Einstein and the Mind of God

in Physics, Religion, Science | October 18th, 2007

Speak­ing at a con­fer­ence on sci­ence, reli­gion and phi­los­o­phy in 1941, Albert Ein­stein famous­ly said that “sci­ence with­out reli­gion is lame; reli­gion with­out sci­ence is blind.” Ein­stein, a Ger­man-born Jew, con­sid­ered him­self reli­gious. But what he meant by reli­gion was not straight­for­ward. The first episode of a two-part pod­cast called Ein­stein and the Mind of God (iTunes — MP3 — Web Site) tries to sort out Ein­stein’s reli­gious sen­si­bil­i­ty and how it squares with his sci­en­tif­ic think­ing. For Ein­stein, reli­gion con­sist­ed of a belief, not in a per­son­al God, but a uni­ver­sal spir­it that man­i­fests itself in nature. And it was the task of physics to make sense of nature, of God’s uni­verse. Or, so that is how it’s explained by Free­man Dyson, a famed the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist who appears on the show. In the sec­ond part, the pod­cast turns to look at Ein­stein’s ethics (iTunes — MP3 — Web Site). Although not with­out per­son­al flaws (he often fell short in his personal/domestic life), Ein­stein had a strong moral sense informed by his Jew­ish upbring­ing. He saw sci­en­tists hav­ing a deep moral oblig­a­tion to soci­ety; he took strong posi­tions against war (except when Hitler came along); he opposed racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and lament­ed the plight of African-Amer­i­cans well before the civ­il rights move­ment; and he laud­ed reli­gious lead­ers’ efforts to use non-vio­lent action to oppose immoral con­di­tions. Each of these pod­casts runs around 53 min­utes in length, and they form part of a larg­er radio/podcast series called Speak­ing of Faith (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), which is issued by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media.

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The World Without Us: Author Interview

in Books, Current Affairs, Media, Science | October 3rd, 2007

Ear­li­er this week I spoke on the phone with Alan Weis­man, the author of The World With­out Us. (See our ini­tial piece on his book.) Alan was gra­cious enough to take some time out of his pub­lic­i­ty sched­ule to share his thoughts on the book, the world, his writ­ing process, and more. What fol­lows is an edit­ed tran­script of our con­ver­sa­tion.

Ed: This book address­es what on the sur­face seems to be a pret­ty far-fetched hypo­thet­i­cal: that human­i­ty might sud­den­ly dis­ap­pear. What drew you to this premise in the first place?

Alan: Well, pre­cise­ly that. Most great envi­ron­men­tal writ­ing does not get read by a lot of the peo­ple who ought to be learn­ing about it because the near­er-term pos­si­bil­i­ties just seem some­times so fright­en­ing, or so depress­ing, that nobody real­ly wants to pick up a book to read it.

By struc­tur­ing the book the way that I did, I dis­arm the auto­mat­ic fear that repels a lot of peo­ple from read­ing about the envi­ron­ment. Peo­ple don’t want to read some­thing that seems too threat­en­ing. On a sub­con­scious or even a con­scious lev­el, they don’t want to be wor­ried we’re all going to die. In my book, killing us off in the first cou­ple of pages means peo­ple don’t have to wor­ry about dying because we’re already dead, and that’s a relief in a sense. The idea of glimps­ing the future is irre­sistible to all of us and I estab­lish pret­ty quick­ly that is not going to just be me spec­u­lat­ing, it’s going to be some hard sci­ence writ­ing based on a lot of report­ing, of talk­ing to experts or eye­wit­ness­es whose guess­es will be far more inter­est­ing than most peo­ples’.

The fact that it is far-fetched is real­ly use­ful because on the one hand real­ly it’s a remote pos­si­bil­i­ty that we would leave, that we would dis­ap­pear tomor­row. So peo­ple don’t go into a pan­ic over this book, and it real­ly gives peo­ple enough time to think about these things with­out pan­ick­ing about it. So that’s how this device works, and I think it’s been proven to be very effec­tive. I’m get­ting a lot more peo­ple to read it than just peo­ple who are hung up on the envi­ron­ment.

