Science

see also: “Neurology”, “Physics”, “Psychiatry” categories

Paradigm shift: 21 distinct senses

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What Is A Paradigm Shift, Anyway?
July 18, 2016
Tania Lombrozo
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/07/18/486487713/what-is-a-paradigm-shift-anyway

Thomas Kuhn‘s 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, transformed the philosophy of science and changed the way many scientists think about their work. But his influence extended well beyond the academy: The book was widely read — and seeped into popular culture. One measure of his influence is the widespread use of the term “paradigm shift,” which he introduced in articulating his views about how science changes over time.

In a paper published in 1970, Margaret Masterson presented a careful reading of Kuhn’s 1962 book. She identified 21 distinct senses in which Kuhn used the term paradigm.

The Strongest Force

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The Strongest Force? Any Parent Can Tell You
By Dennis Overbye
December 21, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/science/21essa.html

hat’s the strongest force in the universe?

Some people will say gravity. But that would be wrong. Gravity, physicists say, is intrinsically puny and gets its overwhelming oomph only from the fact that everything, even energy, contributes to it. Which isn’t much consolation, admittedly, when you drop, say, your trusty college edition of the complete annotated works of William Shakespeare on your foot.

An astronomer quoted in this newspaper a few years back said that jealousy was the strongest force in the universe.

Now we’re getting closer.

I’d like to convince you, at the possible cost of my reputation as a cold-eyed observer of cosmic affairs, that it is …

…

Joel Cohen, a population biologist at Rockefeller University, wrote in an essay in the online journal Public Library of Science Biology that entirely new realms of mathematics would be needed to cope with the complexity of the living world, but I think he’s being optimistic.

Interactive notebooks: IPython

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Interactive notebooks: Sharing the code
The free IPython notebook makes data analysis easier to record, understand and reproduce.
05 November 2014
http://www.nature.com/news/interactive-notebooks-sharing-the-code-1.16261

“In my own computational physics work,” says Granger, “a high-level description of the algorithm that goes into the paper is light years away from the details that are written in the code.
Without those details, there is no way that someone could reproduce it in a reasonable time scale.”

“We used to speak two different languages. I would talk about the biology and she would talk about coding.
Now we have common ground; we can communicate to each other better. This accelerates our research”

related:
https://franzcalvo.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/tacit-knowledge

Science is not purely objective.

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NOT-SO-OBVIOUS WAYS VALUES ENTER PSYCHOLOGY

We less often recognize the subtle ways in which value commitments masquerade as objective truth.
What are three not-so-obvious ways values enter psychology?

THE SUBJECTIVE ASPECTS OF SCIENCE
Scientists and philosophers agree: Science is not purely objective.
Scientists do not simply read the book of nature.
Rather, they interpret nature, using their own mental categories.
In our daily lives, too, we view the world through the lens of our preconceptions.
Whether we see a moving light in the sky as a flying saucer or see a face in a pie crust depends on our perceptual set.

Chapter 1. Introducing Social Psychology
Myers, D. G. (2012). Social psychology (11th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
http://www.mcgraw-hill.com.sg/html/9780078035296.html