First the loose thinking and the building up of a structure on unsound foundations and then the correction to stricter thinking and the substitutions a new underpinning beneath the already constructed mass. Gregory Bateson on the advance of science. (From Steps to an Ecology of Mind) This expresses a process I have observed in developers. … Read moreDevelop before define
“there appear new laws and even new kinds of laws, which apply in the domain in question.” David Bohm, quoted by Alicia Juarrero He’s talking about the qualitative transformation that happens in a system when certain quantitative transition points are passed. Qualitative transformation I notice this when something that used to be a pain gets … Read moreDomain-specific laws
a telling question. This puzzler says something about our culture. It says we think in terms of causes that happen before their effects. That we don’t believe in reflexive causality. In life, everything interesting is a circle. The mitochondria breaks down sugar, the proteins use the energy, they keep up the cell wall, the cell … Read moreWhich came first, the chicken or the egg?
Preface: I studied physics in college, yet there were parts of it that didn’t click with me. Special relativity with all its “a flashlight on a train” examples, that’s counterintuitive and hard. Yesterday in Surfaces & Essences, the authors explain Einstein’s thought process when he came up with it, and it makes sense this way. … Read moreSpecial Relativity finally makes sense