by Maarten Boudry

Maarten Boudry

Science education is an uphill battle. More than 40% percent of the U.S. population, one of the most scientifically advanced countries on the planet, believes that the earth was created in six days by supernatural fiat a few millennia ago. Ghosts, gods, angels and devils continue to populate people’s fertile imagination. Belief in telepathy and assorted psychic powers is rampant, as is belief in all sorts of quack medicine and conspiracy theories. It is no wonder that some scientists and science educators are driven to desperation: why don’t people just get it? Why do they doggedly persist in the myths of old, or the fads of late, as if the scientific revolution has never taken place?

Meanwhile, the progress of science continues unabated, with an ironic twist. Science does not just explain the way the universe is; it also explains why people continue to think the universe is different than it is. In other words, science is now trying to explain its own failure in persuading the population at large of its truth claims. Decades of research in cognitive psychology have revealed that our brains, alas, are just not wired up for science. Or at least not for the fruits of scientific research. To be sure, science is a product of human brains (where else would it come from?), but as scientists have made progress, they have come up with theories and views that are increasingly hard to swallow for those same brains. Take evolutionary theory, a crowning achievement of science. Our minds are prone to find purpose in nature (intuitive teleology), but evolution says there isn’t any: all is blind chance, mindless necessity and pitiless indifference. Our minds like to think of biological species as immutable categories separated by unbridgeable chasms (intuitive essentialism), but evolutionary theory just talks about imperceptibly shifting populations and changes in gene frequencies. Our minds can just about conceive of a thousand years, but scientists estimate that life on earth has been evolving since 3.8 thousand times thousand times thousand years ago. It’s hard to get your puny human brain around such things.

In Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not, philosopher Robert McCauley offers ample demonstrations of the truth of his book title. Many scientific theories run roughshod over our deepest intuitions. Lewis Wolpert even remarked that “I would almost contend that if something fits with common sense it almost certainly isn't science.” It is not so much that the universe is inimical to our deepest intuitions, it’s that it does not care a whit about them (it’s nothing personal, strictly business). And it gets worse as we go along. Newton’s principle of inertia was already hard to get your head around (uniform motion continuing indefinitely?), but think about the curvature of space-time in general relativity, or the bizarre phenomena of quantum mechanics, which baffle even the scientists who spend a lifetime thinking about them. Science does not have much going for it in the way of intuitive appeal.

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by Grace Boey

For some, hopping across countries means switching between being part of the racial majority and being part of the minority. A Chinese Singaporean living in America discusses what she's learned about her privilege from her experiences of racial alienation.

This past June, my home country Singapore hosted the 2015 SEA Games. This is the Southeast Asian version of the Olympics, involving eleven different countries and numerous ethnic groups. The games opened with a lavish parade attended by 50,000 people, including government ministers and foreign dignitaries from all over Southeast Asia. In line with Singapore’s usual standards, the live telecast of the opening ceremony was flawless. But what happened fifteen minutes before the show went live was a more unfortunate story. Bhavan Jaipragas, a journalist covering the event, made the following Facebook post about an interaction between the Singaporean emcee and a young Indian audience member:

“Racism by emcee at SEA Games pre-opening ceremony activity:
In an audience interaction segment before the start of the SEA Games opening ceremony at the National Stadium, emcee Sharon Au approached an Indian girl seated in the stands. The girl did not properly perform the act—saying aloud a line welcoming foreign contingents (others before her didn’t get it right too). Au, speaking into a mike and with the cameras trained on her, shockingly put on a strong Indian accent, and while shaking her head from right to left asked the girl: “What (Vat) happened? What happened?”. Earlier, she made fun of the girl’s name, Kavya, referencing “caviar”.”

