Category: Cosmos
-
Carl Sagan’s “baloney detection kit” – blog 6 of 10
– Carl Sagan’s Fine Art of Baloney Detection, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark It’s time for the sixth tool. So far you have got the facts (1 of 10), you had a substantive debate (2 of 10), you’ve covered arguments from authority (3 of 10), you have several hypotheses (4 of…
-
Carl Sagan’s “baloney detection kit” – blog 5 of 10
– Carl Sagan’s Fine Art of Baloney Detection, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark Half way through this thread and so far you have got the facts (1 of 10), you had a substantive debate (2 of 10), you know how to treat arguments from authority (3 of 10) and most recently…
-
Carl Sagan’s “baloney detection kit” – blog 4 of 10
– Carl Sagan’s Fine Art of Baloney Detection, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark So, you’ve got the facts (1 of 10) and you’ve had a substantive debate (2 of 10) and now (Sagan’s third tool for detecting baloney) how to consider arguments from authority (3 of 10). The next tool…
-
Carl Sagan’s “baloney detection kit” – blog 3 of 10
– Carl Sagan’s Fine Art of Baloney Detection, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark So, you’ve got the facts (1 of 10) and you’ve had a substantive debate (2 of 10), now you need to consider Sagan’s third tool for detecting baloney: Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have…
-
Carl Sagan’s “baloney detection kit” – blog 2 of 10
– Carl Sagan’s Fine Art of Baloney Detection, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark In my last blog, The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science, I referred to Carl Sagan’s “baloney detection kit” as a set of…
-
“The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.”
– Carl Sagan’s Fine Art of Baloney Detection, extracted from The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark Rules for critical thinking (1 of 10): Carl Sagan developed a “baloney detection kit” — a set of cognitive tools and techniques that fortify the mind against penetration by falsehoods. But the kit, Sagan argues,…
-
“At night the stars put on a show for free … And darling, you can share it all with me”
– Gerry Goffin, Carole King The great song writing duo Goffin and King with Up on the Roof, first recorded by Little Eva, the Drifters and many others. Do the lyrics “evinces a quiet sense of sadness, an urban dissatisfaction that moves beyond anything conceived by the rose-spectacled Tin Pan Alley writers of the early…
-
“The wondrous thing about science is that nobody knows the right answer.”
Dr. Becky Smethurst, Astrophysicist. Science Communicator. Author. The full quote from the preface of her book (Space at the Speed of Light: The History of 14 Billion Years for People Short on Time) is: “The wondrous thing about science is that nobody knows the right answer. This is not how we are taught science as…
-
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”
Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:President_Kennedy_-We_Choose_to_Go_to_the_Moon(29533458786).jpg Speaking of perserverance as I was (see here) the US effort on behalf of mankind in the 60s and 70s shows exactly what humanity is capable of. The video of President Kennedy’s still excites and sets the hair on the back of the neck: Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th5A6ZQ28pE PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message…
-
“Man must rise above the Earth—to the top of the atmosphere and beyond—for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives.”
– Socrates (469-399 BC) This quote appears in the Plato’s Dialogue, Phaedo, around 109e. The Greek text is: τὸ δὲ εἶναι ταὐτόν, ὑπ᾽ ἀσθενείας καὶ βραδυτῆτος οὐχ οἵους τε εἶναι ἡμᾶς διεξελθεῖν ἐπ᾽ ἔσχατον τὸν ἀέρα: ἐπεί, εἴ τις αὐτοῦ ἐπ᾽ ἄκρα ἔλθοι ἢ πτηνὸς γενόμενος ἀνάπτοιτο, κατιδεῖν ἂν ἀνακύψαντα, ὥσπερ ἐνθάδε οἱ ἐκ τῆς…
Stargazing Guy 