Author: Scarlet Holvenstot (Page 2 of 2)

Lecture October 24.

October 30, 2017 / / 0 Comments

This week we had a lecture from Professor Loreto on the adjacent possible. He discussed how the new can enter our lives. I found the games that Professor Loreto had us play very interesting. We played the Shannon Game from 1951 where you guess letters based on your knowledge of language. Loreto said that it is possible to use an equation to know how much you are going to guess. Even if you know the language that you are guessing letters from there are so many possibilities that come after every word. One must rely on the knowledge of the previous character. Apparently, one can use similar equations for gambling. I was surprised when Professor Loreto said that the longer you play roulette the more likely you will loose all your money and the same applies to guessing letters.

We talked a lot about new innovation, new innovations in biology, technology, and social systems. Innovation comes from serendipity, exaptation, trial and error, and mutation/fixation. Innovations may be ahead of their time, but they may be a success.

We discussed the difference between what is Actual – what you know all already know and what is Possible- what is possible. We did an exercise where we imagined what could happen in 24 hours. We came to the conclusion that you can’t even imagine what could happen.

In many cases we look at the future with the eyes of the past. However, this doesn’t always work. For example when we look at the history of weather prediction, they used to look at the weather from the past years and predicted the weather based on patterns. For example one may infer that tomorrow will be identical to tomorrow 100 years ago. Now we predict weather using satellites. In addition, we discussed the difference between Modeling vs. Inference. Inference is when one is looking at the past.

Professor Loreto talked about the new Volvo self-driving cars. He discussed how they can’t recognize kangaroos. He used this example to bring up the questions: Can we grasp how the new enter our lives? Can we provide a mathematical framework for innovation dynamics?

Loreto brought his lecture back to talking about language. We discussed the frequency of words in natural texts and Zipf’s law frequency rank plot. He asked us, how can you find innovation in natural texts? One can measure how many new words.

According to Heaps’ law in text the rate of innovation decreases over time, therefore it is tougher and tougher to introduce new words in the text. One can conclude that innovation becomes more difficult overtime. If innovation becomes more difficult over time how can we explain that over the past 100 years innovation has been exploding? This may be because the number of species has also been exploding. However, If you look at twitter and Wikipedia the innovation rate is going down over time, therefore innovation is getting tougher.

Loreto asked us, Can we use math to guess innovation rates? We looked at the species sampling problems. How many species are there in the population including unseen species? Do you know how much time it would take to find new species? This is very complicated. Can we conceive experiments to observe human innovations? We can conceive experiments to observe human creativity at works.People used to invent to functions that were useful. We can look at the way in which people can come up with new ideas. Overall the lecture was very intriguing, I found my self lost in certain moments but remained fascinated by the idea of the New.

 

October 10th 2017

October 19, 2017 / / 0 Comments

On October 10th the origins lecture took place in the museum. We first learned about the origins of the museum. In the 1950s/60s Colby was gifted American + Maine based art. A lot of the art is hung in the museum and also around campus. The philosophy behind hanging art around campus is that good citizens come from looking at American art.

We looked at specific pieces of art that spoke to the theme of origins. I looked specifically at the “Study on the origin of species (after Darwin) 2012” created with ink and watercolor on book page. The book pages had information about the differences in offspring, the origins of the species and differences in animals from different places. There are marks that overlay the book pages. The figures appear to be tree branches. Perhaps the branches signify branches and threads and connections.

Another piece that we looked at was a collection of foreign money. Perhaps this piece represents money as the source of evil. Most of the money was from territories that did not treat their people well. We also brought up the interesting relationship between art and business. For this piece the artist obviously received money for his work, which can be constituted as part of the ugly side of art.

Gary Green’s “Prairies in the south” were also on display. Gary took pictures of a controlled burn. His work addresses mans involvement in resetting the origins of the landscape. His work makes the viewer think about human intervention and question if mans involvement actually helps the ecosystem.

