Philosophy of Science

A few miles farther on, we came to a big, gravelly roadcut that looked like an ashfall, a mudflow, glacial till, and fresh oatmeal, imperfectly blended. "I don't know what this glop is," [Kenneth Deffeyes] said, in final capitulation. "You need a new geologist. You need a Californian."

John McPhee, Assembling California, p. 11 [The Noonday Press; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993]

Essays

• A Summary of Modern Cosmology [57.5K]

• The Pulse of the Earth, Orogenies & Transgressions [10.1K]

• The "Sin" of Galileo [12.1K]
  • The Beginning of Modern Science [32.7K]
  • The Elements and Variety of the Sciences [20.1K]

• Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994) [7.6K]
  • Criticism of Karl Popper in Martin Gardner's Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries? [22.6K]
  • Criticism of Karl Popper in Anthony O'Hear's An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science [7.9K]
  • Exchange with Mark Notturo on Popper and Hayek [111.9K]

• Childhood's End, the Mystery of Order [29.7K]
  • All Living Things, in Seven Kingdoms [124.8K]
  • Creationism & Darwinism, Politics & Economics [26.3K]
  • Scientific Naturalism and Intelligent Design [32.1K]

• Geology & Astronomy
  • Time in Powers of Ten [11.1K]
  • The Pulse of the Earth, Orogenies & Transgressions [10.1K]
  • Human Evolution
  • The 212 Galaxies of the Coma-Sculptor Cloud [244.2K]
  • If a Millimeter Were a Year/Light-Year [46.6K]
  • Comparison of Cosmological Distances with Historical, Paleontological, and Geological Time, as of 1993 [27.6K]
  • All Living Things, in Seven Kingdoms [124.8K]

• Meteorology
  • S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming, Every 1,500 Years, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007 [50.8K]
  • The Beaufort Wind Force Scale, The Saffir/Simpson Hurricane Scale, & the Fujita Scale of Tornado Intensity [35.9K]
    • Clouds
      • Note on Dew Point
    • Snow, Sleet, Ice, and Rain

BILL MURRAY: "Ray, for a moment, pretend that I don't know anything about metallurgy, engineering, or physics, and just tell me what the hell is going on."

DAN AYKROYD: "You never studied."

Ghostbusters, 1984, Columbia Pictures

• Mathematics
  • The Golden Ratio and The Fibonacci Numbers [31.6K]
    • The Continued Fraction for Pi
  • Imaginary Numbers [42.8K]
    • Imaginary Powers of Euler's or Napier's Constant
  • Philosophical Problems with Calculus [34.2K]
    • Zero Divided by Zero [5.2]
    • Exchange with Correspondent on Calculus and Imaginary Numbers [52.0K]
  • Pythagorean Triplets [36.6K]
  • Duodecimal Counting
  • Some Properties of Conic Sections [37.5K]

• Space and Time
  • A Summary of Modern Cosmology [57.5K]
  • Euclid's Axioms and Postulates [22.7K]
  • Hilbert's Axioms of Geometry
    • Platonic and Archimedean Polyhedra [7.8K]
  • The Clarke-Leibniz Debate (1715-1716)
  • Three Points in Kant's Theory of Space and Time
    • Kant's First Antinomy, of Space and Time
  • Note on the Metaphysic of Space [41.8K]
  • The Ontology and Cosmology of Non-Euclidean Geometry [43.4K]
    • §1. Introduction
    • §2. Curved Space and Non-Euclidean Geometry
    • §3. Geometry in Einstein's Theory of Relativity
    • §4. Conclusion
    • §5. Postscript, 1999
  • Time Travel Paradoxes [7.0K]

• Physics
  • A Metaphysic of the Forces of Nature in Multiple Dimensions [21.1K]
  • Relativity and the Separation Formula [28.4K]
    • Historic Equations in Physics and Astronomy
      • Units of Measurement
      • Physical Constants
  • Einstein's Equivalence Principle
  • The Quantacized Atom [52.8K]
    • Kantian Quantum Mechanics [41.8K]
    • Richard Feynman's Quantum Mechanics
    • The Sub-Atomic Zoo [18.1K]
    • The Electromagnetic Spectrum
    • Periodic Table of the Elements [65.6K]
  • Palle Yourgrau, A World Without Time, The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein, Basic Books, 2005 [24.5K]
  • The Emperor's New Mind, Roger Penrose, Oxford University Press, 1990 [14.6K]
  • Childhood's End, the Mystery of Order [29.7K]
  • Coordinated Flight [13.0K]

This is the third of four lectures on a rather difficult subject -- the theory of quantum electrodynamics -- and since there are obviously more people here tonight than there were before, some of you haven't heard the other two lectures and will find this lecture incomprehensible. Those of you who have heard the other two lectures will also find this lecture incomprehensible, but you know that that's all right:  as I explained in the first lecture, the way we have to describe Nature is generally incomprehensible to us.