What would possess an experienced entertainer to casually and distastefully appropriate another race’s accent in front of a stadium full of 50,000 people? Perhaps Iggy Azalea might understand. But to give others the benefit of some context: Au, the emcee, is ethnically Chinese. Like me, she’s a member of the majority ethnic group which makes up 75% of the Singaporean population. Ethnic Indians, on the other hand, comprise just 9% of our population. Because of their dominance, ethnic Chinese Singaporeans enjoy a ‘Chinese privilege’ that’s similar in some ways to the ‘white privilege’ enjoyed by Caucasian people in the western world. In addition to this, casual social interactions in Singapore tend to be much less ‘politically correct’ than in most parts of the western world, at least regarding race. It’s not uncommon for Indian accents to be mimicked, and for Chinese people to ‘joke’ about the darker colour of Indian skin. Chinese Singaporeans have even had their own Bollywood 'blackface' controversies. This, unfortunately, occurs even amongst more educated circles of the Chinese majority. Many of my Indian friends have begrudgingly come to accept this as part of their reality, even joking about it themselves. (My Indian friend on Facebook: Coffee girl audibly sniggered when I ordered a ‘Long Black’. So this is what sexual harassment feels like.)

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by Paul Braterman

It looks as if life on Earth just got older, and probably easier. Tiny scraps of carbon have been found inside 4.1 billion year old zircons, and examination shows that this carbon is most probably the result of biological activity. This beats the previous age record by 300 million years, and brings the known age of life on Earth that much closer to the age of Earth itself. The implication is that life can originate fairly quickly (on the geological timescale) when the conditions are right, increasing the probability that it will have originated many times at different places in our Universe.

The Solar System, it is now thought, formed when the shockwave from a nearby supernova explosion triggered a local increase in density in the interstellar gas cloud. This cloud was roughly three quarters hydrogen and one quarter helium, all left over from the Big Bang some 9 billion years earlier. It had already been seeded with heavier elements produced by red giant stars, to which was now added debris from the supernova, including both long-lived and short-lived radioactive elements. Once the cloud had achieved a high enough local density, it was bound to fall inwards under its own gravity, heating up as it did so. The central region of the cloud would eventually become hot enough and dense enough to allow the fusion of hydrogen to helium. A star was born.

The heavy elements (and in this context “heavy” means anything heavier than hydrogen and helium) in the dust cloud surrounding the nascent Sun gave rise to the rocky cores hidden within the outer giants Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus, of the outer reaches of the Solar System, and to the rocky inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and, of course, to Earth and everything upon it. We are stardust.

The asteroids are made out of material that was never able to come together to form a planet, because of the competing gravitational pull of Jupiter. Asteroids are continually bumping into each other, scattering fragments, and some of these fragments fall to earth as meteorites. The Hubble Telescope has given usimages of star and planet formation in progress. Such is our modern creation myth, magnificent in scale, and rooted in reality.

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By, Leanne Ogasawara

It is one of my life regrets that when in Delhi, I did not take the time to go down and see the Taj Mahal. This is not even the worst travel regret I have either. But it is the second worst. There was so much to see and do in Delhi back then. And I guess I tend toward a pathological dislike for the popular and fashionable. So, I missed seeing the building with my own eyes.

Filled with regret, I sat down at LA's Geffen Playhouse last week to watch Rajiv Joseph's Guards at the Taj.

The play opens as two friends are standing guard in front of the almost completed Taj Mahal. Childhood friends, they cannot keep to the strict rule of silence that their job demands. Surreptitiously, they talk of the stars and their dream of “moving up” to become guards in the emperor's harem… the ultimate job, they decide. Birds are singing. The beauty of their friendship and funny dialog, however, belies the extreme violence that follows in Act 2.

It is an old legend that after having the Taj built as a monument to his beloved dead wife, the emperor Jahan decreed that the architect and all the workers who had built the building would all have their hands cut off. When I was in India, I had actually heard that it was only the architect who was put to death. In any case, it is just a dark legend. Anyway, as the two friends stand guard happily dreaming of the emperor's harem, one tells the other about a rumor that is going around. The emperor, it seems, in his desire to ensure that nothing more beautiful than his glorious Taj ever be built again, will amputate all 20,000 workers' hands.

One friend says, “What a horrible job that would be to cut off the hands of 20,000 men.”

“Yeah” says the other, “that's 40,000 hands.”

In that moment, it then dawns on them that of course this is a job that will fall to themselves–as the lowliest grunts in the army.

And sure enough in Act 2, the stage is awash in blood and severed hands. (My friend Guita called it an early Halloween).