Terry Winter’s “ORA” was also very interesting. One could interpret this piece of art in many different ways. Some may see the federalization of an egg. Some may see flowers and pollen. Regardless, one can conclude that the piece speaks to the origins of plants and the origins of people.

One of the most controversial pieces that we looked at was the “Colored Vases” 2006-08. Ai Weiwei created this work by buying ancient vases dating all the way back to 5000 BC. He then pained the ancient vases very bright colors including pink, blue and yellow. This piece makes the viewer question the origins of these vases and question whether or not it is offensive to take something so old and just paint over it. One may argue that the artist is reusing these objects and is creating new art. One may argue that the artist is covering up the authenticities of the object so that people are unable to track the vases origins. One interesting point of the conversation we had was about the value we place on these old objects. We wondered why seem more concerned with these ancient objects and their destiny then we do with human lives.

Overall the museum was very fascinating. I liked hearing about the origins of the museum and learning about pieces in the museum that represent the theme, origins. I think people can gain a lot when thinking about origins by looking art.

Origin October 3rd.

October 10, 2017 / / 0 Comments

This week our origins lecture discussed the Royal Society and the Origins of the novel. The discussion started with questioning the term “Liberal Arts”. The original phrase was “The liberal arts and sciences”. Why did we cut of the term “sciences”? What does Liberal Arts mean? Where do the words Liberal Arts come from? Our speaker brought up his concern for the separation in buildings on a Liberal Arts campus. Why are the sciences and the humanities so clearly divided? He argued that the sciences and the arts and humanities belong together. He made the point that Liberal Arts ill be in charge of the digital world and it is very important that the humanities and the sciences work together.

Francis Bacon was part of the advancement of learning in 1605. Bacon expressed concern for the division in knowledge. He believed that if knowledge is separated it does not lead to anything good.

The Royal Society was founded in 1660 as a society for experimental science. The Royal Society still exists today Some of the members included Robert Boyle, a chemist, Robert Hooke, involved with the science of microscopy and John Wilkins, natural theologian. Other members included Christopher Wren, architect, Issac Newton, a specialist in math and physics. There was one woman who was involved. Margaret Carendish was invited to the 1667 meeting, but she was not allowed to join. It wasn’t until 1945 that the first female was invited. The motto of the Royal Society was “nullius in verba”, which translates as “take nobody’s word for it”. The Royal Society had a distrust of words. The Royal society not only distrusted words but they also did not trust the novel or fiction. The first novel origin date is debated. Perhaps it could have been in 1666 or as late at 1719.

What is the relationship between the Royal Society and the novel? Ian Watt lead to the rise of the novel. When people began reading the novel there was a huge expansion of the reading public. Other genres like the epic and romance were not for all readers. The novel differed because it depicted domestic life. The novel addressed things like possibility and probability, and social and societal individuals. The novels were finally about regular people, the day-to-day and acted as an instruction guide for readers so that they could learn how to do the right thing. The novel helped enforce morals; this lead to the rise in ideals regarding the control of young women, nationalists, maintaining class hierarchies.

I was a bit confused by the professor’s argument towards the end. Was he arguing for the scientific novel about real people? Was he arguing for “novelistic science”, the novel as a data narrative? Was his argument that the royal society fed the novel? I found that the biggest take away was that knowledge from different fields should be combined and presented together. I think it could be very beneficial if the humanities and the arts and sciences worked together to educate people.

