Tagged: Science

Steven Pinker: Science Is Not Your Enemy

In an engaging article for New Republic, the acclaimed psychologist, linguist and author Steven Pinker discusses the underlying dislike of science residing in some “humanities people”. This matter is especially relevant to the integrated way sciences and humanities and learned in the Core. Here is an extract from Pinker’s introduction: These thinkers—Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, […]

Citizen Science Project Identifies Species By Their Calls

CC106 delves into the current issues with biodiversity. Here is a sample from an article about exciting new technology that battles these issues: Global biodiversity is not doing so well these days, with many scientists even believing that we’re on the brink of the world’s sixth mass extinction. … Simply put: We just don’t know how […]

‘Seeds of Hope’ by Jane Goodall

In this article for the Boston Globe, Adam Langer discusses Jane Goodall’s new work. He describes it as: Part reminiscence, part natural history, and part plea on behalf of the natural world, “Seeds of Hope” begins with Goodall’s childhood in Bournemouth, England, where she recalls spending hours in her favorite tree doing her homework, reading […]

Where Stars Come From

Watch this video on YouTube The Core shares an article from BU Today concerning the intriguing origin of stars, where CAS professor James Jackson answers some exciting questions. A sample: For years, Jackson, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of astronomy, and his international colleagues studied [a dark, opaque mass that astronomers call] “the brick,” […]

CC106: The Sound of Music

Today, February 5th, Biology Professor Jelle Atema (Doctorandus, University of Utrecht (Netherlands); PhD, University of Michigan), held a lecture titled “The sound of music: frog calls and the design of music halls”, for the Core class CC106. CC106 is designed to round out students’ exploration of the natural sciences by focusing on the science of life. The professors […]

Semi-Serious Science Quote: CC105 from Fall 2012

The Core presents a quote on the death of stars: In the later red giant phase, the Core will shrink further and heat up to over 100 million Kelvin. ~Dr. Mark Jonas  

Festina Lente: ‘Conserving Antiquity’ Exhibition

  From January 30 – July 7, 2013, the upcoming Festina Lente exhibition will offer an unconventional behind-the-scenes opportunity to survey the Greek and Roman holdings in the Davis Museum’s permanent collections. Featuring vases and vessels of all sorts and designs, relief portraits and standing figures, mosaics, coins and jewelry, human and animal forms, the scope of […]

Dr. Jelle Atema, from lobsters to CC106

Dr. Jelle Atema of the BU Department of Biology, will be joining the course faculty in CC106: Biodiversity this coming spring. His areas of research interest include sensory biology and biometic robotics, and he is currently involved in studies of the chemical ecology of lobsters, the dispersal of larvae in reef fishes, and navigation in […]

Humanists at the Santa Fe Institute

Professor Daniel Hudon (Core Natural Sciences) writes… What’s the best kind of conversation to have, with those who share your views or those who don’t? If you want to have anything beyond a mutually agreeing chat, then you’re going to want to seek out interlocutors who don’t share your views because they’re the ones who […]

Analects of the Core: Hume on science and learning

The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning; and whoever can either remove any obstruction in this way, or open up any new prospect, ought, so far, to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind. – David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding