I gave a talk at NIAS on M-Theories, which is my approach to the intersection of mind, metaphysics and mathematics. You can see the prezi of the talk here or on the prezi page. via Prezi via Prezi
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Modern technology offers new ways of story telling and of combining images narrative and other media. One of the best new tools is the nonlinear presentation format, best exemplified by the prezi. Here is a prezi explaining (as I see it) the key issues in a synthetic approach to scientific questions. You can see it…
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Analysis is for control freaks: they want to divide the world into constituent bits and make sure that each bit does exactly what we want it to do. It is also meant to end in a final resolution to a problem; having divided a problem into its most atomic constituents, the analyst wants to end…
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Does the study of living systems require a new physics? Not if new physics requires the discovery of yet to be known particles or forces or strange quantum mechanical effects. Organisms are not different from other types of matter as far as their atomic properties are concerned. However, the term organism itself points to where…
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As I wrote in another post, we like to think of ourselves as living in a post-anthropic era where human beings are not special beings at all. This belief is half right. We are certainly aware that human beings are one object among many; we are no longer the centre of the objective universe. But…
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The end of anthropocentrism is one of the signature achievements of science; starting with Copernicus, we have progressively shifted the center of the universe away from human beings. As of now, we are just yet another species in yet another planet in yet another solar system in yet another galaxy (not yet another universe, though…
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In theoretical physics, M-theory is a candidate theory of everything. It is a theory that no one seems to know much about and has been called a piece of 21st century science that accidentally landed in the twentieth century. This site is not about the M-theory of physics. Instead, it is about various other M’s that should…
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According to the cognoscenti biology is the science of the 21st century just as physics was the science of the 20th. Within biology itself, neuroscience is rising fast and becoming the go-to science. Donors, funding agencies and newspapers seem to agree. Even science fiction movies have shifted from space exploration, i.e., Star Wars and Star…
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When human beings investigate their own nature, they ask two seemingly different questions: Who are we? Who should we be? The first is the province of psychology, cognitive science and increasingly, biology. The second is the province of ethics, arts and philosophy. One of the most interesting developments in modern scholarship is how the two…
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Science has mostly been an analytic pursuit; we try to break the universe into its constituent parts and analyze these parts for what they are. This method is also often called reductionism, but one can be analytic without being a reductionist. Engineering on the other hand is synthetic; while an engineer does analyze cars in…
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