Condensed concepts

We are surrounded by scientific knowledge and have become so used to it that we often take science for granted. We may rarely reflect on the...

I am interested in analogues between cognitive science and artificial intelligence. Emergent phenomena occur in both, there have been some f...

Emergence is a concept relevant to a wide range of scientific disciplines, from physics to sociology. Emergence is also at the heart of some...

 This post takes off from the following Einstein quotes. "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensib...

 One of the biggest questions in biology is, What is the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes? In different words, how does a speci...

The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution , which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental ski...

 Where is condensed matter physics heading? Does it have a bright future? What are the big questions the field aims to (and might actually) ...

Most of the questions are inter-related. Most have been discussed in earlier posts. How do we tune physical properties (e.g. hysteresis wi...

I have a friend who works in a small college that offers Masters degrees in the humanities. In one program each student must do a thesis on ...

One of the biggest problems in theoretical physics is to explain why the cosmological constant has the value that it does. There are two as...

Different qualities are used to describe and characterise societies: civil, fair, intolerant, racist, corrupt, free,  …. Two big questions...

Here are some biting critiques of some of the "best" research at the "best" universities, by several distinguished schol...

What are the big questions that people are (or should be) wrestling within universities? What are the grand intellectual challenges, partic...

Through a nice blog post by Anshul Kogar, I became aware of a beautiful Physics Today Reference Frame (just 2 pages!) from 1998 by Frank...