13.8
We live in a scientifically dominated age. Virtually every aspect of our lives is now mediated in some way by science and technology. Our greatest threats, from climate change to nuclear war to the unintentional effects of AI and automation, all stem from science and technology. Our greatest expressions of hope, from medical advances to space exploration to green technologies, also rise from science. As do our greatest fears, as technology and its uses contribute to the decline of our project of civilization. Today, science can't be separated from culture: for better or for worse, their symbiotic relationship drives forward the frontiers of arts and politics.
As a result, if we really want to understand the human condition in the 21st century, we need to critically investigate the braiding of science and culture in all its glory and hope and danger.
That's what 13.8 is all about.
“There can be no experience of the world without the experiencer and that, my dear friends, is us.”
“Before anyone can make theories or get data or have ideas about the world, there must be the raw presence of being-in-the-world. The world doesn’t appear in the abstract to a disembodied perspective floating in space… it appears to us, exactly where and when we are. That means to you or to me right now. In other words, you can’t ignore the brute, existential, phenomenological fact of being subjects.”
Thinking thresholds: Is science the only source of truth in the world?
Adam Frank
A big lesson from the ‘Oumuamua alienware controversy
Marcelo Gleiser
“What scientists say matters.”
“When should a scientist make public declarations about a cutting-edge topic with absolute certainty? I’d say never. There is no clear-cut certainty in cutting-edge science. There are hypotheses that should be tested more until there is community consensus. Even then, consensus is not guaranteed proof. The history of science is full of examples where leading scientists were convinced of something, only to be proven wrong later.”
How Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws apply to alien technology
Einstein’s demon-haunted quantum world
Why did the Buddha invent baseball?
How a scientific consensus developed over beautiful nebulae
Seeing silence: what nature tells us if we listen
How Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” highlights the value of science fiction
The mediocrity of the mediocrity principle (for life in the universe)
Climate change is an existential threat not to humanity but to our project of civilization
Ultrarunning: the ultimate experience of being in the world
What does the Copernican principle say about life in the universe?
The mystery of life cannot be solved by science
A new window to the early universe (and aliens?)
The upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope is the event of a lifetime.
HR diagram: how we learned that stars evolve
After 100 million nights of people asking, "What are those twinkly lights?" it is pretty remarkable that we happen to live in one of the first generations that actually knows the answer.
A fable of ancient Greece: when the mythic universe became a rational machine
This short story is a fictional account of two very real people — Anaximander and Anaximenes, two ancient Greeks who tried to make sense of the universe.
What is light? The limits and limitlessness of imagination
Philosophers and scientists spent millennia arguing about the nature of light. It turned out to be stranger than anyone imagined.
Peeking behind a black hole: how matter bends space that bends light
Albert Einstein and his theory of general relativity continue to amaze us to this day.
How to read the HR diagram, the most important graph in astrophysics
One single plot of data embodies the most profound thing we know about the stars.
A big lesson from the ‘Oumuamua alienware controversy
Scientists should be cautious when expressing an opinion based on little more than speculation.