New Ways of Knowing
Horizontal epistemology is the norm in the age of big data. It's not enough to perform one experiment but to have uniform standards for a family of experiments.
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The Demon of Doubt, or an exercise in fiction science.
Every era of quickening change has its existential worries, when solid ground becomes quicksand. Here I use 'demons' to probe the shifting ground of knowledge.
Trust Centered Design
The scientific community's response to the Corona virus is heartening. We also have excellent resources such as ocw, wikipedia etc. Can we build an “open wisdom” system on top of existing resources and emerging patterns of rapid scientific collaboration?
Two Thoughts for 2019
Every old man thinks the world was a better place when they were young. The colors were brighter, the smiles were warmer and every child had a village growing it to perfection. Sometimes the old man is right; the colors…
Smelly Science
Photographer: Tadeusz Lakota | Source: Unsplash Philosophy has a vision bias. The Sanskrit name for philosophical activity, ‘Darsana’ means ‘vision.’ Intriguingly, across Indo-European cultures, knowledge at a distance is closely related to blindness. Homer was supposedly blind and the great war…
The Skin of the World
Photographer: David Clode | Source: Unsplash I am taking a step back from writing about contentious topics — authoritarian politics, climate change, approaching extinction and animal rights. Not for ever, but for a few weeks. It feels like every conversation about those topics…
Navigating Higher Education
Note: this is the first post in a series that looks at how higher education needs to change in response to the wicked problems we face in the 21st century. Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash I think a lot about my…
Many Mes
Photographer: Andrew Seaman | Source: Unsplash MeMe and YouMe The Buddha, peace be unto him, is famous for declaring there’s no self. Strictly speaking, he denied the existence of an abiding, permanent self, especially the metaphysical Atman of Brahmanical Hinduism. We are…
Subversive Intelligence
Photographer: James Lee | Source: Unsplash If you read or watch any mainstream media source that deals with facts instead of imaginary threats, you will notice the constant invocation of two civilizational threats: automation and climate change. This is mainstream media…
The Great Unsettling
Introduction I have written a few hundred essays over the last five years, with a year and a half in the middle being devoted to a single text, the Mahabharata. I might start the Jayary again this fall, prompted…