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When is something English?
2008-06-01 13:29:00
What criteria apply to an institution or individual to make them English ? Does it involve a love of tea and fair play, an general feeling that Scots’ grievances are largely baseless or just English parentage? Is it ever possible to nail this stuff down?
More About: Football , Ethics , Values , Identity

The 70th Philosophers? Carnival
2008-05-31 10:36:00
Welcome to the 70th edition of the Philosophers ' Carnival , a fortnightly round-up of quality philosophical posts from the blogs of the world. It seems to have been a busy two weeks, so hopefully there's something here for everyone; apologies to those who didn't make it in.

Are Computer Games Art?
2008-05-30 08:52:00
Columnist Charlie Brooker recently stirred up this familiar hornets' nest by writing a piece about censorship of computer games, inspiring a slew of comments comparing the medium to films and novels. Are modern computer games a valid art form, and should Grand Theft Auto IV be treated just like a painting or a symphony?
More About: Games , Computer , Computer Games

Group Theory 4: Symmetries
2008-05-29 08:37:00
In the previous instalment we saw some very "mathematical" examples of groups, but group theory also has an important geometrical aspect. We'll take a look at that before we get into the more abstract material of group theory proper.
More About: Theory , Group , Maths

Big Ideas Event: What Can We Do About Vagueness?
2008-05-28 09:56:00
If we study logic, we begin by learning that truth is a black or white matter. In particular we know that either a given claim is true or it isn't; it can't be both and it can't be neither.
More About: Ideas , Events , Event

Supertasks, Paradox and Impossibility
2008-05-24 17:46:00
I was reminded of supertasks the other day and thought they’re interesting enough for a post, particularly as an argument that they’re impossible uses a similar tactic to some arguments against time travel and other speculative activities. (more…)
More About: Paradox

We’re Hosting the 2 June Philosophers’ Carnival
2008-05-19 08:48:00
As regular readers will know, we’re big fans of blog carnivals, which offer a convenient way to keep up with a broad spectrum of blogs on specialist subjects. The next Philosophers ’ Carnival will be hosted here at Big Ideas. (more…)
More About: Hosting , June

iTunes, CoverFlow and the Myth of the Real
2008-05-16 15:39:00
Many of you now know I’m a music geek, to the extent that my iPod is one of my favourite inorganic things. But I’ve had a vague sense that something was wrong ever since I embraced the MP3 medium some years ago. I think iTunes, of all things, finally showed me why. I should say that as a point of principle I can’t stand iTunes. It secretly makes decisions for you. It connects to the internet without asking (or tries to, anyway). By default, it owns your CD/DVD drive, whether you ask it to or not. It doesn’t save your tags or cover art to the MP3 files, meaning you have to re-tag repeatedly. Fundamentally, I don’t trust it to do anything other that move my MP3s from my disk drive onto my iPod. But it has one thing. It has CoverFlow. And CoverFlow has something slightly magical about it. Let’s be clear here: CoverFlow is a bone-simple idea. With each album in your MP3 collection you associate a cover, by downloading it from iTunes (if iTunes doesn&r...
More About: Itunes , Real , Myth

How to Grasp Power: Notes From the Event
2008-05-13 15:05:00
On 29 April 2008, Danny Rye led a Big Ideas event on the idea of “power”. These are his notes, with links to the books he referred to on the night.
More About: Politics , Power , Events , Event , Notes

Group Theory 3: Some Groups from Arithmetic
2008-05-09 22:24:00
Now we have the formal definition of a group, we'll look at some first examples and reveal their group structure. This will offer good practice in using the definition, so ideally you should read each example and try to prove for yourself that it has the required properties before moving on.
More About: Theory , Group , Groups , Maths

Big Ideas Event: May ?68 Special
2008-05-07 08:01:00
May's Big Ideas event will be an anarchic May '68 special, invoking the spirit of Woodstock and the Sorbonne and casting aside our usual format for a looser, more open-ended approach in which we might cover anything: postmodernism, pop music, radicalism, art, libertarianism, situationism, psychogeography, deconstruction, the swinging sixties, skepticism, cynicism and the whole modern cultural and political landscape.
More About: Events , Event , Special

Group Theory 2: Definitions
2008-04-30 08:42:00
OK, for many readers this is probably the painful part of any of our posts about mathematical subjects but it can’t be avoided: the definitions. The spirit of this mini-series is fairly informal, but we need to get a sense of what a group is before we can get anywhere at all.
More About: Theory , Definitions , Group , Maths

How Not To Be Wrong About The Economy
2008-04-26 15:51:00
Being a media pundit is a job that involves an odd relationship with data, the truth and, of course, most experts' stock in trade: the future. In this world, it seems to me, being right is one thing and not being wrong is another.
More About: Economy , Wrong , Critical thinking

Group Theory 1: First Examples
2008-04-23 08:47:00
“Group theory” is the name of a rich and deep field of mathematics. Group theorists study objects called “groups” in the way zoologists study animals. Groups turn up in virtually all fields of mathematics and in many other disciplines, and in this mini-series we’ll introduce the basic ideas involved.
More About: Theory , Examples , Maths

s/Garfield/ Heidegger/g
2008-04-19 14:13:00
I just discovered Garfield Minus Garfield, a blog whose simple idea is to remove Garfield, and the things he says, from Garfield comic strips, leaving his owner, John Arbuckle, seeming to mutter disjointedly to himself. There's a rich existential seam running through much of it, but this recent one is straight out of Heidegger ..
More About: Metaphysics , Philosophers

