Because they have lost interest in "real life", just like we will soon. Maybe.

I just stumbled upon Feynman on Wikiquote. My favourite one:

I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things; by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose— which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.

Religion is on some kind of renaissance nowadays isn't it? Be it islamic fundamentalists or christian ones - the topic is all over the media and has been for quite a while now. The movement in the USA even seems to be strong enough to threaten science education (im particular evolution) and to make scientists fight against attacks from religious agitators. See here or here for two of the better known science blogs.

The initiative by these people to antagonise pseudo-scientific rubbish is surely to be welcomed and I certainly do not want to diminish their work, anyway, I am quite amazed that this is necessary at all. Shouldn't religion be on it's way to be forgotten and just remembered as what it was - a collection of funny ideas on how the world works (in lack of better understanding) and a means to find comfort for those that need it?

I admit, counting world-wide, it is probably a small minority of people that would agree with me, that there is no god and that all religion is invented by man. This does not make believers right, does it? Mind that I do not distinguish between the different religions - as soon as they propagate some kind of dogma that everyone has to believe because "it's right", they fall into my classification.

Just to make this clear, here comes a differentiation anyway: Of course, I do not care about what the private beliefs of people are and how they even can be helpful to many to find support in our far-from-perfect world. The kind of religion that I want to talk about is the offensive one, the one that evangelises, the one that propagates beliefs and teachings that oppose critical thinking and that try to revert the Age of Enlightenment.

I think Rushdie is right with this excellent article (I read it in German) in saying that religion is far from being a friendly player in the game and that it is to be battled against on every occasion.

For myself there is no question that religion is utterly useless nowadays and that little good and much more bad stems from it. I would also consider it a waste of time to even think or write about it, would there not be that frightening possibility that man's stupidity could win over reason. That may not happen.

Although I stated at the end of my little scorcher yesterday, that I will not have time to listen to the defence of the thesis that I found highly suspicious, I just invested half an hour anyway.

First of all, I was surprised to know the author. She took a course together with me last spring about ohw to give talks and things like that. In my opinion, her talk then was as suspicious as her thesis is now (although people disagreed with me on that then), so maybe I should have remembered her.

Anyway, thanks to the fact the she is a good speaker, her talk gave an overview on what she was trying to accomplish. My main points of critics however remain. She even said herself that this "wholeness" she talks about is some extra layer connected to the explicitly measurable world by some unmeasurable process. Well, then I am sorry to say that this is philosophy at best (and esoteric at worst) but not science.

She claims that there is some connection to physics, in particular she questions the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Physics and made some vague comments about entropy increase. When the opponent started with his questions, he pinpointed exactly my argument immediately: Do any new physically measurable things fall out of her work? How does the double slit experiment look in her wholeness picture. She had no real answer - she claimed that standard physics and measurements represent only the "trivial case" in her picture and that one has to develop a new definition of measurement in her wholeness picture. Something that she had not done, unsurprisingly.

In spite of her being a very nice person (judging from the few times I met her), I have to remain at my scathing criticism, namely that her thesis most probably has nothing whatsoever to do with science, but instead is a collection of philosophical ideas that one may find interesting or safely ignore. Then again, I haven't read the whole thesis and my judgement may be rash, so feel free to comment if you disagree...

Ok, here is a difficult one: I got this email the other day that invited to join a PhD defense tomorrow morning. The title is "Physics from Wholeness - Dynamical Totality as a Conceptual Foundation for Physical Theories". Now that is interesting, isn't it? To be honest, it sounds dubious to me, to say the least. Some kind of strange mixture of philosophy and physics which usually does not work very well. I got the whole thesis from here and tried to read the abstract.

I cite the first two sentences: Motivated by reductionism's current inability to encompass the quantum theory we explore an indivisible and dynamical wholeness as an underlying foundation for physics. After reviewing the role of wholeness in the quantum theory we set a philosophical background aiming at introducing an ontology, based on a dynamical wholeness.

This proved me right in the sense that the author tries to do science by mixing philosophical terms into it. By skipping through the text and finding chapters on philosophy and the like I find myself reconfirmed. Now my personal opinion is that, although philosophy is fun sometimes and may even not be a waste of time, it has nothing to do with science and cannot help it in any way. After all, it boils down to falsifiability of any theory and I doubt that any new scientific insights can be gained from this thesis. The use of advanced mathematical terms does not necessarily make the whole thing more correct or scientific.

Nevertheless, it may well contribute to philosophy but fact is that this thesis is submitted from the local department of engineering science and some well known theoretical physicists from here are mentioned in the acknowledgements.

Please keep in mind that I may be totally wrong with my obliterative judgement. Either the subject is too advanced for my ignorant mind, or it really is crap. Go judge for yourself.

Unfortunately, I won't have time to attend the defense tomorrow morning...

I have been eyeing the iAudio X5L, which is arguably the best mp3-player on the market right now, for quite a long time to replace my Gmini 220. Apart from many small improvements the most important ones for me would be: 35 hours of playtime instead of 8, 30GB instead of 20, ogg support and therefore no need to convert to mp3, getting rid of the quirky handling of the Gmini. Nevertheless, I have decided that I won't do it. I could afford the new one in principle but its not worth it. The old one works and serves satisfactorily playing music while I bike to the institute and to hold my pictures on occasional trips. One day it will break down and then I will have the opportunity to buy a better one then. Am I a bad customer now, ignoring fancy advertisings and refusing to consume? ;-)

Maybe you have seen my previous little text where I tried to criticise Thomas S. Kuhn's views on scientific progress. In the framework of the same course, we now had to write an essay about one of the topics that were discussed. Sure enough, I recycled the earlier text as a part of the essay and then go on to the question whether the laws of physics discovered or invented. Wanna read it? Get the pdf (82k), or read further on this page.

In the framework of a course on scientist- and science-related topics, I just read a text by the science-philospher and -historian Thomas S. Kuhn (TSK). I am talking about the first chapter of the book "The Road Since Structure" (University Of Chicago Press, 2000) which collects philosophical essays by TSK from 1970 to 1993.

In this 20-page text, TSK argues for a classification of scientific progress, namely a distinction between "normal" and "revolutionary" progress (part of the text can be found here). In the following, I will argue against this classification and elaborate a little on why I think he is wrong.
(Read more)

I admit I did not know MM before the Matrix-Soundtrack. His appearance in Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" was good and reminded me of his existence, so I got some of his stuff - and I like it! As I write this I watch the video to "Disposable Teens". Of course it's not "nice" music and can easily be considered shocking by some, both his texts and visual shows. But the world needs weirdos like him. People that cross the line of good taste. That remind us that political correctness is not a law that we have to obey. And that we actually live in quite a strange world. :-)

"It is not enough to teach man a specialty. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise he--with his specialized knowledge--more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow-men and to the community. These precious things are conveyed to the younger generation through personal contact with those who teach, not--or at least not in the main--through textbooks. It is this that primarily constitutes and preserves culture. This is what I have in mind when I recommend the "humanities" as important, not just dry specialized knowledge in the fields of history and philosophy. Overemphasis on the competitive system and premature specialization on the ground of immediate usefulness kill the spirit on which all cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included. It is also vital to a valuable education that independent critical thinking be developed in the young human being, a development that is greatly jeopardized by overburdening him with too much and with too varied subjects (point system). Overburdening necessarily leads to superficiality. Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty."

From the New York Times, October 5, 1952.
(The German translation of this text was brought to my attention by Tobias Wengler, Heidelberg, through the physics' student-council mailing list, English original found via Google.)