Richard P. Feynman, QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, p. 77 [Princeton University Press, 1985]

• Linguistics
  • Languages with more than 30,000,000 Speakers as of 2005 [61.3K]
  • The Semitic and Other Afroasiatic Languages [27.0K]
    • The Pronunciation of Ancient Egyptian [28.7K]
  • "Knowing" Words in Indo-European Languages [34.3K]
    • Greek, Sanskrit, and Closely Related Languages
      • Tense and Aspect in Greek [50.5K]
    • The Spread of Indo-European and Turkish Peoples off the Steppe [61.3K]
    • The Germanic Languages [117.1K]
      • The Great English Vowel Shift
      • Tense and Aspect, Expressed in English
    • The Slavic Languages [95.6K]
  • The Austronesian and Polynesian Languages [36.2K]
    • How to Pronounce "Hawai'i"
    • A Syllabary for Hawaiian
  • The Dialects of Chinese
    • Examples of Dialect Differences Between Peking, Shanghai and, Canton
    • Pronouncing Mandarin Initials
    • Mandarin Finals and Syllables
    • The Contrast between Classical and Modern Chinese
  • Words and Rules, The Ingredients of Language, Steven Pinker Basic Books, 1999 [13.0K]
  • Genetic Distance and Language Affinities Between Autochthonous Human Populations [27.0K]
    • Human Evolution

• Calendars
  • The Century and the Millennium; Cardinalists vs. Ordinalists [43.1K]
  • Groundhog Day and Chinese Astronomy [15.8K]
  • Julian Day Numbers for dates on the Gregorian and Julian Calendars [14.8K]
  • The Solar Terms and the Chinese Calendar [21.7K]
    • The Chinese 60 Year Calendar Cycle
    • The Occurrence of the Solar Terms 1995-2008
  • Chronology and Julian Day Numbers for the Egyptian XII Dynasty [20.1K]
    • The Egyptian Calendar
  • The Babylonian Calendar [69.0K]
  • The Jewish and Moslem Calendars with the Era of Nabonassar
    • The Jewish Calendar
    • Islâmic Dates with Julian Day Numbers
  • A Modern Luni-Solar Calendar
  • The Determination of Easter [34.3K]
  • The Greek Orthodox and Soviet Calendar Reforms [95.6K]
  • Iranian Calendars
  • The Calendar in India
    • Cycles of Time in Hinduism and Buddhism [25.7K]
  • The Mayan Calendar [86.7K]
  • Traditional English Names of Full Moons, and the "Blue Moon"
  • The French Revolutionary Calendar
  • The Days of the Week [15.6K]
    • Fantasy Seven Element Theory [34.0]
    • David Ewing Duncan's Calendar [Avon, 1998]

These ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human curiosity and enquiry. Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, communication of motion by impulse [sic]; these are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever discover in nature.

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section IV, Part I, p. 26 [L.A. Shelby-Bigge, editor, Oxford University Press, 1902, 1972, p. 30]

Book Reviews

• S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming, Every 1,500 Years, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007 [50.8K]
  • Michael Crichton, State of Fear, HarperCollins, 2004

• Palle Yourgrau, A World Without Time, The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein, Basic Books, 2005 [24.5K]

• Words and Rules, The Ingredients of Language, Steven Pinker, Basic Books, 1999 [13.0K]

• Richard Feynman, A Life in Science, John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin, Dutton, Penguin Books, 1997 [17.1K]

• The Emperor's New Mind, Roger Penrose, Oxford University Press, 1990 [14.6K]

• Criticism of Karl Popper in Martin Gardner's Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries?, W.W. Norton & Company, 2003 [22.6K]

• Criticism of Karl Popper in Anthony O'Hear's An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Oxford University Press, 1989 [7.9K]

• The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists, Martin J. S. Rudwick, University of Chicago Press, 1985 [13.4K]

Letters

• Letter Replying to:  "U.S. Workers and the Law," Rodger Doyle, "News Scan," Scientific American, August 2001, p.24; published December 2001 [3.9K]

Home Page

Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved