Paradigm shifts are the stuff of scientific revolutions. They change how we view the world, the sorts of questions that scientists consider worth asking, and even how we do science.
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Darwin Still Rules, but Some Biologists Dream of a Paradigm Shift - New York Times - 1 views
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Many scientists suffer from a kind of split personality. We believe that this is the most exciting time to be working while yearning for the excitement of a revolution. What ambitious scientist would not want to be part of a paradigm shift? Not surprisingly, this yearning occasionally manifests itself in proclamations that a revolution is at hand.
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Comparative studies of development have illuminated how genes operate, and evolve, and this places less emphasis on the gradual accumulation of small genetic changes emphasized by the modern synthesis. Work in ecology has emphasized the role organisms play in building their own environments, and studies of the fossil record raise questions about the role of competition.
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One advantage developmental biologists have over paleontologists is that they can experiment on the development of these animals.
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The failure to consider how biodiversity grows reflects an even more troubling flaw in the modern synthesis: it lacks any real sense of history.
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The truth about Darwin and God - Salon.com - 0 views
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as Darwin himself often confessed, natural selection cannot work without prior variations in the organisms that will be selected or not for survival.
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whatever “Darwinism” is, this is not a book about Darwinism. Nor is it a book about contemporary evolutionary theory or the “new synthesis” or the “extended synthesis.” It is rather a book about “chance” in Darwin’s writing. To that extent it must confront “Darwinism” more broadly, even in its recent and contemporary incarnations, if only to situate the problems it deals with in a proper context.
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My view is that “Darwinism” had a single meaning to Darwin from beginning to end. Yes, changes were made in exposition, over and over again, and in one sense, as a philosophical platitude, one cannot change one’s way of saying something without changing what one says, and therefore what one is taken to mean.
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An examination of the Darwinian corpus shows that many of the most important changes centered on how he wished to present the role of “chance” in evolution to an ever-expanding reading public, especially after the Origin first appeared.
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But I try to set out and move through with a clean slate, basing my claims on Darwin’s ipsissima verba rather than on what others have said.
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The earth, its geological features, and its organic inhabitants are here only through lucky accidents? For many people that was a hard pill to swallow. Darwin did accept it, but also knew he would have to get his audience to accept it too if he were to succeed in establishing his theory as the correct account of the origin of species.
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The Problem With History Classes - The Atlantic - 3 views
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The passion and urgency with which these battles are fought reflect the misguided way history is taught in schools. Currently, most students learn history as a set narrative—a process that reinforces the mistaken idea that the past can be synthesized into a single, standardized chronicle of several hundred pages. This teaching pretends that there is a uniform collective story, which is akin to saying everyone remembers events the same.
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Yet, history is anything but agreeable. It is not a collection of facts deemed to be "official" by scholars on high. It is a collection of historians exchanging different, often conflicting analyses.
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rather than vainly seeking to transcend the inevitable clash of memories, American students would be better served by descending into the bog of conflict and learning the many "histories" that compose the American national story.
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Perhaps Fisher offers the nation an opportunity to divorce, once and for all, memory from history. History may be an attempt to memorialize and preserve the past, but it is not memory; memories can serve as primary sources, but they do not stand alone as history. A history is essentially a collection of memories, analyzed and reduced into meaningful conclusions—but that collection depends on the memories chosen.
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Memories make for a risky foundation: As events recede further into the past, the facts are distorted or augmented by entirely new details
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people construct unique memories while informing perfectly valid histories. Just as there is a plurality of memories, so, too, is there a plurality of histories.
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Scholars who read a diverse set of historians who are all focused on the same specific period or event are engaging in historiography
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This approach exposes textbooks as nothing more than a compilation of histories that the authors deemed to be most relevant and useful.
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In historiography, the barrier between historian and student is dropped, exposing a conflict-ridden landscape. A diplomatic historian approaches an event from the perspective of the most influential statesmen (who are most often white males), analyzing the context, motives, and consequences of their decisions. A cultural historian peels back the objects, sights, and sounds of a period to uncover humanity’s underlying emotions and anxieties. A Marxist historian adopts the lens of class conflict to explain the progression of events. There are intellectual historians, social historians, and gender historians, among many others. Historians studying the same topic will draw different interpretations—sometimes radically so, depending on the sources they draw from
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Jacoba Urist points out that history is "about explaining and interpreting past events analytically." If students are really to learn and master these analytical tools, then it is absolutely essential that they read a diverse set of historians and learn how brilliant men and women who are scrutinizing the same topic can reach different conclusions
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Rather than constructing a curriculum based on the muddled consensus of boards, legislatures, and think tanks, schools should teach students history through historiography. The shortcomings of one historian become apparent after reading the work of another one on the list.
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Although, as Urist notes, the AP course is "designed to teach students to think like historians," my own experience in that class suggests that it fails to achieve that goal.
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The course’s framework has always served as an outline of important concepts aiming to allow educators flexibility in how to teach; it makes no reference to historiographical conflicts. Historiography was an epiphany for me because I had never before come face-to-face with how historians think and reason
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When I took AP U.S. History, I jumbled these diverse histories into one indistinct narrative. Although the test involved open-ended essay questions, I was taught that graders were looking for a firm thesis—forcing students to adopt a side. The AP test also, unsurprisingly, rewards students who cite a wealth of supporting details
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By the time I took the test in 2009, I was a master at "checking boxes," weighing political factors equally against those involving socioeconomics and ensuring that previously neglected populations like women and ethnic minorities received their due. I did not know that I was pulling ideas from different historiographical traditions. I still subscribed to the idea of a prevailing national narrative and served as an unwitting sponsor of synthesis, oblivious to the academic battles that made such synthesis impossible.
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Although there may be an inclination to seek to establish order where there is chaos, that urge must be resisted in teaching history. Public controversies over memory are hardly new. Students must be prepared to confront divisiveness, not conditioned to shoehorn agreement into situations where none is possible
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When conflict is accepted rather than resisted, it becomes possible for different conceptions of American history to co-exist. There is no longer a need to appoint a victor.
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More importantly, the historiographical approach avoids pursuing truth for the sake of satisfying a national myth
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The country’s founding fathers crafted some of the finest expressions of personal liberty and representative government the world has ever seen; many of them also held fellow humans in bondage. This paradox is only a problem if the goal is to view the founding fathers as faultless, perfect individuals. If multiple histories are embraced, no one needs to fear that one history will be lost.
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History is not indoctrination. It is a wrestling match. For too long, the emphasis has been on pinning the opponent. It is time to shift the focus to the struggle itself
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There is no better way to use the past to inform the present than by accepting the impossibility of a definitive history—and by ensuring that current students are equipped to grapple with the contested memories in their midst.
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shared by Javier E on 03 Mar 13
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A 5-Step Technique for Producing Ideas circa 1939 | Brain Pickings - 0 views
www.brainpickings.org/...ique-for-producing-ideas-young
creativity innovation ideas technique learning method principles
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In learning any art the important things to learn are, first, Principles, and second, Method. This is true of the art of producing ideas. Particular bits of knowledge are nothing, because they are made up [of] so called rapidly aging facts. Principles and method are everything.
