March 4, 2015
Following OLLI class cancellations last week, we are fortunate that Dr. Adrian Bejan is able to visit us this week to speak on the Constructal Law.
The Constructal Law is a principle of dynamic formation seen throughout inorganic, organic and social systems. As such, it has some relevance to evolution.
As background for discussions on evolution, you may want to read this short essay, Bushes and Ladders, by Stephen Jay Gould. Gould was an evolutionary biologist at Harvard known for his ability to communicate science in a vibrant way. His essay points to the fallacy in thinking of humankind as the inevitable apogee of creation.
As a treat, please see watch this Birds of Paradise video. There is a whole series of them, assembled by National Geographic, NHK, and partners. The linked video is five and a half minutes, in partner with the Cornell Ornithology Lab. You will easily be able to find more and longer videos, for example, this forty-seven minute National Geographic program with Spanish sub-titles.
The next two attachments are background reading for future classes.
The first is an interesting set of essays by Max Planck on the nature of Free Will from the standpoint of a scientist firmly grounded in the validity of cause and effect in the Universe.
Max Planck was the 19th-20th century physicist who contributed fundamentally to the quantum revolution through his identification of what came to be known as "Planck's constant." Planck's constant, h , is the constant value used to equate the frequency of an electromagnetic wave to its energy. The relationship, known as the Einstein-Planck relation is simply E = hv where E is energy, v is frequency and h is Planck's constant. The amazing thing is that the existence of the value, h , signals the discontinuity of energy, and I suggest, of space-time.
Planck was a wise and knowledgeable scientist, and it is interesting to follow his train of argument.
The second is a couple of chapters from the book by Andrew Newberg, Eugene D'Aquill and Vince Rause, Why God Won't Go Away, Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. The focus of these chapters is on the structures and functional systems of the brain, and what they mean in terms of our understanding of reality.
These readings inform our discussions on Free Will, and on the proposal that ethics is based on the way the universe is evolving, rather than on any system of "oughts."
The Constructal Law is a principle of dynamic formation seen throughout inorganic, organic and social systems. As such, it has some relevance to evolution.
As background for discussions on evolution, you may want to read this short essay, Bushes and Ladders, by Stephen Jay Gould. Gould was an evolutionary biologist at Harvard known for his ability to communicate science in a vibrant way. His essay points to the fallacy in thinking of humankind as the inevitable apogee of creation.
As a treat, please see watch this Birds of Paradise video. There is a whole series of them, assembled by National Geographic, NHK, and partners. The linked video is five and a half minutes, in partner with the Cornell Ornithology Lab. You will easily be able to find more and longer videos, for example, this forty-seven minute National Geographic program with Spanish sub-titles.
The next two attachments are background reading for future classes.
The first is an interesting set of essays by Max Planck on the nature of Free Will from the standpoint of a scientist firmly grounded in the validity of cause and effect in the Universe.
Max Planck was the 19th-20th century physicist who contributed fundamentally to the quantum revolution through his identification of what came to be known as "Planck's constant." Planck's constant, h , is the constant value used to equate the frequency of an electromagnetic wave to its energy. The relationship, known as the Einstein-Planck relation is simply E = hv where E is energy, v is frequency and h is Planck's constant. The amazing thing is that the existence of the value, h , signals the discontinuity of energy, and I suggest, of space-time.
Planck was a wise and knowledgeable scientist, and it is interesting to follow his train of argument.
The second is a couple of chapters from the book by Andrew Newberg, Eugene D'Aquill and Vince Rause, Why God Won't Go Away, Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. The focus of these chapters is on the structures and functional systems of the brain, and what they mean in terms of our understanding of reality.
These readings inform our discussions on Free Will, and on the proposal that ethics is based on the way the universe is evolving, rather than on any system of "oughts."
