. He’s not a dualist exactly, but he has an interesting way of looking at the phenomenon of consciousness that I really should take a look at.
     

  • Another One Bites The Dust

    Following hot on the heels of the BBC’s Horizon’s inexorable decline is, it appears, New Scientist magazine; now heading for the grubbier shores of tabloid journalism and bad science. A pity, I used to like reading the NS, but it’s obviously not what it was. Another once-proud flagship reduced to a “patched and ailing dinghy”…

  • ISS Sighting

    The International Space Station is back in our night skies at the moment. I went out last night at 20:08 to watch it cross the sky from the SSW to the SSE. It’s just a light travelling across the sky, but I never fail to be stirred by it. What made last night’s sighting even more special was the fact that travelling behind it in convoy at about one degree behind it was a fainter light. That, I assume, is the space shuttle Discovery approaching the ISS.  
     
    If you want to see the ISS for yourself, go to Heavens Above, feed in your position (Latitude and Longitude) and you’ll be given the dates, times and positions in the sky when the ISS will be passing over you.

  • The HULC

    In the spirit of turning swords into plowshares, I would like to think that consumer versions of the military HULC system will one day become available. It would be wonderful to be able to continue walking in the countryside well into my old age… But somehow, I think the possibility will remain, like the dream of a personal jet-pack, forever out of reach…

  • Abiogenesis

    A good video that sets out a clear description of one of the current theories of abiogenesis. It wasn’t lightning striking a mud puddle as some idiots would have you think.
     
     

  • Why Is Science Important?

    Back in 2005, I mentioned a survey of over 250 renowned scientists, science communicators, and educators – including 11 Nobel laureates – asking what they would teach the world about science and why, if they could pick just one thing. That survey, thanks to Alom Shaha, is now in video form. and here it is. Over 250 candles lit to beat back the darkness…
     

  • Playing With Magnets

    As a boy, I used to play with magnets – I find them fascinating. In those days, the magnets available to small boys were not very strong. As I’ve grown up, so has the technology. These days it’s possible to get very strong magnets indeed. And as the strength grows, so does the risk of accidents. Here’s Dirk’s story. Ouch!
     
    (hat tip to the Bad Astronomer)

  • Won’t Someone Put “Horizon” Out Of Its Misery?

    I know I’ve complained about the dumbing-down of the BBC’s Horizon before, but I keep on trying to watch it in the hope that its decline might be reversed. However, last night’s edition on the body clock seems to have been the nadir of a once great television series that had a mission to “educate, inform and entertain”*. I say “seems to have been”, because I confess I only lasted about five minutes before I turned it off in utter disgust at its crassness (flashy graphics, stupid ideas, loud music and a bad script). Luckily, someone who was paid to watch the whole thing, reports today that I was not wrong to do so. As Lucy Mangan says:

    …the time has come for the BBC’s once-flagship science documentary series to be officially demoted, possibly to "weekend sailboat", more probably to "patched and ailing dinghy".

    Frankly, I think it would be kinder, and more useful, to take it outside, shoot it, and boil the body down for glue.

    * Lord Reith, the first Director-General of the BBC, famously summarised the purpose of the BBC in those words: “educate, inform and entertain”. It is perhaps telling that the BBC’s current mission statement reverses the order to be “entertain, inform and educate”. I can’t say I’m totally surprised as a result that Horizon is no longer worth watching.

  • Flushed With Success

  • Kurzweil Kookery

    And while I’m pointing at the clay feet of people who pretend otherwise, I can’t help saying that when I read PZ Myer’s views on Ray Kurweil’s posturings, I punched the air and said "yes!" I’ve never really understood how Kurzweil’s pontifications receive anything other than a Bronx cheer. As a commentator stated, Kurzweil puts me in mind of Madame Blavatsky. Are both Blavatsky and Kurzweil deluded, cynical or merely mistaken? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that Kurzweil will be proven as erroneous as Blavatsky by history.
     
    Oh, and perhaps I should point out that my main beef with Kurzweil is over his timescales. They seem to be ludicrously on the optimistic side. My bet is that we as the human race will have long since been extinguished, or died at our own hands, before our technologies will have evolved sufficiently to act as perfect substitutions for our current carbon-based substrates of consciousness.

  • Waving the Red Flag

    There was a rather odd article by Michael Brooks in last Saturday’s Guardian‘s Comment is Free section: Black Holes in the Argument. He constructed a strawman in his very first paragraph and proceeded from there. The whole effect reminded me of the sort of person who insisted that a man should walk in front of the early horseless carriages waving a red flag.
     
    Still, not to worry, "Charles Darwin" is on hand to point the piece out for the rather muddled nonsense it seemed to be. 

  • What Will Change Everything?

    Edge has posted its big question for 2009: "What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?" and has asked a wide variety of scientists, academics and philosophers for their answers.
     
    I don’t expect to live to see it, but I think the biggest game-changing development would be cheap energy from workable nuclear fusion. It would utterly change the whole energy landscape.

  • The Riddle of Consciousness

    Here’s a terrific article on self-awareness by V. S. Ramachandran. I might quibble with his opening sentence (the riddle of consciousness is very far from being "one of the last remaining problems in science"), and Dr. Vaughan Bell wonders about a couple of passages in Ramachandran’s essay. Nonetheless, it’s a wonderful insight into the mirror maze that lies at the heart of that most difficult question: "Who am I?"

  • Dark Sky Parks

    I see that Scotland is preparing to host Europe’s first ‘dark sky park’. It’s near to where my brother lives, so that I’m pleased that he will be able to enjoy it. Around here, even though we are in what passes for the Dutch countryside, we still have a lot of light pollution. I would guess that for most nights we are still only class 4 on the Bortle Scale.