Darwin used to be a deeply religious man. He studied theology at Cambridge and as a young man he looked forward to the lifelong service of a cleric. His professional outlook changed dramatically after he embarked in 1831 on a five-year voyage around the world aboard the HMS Beagle. His...
Author: George Zarkadakis
Aristotle on a chip
The reemergence of ancient notions in the modern field of bioinformatics Aristotle, in his zoological opus Historia Animalium (The history of animals), launches into his analysis of the animal kingdom by observing differences and similarities between the species. For example, he observes that bats and birds both have wings, so he surmises...
Darwin 101 for politicians
No other idea in human history has had a more profound impact on modern society than the evolutionary theory, independently conceived by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace 150 years ago. In neat, concise, transparent terms, it explains the multiversity of lifeforms that have replenished Earth since billions of years,...
Temnothorax de Condorset
How the collective intelligence of social animals can provide a new paradigm for ecological decision-making (notes of a lecture at Panteion University) Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794) was a pioneer in applying mathematics to the social sciences. His jury theorem states that if each member of a voting group is more likely than not...
Literature, science and the future society
Thomas S. Kuhn in his landmark opus “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” surmises from the study of contemporary historiography that the big revolutions in science have been changes of World View. I will argue in this short introduction that World Views are expressed through Literary Narratives and are defined by...
The book of the universe
Modern science is a hypertext narrative describing the birth and evolution of the Universe. Its chapters interconnect in multifarious ways with the many branches of scientific enquiry – and this includes the humanities - and many of the chapters are being written even today. Many important details are still missing,...
Spontaneous dichotomy in scientific debate
Scientific debate is the rigorous process by which scientific theories, ideas and explanations are tested by the scientific community. The debate incorporates a variety of instruments, such as peer reviews, conference discussions, duplication of experiments and experimental results and, ultimately, discussion upon the interpretation of experimental results. An important result...
The new narrative as a simulation
The end of WWII may be regarded as a watershed in the political and cultural history of the West. The devastated European hinterland, the hecatombs of the Holocaust, the radioactive emptiness of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, demonstrated adequately enough that there were no limits to what human beings can do when...
Science as religion
Science and Religion can be easily compared in the context of narrative. Both are narratives (see also “The Book of the Universe”). Religious narratives always interrelate an explanation of the world as well as a set of moral instructions. Within the set of moral instructions we must include ritual, which...
Downloading consciousness
Frank Tipler, in his new book “The Physics of Christianity” makes a number of interesting – some would even say amusing - claims with regards the “end of days”, as he sees it. I would like to focus on two of those claims, predictions in fact, which Tipler estimates that...