Category: biology
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Addiction: The View from Rat Park
In an interview of Alexis Pietak, I have heard about Rat Park and now I have found information in Internet. Bruce K. Alexander Addiction: The View from Rat Park http://globalizationofaddiction.ca/articles-speeches/rat-park/148-addiction-the-view-from-rat-park.html “In the 1960s, some experimental psychologists began to think that the Skinner Box was a good place to study drug addiction. They perfected techniques that…
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Darwin’s Ghosts
Rebecca Stott, Darwin’s Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution A nice book. I have enjoyed listening to it. Below there are scientists, considered in detail in the book. An excerpt: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/204510/darwins-ghosts-by-rebecca-stott#excerpt Chapter 2: Aristotle Eyes – Lesbos, 344 BC The History of Animals, Parts of Animals Chapter 3: The Worshipful Curiosity of Jahiz – Basra…
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The Uses of a Screwdriver Cannot be Listed Algorithmically
A quote from Stuart A. Kauffman, Foreword: Evolution beyond Newton, Darwin, and Entailing Law. In Beyond Mechanism: Putting Life Back Into Biology p. 9 “Here is the first ‘strange’ step. Can you name all the uses of a screwdriver, alone, or with other objects or process? Well, screw in a a screw, open a paint can, wedge…
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Thermodynamics of evolution
Prigogine, I., G. Nicolis & A. Babloyantz (1972). Thermodynamics of evolution. Physics Today 25(11), 23-28. “The functional order maintained within living systems seems to defy the Second Law; nonequilibrium thermodynamics describes how such systems come to terms with entropy.” Prigogine, I., G. Nicolis & A. Babloyantz (1972). Thermodynamics of evolution. Physics Today 25(12), 38-44. “The…
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Schrödinger’s Order, Disorder and Entropy
Recently I have made a talk “Does Entropy Play a Role in Biology?” where I have made a short introduction to the thermodynamic entropy and discussed misconceptions of the entropy in biology. Now I see that I have missed to mention an important text that seemed to play a big role in raising one particular…
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Biologism and Christianity
It seems that biologism and the Christian religion are at odds, see for example The God Delusion. Well, the contradiction seems to be apparent. For example, statements “God has created” and “Evolution has created” are very similar. Jeffrey Gray has once mentioned “For the good fit between conscious experience and outside reality, the idealist philosopher Berkley called…
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Resuscitation of Hamsters after Supercooling
Robert Karl Stonjek in the discussion on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/groups/rks.consciousness/10150829992540115/ has mentioned: “On the suspension of life, it was James Lovelock and his colleagues in the 1950s that were freezing hamsters and then bringing them back to life.” Also he has quoted ‘Homage to Gaia: The Life of an Independent Scientist’ by James Lovelock, P.108-9 (hardcover version):…
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Aristotle on the Souls of Animals
In his lecture (Beweistheorien, lecture 9) http://www.podcasts.uni-freiburg.de/podcast_content?id_content=24 Prof Hoenen has mentioned that according to Aristotle even an animal has an ability to make a judgment (Urteil) based on perception. “And this evidently belongs to all animals; for they have a connate judgemental capacity, which is called perception. And if perception is present in them, in…