 

Origin and Evolution of the Earth

October 2, 2017 / / 0 Comments

On September 26, 2017 our class discussed the origin and evolution of the earth. The earth is very special because we have water, a habitable climate and complex life. Why does the earth have all these features? Why is there no life like ours found in our solar system? One might find microbial life; however, there is no complex life. According to the big bang theory, 14 billion year ago the universe expanded exploding rapidly at first and then slowed down. After 4 million years stars start to form; however, most of the universe is dark energy. Most of the energy is not atomic matter. 4% of the universe is made up of atoms. How did things like hydrogen and oxygen come to be? Clouds collapsing form these elements. Inside the stars things like hydrogen and helium are made. The sun was a cloud that stopped collapsing. In 10 billion years sun will burn out. If a star doesn’t burn for a long time there is no complex life. Red super giant stars are so big that when they collapse they make elements all at once because they are so hot. However, the stars stop at iron, because the other elements are to heavy. The heavier elements are made in process called neutron capture. When the super red giant collapses clouds of dust filled with elements. Everything in you was made inside of a star. We are all just made out of stardust. How do planets form from these big giant stars? How do you make a planet out of dust? The small particles stick to each other. Gravity isn’t strong enough at first to bring these particles together. Overtime the particles start to stick together. When there isn’t enough stickiness the particles bounce off of each other. How was planet earth formed? The earth is 4.6 billion years old. How was the moon formed? Why do we have the moon? Apparently a mars size planet whacked the earth. This collision caused material to splatter off. Mantle material creates the moon.Where did water on earth come from? The most likely theory is that the ocean came e out of the earth. Perhaps it was frozen? Or perhaps the earth sweats out the water. Although it seems like the earth has a ton of water, the water content of the earth is a tiny .02% of its mass. In bulk the earth is very dry. What about the earth’s atmosphere? How could it be that the atmosphere is at just the right temperature that water can condense out? What about plate tectonics? Why are there only plates on earth? We don’t know when plate tectonics started. It is magnificent miracle that the earth exists, that it has such complex life and it has all of these things that maintains complex life such as water and an atmosphere. One can try their best to discover how these things came about; however, the truth is that no one will ever know how all these things came about. It is magical, that’s for sure.

 

 

The Universe and the Big Bang Theory

September 24, 2017 / / 0 Comments

In the lecture on September 19th we discussed the big bang theory and the origin of the universe. The origin of the universe has been a big debate for decades. How did we get here? What came first? Does god play a role in the creation of the universe? Is the universe still expanding? These are all question that people have and will continue to ponder.

There are plenty of myths about how the universe and the earth were created.

One of the most popular theories about how the universe came to be is the big bang theory. In the 1920s Hubble made the observation that all of the galaxies near our own are moving away from us. Hubble further observed that when objects are moving away from us the process makes red light. The redshift of light is evidence that the universe is expanding. It is hard to grapple with an expanding universe. How big is it? Will it continue to grow forever? How does the earth compare to the always-expanding universe?

Hubble’s claim that the universe is always expanding was a new idea in the early 20th century. Up until then many believed that the universe was unchanging. Many thought that if the universe was infinite then you should be able to see light in all directions. This theory makes a lot of sense to me. If the universe was infinite then it would make sense that light would be seen from every angle. However, some may argue that just because you can’t see light doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. There are some factors that contribute to the way we see light from earth. Some may suggest that the distance is just too long and so we can’t see light from earth. Some may argue that the light is obscured in some fashion, or perhaps because the light from the distance hasn’t reached us yet.

I recall during the lecture that the estimated time since the big bang is 13.7 billion years. I didn’t pick up on how this number came to be. It is hard for me to fathom such a large number and such a enormous amount of time. It’s hard to imagine the amount of movement and expansion that has been going on around the earth while we are held together by gravity.

Although the big bang theory is very popular, can we see evidence of the big bang theory? If the big bang theory created space and time then there literally was nothing else before the big bang. If nothing existed before the big bang, this leaves scientists and human curiosity at a stand still. Perhaps we will never know how our universe was created. The creation of the universe is a big question that many will never know the true answer to. This is not a surprise considering the difficulty around this question. Some of the world’s brightest minds couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea. For example Einstein said the universe expanding was the greatest blunder of his life.

 

 

 

Newer posts »

© 2025 Origins: Order vs. Chaos

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