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by Yohan J. John

I've always had a problem with the word 'nature'. It seems to serve as a label for multiple, mutually inconsistent notions. This in itself is not a reason to dislike a word — we seem to have little problem with most words that have multiple meanings. (Surely “right” as in “right versus wrong”, is easy to separate from “right” as in “right versus left”? Surely it isn't semantic confusion that causes left-handed people and leftists to be accused of being wrong, and even unnatural?) What seems to make the concept of “naturalness” especially problematic is the way it is used to justify particular situations or courses of action.

So what are the multiple senses of the concept of nature? I think we can discern at least three, which can be best described in terms of dichotomies. We have:

1. Nature versus the Supernatural
2. Nature versus Nurture
3. Nature versus Culture

Let's examine them one by one, and then see what they imply for 'human nature'.

1. The Way It Is: Nature versus the Supernatural

One of the earliest notions of 'nature' was as 'character' or 'essence'. The nature of a thing is its way, its tao. The word itself stems ultimately from the Latin word “natus“, which means “born”. Since the late 14th century it has connoted creation — all that has been born — and is therefore synonymous with the universe and everything in it. In other words, it's Mother Nature.

So nature is what science aims to understand. Oddly, it is also a word used to label that understanding itself. To uncover the nature of a thing or a process is to situate it in the web of causality. Understanding an object's nature involves finding out where it comes from, how it is made or formed, and the various properties it exhibits in different circumstances. Understand a natural process involves systematically diminishing its potential to surprise us: even quantum mechanical 'weirdness' obeys laws, albeit probabilistic ones.

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by Rafiq Kathwari

Nine days in October 1947 that mapped the future of Kashmir

October 23, Thursday

On my walk in the evening, I saw refugees arriving from Muzaffarabad, where it appears some trouble had started and tribesmen had infiltrated into Muzaffarabad. I found lorries arriving in large numbers with Hindu and Sikh refugees.

October 24, Friday

Today is arfa (the day before Eid-ul-Adha), as well as Dussehra (a Hindu festival that celebrates the victory of good over evil). Maharaja Hari Singh went in the morning to attend the puja (ritual worship of god in Hinduism).

The ‘Salamati Fauj’ (Peace Brigade) of the National Conference is parading the streets. News about fighting in Muzaffarabad continues. In the evening, just before the radio news, the lights went off. First, we thought that it was only some trouble in the powerhouse, or on some line in the city, but later, we learnt that the staff at the Mohara powerhouse had fled, closing up the station. Grave situation is arising, seemingly.

October 25, Saturday

Eid-ul-Adha

In the morning went to Eidgah for prayers–a record congregation. After the prayers, a minor scuffle with the National Conference people resulting from a hawker giving offensive slogans about Qaid-e-Azam. Police also arrived on the scene. No light. No radio news. Slept.

October 26, Sunday

I was awakened early by the telephone. The Maharajah, his family all other wazir’s and Rajput families have fled away during the night. Situation must be very grave. Went out to the boulevard. National Conference ‘Salamati Fuaj’ parading the streets: chaos and confusion everywhere. News about insurgents advancing: they have reached Sopore. Sheikh Abdullah has early in the morning flown to Delhi, presumably to sell musalmans of Kashmir and to hatch up an intrigue against Pakistan itself. God help us all. Reportedly, the maharaja called Sheikh Abdullah during the night to transfer power to him. The National Conference volunteers are harassing those who support Pakistan, and for whom conditions appear most apprehensive.

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By Maniza Naqvi

We're trying to get the biggest bang for their buck–or rather biggest buck for their bang. Or you can say we're helping them pass the buck? Yes-yes–true–I'm a bit of a smart alec– at Boarding School everyone thought I had the comic's gift. I would agree. Wouldn't you? Doesn't matter what you think as long as the money keeps rolling in.

