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anonymous

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Why We're Wired for Science and How Originality Differs in Science and Art | Brain Pickings - 2 views

www.brainpickings.org/...neil-degrasse-tyson-on-science

Science methodology the arts definition originality

shared by anonymous on 20 May 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 20 May 12
     
    ""Every child is a scientist." Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson may well be the Richard Feynman of our day, a "Great Explainer" in his own right, having previously reflected on everything from the urgency of space exploration to the most humbling fact about the universe. In this short video, Tyson contributes a beautiful addition to this omnibus of notable definitions of science and explores subjects as diverse as the nature of originality and the future of artificial intelligence."
anonymous

What Is Science? From Feynman to Sagan to Curie, an Omnibus of Definitions | Brain Pickings - 2 views

www.brainpickings.org/...what-is-science

Science methodology the arts definition originality

shared by anonymous on 20 May 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 20 May 12
     
    "'The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.' "We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology," Carl Sagan famously quipped in 1994, "and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster." Little seems to have changed in the nearly two decades since, and although the government is now actively encouraging "citizen science," for many "citizens" the understanding of - let alone any agreement about - what science is and does remains meager. So, what exactly is science, what does it aspire to do, and why should we the people care? It seems like a simple question, but it's an infinitely complex one, the answer to which is ever elusive and contentious. Gathered here are several eloquent definitions that focus on science as process rather than product, whose conduit is curiosity rather than certainty."
anonymous

Basics - Primal, Acute and Easily Duped - Our Sense of Touch - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...09angi.html

Sense Perception illusion

shared by anonymous on 16 Aug 10 - Cached
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 16 Aug 10
       
      The tactile map is not the territory...we always change what we come into contact with by our very presence; the observer effect.
  • The signals from the various touch receptors converge on the brain and sketch out a so-called somatosensory homunculus, a highly plastic internal representation of the body. Like any map, the homunculus exaggerates some features and downplays others.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 16 Aug 10
       
      Even our internat tactile maps of ourselves are not the true territory of our bodies.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • But on some tactile tasks, touch is all thumbs. When people are given a raised line drawing of a common object, a bas-relief outline of, say, a screwdriver, they’re stumped. “If all we’ve got is contour information,” Dr. Lederman said, “no weight, no texture, no thermal information, well, we’re very, very bad with that.”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 16 Aug 10
       
      Touch, like all senses, is best used in concert with the others.
  • Touch also turns out to be easy to fool. Among the sensory tricks now being investigated is something called the Pinocchio illusion. Researchers have found that if they vibrate the tendon of the biceps, many people report feeling that their forearm is getting longer, their hand drifting ever further from their elbow. And if they are told to touch the forefinger of the vibrated arm to the tip of their nose, they feel as though their nose was lengthening, too.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 16 Aug 10
       
      We'll discuss illusions in class, I've never been able to get the Pinocchio illusion to work but we can try it.
  • People who watch a rubber hand being stroked while the same treatment is applied to one of their own hands kept out of view quickly come to believe that the rubber prosthesis is the real thing, and will wince with pain at the sight of a hammer slamming into it.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 16 Aug 10
       
      This one we can try in class, but I lost my prosthetic hand last year.
  • Biologically, chronologically, allegorically and delusionally, touch is the mother of all sensory systems. It is an ancient sense in evolution: even the simplest single-celled organisms can feel when something brushes up against them and will respond by nudging closer or pulling away. It is the first sense aroused during a baby’s gestation and the last sense to fade at life’s culmination. Patients in a deep vegetative coma who seem otherwise lost to the world will show skin responsiveness when touched by a nurse.
  • “Touch is so central to what we are, to the feeling of being ourselves, that we almost cannot imagine ourselves without it,” said Chris Dijkerman, a neuropsychologist at the Helmholtz Institute of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. “It’s not like vision, where you close your eyes and you don’t see anything. You can’t do that with touch. It’s always there.”
  • For all its antiquity and constancy, touch is not passive or primitive or stuck in its ways. It is our most active sense, our means of seizing the world and experiencing it, quite literally, first hand. Susan J. Lederman, a professor of psychology at Queen’s University in Canada, pointed out that while we can perceive something visually or acoustically from a distance and without really trying, if we want to learn about something tactilely, we must make a move. We must rub the fabric, pet the cat, squeeze the Charmin. And with every touchy foray, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle looms large. “Contact is a two-way street, and that’s not true for vision or audition,” Dr. Lederman said. “If you have a soft object and you squeeze it, you change its shape. The physical world reacts back.”
anonymous

Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...07mind.html

education research Human Sciences psychology evidence

shared by anonymous on 09 Sep 10 - No Cached
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 09 Sep 10
       
      This is such a comment complaint of teachers, namely that students act, from year to year, as if they don't remember every even being introduced to something that the current year teacher thinks is review. Many grade level teachers begin the year thinking their predecessors in the previous year didn't do a good job preparing their students.
  • These findings extend well beyond math, even to aesthetic intuitive learning.
  • The finding undermines the common assumption that intensive immersion is the best way to really master a particular genre, or type of creative work, said Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College and the lead author of the study. “What seems to be happening in this case is that the brain is picking up deeper patterns when seeing assortments of paintings; it’s picking up what’s similar and what’s different about them,” often subconsciously.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • But at the very least, the cognitive techniques give parents and students, young and old, something many did not have before: a study plan based on evidence, not schoolyard folk wisdom, or empty theorizing.
  • “With many students, it’s not like they can’t remember the material” when they move to a more advanced class, said Henry L. Roediger III, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s like they’ve never seen it before.”
  • That’s one reason cognitive scientists see testing itself — or practice tests and quizzes — as a powerful tool of learning, rather than merely assessment. The process of retrieving an idea is not like pulling a book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the future.
  • Dr. Roediger uses the analogy of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, which holds that the act of measuring a property of a particle (position, for example) reduces the accuracy with which you can know another property (momentum, for example): “Testing not only measures knowledge but changes it,” he says — and, happily, in the direction of more certainty, not less.
  • “Testing has such bad connotation; people think of standardized testing or teaching to the test,” Dr. Roediger said. “Maybe we need to call it something else, but this is one of the most powerful learning tools we have.”
  • Motivation matters. So do impressing friends, making the hockey team and finding the nerve to text the cute student in social studies.
  • The more mental sweat it takes to dig it out, the more securely it will be subsequently anchored.
  • “In lab experiments, you’re able to control for all factors except the one you’re studying,” said Dr. Willingham. “Not true in the classroom, in real life. All of these things are interacting at the same time.”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 09 Sep 10
       
      Perfect explanation of why the so-called "soft" sciences (Psych, Econ, Sociology, etc) are actually quite hard while the "hard" sciences (Physics in particular) are actually compartively easy!
anonymous

Left-Handedness Loses Its Stigma but Retains Its Mystery - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...08klass.html

human science psychology science brain neuroscience symmetry uncertainty

shared by anonymous on 07 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 07 Mar 11
     
    "Humans are asymmetric animals. Early in our embryonic development, organs turn to one side or the other - heart to the left, liver to the right and so on. In rare cases, an organ may turn up on the "wrong" side with no untoward effects. (I once examined a child with dextrocardia, or heart on the right.) But there is one form of asymmetry that is common and, until quite recently, stigmatized: handedness. Over the centuries, left-handers have been accused of criminality and dealings with the devil, and children have been subjected to "re-education." In recent years the stigma has largely vanished; among other things, four of our last five presidents - Reagan, the elder Bush, Clinton, Obama - have been left-handed. (Reagan is sometimes cited as ambidextrous.) But the riddle of why about 10 percent of children are born with this essentially human asymmetry remains. "
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