Mark R. Kelly
» Founder in 1997 and site-runner for 20 years of Locus Online (Hugo Award winner in 2002). Founder in 2012 and still site-runner of sfadb.com (Science Fiction Awards Database). Retired in 2012 after 30 years as a software engineer for a certain rocket engine factory.
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Meta
Search Results for: consilience
My Essay Accepted for Publication
The news this late October is that I’ve had an 11,000 word essay, the one I’ve been working on since June, accepted by Gary Westfahl for publication in a volume of essays to be published in a year or so … Continue reading
Posted in Personal history, science fiction
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Science and Art and Predictions and Immortality
Carlo Rovelli on science and art; Big Think on failed predictions; Immortality as a philosophical paradox; Michio Kaku on the four types of planetary civilizations. —— NY Times, guest essay by Carlo Rovelli, 16 Oct 2023: The Secret to Unlocking … Continue reading
Modern Science and Literary Wisdom
and Human Nature and Its Biases and Rationality and The Two Cultures and Consilience. Gregory Feeley, in a friends-only post on Facebook three days ago, linked the two items below and and made some generalizing comments about them.
Evolution Understood and Not Understood
I mentioned those John Brockman anthologies of science essays back on Feb 4th. They’re associated with the website Edge.org, one of those fascinating websites I’ve noticed over the years but have not followed regularly (others are Big Think, Quanta, Aero, … Continue reading
Third Culture Books; Perceptions and Reality
Today’s three topics: A new Michael Shermer book I missed when it came out last October; How magenta is a color that doesn’t exist on the spectrum; Public perceptions of the economy. There are authors I’ve followed for years, both … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Politics, Psychology
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Dialogues: Democracy’s Enemies; Yuval Noah Harari
Two items today are responses to earlier articles or reviews, about the enemies of democracy, and about Yuval Noah Harari. And then my responses to them.
E.O. Wilson: THE SOCIAL CONQUEST OF EARTH (2012)
E.O. Wilson’s THE SOCIAL CONQUEST OF EARTH, from 2012, is in my estimation one of the four most significant books by this scientist and writer. (The others are ON HUMAN NATURE, 1978; CONSILIENCE, 1998; and THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Changing One's Mind, Culture, Evolution, Morality, Religion
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E.O. Wilson: THE ORIGINS OF CREATIVITY (2017)
What is creativity? It is the innate quest for originality. The driving force is humanity’s instinctive love of novelty—the discovery of new entities and processes, the solving of old challenges and disclosure of new ones, the aesthetic surprise of unanticipated … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Evolution
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E.O. Wilson
The great evolutionary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died on Sunday. He was 92. He had been publishing new books right up to the end, with Tales from the Ant World in 2020. Several of his earlier books, from On … Continue reading
Posted in Personal history, Science
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Novella et al: THE SKEPTICS’ GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE
Novella, Dr. Steven, et al. The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe: How to Know What’s Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake. Grand Central, 2018. *** I read this shortly after publication, nearly three years ago now, and … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Science, Thinking
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