Purls of Wisdom: The Geometry and Topology of Weavables, Wearables and Wallpaper – Elisabetta Matsumoto
Tag: science
Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it.
Source: A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality
In a new study, researchers uncovered female programmers who made important but unrecognized contributions to genetics.
Source: The Women Who Contributed to Science but Were Buried in Footnotes
“We are not just saying that if you know the position of the electron, then you don’t know whether or not it’s moving. We’re saying that if the electron has some position, then it does not have any state of motion. What could this possibly mean? Nobody is quite sure.“
Quantum food for thought.
“The consistency condition which demands that new hypotheses agree with accepted theories is unreasonable because it preserves the older theory, and not the better theory. Hypotheses contradicting well-confirmed theories give us evidence that cannot be obtained in any other way. Proliferation of theories is beneficial for science, while uniformity impairs its critical power. Uniformity also endangers the free development of the individual.”
“There is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge. The whole history of thought is absorbed into science and is used for improving every single theory. Nor is political interference rejected. It may be needed to overcome the chauvinism of science that resists alternatives to the status quo.”
“No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress. It is also a first step in our attempts to find the principles implicit in familiar observational notions.”
Terence McKenna was a fan.
Source: Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method
Julian Voss-Andreae, a sculptor with a background in physics and mathematics, builds sculptures that seem to vanish into thin air.
Source: Sculptures disappear into thin air – INSIDER
There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.[71]
— Daniel Dennett,
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 1995
Dig for your own gems at Ocean View mine in southern california.
One mathematician who’s got first-hand experience of the fascinating interplay between physics and geometry is Shing-Tung Yau. In a new book called The shape of inner space (co-authored by Steve Nadis) Yau describes how the strange geometrical spaces he discovered turned out to be just what theoretical physicists needed in their attempt to build a theory of everything. Plus met up with Yau on his recent visit to London, to find out more.
Jack Whitten, Beloved Painter of Abstract Cosmologies, Dies at 78 -ARTnews
His “conceptual paintings” offered new possibilities for what abstraction could be.
“Ethereal and oftentimes mystical, Whitten’s paintings came out of inquiries into philosophical, scientific, and mathematical concepts. The chipped-paint technique in the “E Stamps” works, for example, often makes his work shine, and it sprang from reading up on the physical properties of light. “We know now that light occurs in extremely small particles,” he once told ARTnews. “That’s what allows us to see—those little fucking photons bouncing around your retina, and blam-o, I can see!””
Source: Jack Whitten, Beloved Painter of Abstract Cosmologies, Dies at 78 -ARTnews