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So with the art of producing ideas. What is most valuable to know is not where to look for a particular idea, but how to train the mind in the method by which all ideas are produced and how to grasp the principles which are at the source of all ideas.
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What you do is to take the different bits of material which you have gathered and feel them all over, as it were, with the tentacles of the mind. You take one fact, turn it this way and that, look at it in different lights, and feel for the meaning of it. You bring two facts together and see how they fit. What you are seeking now is the relationship, a synthesis where everything will come together in a neat combination, like a jig-saw puzzle.
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Every really good creative person…whom I have ever known has always had two noticeable characteristics. First, there was no subject under the sun in which he could not easily get interested — from, say, Egyptian burial customs to modern art. Every facet of life had fascination for him. Second, he was an extensive browser in all sorts of fields of information.
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Then and only then, Young promises, everything will click in the fourth stage of the seemingly serendipitous a-ha! moment: Out of nowhere the Idea will appear. It will come to you when you are least expecting it
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articulates the increasing importance of quality information filters in our modern information diet. This notion of gathering raw material is the first step in his outline of the creative process:
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[W]hen you reach this third stage in the production of an idea, drop the problem completely and turn to whatever stimulates your imagination and emotions. Listen to music, go to the theater or movies, read poetry or a detective story.
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In his third stage of the creative process, Young stresses the importance of making absolutely “no effort of a direct nature”: It is important to realize that this is just as definite and just as necessary a stage in the process as the two preceding ones. What you have to do at this time, apparently, is to turn the problem over to your unconscious mind and let it work while you sleep.
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Young calls the last stage “the cold, gray dawn of the morning after,” when your newborn idea has to face reality: It requires a deal of patient working over to make most ideas fit the exact conditions, or the practical exigencies, under which they must work. And here is where many good ideas are lost. The idea man, like the inventor, is often not patient enough or practical enough to go through with this adapting part of the process. But it has to be done if you are to put ideas to work in a work-a-day world. Do not make the mistake of holding your idea close to your chest at this stage. Submit it to the criticism of the judicious. When you do, a surprising thing will happen. You will find that a good idea has, as it were, self-expanding qualities. It stimulates those who see it to add to it. Thus possibilities in it which you have overlooked will come to light.
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what’s perhaps most interesting is the following note he made to the postscript of a reprint: From my own further experience in advertising, government, and public affairs I find no essential points which I would modify in the idea-producing process. There is one, however, on which I would put greater emphasis. This is as to the store of general materials in the idea-producer’s reservoir. […] I am convinced, however, that you gather this vicarious experience best, not when you are boning up on it for an immediate purpose, but when you are pursuing it as an end in itself.
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Eric Kandel's Visions - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views
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Judith, "barely clothed and fresh from the seduction and slaying of Holofernes, glows in her voluptuousness. Her hair is a dark sky between the golden branches of Assyrian trees, fertility symbols that represent her eroticism. This young, ecstatic, extravagantly made-up woman confronts the viewer through half-closed eyes in what appears to be a reverie of orgasmic rapture," writes Eric Kandel in his new book, The Age of Insight. Wait a minute. Writes who? Eric Kandel, the Nobel-winning neuroscientist who's spent most of his career fixated on the generously sized neurons of sea snails
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Kandel goes on to speculate, in a bravura paragraph a few hundred pages later, on the exact neurochemical cognitive circuitry of the painting's viewer:
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"At a base level, the aesthetics of the image's luminous gold surface, the soft rendering of the body, and the overall harmonious combination of colors could activate the pleasure circuits, triggering the release of dopamine. If Judith's smooth skin and exposed breast trigger the release of endorphins, oxytocin, and vasopressin, one might feel sexual excitement. The latent violence of Holofernes's decapitated head, as well as Judith's own sadistic gaze and upturned lip, could cause the release of norepinephrine, resulting in increased heart rate and blood pressure and triggering the fight-or-flight response. In contrast, the soft brushwork and repetitive, almost meditative, patterning may stimulate the release of serotonin. As the beholder takes in the image and its multifaceted emotional content, the release of acetylcholine to the hippocampus contributes to the storing of the image in the viewer's memory. What ultimately makes an image like Klimt's 'Judith' so irresistible and dynamic is its complexity, the way it activates a number of distinct and often conflicting emotional signals in the brain and combines them to produce a staggeringly complex and fascinating swirl of emotions."
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His key findings on the snail, for which he shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, showed that learning and memory change not the neuron's basic structure but rather the nature, strength, and number of its synaptic connections. Further, through focus on the molecular biology involved in a learned reflex like Aplysia's gill retraction, Kandel demonstrated that experience alters nerve cells' synapses by changing their pattern of gene expression. In other words, learning doesn't change what neurons are, but rather what they do.
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In Search of Memory (Norton), Kandel offered what sounded at the time like a vague research agenda for future generations in the budding field of neuroaesthetics, saying that the science of memory storage lay "at the foothills of a great mountain range." Experts grasp the "cellular and molecular mechanisms," he wrote, but need to move to the level of neural circuits to answer the question, "How are internal representations of a face, a scene, a melody, or an experience encoded in the brain?
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Since giving a talk on the matter in 2001, he has been piecing together his own thoughts in relation to his favorite European artists
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The field of neuroaesthetics, says one of its founders, Semir Zeki, of University College London, is just 10 to 15 years old. Through brain imaging and other studies, scholars like Zeki have explored the cognitive responses to, say, color contrasts or ambiguities of line or perspective in works by Titian, Michelangelo, Cubists, and Abstract Expressionists. Researchers have also examined the brain's pleasure centers in response to appealing landscapes.
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it is fundamental to an understanding of human cognition and motivation. Art isn't, as Kandel paraphrases a concept from the late philosopher of art Denis Dutton, "a byproduct of evolution, but rather an evolutionary adaptation—an instinctual trait—that helps us survive because it is crucial to our well-being." The arts encode information, stories, and perspectives that allow us to appraise courses of action and the feelings and motives of others in a palatable, low-risk way.
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"as far as activity in the brain is concerned, there is a faculty of beauty that is not dependent on the modality through which it is conveyed but which can be activated by at least two sources—musical and visual—and probably by other sources as well." Specifically, in this "brain-based theory of beauty," the paper says, that faculty is associated with activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex.
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It also enables Kandel—building on the work of Gombrich and the psychoanalyst and art historian Ernst Kris, among others—to compare the painters' rendering of emotion, the unconscious, and the libido with contemporaneous psychological insights from Freud about latent aggression, pleasure and death instincts, and other primal drives.
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although Kandel considers The Age of Insight to be more a work of intellectual history than of science, the book summarizes centuries of research on perception. And so you'll find, in those hundreds of pages between Kandel's introduction to Klimt's "Judith" and the neurochemical cadenza about the viewer's response to it, dossiers on vision as information processing; the brain's three-dimensional-space mapping and its interpretations of two-dimensional renderings; face recognition; the mirror neurons that enable us to empathize and physically reflect the affect and intentions we see in others; and many related topics. Kandel elsewhere describes the scientific evidence that creativity is nurtured by spells of relaxation, which foster a connection between conscious and unconscious cognition.