(more…)

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The Elegant Universe

in Science, Video - Science | September 27th, 2007

PBS’s NOVA recent­ly aired a three-hour mini-series, The Ele­gant Uni­verse, that intro­duced TV view­ers to string the­o­ry — a rad­i­cal “the­o­ry of every­thing” that unites major laws of physics and offers a uni­fied expla­na­tion for every­thing that hap­pens in the uni­verse. The pro­gram was host­ed by Bri­an Green, a string the­o­rist who wrote a run­away best­selling book also called The Ele­gant Uni­verse (you can read an excerpt here). The pro­gram makes dif­fi­cult con­cepts quite gras­pable, part­ly with the help of dynam­ic com­put­er ani­ma­tion. And the best part is that you can now watch the mini-series any time you want online (just click here to get the videos). You can also access the com­plete descrip­tion of the show here.

PS: Here is a great heads up from a read­er. “A great com­ple­ment to the Ele­gant Uni­verse is the Ori­gins series on NOVA, part of which is also avail­able online. It details the cre­ation of life on earth.” The com­plete col­lec­tion of NOVA episodes can be found here. Thanks Allen for the good info.

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The World Without Us: The Staggering Thought Experiment

in Science | September 10th, 2007

worldwithout2.jpgWhat if we dis­ap­peared from the face of the earth tomor­row? All of us, just like that? What would hap­pen? How would the remain­ing world sur­vive or thrive with­out us? That’s the sce­nario that sci­ence writer Alan Weis­man works through in his new eco-thriller, The World With­out Us.

Based on his con­sid­er­able research and exten­sive inter­views with experts, Weis­man sees things play­ing out like this (and here I’m quot­ing from the New York Times book review): “With no one left to run the pumps, New York’s sub­way tun­nels would fill with water in two days. With­in 20 years, Lex­ing­ton Avenue would be a riv­er. Fire- and wind-rav­aged sky­scrap­ers would even­tu­al­ly fall like giant trees. With­in weeks of our dis­ap­pear­ance, the world’s 441 nuclear plants would melt down into radioac­tive blobs, while our petro­chem­i­cal plants, ‘tick­ing time bombs’ even on a nor­mal day, would become flam­ing gey­sers spew­ing tox­ins for decades to come… After about 100,000 years, car­bon diox­ide would return to pre­hu­man lev­els. Domes­ti­cat­ed species from cat­tle to car­rots would revert back to their wild ances­tors. And on every dehabi­tat­ed con­ti­nent, forests and grass­lands would reclaim our farms and park­ing lots as ani­mals began a slow parade back to Eden.” And, it’s also help­ful to know, per­haps, that not even cock­roach­es would fare well in a world with­out Homo sapi­ens.

How Weis­man researched this big ques­tion and drew his con­clu­sions is fas­ci­nat­ing, and for­tu­nate­ly it’s all explained in this Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) that fea­tures two recent inter­views with Weis­man. You can also catch Weis­man speak­ing on John Stew­art’s Dai­ly Show in less sci­en­tif­ic terms. Watch the video here.

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15 Ways to Avert a Climate Crisis

in Current Affairs, Science, Video - Science | August 27th, 2007

gore2.JPGAnd now we bring you a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment.…

Below, you can watch Al Gore talk about tan­gi­ble ways that you can be a good envi­ron­men­tal cit­i­zen. The first 5 min­utes start with some wit and ban­ter that would have served him well in 2000; the next 10 min­utes get down to some busi­ness.

A few, quick relat­ed items: Google offers a free online copy of Gore’s major book on the envi­ron­ment, Earth in the Bal­ance. Pub­lished first in 1992, the book demon­strates, among oth­er things, Gore’s sus­tained com­mit­ment to this issue. Next, if you’ve nev­er seen An Incon­ve­nient Truth, then you may want to give a lis­ten to Gore’s speech at Stan­ford’s Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness (lis­ten on iTunes here). It cov­ers much of the same ground. Final­ly, this all reminds me of a tele­vi­sion exposé that Bill Moy­ers aired a few months back. It’s called “Is God Green?,” and it takes a lengthy look at how con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal move­ments in the US are increas­ing­ly tak­ing glob­al warm­ing seri­ous­ly as an issue. (You can watch it here.) And if you know Amer­i­ca, you know that’s essen­tial for chang­ing the nation’s envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies.

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The Science Behind the Bible

in Religion, Science | August 17th, 2007

The lat­est pod­cast put out by The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion (iTunes — Stream — Web Site) does­n’t shy away from hot-but­ton issues. Below, we’ve past­ed the sum­ma­ry that accom­pa­nies the pod­cast on The Chron­i­cle’s web site. Read it and then give the audio some time and thought.

