The Philosophical Breakfast Club, and my recent TED Talk, were featured in Newsweek’s piece “Around the World in Six Ideas,” written by Christopher Dickey: Before There Were Scientists The word “scientist” was not coined until 1833. Before that, scientific disciplines were the domain of mostly wealthy men and women who called themselves “natural philosophers.” They might […]
From yesterday’s TED blog, a fun piece on seven groups of writers/artists/philosophers who transformed their world—and ours.
Here’s the TED Talk on the Philosophical Breakfast Club I gave at TED Global 2012. Share! [ted id=1712]
I’m excited to announce that the video of the talk I gave at the TED Global conference in Edinburgh in June will be available for viewing on the TED website starting Friday morning, at 11 am ET. I’ll post a link here when the video goes online!
A nice piece on consilience is just out in Philosophy Now magazine. Written by Toni Vogel Carey, the article highlights the different views of consilience held by Whewell/Herschel on the one hand and E.O. Wilson/Stephen Jay Gould on the other. Definitely worth a look by anyone interested in scientific confirmation.
My review of David Berlinski’s The King of Infinite Space: Euclid and His Elements will be in this weekend’s edition of The Wall Street Journal. Just in time for the Oscars, there’s even a movie tie-in: “One of the more curious historical revelations of Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” is that America’s 16th president was obsessed by […]
Happy 2013, everyone! To start off the new year, here’s my latest for the Wall Street Journal: a review of three books that locate the origins of modern scientific practice where we may least expect it—in monks’s cells, magicians’ workshops, and alchemists’ hidden laboratories. Read the review here and in tomorrow’s print edition. The books […]
In honor of the anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species on November 24, 1859: Footage of the moth that pollinates Angraecum sesquipedale, a Madagascar orchid, whose existence Darwin predicted 142 years ago. Because the nectar is so far down the neck of this orchid, Darwin knew that there had to be a […]
My picks for holiday books about science appeared in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal. You can see which 2012 releases I suggest for gift giving here.
My newest review for the Wall Street Journal is out in today’s issue. To see what I had to say about Robyn Arianrhod’s Seduced by Logic: Emilie du Chatelet, Mary Somerville, and the Newtonian Revolution, see here. Watch out on Saturday for my contribution to the Wall Street Journal’s annual Book Gift Guide. And, coming […]