Regarding Max Planck being warned away from physics in 1875 (because everything had already been discovered): Isn't it remarkable that fundamental discoveries about quantum theory are still being made today?
November 30, 2010
November 29, 2010
"F.A."
In MRI, "F.A." (often written without periods, as "FA") can stand for either flip angle, which measures how much of the refractory longitudinal magnetization is converted into detectable transverse magnetization, or fractional anisotropy, which expresses the degree to which the diffusion of water is directionally non-uniform.
November 28, 2010
"... it is too narrow for that."
In a 1953 letter, Wolfgang Pauli related to Carl Jung a comment that Ernst Mach had made, some decades earlier, regarding Freudian psychoanalysis:
"These people try to use the vagina as if it were a telescope so that they can see the world through it. But that is not its natural function – it is too narrow for that."
November 27, 2010
November 26, 2010
"My feeling about you is just the opposite."
In 1926, Wolfgang Pauli attended a lecture by Paul Ehrenfest. Afterwards, Pauli made many criticisms, and an exasperated Ehrenfest said:
"I like your publications better than I like you."
Pauli responded:
"Strange. My feeling about you is just the opposite."
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"... I walk out to make a point."
December 7, 2008:
"I didn't come there to try anything," she said. "I just thought, Whoever else is on that show, they have to die tonight. I haven't had the opportunity to be adored already when I walk out onstage. Still, when I walk out, I walk out to make a point. If I have to rise to the occasion of killing you, I will."
-from "Long Time Coming: Bettye La Vette gets her due" by Alec Wilkinson, in the November 15, 2010 issue of the New Yorker.
November 25, 2010
A Thanksgiving treat!
In honor of today's holiday of Thanksgiving*, the Library of America has made available Mark Twain's short story, Hunting the Deceitful Turkey, first published in Harper's Magazine in December 1906.
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*Today is Thanksgiving in the USA; Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October; our friends in the United Kingdom give thanks on July 4th.
November 24, 2010
November 23, 2010
We weren't "built for" anything.
Living beings are products of evolution – that is, random mutation & natural selection – they were not "built for" or "built to do" anything. The false belief that organisms are made for a purpose is known as teleology, from "the Greek τέλος - telos, root: τελε-, 'end, purpose.'"
And the same holds for the components of living things. It is true that you walk on your feet, but that does not mean that feet were "made for" walking. It is true that your brain is a prediction machine, but that does not mean that brains were "made for" predicting.
This distinction is important, because if we mistakenly adopt the teleological view, we deprive ourselves of the insights that come from an evolutionary perspective – in fields as different as ecology, comparative anatomy, & medical genetics.
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