“Uni­ver­si­ty-trained archae­ol­o­gists and his­to­ri­ans are scared to take on the Bible, says Eric H. Cline, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of clas­sics at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. He talks about his new book, From Eden to Exile: Unrav­el­ing Mys­ter­ies of the Bible, in which he argues that Bible stud­ies have become dom­i­nat­ed by ‘junk sci­ence’ (Noah’s ark found in Turkey!) because aca­d­e­mics have yield­ed the field.”

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The Digital Encyclopedia of Life

in Harvard, Science, Video - Science | July 31st, 2007

In 2003, the Har­vard biol­o­gist E.O. Wil­son wrote a wide­ly read essay that called for an “Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life.” Summed up sim­ply, Wil­son had in mind “an online ref­er­ence source and data­base” that cat­a­logued “every one of the 1.8 mil­lion species that are named and known on this plan­et,” not to men­tion the many organ­isms that aren’t yet known. When ful­ly com­piled, the web-based data­base would offer a “macro­scope” of sorts, a way to do com­par­a­tive biol­o­gy and ecol­o­gy on an unprece­dent­ed scale, allow­ing sci­en­tists to gain new insights into the immense bio­di­ver­si­ty of our plan­et.

Wil­son is still push­ing this vision, and he laid it out most recent­ly at the TED Talks con­fer­ence in Mon­terey, Cal­i­for­nia. (Watch the video below.) The envi­sioned ency­clo­pe­dia will be a col­lab­o­ra­tive enter­prise, mod­eled some­what along the lines of Wikipedia (see some demon­stra­tion pages here). And it’ll be acces­si­ble any­where, any­time, to who­ev­er could ben­e­fit from it. It’s expect­ed to take close to a decade to com­plete the project, although some key com­po­nents of the data­base will be avail­able in 2008. (See this FAQ for more details.)

For more infor­ma­tion on E.O. Wil­son, I would encour­age you to lis­ten to Bill Moy­ers’ pro­file of Wil­son (iTunes — Feed — MP3) which recent­ly aired on PBS. You may also want to give some atten­tion to Wilson’s lat­est book, The Cre­ation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.

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Straight Talk about Stem Cells: Another Stanford Course via Podcast

in Online Courses, Science, Stanford | July 25th, 2007

stem5.jpgLast week, we men­tioned The Future of the Inter­net. This week it’s anoth­er course avail­able as a free pod­cast : Straight Talk About Stem Cells (iTunes).

The course was taught by Christo­pher Scott, the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Stan­ford’s Pro­gram on Stem Cells in Soci­ety and the author of Stem Cell Now: An Intro­duc­tion to the Com­ing Med­ical Rev­o­lu­tion. Orig­i­nal­ly taught with­in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, the course was designed with the gen­er­al pub­lic in mind. So it should be quite acces­si­ble. You can now down­load three of the total five lec­tures. Two more will be com­ing soon. (Get it on iTunes here.) Here is the orig­i­nal course descrip­tion for the course.

Biol­o­gy’s Brave New World: Straight Talk about Stem Cells

No area of sci­ence holds such promise for treat­ing dis­ease and improv­ing human lives as stem cell research. But no area of sci­ence caus­es such fun­da­men­tal eth­i­cal con­cern and such fero­cious polit­i­cal con­flict. In this short course, stu­dents will learn the fun­da­men­tals of stem cell biol­o­gy, and study how these pow­er­ful cells could be used to make func­tion­al organs, treat dia­betes or repair spinal cord injuries. With the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy firm­ly in hand, we will jour­ney into the deep reach­es of the con­tro­ver­sy and exam­ine the inter­na­tion­al explo­sion of stem cell research and how law and pol­i­cy are affect­ing long-held Amer­i­can dom­i­nance in cell biol­o­gy. New sci­ence often pro­vokes a rede­f­i­n­i­tion of eth­i­cal stan­dards. Stem cells have reignit­ed the debate about the embryo, abor­tion, and sci­ence run amok. We will leave the shrill rhetoric behind, dis­cussing the ques­tion at the heart of the debate: How, as a soci­ety, do we bal­ance our respon­si­bil­i­ties to the unborn and the sick?

Check out our larg­er col­lec­tion of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es.

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