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The author of a classic textbook on neuroscience, he seems here to have written a layman's cognition textbook wrapped within a work of art history.
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"our initial response to the most salient features of the paintings of the Austrian Modernists, like our response to a dangerous animal, is automatic. ... The answer to James's question of how an object simply perceived turns into an object emotionally felt, then, is that the portraits are never objects simply perceived. They are more like the dangerous animal at a distance—both perceived and felt."
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If imaging is key to gauging therapeutic practices, it will be key to neuroaesthetics as well, Kandel predicts—a broad, intense array of "imaging experiments to see what happens with exaggeration, distorted faces, in the human brain and the monkey brain," viewers' responses to "mixed eroticism and aggression," and the like.
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while the visual-perception literature might be richer at the moment, there's no reason that neuroaesthetics should restrict its emphasis to the purely visual arts at the expense of music, dance, film, and theater.
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Kandel views the Expressionists' art through the powerful multiple lenses of turn-of-the-century Vienna's cultural mores and psychological insights. But then he refracts them further, through later discoveries in cognitive science. He seeks to reassure those who fear that the empirical and chemical will diminish the paintings' poetic power. "In art, as in science," he writes, "reductionism does not trivialize our perception—of color, light, and perspective—but allows us to see each of these components in a new way. Indeed, artists, particularly modern artists, have intentionally limited the scope and vocabulary of their expression to convey, as Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt do, the most essential, even spiritual ideas of their art."
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Zeki's message to art historians, aesthetic philosophers, and others who chafe at that idea is twofold. The more diplomatic pitch is that neuroaesthetics is different, complementary, and not oppositional to other forms of arts scholarship. But "the stick," as he puts it, is that if arts scholars "want to be taken seriously" by neurobiologists, they need to take advantage of the discoveries of the past half-century. If they don't, he says, "it's a bit like the guys who said to Galileo that we'd rather not look through your telescope."
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Matthews, a co-author of The Bard on the Brain: Understanding the Mind Through the Art of Shakespeare and the Science of Brain Imaging (Dana Press, 2003), seems open to the elucidations that science and the humanities can cast on each other. The neural pathways of our aesthetic responses are "good explanations," he says. But "does one [type of] explanation supersede all the others? I would argue that they don't, because there's a fundamental disconnection still between ... explanations of neural correlates of conscious experience and conscious experience" itself.
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There are, Matthews says, "certain kinds of problems that are fundamentally interesting to us as a species: What is love? What motivates us to anger?" Writers put their observations on such matters into idiosyncratic stories, psychologists conceive their observations in a more formalized framework, and neuroscientists like Zeki monitor them at the level of functional changes in the brain. All of those approaches to human experience "intersect," Matthews says, "but no one of them is the explanation."
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"Conscious experience," he says, "is something we cannot even interrogate in ourselves adequately. What we're always trying to do in effect is capture the conscious experience of the last moment. ... As we think about it, we have no way of capturing more than one part of it."
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Kandel sees art and art history as "parent disciplines" and psychology and brain science as "antidisciplines," to be drawn together in an E.O. Wilson-like synthesis toward "consilience as an attempt to open a discussion between restricted areas of knowledge." Kandel approvingly cites Stephen Jay Gould's wish for "the sciences and humanities to become the greatest of pals ... but to keep their ineluctably different aims and logics separate as they ply their joint projects and learn from each other."
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Scientists at Stanford University and the J. Craig Venter Institute have developed the first software simulation of an entire organism, a humble single-cell bacterium that lives in the human genital and respiratory tracts.
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the work was a giant step toward developing computerized laboratories that could carry out many thousands of experiments much faster than is possible now, helping scientists penetrate the mysteries of diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s.
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This kind of modeling is already in use to study individual cellular processes like metabolism. But Dr. Covert said: “Where I think our work is different is that we explicitly include all of the genes and every known gene function. There’s no one else out there who has been able to include more than a handful of functions or more than, say, one-third of the genes.”
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The simulation, which runs on a cluster of 128 computers, models the complete life span of the cell at the molecular level, charting the interactions of 28 categories of molecules — including DNA, RNA, proteins and small molecules known as metabolites, which are generated by cell processes.
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They called the simulation an important advance in the new field of computational biology, which has recently yielded such achievements as the creation of a synthetic life form — an entire bacterial genome created by a team led by the genome pioneer J. Craig Venter. The scientists used it to take over an existing cell.
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A decade ago, scientists developed simulations of metabolism that are now being used to study a wide array of cells, including bacteria, yeast and photosynthetic organisms. Other models exist for processes like protein synthesis.
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“Right now, running a simulation for a single cell to divide only one time takes around 10 hours and generates half a gigabyte of data,” Dr. Covert wrote. “I find this fact completely fascinating, because I don’t know that anyone has ever asked how much data a living thing truly holds. We often think of the DNA as the storage medium, but clearly there is more to it than that.”
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scientists chose an approach called object-oriented programming, which parallels the design of modern software systems. Software designers organize their programs in modules, which communicate with one another by passing data and instructions back and forth.
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“The major modeling insight we had a few years ago was to break up the functionality of the cell into subgroups, which we could model individually, each with its own mathematics, and then to integrate these submodels together into a whole,”
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Creativity Becomes an Academic Discipline - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Once considered the product of genius or divine inspiration, creativity — the ability to spot problems and devise smart solutions — is being recast as a prized and teachable skill.
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“That is why you are seeing more attention to creativity at universities,” he says. “The marketplace is demanding it.”
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Creativity moves beyond mere synthesis and evaluation and is, he says, “the higher order skill.” This has not been a sudden development. Nearly 20 years ago “creating” replaced “evaluation” at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning objectives. In 2010 “creativity” was the factor most crucial for success found in an I.B.M. survey of 1,500 chief executives in 33 industries. These days “creative” is the most used buzzword in LinkedIn profiles two years running.
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The method, which is used in Buffalo State classrooms, has four steps: clarifying, ideating, developing and implementing. People tend to gravitate to particular steps, suggesting their primary thinking style.
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What’s igniting campuses, though, is the conviction that everyone is creative, and can learn to be more so.
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Just about every pedagogical toolbox taps similar strategies, employing divergent thinking (generating multiple ideas) and convergent thinking (finding what works).The real genius, of course, is in the how.
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as content knowledge evolves at lightning speed, educators are talking more and more about “process skills,” strategies to reframe challenges and extrapolate and transform information, and to accept and deal with ambiguity.
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Ideating is brainstorming and calls for getting rid of your inner naysayer to let your imagination fly.
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Clarifying — asking the right question — is critical because people often misstate or misperceive a problem. “If you don’t have the right frame for the situation, it’s difficult to come up with a breakthrough,
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Developing is building out a solution, and maybe finding that it doesn’t work and having to start over
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“the frequency and intensity of failures is an implicit principle of the course. Getting into a creative mind-set involves a lot of trial and error.”
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His favorite assignments? Construct a résumé based on things that didn’t work out and find the meaning and influence these have had on your choices.
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“Examine what in the culture is preventing you from creating something new or different. And what is it like to look like a fool because a lot of things won’t work out and you will look foolish? So how do you handle that?”
