Category Archives: Science

C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures, The Third Culture, Big History, and 2001

Posted on 10 May 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

C.P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures” is the famous 1959 lecture and then essay about the divide between the scientific community and the literary ‘intellectual’ community, an essay much referenced in books about the acceptance of science in modern culture (with, … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Science, science fiction | Leave a comment

Richard Feynman’s Meaning, and Being Savvy

Posted on 3 May 2018 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a short book of three essays first delivered as lectures at the University of Washington in Seattle, in 1963, gathered into a book published in 1998. Feynman, of course, was a famous CalTech physicist influential for work in quantum … Continue reading →

Posted in Meaning, Science | Leave a comment

Links and Comments: Regulations; Science on Sundays; How to Talk to Someone in a Conservative Bubble

Posted on 26 December 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

Slate: Trump’s quiet attack on the regulatory state is another part of his broader class war The conservatives’ simplistic rebellion against “regulations” will have consequences, and costs. Regulations are there for a reason. Yes, these rules and regulations might technically … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Psychology, Religion, Science | Leave a comment

What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper

Posted on 19 November 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

Robert H. Frank, Molly Worthen, Anthony Doerr, and Nicholas Kristof on cutting taxes for the rich, rejecting Roy Moore-style evangelicalism, how even the conscientious among us react to warnings of climate change, and how Blue States do better at practicing … Continue reading →

Posted in MInd, Politics, Psychology, Religion, Science | Comments Off on What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper

Links and Comments: The Profound and the Pernicious

Posted on 13 November 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

From NPR, The Answer To Life, The Universe — And Everything? It’s 63. The headline is a riff on the famous episode in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Wikipedia) in which a vast computer called Deep Thought … Continue reading →

Posted in Cosmology, Morality, Politics, Science | Comments Off on Links and Comments: The Profound and the Pernicious

Links and Comments: Reviews of Books about Religion and Science

Posted on 23 October 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

NY Times: “Ivory Tower” column review of three university press books on religion: Unknown Unknowns: Three Inquiries Into Religion, by James Ryerson. The most interesting of the three seems to be the first, Tim Crane’s THE MEANING OF BELIEF: Religion … Continue reading →

Posted in Religion, Science | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Reviews of Books about Religion and Science

Links and Comments: Reactions to Art; the Eclipse; Christianity and PKD

Posted on 16 September 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

Saved from Facebook… A post by Adam-Troy Castro: Noted in a thread: Somebody (I forget who) told the story of leaving A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE as one of two teenage couples, being absolutely gobsmacked by it, and listening to his … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Movies, Religion, Science | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Reactions to Art; the Eclipse; Christianity and PKD

Bertrand Russell: Why I Am Not a Christian: Summary and Comments

Posted on 14 September 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

This is a famous essay/lecture by one of the 20th century’s most influential philosophers. I first read the book containing this essay in 1979, when I was 23; I was thrilled to find someone so eminent unapologetically spell out the … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Philosophy, Religion, Science | Comments Off on Bertrand Russell: Why I Am Not a Christian: Summary and Comments

Link and Comments: The 3% Climate Change Deniers

Posted on 12 September 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

You know how 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real, and due to human causes? So what about the 3% that don’t? A new study examined those. Quartz: Those 3% of scientific papers that deny climate change? … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Comments Off on Link and Comments: The 3% Climate Change Deniers

Link and Comment: Elizabeth Kolbert spells it out

Posted on 11 September 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

The New Yorker, September 11th issue. Elizabeth Kolbert: Hurricane Harvey and the Storms to Come. Subtitle: “In the leadup to the historic flood, Texas Republicans abetted Trump’s climate-change delusions.” Print title: “Coming Storms” Elizabeth Kolbert, author of one of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Science | Comments Off on Link and Comment: Elizabeth Kolbert spells it out