Big IdeasBig IdeasPosts on philosophy, mathematics, culture etc for a general audience. We organise intelligent and fun events in pubs in central London and blog here the rest of the time. Articles
Topology 13: Connectedness
2008-02-17 14:36:00 We continue our look at topological properties with an examination of connectedness. We’ll use this property to prove the most important theorem we’ve met so far. More About: Maths
Knowledge, Belief and Justification Closure
2008-02-15 08:00:00 Johnny Dee has recently been writing about “justification closure“, which despite its technical-sounding name is a seemingly obvious thing that turns out to present problems (or seeming problems) under certain circumstances. More About: Knowledge , Closure , Justification , Belief , Epistemology
Have Your Say, Their Way
2008-02-11 07:19:00 Recently strictlytrue made an observation about “interactivity” and the media. I think it’s particularly apposite in relation to the coverage of a recent speech by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams referring to the adoption of Sharia law in the UK. More About: Politics , Values
Variants on the Wason Selection Task
2008-02-08 08:07:00 The Wason Selection Task is a fairly well-known puzzle that tests whether or not you have an intuitive grasp of the thing logicians call the material conditional. It turns out that most people who aren’t logicians don’t. Here it is, along with some (so far as I know) original variants. More About: Critical thinking , Logic
Popular Philosophy vs Popular Science
2008-02-02 19:40:00 Reading a recent Leiter Report post on the kind of philosophy that gets media coverage might lead one to wonder what kind of popular philosophy we want, if any at all, and what good or harm popularisation does for a discipline. More About: Philosophy , Science , Popular , Values
History and National Identity
2008-02-01 11:41:00 Recently the nature and practice of history, heritage and identity have all featured as Big Ideas topics of discussion. Jon E Wilson's article in this month's Prospect brings all of these themes together in an insightful piece on the attempt to find a British national story. More About: National , History , Identity
Heath Bunting: Mapping the System
2008-01-30 07:55:00 Last Saturday a small group of Big I-related folks participated in Status Walk, a part of an ongoing project by artist Heath Bunting. The event gave us a glimpse into a large and ambitious project that asks questions about identity, the state and the function of art itself. More About: System , Mapping
Big Ideas Event: Who Needs Copyright? on 26 February 2008
2008-01-27 13:45:00 The next Big Ideas event will be on Tuesday 26th February in the upstairs room of the Wheatsheaf pub in Fitzrovia. Doors open at 7:30 and we’ll kick off at 8. More About: Events , Event , Copyright , February 2008
Topology 12: Triangulability and Orientability
2008-01-26 13:11:00 For the remaining instalments of this mini-series, we turn our attention to some further properties of a space that are topological — that is, properties that don’t change under homeomorphisms. More About: Maths
The Cultural Memory Hole
2008-01-24 01:04:00 It?s always a pleasure to explain to someone about Joey Deacon. Not only because you get to do that thing with your arms at the end like some Jupitus-a-like in a low-rent I love… clip show, but also because it seems astounding that a cultural experience More About: Music , Memory , Hole , Cultural
History and heritage
2008-01-23 19:24:00 Last night's Big Ideas at the Wheatsheaf covered the question, "Is Heritage History ?" In the fact the question was just a jumping-off point the practice of history, the value of the concept of heritage and how this all relates to identity.
