Yesterday afternoon I found myself sprawled on the couch, eyes half open, the concepts of dot product, cross product, projection and determinant swimming around in my head. It’s worth noting here both that I studied up through a MS in math and that I’m no longer a mathematician professionally. I came upon these concepts idly … More Free Mathing, like Free Writing
The natural philosopher Francis Bacon is well-known (among historians of science…) for his Novum Organon that rejected much of Aristotle’s theoretical method (the Organon) and sought to establish methods of investigation that intimately bound empiricism and abstract reasoning. In the blitz history of science given in science classes, he’s one of the people cited as … More Scientific methods, not method: going back to the sources for Francis Bacon
Maria Popova is a thought-hero of mine. She’s not an idol—rather, at my best thinking self I try to be her apprentice. No, we’ve never met. And yet, as is manifest in her writing on years of written correspondence between women who admire each other intimately, we can seem to ourselves to know a soul … More Maria Popova: A Dear Mentor I’ve Never Met
Some of my most memorable, and thus powerful, learning experiences in languages and humanities have come from imitation. In a college literature class on the English Metaphysical Poets, I had the opportunity to write a poem imitating John Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” and reflect on my process, defending how it was an imitation, instead … More To create, imitate
“Proportions alternate between infinitesimal and astronomical. The signals are infinitesimal. The sources are astronomical. The sensitivities are infinitesimal. The rewards are astronomical. The human ambition to understand the universe is merely epic, and astronomical trumps epic.” – Janna Levin in Black Hole Blues My father, the wonder-full layman, and I, the one who broke … More Scholar, would you tell me a story?
