Attention Required! | Cloudflare
Scientists often bemoan the state of originality in their field. New ideas are getting “harder to find.” Progress in large fields of science and technology is “slowing down.” Scientific knowledge has been in “clear secular decline.” (One wonders about the originality of their bemoaning.) But today’s researchers aren’t getting worse at coming up wit... See more
The Atlantic • Is America Really Running Out of Original Ideas?
People who ignore science are either afraid of it, because they don’t understand it, or find its truths inconvenient. Science is a guiding light: if we put it out, we are in the dark. And precisely because it is so precious, we should be careful to guard it from ever-present dangers – exaggerated claims, models that distort, and institutional press
... See moreIain McGilchrist • The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World
Every day we are assaulted by scientific or biomedical questions that we don’t even know how to think about, from toxic wastes and “Star Wars” and nuclear energy to acid rain and gene splicing and surrogate motherhood. Many of them are the legacy of scientists who now admit that they didn’t understand how their decisions would affect the quality of
... See moreWilliam Zinsser • Writing to Learn: How to Write - and Think - Clearly About Any Subject at All
I had long seen science as the great equalizer. No matter one’s race, or sex, or faith—there were facts in the world waiting to be discovered. How little thought I’d given to the ways in which it might be corrupted.
Esi Edugyan • Washington Black
“Why are there some 5,300 universities and colleges in the U.S. but only one point of view?”