ELQs, Funding and Narratives About Education
2008-01-19 08:34:00 Government funding for ELQs — essentially, second degrees — is being redistributed. These cuts are likely to make “lifelong learning” even more difficult for most of us than it is already, but there’s no simple answer to how funding ought to be distributed. More About: Politics , Education , Funding , Values
Mr Kingham?s Marvellous Ackroydian Walking Tour
2008-01-16 12:40:00 In March, Robert Kingham will be repeating his celebrated walking tour of (roughly) the Clerkenwell and Holborn areas of London. The tour is structured around readings from Peter Ackroyd’s London: the Biography and visits to many fine and interesting public houses. More About: Events , Tour , Walking
Antisociality and The Ethics of the iPod
2008-01-15 19:43:00 A recent post on Julian Baggini’s blog considers the ethics of the iPod, and comes close to asking whether being antisocial is unethical (that’s certainly one of the points the comments thread picks up). So, is it? More About: Ipod , Ethics , Values
When One Thing Is Less Identical Than The Rest
2008-01-13 22:37:00 Earlier today I pulled three socks out of my sock drawer. “They all look identical”, I thought, and was about to discard an arbitrary one when another thought crossed my mind. “No, wait, that one’s not as identical as the others”. More About: Rest , Critical thinking , Thing , Logic
Big Ideas Event: Is Heritage History? on 22 January
2008-01-10 10:36:00 Next Big Ideas event will be on Tuesday January 22nd. The location will be, as usual, the upstairs room of the Wheatsheaf pub. More About: Events , Event , History , Heritage
Mathematical Beauty and the K4 Crystal
2008-01-07 17:38:00 In geek news today we came across Toshikazu Sunada's paper on something called the K4 Crystal , and his claim that it "looks no less beautiful than the diamond". In this Sunada is consciously following in a very long aesthetic tradition. More About: Beauty
Atomism, Reductionism and Fundamental Particles
2008-01-04 18:24:00 A few weeks ago Bryan Norwood of Movement of Existence put his finger on something that’s been bothering me for a while: the metaphysical assumption that little things are better than than big things. More About: Science , Metaphysics , Fundamental , Amen , Dame
How Much Do You Love Me?
2007-12-29 12:24:00 There are some questions that ask for a quantitative answer — an amount — even though no precise answer is possible even in principle. The question of the title invites responses such as “a lot”, “somewhat”, “hardly at all” and even “twice as much as my husband” (ahem). More About: Love , Critical thinking , Logic
Sam Shuster?s Hormonal Unicycling Hack
2007-12-21 15:10:00 In other news today, a “study” by unicycling Professor Sam Shuster that argues that men are agressive and funny while women are nurturing. It’s about their hormones, you see? Now that’s proper science. More About: Science , Hack , Values , Mona
Harriet Harman on Paying For It
2007-12-21 08:54:00 So, yesterday Labour MP Harriet Harman announced she’d like to make paying for sex a criminal act as a way to combat people trafficking. This is of course a fantastic idea. More About: Politics , Critical thinking , Arma
Should Ethics Be Concerned With Intentions?
2007-12-19 08:18:00 We ask because Show Me The Argument has recently had a thread about ethically evaluating intentions. Imagine two people could act in exactly the same way, but one with a bad intention and the other a good one; the difficulty is in saying that the former person did wrong while the latter didn’t. More About: Ethics , Concerned , Consciousness
Leibniz?s Law in Max Black?s Two-Sphere Universe
2007-12-17 09:04:00 I came across the following quasi-logical puzzle the other day while looking for something else. It’s about identity and, specifically, the rule about the “identity of indiscernibles” known as Leibniz’s Law. More About: Universe , Sphere , Black , Critical thinking , Logic
Christmas Social Reminder
2007-12-16 18:31:00 Just a reminder that we'll be hosting the 2007 Big Ideas Christmas Social at the Wheatsheaf on Tuesday night. All welcome. See here for the details. More About: Events , Reminder , Remi
Two Daft But Amusing Kant Videos
2007-12-14 19:13:00 Two! Count ‘em! More About: Videos , Daft , Amusing
Topology 11: Connected Sums and Polygonal Presentations
2007-12-12 22:40:00 In the previous instalment we saw how to make surfaces using quotient maps that identify the edges of a square. In this one we’ll expand our repertoire by considering “connected sums” of surfaces, and we’ll see how to manipulate polygonal presentations to prove non-obvious facts about the surfaces they represent. More About: Presentations , Connected , Resent
Choosing Freely and Free Will
2007-12-10 08:59:00 Peter at On Philosophy recently posted some thoughts on choice-making in a way that might make an interesting and, I think, quite novel argument against the idea of free will. More About: Free , Consciousness , Values , Free will
At The World Question Centre
2007-12-09 15:10:00 Two-culture-uniting organisation Edge has been posing a simple question every two years since 1998 and receiving answers and comments from a battery of eminent people. Of course, the real fun is coming up with your own answers. More About: World , Question , The World , Centre
Karlheinz Stockhausen Dies
More articles from this author:2007-12-07 22:13:00 Today German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen died at the age of 79. In a half-century of revisionism in the classical music world, Stockhausen remained a joyful experimenter in sound whose infectious excitement seemed to make accessible the most superficially “difficult” of music. More About: Dies 1, 2, 3 |
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