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Because academics run from failure, Mr. Keywell says, universities are “way too often shapers of formulaic minds,” and encourage students to repeat and internalize fail-safe ideas.
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“The new people who will be creative will sit at the juxtaposition of two or more fields,” she says. When ideas from different fields collide, Dr. Cramond says, fresh ones are generated.
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Basic creativity tools used at the Torrance Center include thinking by analogy, looking for and making patterns, playing, literally, to encourage ideas, and learning to abstract problems to their essence.
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students explore definitions of creativity, characteristics of creative people and strategies to enhance their own creativity.These include rephrasing problems as questions, learning not to instinctively shoot down a new idea (first find three positives), and categorizing problems as needing a solution that requires either action, planning or invention.
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The Creative College Student | Psychology Today - 0 views
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surface learning (doing enough memorization to get by), strategic learning (aiming primarily for high grades and honors), and deep learning (autonomous striving for meaning):
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College is the perfect place and time for this, as students who may have been pigeon-holed as the smart ones, the funny ones, or the messy ones in their class or family can start anew and try on some new personalities for size.
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The Science Behind Dreaming: Scientific American - 1 views
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Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung put forth some of the most widely-known modern theories of dreaming. Freud’s theory centred around the notion of repressed longing -- the idea that dreaming allows us to sort through unresolved, repressed wishes. Carl Jung (who studied under Freud) also believed that dreams had psychological importance, but proposed different theories about their meaning.
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One prominent neurobiological theory of dreaming is the “activation-synthesis hypothesis,” which states that dreams don’t actually mean anything: they are merely electrical brain impulses that pull random thoughts and imagery from our memories. Humans, the theory goes, construct dream stories after they wake up, in a natural attempt to make sense of it all.
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the “threat simulation theory” suggests that dreaming should be seen as an ancient biological defence mechanism that provided an evolutionary advantage because of its capacity to repeatedly simulate potential threatening events – enhancing the neuro-cognitive mechanisms required for efficient threat perception and avoidance.
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shared by grayton downing on 23 Oct 13
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Inhibit Mitochondria to Live Longer? | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views
www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/35673/title/Inhibit-Mitochondria-to-Live-Longer-/
scientist research mitochondria life-span
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Although previous work had indirectly suggested that changing mitochondrial function affected lifespan, “this is the first clear demonstration [that it] extends mouse lifespan,” Miller added.
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well known that mitochondria are linked to health. Some evidence suggests that inhibiting mitochondrial function can be harmful—as in the case of diabetes or obesity—but earlier data from nematodes and fruit flies also suggest a link to lifespan increase. The latest findings are a step toward untangling one of the current debates in the field—whether inhibiting mitochondrial function is detrimental or beneficial,
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The average lifespan of BXD mice range from 1 year to almost 2.5 years. The researchers were able to link 3 genes to longevity variability, including mitochondrial ribosomal protein S5 (Mrps5), which encodes a protein integral to mitochondrial protein synthesis. They found that BXD strains with 50 percent less Mrps5 expression lived about 250 days longer than BXD mice with more robust Mrps5 expression.
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researchers were also able to activate the mitochondrial UPR via pharmacological means. Dosing worms with the antibiotic doxycyline, which inhibits bacterial and mitochondrial protein translation, also activated the mitochondrial UPR and extended worm lifespans. Rapamycin, shown to enhance longevity in mice, also extended worm lifespan and induced mitonuclear protein imbalance and the mitochondrial UPR in mouse hepatocytes.
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mitochondrial ribosomal proteins are not to be trifled with. “There are a number of well-defined severe disorders in humans, including neonatal lethality, due to defects in those exact proteins,”
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is beginning to cast a wider net, looking to see whether mitonuclear protein imbalance could explain longevity induced by other means, such as caloric restriction. Auwerx hopes that the work will aid in designing a drug intervention “to pump up this response via pharmacological tools.”
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he’s optimistic that his team has identified a “common thread” demonstrating that longevity is not affected so much by inhibiting or stimulating mitochondria, but how the organelles “deal with proteins.”
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Unprecedented Level of Human Harm to Sea Life Is Forecast - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them.
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A number of experts said the result was a remarkable synthesis, along with a nuanced and encouraging prognosis.
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There are clear signs already that humans are harming the oceans to a remarkable degree, the scientists found. Some ocean species are certainly overharvested, but even greater damage results from large-scale habitat loss, which is likely to accelerate as technology advances the human footprint, the scientists reported.
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Fragile ecosystems like mangroves are being replaced by fish farms, which are projected to provide most of the fish we consume within 20 years.
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Mining operations, too, are poised to transform the ocean. Contracts for seabed mining now cover 460,000 square miles underwater, the researchers found, up from zero in 2000.
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The fossil record indicates that a number of large animal species became extinct as humans arrived on continents and islands.
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But it was only after 1800, with the Industrial Revolution, that extinctions on land really accelerated.
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Humans began to alter the habitat that wildlife depended on, wiping out forests for timber, plowing under prairie for farmland, and laying down roads and railroads across continents.
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shared by Javier E on 20 Mar 19
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Opinion | A 'Disgusting' Yale Professor Moves On - The New York Times - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...nicholas-christakis-yale.html
human nature kindness good cooperation love teaching psychology
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Christakis’s wife, Erika, who also taught at Yale back then, had circulated a memo in which she questioned a university edict against culturally insensitive Halloween costumes, suggesting that students could police themselves and should have both the freedom to err and the strength to cope with offense. She wrote that her husband concurred.
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when, in that courtyard, Christakis apologized for any pain that the memo had caused but refused to disavow its content, he was pilloried.
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“Blueprint,” it’s no lament for the mess that we humans make of things. It’s an argument that we’re transcendently and inherently good — that we’re genetically wired for it, thanks to a process of natural selection that has favored people prone to constructive friendships, to cooperation, to teaching, to love.
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“For too long,” he writes in the preface, “the scientific community has been overly focused on the dark side of our biological heritage: our capacity for tribalism, violence, selfishness and cruelty. The bright side has been denied the attention it deserves.”
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He told me that few people realize that he listened to those students for more than two hours, and that they hadn’t intercepted and surprised him: He went out to meet them, knowing how angry they were. “I felt that I had to model the principles that I believed — which is that I am committed to free and open expression,” he said. “I hardly could cower in my house.”
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The book is a hefty, dazzlingly erudite synthesis of history, philosophy, anthropology, genetics, sociology, economics, epidemiology, statistics and more. It uses everything from shipwrecks to the primatologist Jane Goodall to make its pro-kindnes
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Although he stayed calm — which he attributes to years of training in karate and its premium on self-control — he was rattled, deeply, by the encounter. He soon took his first sabbatical ever. He read books about equanimity in the face of injustice. “I did not want to become a different person,” he said. “I certainly did not want to become embittered.”
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He rues America’s intense polarization, which perhaps makes this “an odd time for me to advance the view that there is more that unites us than divides us.”
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His reasoning, oversimplified, is this: Complex societies are possible and durable only when people are emotionally invested in, and help, one another; we’d be living in smaller units and more solitary fashions if we weren’t equipped for such collaboration; and human thriving within these societies guarantees future generations suited to them.
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Yes, there are hideous wars and horrid leaders. But if that were the sum of us, how to explain all the peace and progress? Christakis urges a wide angle and the long view
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“To accept this belief that human beings are evil or violent or selfish or overly tribal is a kind of moral and intellectual laziness,” he told me. It also excuses that destructiveness. “The way to repair our torn social fabric is to say: Wait a minute, that’s not quite right.
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The Story Behind the SAT Overhaul - NYTimes.com - 2 views
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“When you cover too many topics,” Coleman said, “the assessments designed to measure those standards are inevitably superficial.” He pointed to research showing that more students entering college weren’t prepared and were forced into “remediation programs from which they never escape.” In math, for example, if you examined data from top-performing countries, you found an approach that emphasized “far fewer topics, far deeper,” the opposite of the curriculums he found in the United States, which he described as “a mile wide and an inch deep.”
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The lessons he brought with him from thinking about the Common Core were evident — that American education needed to be more focused and less superficial, and that it should be possible to test the success of the newly defined standards through an exam that reflected the material being taught in the classroom.
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she and her team had extensive conversations with students, teachers, parents, counselors, admissions officers and college instructors, asking each group to tell them in detail what they wanted from the test. What they arrived at above all was that a test should reflect the most important skills that were imparted by the best teachers
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for example, a good instructor would teach Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech by encouraging a conversation that involved analyzing the text and identifying the evidence, both factual and rhetorical, that makes it persuasive. “The opposite of what we’d want is a classroom where a teacher might ask only: ‘What was the year the speech was given? Where was it given?’ ”
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in the past, assembling the SAT focused on making sure the questions performed on technical grounds, meaning: Were they appropriately easy or difficult among a wide range of students, and were they free of bias when tested across ethnic, racial and religious subgroups? The goal was “maximizing differentiation” among kids, which meant finding items that were answered correctly by those students who were expected to get them right and incorrectly by the weaker students. A simple way of achieving this, Coleman said, was to test the kind of obscure vocabulary words for which the SAT was famous
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In redesigning the test, the College Board shifted its emphasis. It prioritized content, measuring each question against a set of specifications that reflect the kind of reading and math that students would encounter in college and their work lives. Schmeiser and others then spent much of early last year watching students as they answered a set of 20 or so problems, discussing the questions with the students afterward. “The predictive validity is going to come out the same,” she said of the redesigned test. “But in the new test, we have much more control over the content and skills that are being measured.”
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Evidence-based reading and writing, he said, will replace the current sections on reading and writing. It will use as its source materials pieces of writing — from science articles to historical documents to literature excerpts — which research suggests are important for educated Americans to know and understand deeply. “The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers,” Coleman said, “have managed to inspire an enduring great conversation about freedom, justice, human dignity in this country and the world” — therefore every SAT will contain a passage from either a founding document or from a text (like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address) that is part of the “great global conversation” the founding documents inspired.
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The Barbara Jordan vocabulary question would have a follow-up — “How do you know your answer is correct?” — to which students would respond by identifying lines in the passage that supported their answer.
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The idea is that the test will emphasize words students should be encountering, like “synthesis,” which can have several meanings depending on their context. Instead of encouraging students to memorize flashcards, the test should promote the idea that they must read widely throughout their high-school years.
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. No longer will it be good enough to focus on tricks and trying to eliminate answer choices. We are not interested in students just picking an answer, but justifying their answers.”
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the essay portion of the test will also be reformulated so that it will always be the same, some version of: “As you read the passage in front of you, consider how the author uses evidence such as facts or examples; reasoning to develop ideas and to connect claims and evidence; and stylistic or persuasive elements to add power to the ideas expressed. Write an essay in which you explain how the author builds an argument to persuade an audience.”
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The math section, too, will be predicated on research that shows that there are “a few areas of math that are a prerequisite for a wide range of college courses” and careers. Coleman conceded that some might treat the news that they were shifting away from more obscure math problems to these fewer fundamental skills as a dumbing-down the test, but he was adamant that this was not the case. He explained that there will be three areas of focus: problem solving and data analysis, which will include ratios and percentages and other mathematical reasoning used to solve problems in the real world; the “heart of algebra,” which will test how well students can work with linear equations (“a powerful set of tools that echo throughout many fields of study”); and what will be called the “passport to advanced math,” which will focus on the student’s familiarity with complex equations and their applications in science and social science.
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“Sometimes in the past, there’s been a feeling that tests were measuring some sort of ineffable entity such as intelligence, whatever that might mean. Or ability, whatever that might mean. What this is is a clear message that good hard work is going to pay off and achievement is going to pay off. This is one of the most significant developments that I have seen in the 40-plus years that I’ve been working in admissions in higher education.”
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The idea of creating a transparent test and then providing a free website that any student could use — not to learn gimmicks but to get a better grounding and additional practice in the core knowledge that would be tested — was appealing to Coleman.
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(The College Board won’t pay Khan Academy.) They talked about a hypothetical test-prep experience in which students would log on to a personal dashboard, indicate that they wanted to prepare for the SAT and then work through a series of preliminary questions to demonstrate their initial skill level and identify the gaps in their knowledge. Khan said he could foresee a way to estimate the amount of time it would take to achieve certain benchmarks. “It might go something like, ‘O.K., we think you’ll be able to get to this level within the next month and this level within the next two months if you put in 30 minutes a day,’ ” he said. And he saw no reason the site couldn’t predict for anyone, anywhere the score he or she might hope to achieve with a commitment to a prescribed amount of work.
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How to Use Critical Thinking to Separate Fact From Fiction Online | by Simon Spichak | ... - 2 views
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Critical thinking helps us frame everyday problems, teaches us to ask the correct questions, and points us towards intelligent solutions.
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Critical thinking is a continuing practice that involves an open mind and methods for synthesizing and evaluating the quality of knowledge and evidence, as well as an understanding of human errors.
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One of the first things I ask myself when I read a headline or find a claim about a product is if the phrase is emotionally neutral. Some headlines generate outrage or fear, indicating that there is a clear bias. When we read something that exploits are emotions, we must be careful.
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When I’m trying to figure out whether a claim is factual, there are a few questions I always ask myself.Does the headline, article, or information evoke fear, anger, or other strong negative emotions?Where did you hear about the information? Does it cite any direct evidence?What is the expert consensus on this information?
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Step 2. Evidence Synthesis and EvaluationSometimes I’m still feeling uncertain if there’s any truth to a claim. Even after taking into account the emotions it evokes, I need to find the evidence of a claim and evaluate its quality
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Often, the information that I want to check is either political or scientific. There are different questions I ask myself, depending on the nature of these claims.
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Looking at multiple different outlets, each with its own unique biases, helps us get a picture of the issue.
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I use multiple websites specializing in fact-checking. They provide primary sources of evidence for different types of claims. Here is a list of websites where I do my fact-checking:
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SnopesPolitifactFactCheckMedia Bias/Fact Check (a bias assessor for fact-checking websites)Simply type in some keywords from the claim to find out if it’s verified with primary sources, misleading, false, or unproven.
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Often we tout science as the process by which we uncover absolute truths about the universe. Once many scientists agree on something, it gets disseminated in the news. Confusion arises once this science changes or evolves, as is what happened throughout the coronavirus pandemic. In addition to fear and misinformation, we have to address a fundamental misunderstanding of the way science works when practicing critical thinking.
