“One bluebird ‘in its way absolutely perfect’ is staggering evidence of art and design.”
Aesthetics, art, beauty and mind
At Reasons.org: More Evidence for a Beautiful Universe
Burov and Burov: “The laws of nature are fine‐tuned not only with
respect to the anthropic principle but to be discoverable as well.”
Beauty and Naturalism
Physicist Eric Hedin: “The failure to make significant progress on the standard model of particle physics may stem from a misguided concept of beauty.”
Netflix goes over the moral cliff (or is it “conspiracism”?) . . .
A pic to ponder, first: In the aftermath of Mr Weinstein, Mr Epstein, Ms Maxwell and others (see here, the MeToo movement and how it helped set up the Kavanaugh hearings accusations), as well as the questions hovering over Prince Andrew of Windsor and others, many have begun to believe there is a lurking network Read More…
Is Christian art an expression of white supremacism?
Overnight, we noted a certain Mr Sean King, aka “Talcum X” who has perhaps 1.1 million Twitter followers: I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been. In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, Read More…
NASA translates Hubble images to music
Well, loosely interpreted, music. See what you think of the sonification. Is there music in the spheres after all?
Thoughts on the soul
In the recent discussion on causation, I noted: KF, 72: >>As I think about cause, I am led to ponder a current discussion that echoes Plato on the self-moved, ensouled agent with genuine freedom. Without endorsing wider context, John C Wright draws out a key point that we may ponder as a nugget drawn from Read More…
Karsten Pultz: The Information Problem, Part Two
My main postulate is that information is strictly tied to an idea, a product, or a message. I cannot see how it is possible to have information prior to the idea, product, or message because information is an abstract representation of those things. How can an abstract representation exist prior to the phenomenon which it represents?
Massimo Pigliucci: Feynman was wrong about truth and beauty in science
He starts out well but notice how Darwinism, flung into the works like an old shoe, undermines the topic completely. If beauty is really “in the eye of the beholder” full stop, there is really no such thing as beauty. If the “capacity for aesthetic appreciation” evolved “possibly involving natural selection,” then it is unrelated to the object and best understood in terms of how many children artists have.
Physics envy is a terrible thing, especially in economists
John Rapley: That’s something that ‘physics envy’ can’t capture – that the social nature of human beings makes any laws of behaviour tentative and contextual. In fact, the very term ‘social science’ is probably best seen as an oxymoron.
Natural philosopher insists, science is deeply imaginative
Okay but the multiverse crowd does not lack imagination. Nor do those who have convinced themselves of panpsychism. The thing about imagination in science is that it must be disciplined. If it isn’t, it ends up competing with fiction, without the style.
Is this the best snake mimic caterpillar to date?
Wouldn’t structuralism (pre-existing patterns) make better sense than Darwinism (it somehow evolved by trial and error)?
Churchill on rebuilding the traditional: “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us”
According to news reports, already over US$ 1 billion has been pledged towards rebuilding Notre Dame: BTW: after the fire, a video tour: In today’s ever so polarised age [currently awaiting the infamous redacted Mueller Report on a two-year investigation into US President Trump], it is unsurprising that we see for example in Rolling Stone: Read More…
Logic & First Principles, 14: Are beauty, truth, knowledge, goodness and justice merely matters of subjective opinions? (Preliminary thoughts.)
We live in a Kant-haunted age, where the “ugly gulch” between our inner world of appearances and judgements and the world of things in themselves is often seen as unbridgeable. Of course, there are many other streams of thought that lead to widespread relativism and subjectivism, but the ugly gulch concept is in some ways Read More…