More Beauty

This time an evolutionary theory.

The talk is found through the article link below.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2010/nov/22/1

Fragile Historic Sources: Barriers to the Truth

Fragile Historic Sources: Barriers to the Truth

Beauty

This link might be interesting in taking forward the notion of beauty in mathematics and physics.

Murray Gel-Mann puts it better than we were able to in this Ted talk.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/murray_gell_mann_on_beauty_and_truth_in_physics.html#

Some resources. Or, what to spend your budget on?

I’m sitting in Gatwick, waiting for my flight to board, and still thinking about ToK.  Which is some sign that the course has got its hooks into me a little.  So I thought that I’d try to write up some of the references and resources that people recommended over that past couple of days.  I apologise in advance if the list is skewed towards the things that I personally thought interesting – that’s how perception works.  (Discuss.)

Between The Conceits is a story by Will Self, from his collection Grey Area.  I’ve included it here for Wayne, and his worries about they…

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson.  This is the fiction about Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, sparked off by my showing of the graph/map/artwork from Edward Tufte’s Visual Display of Quantitative Information.  I recommend anything by Tufte.

Sheila Fitzpatrick’s book on the Russian Revolution was recommended by our historians, almost as much as Wayne recommended AJP Taylor.

Fritz Fischer’s Germany’s War Aims, as a bit of revisionist history.  Connected with this, people thought that Nazis: A Warning From History and Judgement At Nuremburg were good documentary resources. 

Sue talked about Art & Eros, and Above The Gods, both by Iris Murdoch.  She also waved Letters To A Young Mathematician by Ian Stewart.

Paul, I think, recommended The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler.

We also had On Ugliness, and On Beauty, by Eco. 

A documentary called My Kid Could Paint That, some of which is on YouTube.

The Mathematical Experience by Davis and Hersh.

The Professor & The Housekeeper by Yoko Ogawa, and the (possibly) similar film Memento by Christopher Nolan.

I’m going to buy Solar by Ian McEwan.

Alva Noe was recommended by Sue – one of her former pupils, and now a professor of the philosophy of perception.  What a great job!

A BBC documentary by Horizon, called Seeing Is Believing.

Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science has an excellent chapter called ‘The Doctor Will Sue You Now’, about AIDS/HIV deniers.  It’s an excellent book all round, I think.

I may have spelt some of these names incorrectly, but Google should have no trouble in finding any of this stuff.

Please chip in if there’s stuff that I didn’t write down.

Growing Knowledge

Perhaps a fruitful path towards integration could come through looking at the impact of technology in the creation of knowledge in the various Areas of Knowledge.  My niece is the manager of reference services at the British Library in London and she has been involved in an exhibition that just opened which examines the impact that technology is having in research and in generating new knowledge.  You can find lots of interesting material on the homepage, called Growing Knowledge

First post

This is just a place-holder post.  I'm off for a snooze now, and will check in properly soon.  But the aim is to see how using this blog works as a way to share info and ideas as we all move towards the integration of ToK in our schools.