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It is confusing to hear about certain drugs found to cure the coronavirus one moment, followed by many other scientists and researchers saying that they don’t. How do we collect and assess these scientific claims when there are discrepancies?
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Sometimes the distinction between scientific coverage and scientific articles isn’t clear. When this difference is clear, we might still find findings in different academic journals that disagree with each other. Sometimes, research that isn’t peer-reviewed receives plenty of coverage in the media
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Correlation and causation: Sometimes a claim might present two factors that appear correlated. Consider recent misinformation about 5G Towers and the spread of coronavirus. While there might appear to be associations, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a causative relationship
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When you’re still unsure, follow the consensus of the experts within the field. Scientists pointed out flaws within this pre-print article leading to its retraction. The pre-print was removed from the server because it did not hold up to proper scientific standards or scrutiny.
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The next examples I want to bring up refer to retracted articles from peer-reviewed journals. Since science is a self-correcting process, rather than a decree of absolutes, mistakes and fraud are corrected.
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Briefly, I will show you exactly how to tell if the resource you are reading is an actual, peer-reviewed scientific article.
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researchers outline exactly how they conducted their experiments so other researchers can replicate them, build upon them, or provide quality assurance for them. This scientific report does not go straight to the nearest science journalist. Websites and news outlets like Scientific American or The Atlantic do not publish scientific articles.
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Once it’s written up, researchers send this manuscript to a journal. Other experts in the field then provide comments, feedback, and critiques. These peer reviewers ask researchers for clarification or even more experiments to strengthen their results. Peer review often takes months or sometimes years.
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Some peer-reviewed scientific journals are Science and Nature; other scientific articles are searchable through the PubMed database. If you’re curious about a topic, search for scientific papers.
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Peer-review is crucial! If you’re assessing the quality of evidence for claims, peer-reviewed research is a strong indicator
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Finally, there are platforms for scientists to review research even after publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Although most scientists conduct experiments and interpret their data objectively, they may still make errors. Many scientists use Twitter and PubPeer to perform a post-publication review
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To finish off, I want to discuss common cognitive errors that we tend to make. Finally, there are some framing questions to ask at the end of our research to help us with assessing any information that we find.
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Dunning-Kruger effect: Why do we rely on experts? In 1999, David Dunning and Justin Kruger published “Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.” They found that the less a person understands about a topic, the more confident of their abilities or knowledge they will be
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How does this relate to critical thinking? If you’re reading a claim sourced or written by somebody who lacks expertise in a field, they are underestimating its complexity. Whenever possible, look for an authoritative source when synthesizing and evaluating evidence for a claim.
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Survivorship bias: Ever heard someone argue that we don’t need vaccines or seatbelts? After all, they grew up without either of them and are still alive and healthy!These arguments are appealing at first, but they don’t account for any cases of failures. They are attributing a misplaced sense of optimism and safety by ignoring the deaths that occurred resultant from a lack of vaccinations and seatbelts
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To practice critical thinking with these kinds of claims, we must ask the following questions:Does this claim emerge from a peer-reviewed scientific article? Has this paper been retracted?Does this article appear in a reputable journal?What is the expert consensus on this article?
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Now with all the evidence we’ve gathered, we ask ourselves some final questions. There are plenty more questions you will come up with yourself, case-by-case.Who is making the original claim?Who supports these claims? What are their qualifications?What is the evidence used for these claims?Where is this evidence published?How was the evidence gathered?Why is it important?
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“even if some data is supporting a claim, does it make sense?” Some claims are deceptively true but fall apart when accounting for this bias.
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Human Microbiome and Microbiota - 0 views
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The human microbiota consists of the entire collection of microbes that live in and on the body. In fact, there are 10 times as many microbial inhabitants of the body than there are body cells. Study of the human microbiome is inclusive of inhabitant microbes as well as the entire genomes of the body's microbial communities. These microbes reside in distinct locations in the ecosystem of the human body and perform important functions that are necessary for healthy human development.
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Microbes of the BodyMicroscopic organisms that inhabit the body include archaea, bacteria, fungi, protists, and viruses. Microbes start to colonize the body from the moment of birth. An individual's microbiome changes in number and type throughout his or her lifetime, with the numbers of species increasing from birth to adulthood and decreasing in old age. These microbes are unique from person to person and can be impacted by certain activities, such as hand washing or taking antibiotics. Bacteria are the most numerous microbes in the human microbiome.
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Human skin is populated by a number of different microbes that reside on the surface of the skin, as well as within glands and hair. Our skin is in constant contact with our external environment and serves as the body's first line of defense against potential pathogens. Skin microbiota help to prevent pathogenic microbes from colonizing the skin by occupying skin surfaces. They also help to educate our immune system by alerting immune cells to the presence of pathogens and initiating an immune response
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The human gut microbiome is diverse and dominated by trillions of bacteria with as many as one-thousand different bacterial species. These microbes thrive in the harsh conditions of the gut and are heavily involved in maintaining healthy nutrition, normal metabolism, and proper immune function. They aid in the digestion of non-digestible carbohydrates, the metabolism of bile acid and drugs, and in the synthesis of amino acids and many vitamins. A number of gut microbes also produce antimicrobial substances that protect against pathogenic bacteria.
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Microbiota of the oral cavity number in the millions and include archaea, bacteria, fungi, protists, and viruses. These organisms exist together and most in a mutualistic relationship with the host, where both the microbes and the host benefit from the relationship. While the majority of oral microbes are beneficial, preventing harmful microbes from colonizing the mouth, some have been known to become pathogenic in response to environmental changes. Bacteria are the most numerous of the oral microbes and include Streptococcus, Actinomyces, Lactobacterium, Staphylococcus, and Propionibacterium.
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On the Shortness of Life 2.0 - by Peter Juul - The Liberal Patriot - 0 views
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life planning time-management psychology education
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Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, writer and regular Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman faithfully carries the spirit of Seneca’s classic essay forward
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It’s a deft and eclectic synthesis of ancient and modern thinking about how humanity can come to terms with our limited time on Earth – the title derives from the length of the average human lifespan – ranging intellectually from ancient Greek and Roman philosophers like Seneca to modern-day Buddhist and existentialist thinkers.
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he only touches on politics briefly and sporadically throughout the book’s 245 pages. But those of us in politics and policy – whatever capacity we find ourselves in – can learn quite a bit
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defined by Burkeman as “a machine for misusing your life.” Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook don’t just distract us from more important matters, he argues, “they change how we’re defining ‘important matters’ in the first place.”
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Social media also amounts to “a machine for getting you to care about too many things, even if they’re each indisputably worthwhile.” Hence the urge to depict every policy problem as an urgent if not existential crisis
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social media has turned all of us into “angrier, less empathetic, more anxious or more numbed out” versions of ourselves.
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our political and policy debates tend towards what Burkeman calls “paralyzing grandiosity” – the false notion that in the face of problems like climate change, economic inequality, and ongoing threats to democracy “only the most revolutionary, world-transforming causes are worth fighting for.” It’s a sentiment that derives from and reinforces catastrophism and absolutism
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we lack the patience to tolerate the fact that most of the things we want to happen won’t occur in one fell swoop.
