Postby Technomancer » Wed Sep 01, 2004 9:45 am
"The Frontiers of Complexity" by Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield. Essentially the book is about the new field of compexity and emergent systems in which complex behaviour emerges from the application of a few simple rules. This has applications in a variety of fields including chemistry, biology, and engineering.
The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes. Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry—is not even a "subject"—but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning.
Neil Postman
(The End of Education)
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge
Isaac Aasimov