Gender in the Music Classroom
2008-04-11 12:55:00
I promised myself I wouldn't cover another of these slow-news-day stories about gender differences for a while, but this one is a bit different in that it's not coming from a sociobiologist's perspective and actually appears to be a decent piece of research.
More About: Politics , Music , Gender , The Music

The Abel Prize, and a New Mini-Series
2008-04-10 20:05:00
It’s been a while, but to celebrate the awarding of the 2008 Abel Prize to John Thompson and Jacques Tits we’ve decided to run an introductory series on the theory of groups. As usual with our mini-series we won’t assume you have any previous mathematical knowledge (beyond basic numeracy), so this will hopefully be a ...
More About: Series , Mini , Maths

Where Meaning Is
2008-04-08 08:54:00
We just learned, via the blog of the Berlin-based research institute Phlox, about an odd example due to logical positivist Moritz Schlick illustrating where meaning resides in a language. To paraphrase, take a chair and define 26 different positions it can occupy in a room, including orientations (so which way it's facing and which way up it is are significant). Assign each of these a latter of the alphabet...
More About: Language , Meaning , Philosophers

Big Ideas Nominated Cool Math Site Of the Week
2008-04-06 17:25:00
We're honoured to have been the Canadian Math ematical Society's "Cool Math Site of the Week " and added to their braid of links (the name, I'm thinking, is a pun on terms from category theory and topology).
More About: Ideas

Secularism, Absolutism and the Far Right
2008-04-06 11:58:00
Terry Sanderson’s latest missive on the National Secular Society’s web site states that “‘Aggressive secularists’ must start to live up to their name”. It’s a brief piece but it makes a useful jumping-off point to discuss the current stance of self-styled “rationalist” groups.
More About: Politics , Secularism , Values , Absolutism

Big Ideas Event: How To Grasp Power (A Brief Guide) on 29 April 2008
2008-04-04 20:29:00
We hear and see the word power in a political and social context almost every day. Politicians come into power, hold power and lose it. People are seen as powerful by virtue of a perceived ability to get other people to do what they want. But what is power really and how does it work? Can it be identified and described? Or is it something altogether more hidden and nebulous? (more…)
More About: Ideas , Power , Event , April , Guide

So What Did Happen to Classical Music?
2008-03-25 07:31:00
Here’s a write-up of my notes from our March 2008 event on classical music. I was particularly interested in a couple of things: firstly the standard narrative about how classical music changed in the mid-20th century, and secondly the general question of making value judgements about something like music.
More About: Music , Events , Classical

Visual Methods - Solutions
2008-03-14 08:46:00
Following my post about visual methods from a few weeks ago, here are some solutions to the puzzles. If you haven’t already, you might like to read the original post and try them for yourself before reading on.
More About: Visual , Methods , Solutions , Maths

Classical Music Timeline
2008-03-13 09:08:00
To complement our upcoming event on classical music, we've created a timeline of classical music from the early Renaissance to the present.
More About: Music , Classical , Timeline

Big Ideas Event: What Happened to Classical Music? on 25 March 2008
2008-03-07 15:41:00
Everybody knows something about classical music, which was made by great composers like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms. But are there any classical composers alive today? Are they as good as those famous names from past centuries, or do they just make obscure, incomprehensible sounds? Did the classical tradition end after the 19th century?
More About: Ideas , Music , Events , Event , Classical

The Art and Science of Mathematics
2008-03-06 07:47:00
A recent Big Ideas podcast asked whether mathematics is an art or a science. Here's a write-up of some of my thoughts on the subject, including some things I'd have liked to say at the time but didn't get around to.
More About: Science , Mathematics

Three Little Truth Value Paradoxes
2008-03-02 16:40:00
The “truth value” of a proposition is just whether it’s true or not. The truth value of “2+2 is 4″ is true, and the truth value of “2+3 is 6″ is false. The truth value of “Hilary Clinton will be the 44th president of the United States” is currently unknown;
More About: Truth , Critical thinking , Logic , Paradoxes

Mueller-Lyer and Inconsistent Beliefs
2008-02-25 11:35:00
Regular readers may know that we enjoy optical illusions, and I think Roy Sorensen, whose Vagueness and Contradiction I’ve been enjoying lately, may have put his finger on why.
More About: Beliefs , Critical thinking , Mueller , Epistemology

Visual Methods
2008-02-21 19:23:00
A well-constructed drawing can help to understand or stimulate a mathematical idea. The following puzzles explore some of the visual techniques that can be employed.
More About: Visual , Methods , Maths

Latest podcast - Mathematics: Art or Science?
2008-02-17 23:16:00
Last Tuesday some Big Ideas regulars met at The Crosse Keys to discuss whether maths is an art or a science. It’s an intentionally awkward question
More About: Science , Mathematics , Podcasts , Podcast