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We’ve got to resist the need for speed and desire for rapid resolution of problems, letting them instead take the time they take. In part, that means accepting even limited progress rather than giving up and growing cynical
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Burkeman’s advice to rest for rest’s sake, “to spend some of our time, that is, on activities in which the only thing we’re trying to get from them is the doing itself.”
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Burkeman suggests we find some hobby we enjoy for its own sake, not because there’s some benefit we think we can derive from it.
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When we somewhat sheepishly admit to a hobby, he writes, “that’s a sign you’re doing it for its own sake, rather than some socially sanctioned outcome.”
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he joy we find in our hobbies can bleed into other parts of our lives as well, and if they’re more social in nature that can help build relationships unrelated to politics and policy that are necessary to make democracy work.
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“Consolidate your caring” and think small. “To make a difference,” Burkeman argues, “you must focus your finite capacity for care.”
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What matters is that we make things slightly better with our contributions and actions, not that we solve all the world’s at once.
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On the Shortness of Life 2.0 - by Peter Juul - The Liberal Patriot - 0 views
theliberalpatriot.substack.com/...on-the-shortness-of-life-20
time management organization life planning mission balance ethics personal virtue good life
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It’s a deft and eclectic synthesis of ancient and modern thinking about how humanity can come to terms with our limited time on Earth – the title derives from the length of the average human lifespan – ranging intellectually from ancient Greek and Roman philosophers like Seneca to modern-day Buddhist and existentialist thinkers. Stuffed with valuable and practical insights on life and how we use – or misuse – it, Four Thousand Weeks is an impressive and compact volume well worth the time and attention of even the most casual readers.
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As Burkeman notes, our preoccupation with productivity allows us to evade “the anxiety that might arise if we were to ask ourselves whether we’re on the right path.” The end result is a lot of dedicated and talented people in politics and policy burning themselves out for no discernable or meaningful purpose.
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Then there’s social media, defined by Burkeman as “a machine for misusing your life.” Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook don’t just distract us from more important matters, he argues, “they change how we’re defining ‘important matters’ in the first place.”
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Social media also amounts to “a machine for getting you to care about too many things, even if they’re each indisputably worthwhile.” Hence the urge to depict every policy problem as an urgent if not existential crisis
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social media has turned all of us into “angrier, less empathetic, more anxious or more numbed out” versions of ourselves.
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Finally, our political and policy debates tend towards what Burkeman calls “paralyzing grandiosity” – the false notion that in the face of problems like climate change, economic inequality, and ongoing threats to democracy “only the most revolutionary, world-transforming causes are worth fighting for.” It’s a sentiment that derives from and reinforces catastrophism and absolutism as ways of thinking about politics and policy
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That sentiment also often results in impotent impatience, which in turn leads to frustration, anger, and cynicism when things don’t turn out exactly as we’ve hoped. But it also allows us to avoid hard choices required in order to pull together the political coalitions necessary to effect actual change.
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Burkeman suggests we find some hobby we enjoy for its own sake, not because there’s some benefit we think we can derive from it
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rest for rest’s sake, “to spend some of our time, that is, on activities in which the only thing we’re trying to get from them is the doing itself.”
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we should cultivate the patience to see our goals through step-by-step over the long term. We’ve got to resist the need for speed and desire for rapid resolution of problems, letting them instead take the time they take.
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it’s perfectly fine to dedicate your time to a limited subset of issues that you care deeply about. We’re only mortal, and as Burkeman points out it’s important to “consciously pick your battles in charity, activism, and politics.”
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our lives are just as meaningful and worthwhile if we spend our time “on, say caring for an elderly relative with dementia or volunteering at the local community garden” as they are if we’re up to our eyeballs in the minutiae of politics and policy. What matters is that we make things slightly better with our contributions and actions
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once we give up on the illusion of perfection, Burkeman observes, we “get to roll up [our] sleeves and start work on what’s gloriously possible instead.”
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Korean philosophy is built upon daily practice of good habits | Aeon Essays - 0 views
aeon.co/...-daily-practice-of-good-habits
korea philosophy practice habits aeon essay wisdom eastern civilization(s) cultivated learning education history
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‘We are unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves,’ wrote Friedrich Nietzsche at the beginning of On the Genealogy of Morals (1887
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This seeking after ourselves, however, is not something that is lacking in Buddhist and Confucian traditions – especially not in the case of Korean philosophy. Self-cultivation, central to the tradition, underscores that the onus is on the individual to develop oneself, without recourse to the divine or the supernatural
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Korean philosophy is practical, while remaining agnostic to a large degree: recognising the spirit realm but highlighting that we ourselves take charge of our lives by taking charge of our minds
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The word for ‘philosophy’ in Korean is 철학, pronounced ch’ŏrhak. It literally means the ‘study of wisdom’ or, perhaps better, ‘how to become wise’, which reflects its more dynamic and proactive implications
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At night, in the darkness of the cave, he drank water from a perfectly useful ‘bowl’. But when he could see properly, he found that there was no ‘bowl’ at all, only a disgusting human skull.
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Our lives and minds are affected by others (and their actions), as others (and their minds) are affected by our actions. This is particularly true in the Korean application of Confucian and Buddhist ideas.
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Wŏnhyo understood that how we think about things shapes their very existence – and in turn our own existence, which is constructed according to our thoughts.
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In the Korean tradition of philosophy, human beings are social beings, therefore knowing how to interact with others is an essential part of living a good life – indeed, living well with others is our real contribution to human life
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he realised that there isn’t a difference between the ‘bowl’ and the skull: the only difference lies with us and our perceptions. We interpret our lives through a continual stream of thoughts, and so we become what we think, or rather how we think
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As our daily lives are shaped by our thoughts, so our experience of this reality is good or bad – depending on our thoughts – which make things ‘appear’ good or bad because, in ‘reality’, things in and of themselves are devoid of their own independent nature
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We can take from Wŏnhyo the idea that, if you change the patterns that have become engrained in how you think, you will begin to live differently. To do this, you need to change your mental habits, which is why meditation and mindful awareness can help. And this needs to be practised every day
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Wŏnhyo’s most important work is titled Awaken your Mind and Practice (in Korean, Palsim suhaeng-jang). It is an explicit call to younger adherents to put Buddhist ideas into practice, and an indirect warning not to get lost in contemplation or in the study of text
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While Wŏnhyo had emphasised the mind and the need to ‘practise’ Buddhism, a later Korean monk, Chinul (1158-1210), spearheaded Sŏn, the meditational tradition in Korea that espoused the idea of ‘sudden enlightenment’ that alerts the mind, accompanied by ‘gradual cultivation’
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we still need to practise meditation, for if not we can easily fall into our old ways even if our minds have been awakened
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his greatest contribution to Sŏn is Secrets on Cultivating the Mind (Susim kyŏl). This text outlines in detail his teachings on sudden awakening followed by the need for gradual cultivation
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hinul’s approach recognises the mind as the ‘essence’ of one’s Buddha nature (contained in the mind, which is inherently good), while continual practice and cultivation aids in refining its ‘function’ – this is the origin of the ‘essence-function’ concept that has since become central to Korean philosophy.
