Souvenirs for scientists

I love these Matryoshka dolls: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Sagan and Hawking

Matryoshka dolls are great ornaments – and kids, especially the very young ones, love to play with them. I have been aware that the whole idea of these traditional dolls has been extended to produce sets of politicians, for example, as souvenirs. However, this is the first set I have seen of scientists.

A great idea – along the lines of standing on the shoulders of giants. Just the thing for a scientist’s desk.

Now, I wonders of there are sets for biologists,chemists, mathematicians, . . .

Thanks to Rachana Bhatawdekar  @astrogeek03

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Thanks also to Darcy who hunted down the original source. These dolls were constructed by Nate Bellegarde as a gift for his girlfriend who was majoring in astronomy. He talks about it on his post Astronomatryoshkas

From “Grand Design” to “On Being”

In recent months Stephen Hawking has been “fair game” for theologians, philosophers of religion and even some philosophers of science. Basically because of pre-publication publicity around his book (with co-author Leonard Mlodinow)  The Grand Design . I suggested this attention will soon switch to Peter Atkins when his new book “On Being: A Scientist’s Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence“ becomes available over the next few months (see On being philosophical about science). Like The Grand Design, Atkins’ book will be unpalatable to theologians and “philosophers of religion. It may also brush some philosophers up the wrong way.

To clear the decks, as it were, for the coming theological onslaught I am responding here to some of the criticisms made of The Grand Design, and Stephen Hawking. Actually, I am sure some of the future flack over Atkins’ book will concentrate on similar issues.

Overall, I think The Grand Design is a very readable book providing a brief overview of current ideas about the origin of the unvierse. It also gives a history of science and the philosophy of science. Don’t expect any details (it’s only 180 pages long) but it is certainly thought provoking. And, yeah, what an inappropriate title – presumably chosen for publicity reasons.

But what about the criticisms of the book? These are mainly around a few issues. Often really just around quotes from the book used for publicity purposes. Inevitably such criticisms lack context. Here are my comments on them:

Where did we come from?

Anyone interested in this question (and aren’t most of us) could not do better than watch the videos coming out of the Origins symposium. With a mission statement of “Exploring Questions at the Edge of Knowledge: From the Universe to Humanity” this has got to be fascinating.

Add to this the high calibre of the participants. These include names like Lawrence Krauss, Steven Weinberg, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Andrei Linde, Richard Dawkins, Alan Guth, David Gross, Alex Vilenkin, Peter Ward, Steven Pinker, VS Ramachandran, Paul Davies, Patricia Churchland, AC Grayling, J. Craig Venter, Frank Wilczek, and many more.

The Symposium Sessions include:

1. The Universe, Multiverse, Physical Laws
2. The Galaxies, Planets, Life
3. Origin of species, Evolution, Human Origins
4. Consciousness, Complex Cognition, Language to Culture, Cooperation, Morality and Institutions.

The Science Network is currently uploading videos – pretty efficient seeing the Symposium occurred over April 3 – 6. Currently five videos are online (introductions and panel on “How Far Can we go Back?”)

I know what I will be watching over the next week or so.

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