Category: Science

  • Science and beliefs

    “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.” Neil deGrasse Tyson Of course an astrologer would say this is true of astrology as well. It misses the point as to what we accept as truth, and this in turn depends on our assumptions. I’ve written previously about some…

  • When I rejected the beliefs of my parents

    It’s probably not completely true to say that this account marks the day I rejected the beliefs of my parents, rather it was a major event in an on-going process that led me to reassess all my assumptions. It was Christmas 1977, I think. I was living in the UK, in St. Albans in Hertfordshire…

  • A new Approach to the Consciousness-Mind-Body Problem

    Modern theories of consciousness, or the ‘Mind-Body Problem’ are rather depressing, as I’ve written about this here. This is a new and totally original theory on consciousness which, when understood, could completely change our research into this area of philosophy. Anyone who thinks beyond what we may call the superficial level has probably at one time…

  • Scientific impartiality

    There is a view which is expounded, predominantly by Atheists, that science is objective and impartial. I was told by a member of a skeptics association that peer review guaranteed that science was impartial. Apparently Richard Feynman said that Philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds. Of course the difference is…

  • The Girl with the X-Ray Eyes

    A TV documentary from the Discovery Channel examined the case of a girl in Russia, Natasha Demkina, who claimed to treat people by seeing into them. (She says she can “look deep inside people’s bodies, watch their organs at work and spot when things are going wrong”). Natasha volunteered to be examined by CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation…

  • The till roll and the Turkish carpet

    Religion in the West is a dying concept. Even many Christians don’t seem to live their lives on the assumption that they will be accountable to a creator. In fact, most people in Western society perceive life as like a till roll. An event happens, then another and so on until we run out of…

  • How we Model

    When we discuss such concepts as dimensions and time it is obvious that our diagrams are simply representations. In the way that a picture paints a thousand words, they are models which help us to understand some ideas better than simply using word would do, Its very easy to get beguiled by a model. As…

  • Mathematics and the Real World

    What is the relationship between the ‘real’ world and the mathematical world? If you studied physics at school you may have performed experiments with lights boxes and weights and other such things to understand how the world works. If you went on to study physics at university you would probably find that most of the…

  • The Quantum World

    The world at the quantum level, that is at very small scales and very short time intervals, is very different from the kind of world we are used to. The quantum effects only affect very small particles and time instances. In our physical world what we call the laws of nature are an averaging of…

  • The god of the Atheist

    To say that Atheists have a god sounds like an oxymoron. After all, Atheists claim that they don’t believe in any gods. In fact, it’s used as an argument to support the idea that science and religion are incompatible. If someone was to say that things fall down because of the will of god, this…