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These ideas also influenced the reformed view of Confucianism that became linked with the mind and other metaphysical ideas, finally becoming known as Neo-Confucianism.
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During the Chosŏn dynasty (1392-1910), the longest lasting in East Asian history, Neo-Confucianism became integrated into society at all levels through rituals for marriage, funerals and ancestors
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Neo-Confucianism recognises that we as individuals exist through plural relationships with responsibilities to others (as a child, brother/sister, lover, husband/wife, parent, teacher/student and so on), an idea nicely captured in 2000 by the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy when he described our ‘being’ as ‘singular plural’
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Corrupt interpretations of Confucianism by heteronormative men have historically championed these ideas in terms of vertical relationships rather than as a reciprocal set of benevolent social interactions, meaning that women have suffered greatly as a result.
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Setting aside these sexist and self-serving interpretations, Confucianism emphasises that society works as an interconnected set of complementary reciprocal relationships that should be beneficial to all parties within a social system
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Confucian relationships have the potential to offer us an example of effective citizenship, similar to that outlined by Cicero, where the good of the republic or state is at the centre of being a good citizen
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There is a general consensus in Korean philosophy that we have an innate sociability and therefore should have a sense of duty to each other and to practise virtue.
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The main virtue of Confucianism is the idea of ‘humanity’, coming from the Chinese character 仁, often left untranslated and written as ren and pronounced in Korean as in.
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It is a combination of the character for a human being and the number two. In other words, it signifies what (inter)connects two people, or rather how they should interact in a humane or benevolent manner to each other. This character therefore highlights the link between people while emphasising that the most basic thing that makes us ‘human’ is our interaction with others.
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Neo-Confucianism adopted a turn towards a more mind-centred view in the writings of the Korean scholar Yi Hwang, known by his pen name T’oegye (1501-70), who appears on the 1,000-won note. He greatly influenced Neo-Confucianism in Japan through his formidable text, Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning (Sŏnghak sipto), composed in 1568, which was one of the most-reproduced texts of the entire Chosŏn dynasty and represents the synthesis of Neo-Confucian thought in Korea
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with commentaries that elucidate the moral principles of Confucianism, related to the cardinal relationships and education. It also embodies T’oegye’s own development of moral psychology through his focus on the mind, and illuminates the importance of teaching and the practice of self-cultivation.
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He writes that we ourselves can transform the unrestrained mind and its desires, and achieve sagehood, if we take the arduous, gradual path of self-cultivation centred on the mind.
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Confucians had generally accepted the Mencian idea that human nature was embodied in the unaroused state of the mind, before it was shaped by its environment. The mind in its unaroused state was taken to be theoretically good. However, this inborn tendency for goodness is always in danger of being reduced to passivity, unless you cultivate yourself as a person of ‘humanity’ (in the Confucian sense mentioned above).
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You should constantly try to activate your humanity to allow the unhampered operation of the original mind to manifest itself through socially responsible and moral character in action
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Humanity is the realisation of what I describe as our ‘optimum level of perfection’ that exists in an inherent stage of potentiality due our innate good nature
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This, in a sense, is like the Buddha nature of the Buddhists, which suggests we are already enlightened and just need to recover our innate mental state. Both philosophies are hopeful: humans are born good with the potential to correct their own flaws and failures
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The seventh diagram in T’oegye’s text is entitled ‘The Diagram of the Explanation of Humanity’ (Insŏl-to). Here he warns how one’s good inborn nature may become impaired, hampering the operation of the original mind and negatively impacting our character in action. Humanity embodies the gradual realisation of our optimum level of perfection that already exists in our mind but that depends on how we think about things and how we relate that to others in a social context
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For T’oegye, the key to maintaining our capacity to remain level-headed, and to control our impulses and emotions, was kyŏng. This term is often translated as ‘seriousness’, occasionally ‘mindfulness’, and it identifies the serious need for constant effort to control one’s mind in order to go about one’s life in a healthy manner
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For T’oegye, mindfulness is as serious as meditation is for the Buddhists. In fact, the Neo-Confucians had their own meditational practice of ‘quiet-sitting’ (chŏngjwa), which focused on recovering the calm and not agitated ‘original mind’, before putting our daily plans into action
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These diagrams reinforce this need for a daily practice of Confucian mindfulness, because practice leads to the ‘good habit’ of creating (and maintaining) routines. There is no short-cut provided, no weekend intro to this practice: it is life-long, and that is what makes it transformative, leading us to become better versions of who were in the beginning. This is consolation of Korean philosophy.
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Seeing the world as it is can steer us away from making unnecessary mistakes, while highlighting what is good and how to maintain that good while also reducing anxiety from an agitated mind and harmful desires. This is why Korean philosophy can provide us with consolation; it recognises the bad, but prioritises the good, providing several moral pathways that are referred to in the East Asian traditions (Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism) as modes of ‘self-cultivation’
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As social beings, we penetrate the consciousness of others, and so humans are linked externally through conduct but also internally through thought. Humanity is a unifying approach that holds the potential to solve human problems, internally and externally, as well as help people realise the perfection that is innately theirs
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Synthetic Thinking | Jerome Groopman | The New York Review of Books - 0 views
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medicine political theory writing synthesis progress adaptation identity
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Chemistry requires synthetic thinking. You have to bring disparate pieces of knowledge together in order to look for a chemical structure. Political philosophy, to some degree, also involves disparate aspects of knowledge: economics, sociology, history, pure philosophy
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I found that in medicine, you don’t have an answer when you start out. You’re looking for clues that are often distributed in different places: family history, as there might be a genetic predisposition; social history, because the person smoked or was exposed to a toxin; the physical examination, where you find that an organ might be disordered. Add to that the blood test, the CAT scan, all of it, but most importantly, the person, the psychology of the person you’re dealing with. It’s the same kind of synthetic process as political philosophy, but in a different dimension.
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Writing, especially the kind of writing that I do, brings together narrative, science, sometimes history, and an appreciation for the person who might be at the center of the narrative.
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The greatest influence on me was Oliver Sacks, because he could capture people as people, and he always integrated serious science into his pieces.
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The two subjects that were most prominent for him, as I once wrote for you, were identity and adaptation: Who is this person, despite their illness? How does that illness interface with their behavior and their decisions, how do people perceive them from the outside, and how do they try to find meaning and adapt to what looks like a disability, but sometimes—not always, but sometimes—gives them hidden strength?
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I’ve gone from witnessing the depths of disability and death, like with AIDS: I saw some of the first people with AIDS in California, in 1982 or so. The average lifespan was six months. They were mostly young gay men, and it was devastating, the infections they got, the cancers they got. Now, with all the new drugs that have been developed, someone who gets HIV is projected to have a normal lifespan. From six months to fifty years: it’s miraculous
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The idea of genetic treatments. Often when people hear the words “genetics” or “DNA” or “RNA,” they shut down. The challenge is how to make it accessible.
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There’s a wonderful line in the Talmud that says, “Whoever saves a single life saves the whole world.” There might be only a few hundred people in the whole country who have a particular genetic disorder. I