FAITH = CREDULITY? (Part 1)

I won't be obnoxious, I promise. On either side of the argument (there IS a God, or there IS NO God), it seems to me that there is a tendency to stick to one’s guns as it were, dismissing the other side’s view without even trying to gauge it. It transpires in comments like “I don’t have to prove anything. I have FAITH, you don’t” or on the other side “you believe in NONSENSE, it’s been proven”. If you are willing to read further, I will share with you my take on this. First, blind faith is not...

Knowledge : the never ending story

I don't know how people could ever think that we now know all there is to know... I mean our understanding of stuff is constantly refined. Take for example Newton's law of Gravity. He thought gravity was a force pulling things towards the center of the Earth. We now describe Gravity differently: Each large celestial body has its own gravitational pull because its mass bends the space around it, a bit like a basketball on the roof of a gazebo... We used to think atoms were the smallest things on Earth but then we discovered electrons. We used...

Why we shouldn't lap up the idea we come from monkeys

I tell you what, Science has Tourette's. Good character in general, coming out with really fascinating, logical and useful stuff, but peppered with uncontrollable tics. Let me explain. My Biology teacher always stressed that the scientific method is to observe a phenomenon, formulate assumptions, test the assumption's validity and then go with what the results tell you. If vaccines were not properly tested before use on a massive scale, what disaster may have ensued? What happened when Asbestos entered the commercial world without thorough testing? Thousands of deaths. People were obsessed by what they could get out of...

Lighter stuff about languages

A wise man remarked that if you bring together animals of the same species but normally living from different parts of the globe, they still understand each other. They have exactly the same language. A dog from China won’t need an interpreter to understand a dog from Blighty. Humans are the only species with different languages. Odd, init? Although, I know this one animal who learnt to speak dog and that saved her life and that of her family… Mind you, that was a mouse and she learnt dog to frighten a cat….and I forgot to mention she...

Heavy stuff about languages

Languages fascinate me on many levels. One thing I find quite interesting (even puzzling if you cross reference it with the ideas in vogue nowadays) is the complexity of ancient languages. You would have thought that the further back in time you go, the simpler the recorded languages get because apparently, we all started in grunts …. Hunh? Hungawa! (And all that jazz) Take Sumerian for instance, the oldest written language (oldest records of it date about 4000 BCE I believe). It’s more complex than most modern languages with its infixes, suffixes, prefixes…. Take another one, Hebrew (one...

The Equation of Everything

Whether or not the Equation of everything exists, it is interesting to think there might be a unifying principle that explains the mathematical order in the mind bogglingly big things of the universe down to the minuscule things on Earth… I mean the whole thing seems to be a ballet of order, intricacy, beauty and movement The universe is generally precise like clockwork. Orbits follow mathematical laws. Scientists can predict and calculate many things in the universe thanks to this mathematical order. We know in advance when the new moon, full moon, etc will be, theorists make sense...