Category Archives: Philosophy & Politics

3quarksdaily: Philosophy is a Bunch of Empty Ideas: Interview with Peter Unger

Philosophy: you either get it or you don’t. The field has its passionate defenders, but according to its critics, philosophy is irrelevant, unproductive, and right at the height of the ivory towers. And now, the philosophy-bashing camp can count a … Continue reading

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An (Im)Modest Proposal – The UK Evidence Information Service | Pasco Phronesis

Three U.K. universities are doing something I doubt their U.S. counterparts have the resources (or the willingness to risk) to duplicate.  They have started a process for establishing an Evidence Information Service (EIS) to, as they put it, help put … Continue reading

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The Overwhelm

Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, talks with the Atlantic Monthly. Schulte scrutinizes this state of affairs: Why do we all feel so overworked? How is that feeling different for men … Continue reading

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What Would Plato Tweet? – NYTimes.com

…For the past few years I’d been obsessed with trying to figure out what lay behind the spectacular achievements that had occurred there. In a mere couple of centuries, Greek speakers went from anomie and illiteracy, lacking even an alphabet, … Continue reading

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The Future of Brain Implants – WSJ.com

What would you give for a retinal chip that let you see in the dark or for a next-generation cochlear implant that let you hear any conversation in a noisy restaurant, no matter how loud? Or for a memory chip, … Continue reading

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Public Books — Stop Defending the Humanities

Those who matter most to the humanities fall, I think, into two classes. The most important is that relatively small group of 18-year-olds (disproportionately few from poorer families) who are inclined to study the humanities. Our immediate future rests primarily … Continue reading

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1 In 4 Americans Thinks The Sun Goes Around The Earth, Survey Says : The Two-Way : NPR

A quarter of Americans surveyed could not correctly answer that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, according to a report out Friday from the National Science Foundation. The survey of 2,200 people in the … Continue reading

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▶ Is Futurama the Best Argument Against Transhumanism? | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios – YouTube

▶ Is Futurama the Best Argument Against Transhumanism? | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios – YouTube.

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Naomi Klein: How science is telling us all to revolt

In December 2012, a pink-haired complex systems researcher named Brad Werner made his way through the throng of 24,000 earth and space scientists at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, held annually in San Francisco. This year’s conference … Continue reading

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Science’s rightful place is in service of society | Dan Sarewitz

Science policy must concentrate less on how much money is spent, and more on how to translate investments into public good via Science’s rightful place is in service of society : Nature News & Comment.

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A Wizard of Oz Moment for the Web: Pull back the Curtains

Lightbeam, a download produced by Mozilla, the US free software community behind the popular Firefox browser, claims to be a “watershed” moment in the battle for web transparency. Everyone who browses the Internet leaves a digital trail used by advertisers … Continue reading

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The History, Honor, and Travail of the Nobel

Mark Jackson takes a look at the prize against which most other prizes are measured and how sometimes, winning the great honor precedes the slowing down of an innovative research career. Via The Not-So Noble Past of the Nobel Prize http://theconversation.com/the-not-so-noble-past-of-the-nobel-prizes-18939

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Academic Sustainability

The academy may be filled with leftists–so we are told–but it has yet to apply its Marxist interpretive skills to its own situation. For the academy suffers from epistemic overproduction. We can expect a crash. This overproduction shows itself both … Continue reading

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Nigel Warburton’s negative vision of what philosophy isn’t | jbrittholbrook

Does not resisting impact requirements mean you’re not a real philosopher? Nigel Warburton’s negative vision of what philosophy isn’t | jbrittholbrook.  

Posted in Accountability, Broader Impacts, CSID Publications, Future of the University, institutionalizing interdisciplinarity, Metrics, NSF, Philosophy & Politics, Public Philosophizing, Science and technology ramifications, STEM Policy, Transdisciplinarity | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What Dancy’s Late Late Show appearance has to say about the philosopher’s disappearance | Andrew Taggart

Dr. Andrew J. Taggart, Philosophical Counselor, considers the role of the public philosopher and gives a shout out to our efforts here at CSID. On April 1, 2010, the professional philosopher Jonathan Dancy, who happens to be the father-in-law of … Continue reading

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Exchange on Holbrook and Briggle’s “Knowing and Acting”, Briggle, Fuller, Holbrook and Lipinska « Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective

Exchange on Holbrook and Briggle’s “Knowing and Acting”, Briggle, Fuller, Holbrook and Lipinska « Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective.

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Mothers of Jews who like bacon: Where Facebook meets identity politics

Tom Scott did something extraordinary last week: he typed in searches on Facebook’s new Graph Search feature and posted images of the results on his tumblr, called ActualFacebookGraphSearches. … which sounds quite un-extraordinary. Except that Scott – something of an … Continue reading

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Bieberians at the Gate? | Inside Higher Ed

Essay on the idea that non-philosophers should judge philosophers | Inside Higher Ed. Comments on this piece are most welcome!

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Science Progress publicizes study of beliefs about hydraulic fracturing for natural gas

http://scienceprogress.org/2012/12/technology-and-society-fracking-ideology/ As a follow up to the Science Progress article I co-authored with Dr. Adam Briggle earlier this July, we have written another short piece that again explains the subject of our study, Technology and Society: Fracking Ideology, and requests reader participation. … Continue reading

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After Kyoto: Special Issue of NATURE

On 1 January 2013, the world can go back to emitting greenhouse gases with abandon. The pollution-reduction commitments that nations made as part of the Kyoto Protocol will expire, leaving the planet without any international climate regulation and uncertain prospects … Continue reading

Posted in Climate Change, Degrowth Economics, Environmental policy, Globalization, Philosophy & Politics, Public Philosophizing, Science and technology ramifications, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security, TechnoScience & Technoscientism | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The looming spectre of differential tuition

Someone can do the relatively simple accounting and see that the humanities–”majors without an immediate job payoff”–are already subsidizing those which have a “job payoff.” In fact, this was already done at few institutions, including UCLA. But this is a … Continue reading

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More Scientists-Statesmen?

Only a handful of physicists have reached the halls of Congress. Bill Foster, a particle physicist and businessman just elected as a Democrat to the House of Representatives from Illinois’s newly drawn 11th district, wants this situation to change. The … Continue reading

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*Fracking survey* — Make sure your beliefs about hydraulic fracturing for natural gas are counted!

Technology and Society: Fracking Ideology A survey of beliefs about hydraulic fracturing for natural gas Dear energy consumers, Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” for natural gas plays an important role in the debate about our energy future. As an energy consumer, … Continue reading

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Denton Drilling: Draft ordinance needs overhaul

Last night, about forty dedicated citizens gathered to review the draft gas drilling ordinance and generate ideas for how to improve it. There was one clear take home message: The draft ordinance is inadequate. It gets an F. We need … Continue reading

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Study shows gender bias in science is real… Scientific American Blog Network

Whenever the subject of women in science comes up, there are people fiercely committed to the idea that sexism does not exist. They will point to everything and anything else to explain differences while becoming angry and condescending if you … Continue reading

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