But seriously, do you think that just before he slits my throat he'll think of this: How I compared his mother to fifteen goats? Is that what you're asking me? Come off it–my friend—- he's going to be angry yes—He's going to wonder why I didn't compare his beloved Ma to fifteen cows—cows fetch 20,000 rupees apiece. Livestock. So get your facts straight—its cows not goats. Each person in these parts who is killed by a drone attack is equivalent to the rupee price of 15 cows. Converted into dollars? At today's rates?—$194—that's about 38 chai lattes or thereabouts at your nearest café in Washington DC——You see if a civilian is killed we pay three hundred thousand rupees. If a cow is killed we pay 20,000 rupees. My wife's outfit yesterday—the one you liked so much—the one you want made for yourself—well that cost me 450,000 rupees—yes—four lakhs. So you see, at 300,000 rupees it's a bargain. And we keep the costs down. We have a budget, a set quota for 2000 civilian deaths. Anything —or rather any more bodies– over this allocated amount, we just categorize them as militants. That way we don't have to pay. You see? Nice huh? Just an accountant's little trick of the trade. But my God! What a headache to get the numbers right on this. Hours—days of negotiations man—We finally gave them a list—how much for what they target—destroy—working age man, woman, pregnant woman, elderly man or woman, child, girl child, boy child, fetus, baby, goat, chicken, cow—concrete house, mud house, number of rooms, vehicle, what kind of vehicle—farm tools—and so on and on. It's a long list. We perfected the system—this cash transfers system—after the big Earthquake. Gave out money for the dead.

And you have no idea what a headache it is—on the other side of this—–these—our people are such cheaters, such brigands such liars….they will inflate their quotas of dead you see—no willingness to stay within the prescribe quotos—no principles at all—no integrity—they'll tell us that so many children have been killed—or so many women—we have no way of verifying how many women were inside those damn mud huts and so we have to rely on their word. Their word!!!! Makes you want emancipation doesn't it? These bloody losers keep them locked up—-we can't even get an honest head count. And after a house is blown up how are we supposed to know how many were in there, right! No sense of setting down a principle based on science or math–just emotions! I tell you literacy my friend is important! Number one priority once we are in the clear.

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by Michael Lopresto

Many people from all walks of life have been liberated by the phrase “social construction.” Most notably, those with gender identities that don't conform to traditional ideas, and those with behaviours that don't conform to traditional norms and values. In the former case, it's said that gender roles are wholly the product of socialisation, culture and education, whilst the labelling of nonconforming behaviours as “mad” is actually nothing more than the will of those in power trying to control behaviour and punish those they see as a threat to the status quo.

Indeed there's a venerable tradition in philosophy of saying that everything's socially constructed; with Michel Foucault and Judith Butler in the continental tradition, and an anti-metaphysical thread from Kant to the logical positivists to Quine and Goodman in the analytic tradition. Those with an anti-metaphysical bent often thought that philosophers were in a special place to examine and think about the world with their distinctly conceptual resources. The thought was that Plato was wrong to think that nature has joints, and that we can divide the world up in any way we want. We might think about the world as containing tigers or trees, things that form a distinct natural category, but that's actually a fact about our psychology than about how the world is independent of us. The common sense “naïve realism” of Aristotle says that there are things in themselves, and that science uncovers their real essences, but actually this is just a way of conveniently packaging our ideas and experiences. And this anti-metaphysical, anti-essentialist framework was put to good political use as well. Logical positivists such as Carnap and Schlick criticised metaphysical concepts such as wholes-as-distinct-from-parts as being nothing but metaphysical extravagance that couldn't be rigorously explicated, and therefore the very concept that underpinned the Nazi idea that the Volk was some distinct entity from collections of individual German people was complete nonsense.

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by Carl Pierer

Who the noble prize achieveth,
Good friend of a friend to be;
Who a lovely wife attaineth,
Join us in his jubilee!
Yes—he too who but one being
On this earth can call his own!
He who ne'er was able, weeping
Stealeth from this league alone!

—Friedrich Schiller, “Ode to Joy”

*

In “The Pervert's Guide to Ideology”, Slavoj Žižek draws the viewer's attention to the hollow, empty shell of the famous musical adaption of the ode to joy in Beethoven's Ninth. Commonly perceived to be a celebration of universal brotherhood, it has been used by various, starkly opposed political movements. While in Nazi Germany it was played at great public event, it was perceived as an almost communist song in the USSR and has now become the unofficial anthem of the European Union. He continuous to suggest that whenever a text claims to be rejoicing in the universal fraternity of humanity, it should be questioned who is meant by this. Is it really all of humanity or is there someone excluded? What are the conditions to shape the all-embracing league?

The Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has an affinity for the presence of philosophical abysses in contemporary society. His films, absurd and highly satirical, yet at the same time deeply serious, are tremendously haunting. With great naturalness, he lets the familiar collide with the outlandish, thereby creating absurd frameworks. Such a background allows him to explore problems of identity, care and closeness and all the while caricature present society in elaborate metaphors. To take an example, “Alps” may illustrate this idea.

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by Charlie Huenemann

What would it be for life to have a “meaning”? What does it mean when people say life is meaningful? I’m not sure, so let’s start with smaller, more obviously meaningful things. Better yet, let’s start with some meaningless things. When Bob sits down to polish the steel junk he’s about to haul to the scrap heap, we can say his activity is meaningless: there’s no point to it. Similarly, when my students sit down to prepare for an exam that I have decided to cancel, their work is pointless and meaningless. When Sally writes a memo about the futility of writing memos, crafting her prose to limpid perfection, with the aim of deleting her anti-memo memo before anyone reads it, we should feel some degree of concern for her mental well-being. Meaningless things have no point to them – nothing is achieved, no purpose can be fathomed, and the work we dedicate to them is entirely wasted. Meaningful things, let’s presume, are just the opposite.

So, how about life as a whole – your whole life, and the lives of everyone? If we believe in a Grand Scheme of Things, some cosmic contest with an unambiguous finish line, then we might then see lives as meaningful. The history of philosophy is crammed full of such Grand Schemes, but we might call upon Leibniz to present one of the greatest ones. This world, said Leibniz, is the best of all possible worlds, the very best world a just and omniscient being could call into existence, and it is made the best by all of the things people do, when taken as a whole. All finite things strive toward greater and greater perfections of being, and the world over time turns into something that is worthy of divine selection. If we embrace the Leibnizian scheme, we feel the pressure of bringing all our actions and thoughts to the highest reaches of moral and metaphysical perfection. Everything is meaningful, because everything contributes to the end God set for creation.

This is one thrillingly grand notion of cosmic meaningfulness – but hardly anyone now believes it. Most of us accept that the universe has not come about for the purpose of achieving anything. Cosmologists tell us that it’s something of a puzzle why there should be anything at all, and many of them are driven to the conclusion that there must be an infinity of possible universes, most of them boring beyond any description, and a scant few of them including such noteworthy features as matter. They come to this conclusion precisely to avoid the conclusion our universe has anything to brag about. Our universe is the way it is because some universe had to be, and it’s consequently no surprise that we – as evolved, intelligent beings – would find ourselves in one of those rare universes in which something relatively interesting has happened.

What does our universe try to achieve? Well, if anything, it seems to enjoy growing entropy – that is, it tries to shed itself of any order. Our universe would love nothing more than to become a thin, bland soup, and verdicts seem to go back and forth about whether it’s likely to succeed in this modest goal. The more fundamental point, of course, is that the universe itself does not really care one way or another about its own success. It just does whatever its laws tell it to do, and the laws, so far as we comprehend them, do not aim toward any special, purposeful end.

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by Mathangi Krishnamurthy

Somewhere in Japan, on offer for the throwaway price of a thousand yen, is a good night's cuddle. Somewhere in Seattle and elsewhere in Oregon, the price of an expensive meal will offer you the benefits of touch; hugging, cuddling, and spooning. Somewhere on a street corner, someone is standing around with a board that says “Free Hugs”.

Intimacy, otherwise sparse, is now available, sometimes freely and sometimes not. Theorists of the 21st century speak of the phenomenon called affective labor wherein even emotion is brought under the purview of capitalist modes of valuation and exchange. This is a matter of both lament and orientation. One is nostalgic for her grandmother who offered food and love in abundant measure, while being aware that all of it was provided through backbreaking, undervalued and underpaid, gendered labor.

Having lived in the US for close to a decade, I am intensely familiar with the enunciations of such affective labor. Cashiers who ask you how you are doing with such abundant cheer, even as they do not necessarily care to hear the answer, are part of this labor complex. Also inhabiting this phenomenon are bartenders; men and women, who must both produce unique personalities, as well as subsume them in the service of listening to your life story. In return, one plays the game. One declares to the cashier that life could be better, but isn't bad, and one produces for the bartender, a confession hopefully more interesting than the last. In turn is generated the counter effect of a hermetic sealing off from affective atmospheres. Modes of survival seem to depend upon avoiding all but the most perfunctory forms of structured intimacy, thereby retaining all control. In such a milieu, the form of loneliness produced is piercing, and singular. It creates an appreciation and tolerance for being alone, along with an inability to be anything but, compounded by a deep desire for the one true companion that will dispel this state of being. The myth that therefore sustains this affective dissonance and deprivation is that of the love story.

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by Hari Balasubramanian

This piece is framed as a 'conversation' but it is really a conversation or debate between two voices/perspectives in my own head (here's a similar piece from last year).

__

“There's a lot of talk these days about 'staying in the present moment', 'being mindful', etc. I find it all quite puzzling. Because it doesn't matter what is going on or what I am thinking, I am always in the present – isn't that the case?”

“Well, I find myself usually thinking of the past or projecting future scenarios…”

“Sure – that's true for me too. But isn't it true that thinking of the past or the future also happens the present? A memory of the past is somehow retrieved now in our mental space and we say we are thinking of the past. The screen on which the past unfolds or the future is projected is always the present.”

“You can get very technical about it if you like. The idea of being present is simply to clear your mind of unnecessary and – on many occasions – troublesome thoughts which keep taking you on needless mental journeys.”

“Okay – then what remains when your mind is clear of thoughts?”

“I guess you experience sensory stimuli going on right now – you feel how cold the wind is, or how red that piece of cloth is, how bitter the coffee is and so on.”

“And why are these sensory perceptions more special than thoughts of the past or future? Isn't the feeling that the coffee is bitter a kind of thought too – you taste the coffee and something in your mind, some kind of past knowledge or memory, learned or ingrained, but which is still thought, informs you that it is bitter.”

“At least it is more immediate…”

“Yes, but the present is already the past by the time you label something. Thought is always one step behind whatever is unfolding…”

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by Sarah Firisen

The week before last I changed the sheets on my bed. Stripped the fitted sheet, the pillow cases, bundled it all up in my arms and threw it in the washing machine and turned it on (I’m lucky enough to have a washer/dryer in my apartment in NYC). About 3 minutes went by, maybe 4. I suddenly felt that something was wrong, something was missing, I looked on the kitchen counter, on the coffee table, ran into the bedroom and looked on my bedside table, but the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach told me what I already knew; I ran to the washer, opened up the top, reached inside, felt around and there it was, my iPhone. The sheets weren’t soaked, but they were pretty wet, a decent amount of water was already in the washer. I knew the drill from when my daughter had dropped her phone in the toilet, but in the panic of the moment there were steps I forgot or overlooked. Luckily I had bulked ordered Arborio rice (I like risotto) and so quickly dumped 3 bags worth into a bowl. Took the phone out of its case, which in this circumstance had probably done more harm than good, trapping the water nicely. Put the phone in the rice, put the bowl in a warm dry spot as dictated by the various guides to such things I found on the internet, which luckily I could still access via my laptop and prayed. My daughter scolded me – “and you know, you have to wait at least 72 hours!!” Her concern was hardly selfless; the plan was that when I was eligible to upgrade in just over 6 weeks, she’d get my old phone to replace her almost totally defunct iPhone 5.

Those 72 hours were hell. I have no house phone, so no way to call anyone and even if I did, I don’t know anyone’s phone numbers except my aunt and uncle in England because they’ve had the same phone number since I was 7 and my ex-husband who’s had his mobile number at least 10 years.

I do everything on my phone: banking, airline check-ins (I fly a lot) and boarding passes, pay my rent, stay in touch with loved ones, read the New York Times and the New Yorker, read books, and listen to music. Without it, I’m ashamed to say I was bereft. I couldn’t work out because I really need to listen to music to motivate me and I had no way to do that. Could only communicate with friends and family through email and Facebook from my laptop which left me rather housebound. And there are some personal details at the intersection of personal hygiene and technology that I can’t even bring myself to report with greater clarity. Suffice it to say, I was lost. It was a very long 3 days. Actually more like 2 ½ because I cracked around 11am Monday morning, took it out of the rice and tried to turn it on.

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