This book is a cultural phenomenology of doing physics. It describes the ways physicists actually do their work--their motives, and their ways of making sense of the world--so that outsiders can understand it. Martin H. Krieger explains that physicists employ a small number of everyday notions to get at the world experimentally and conceptually.

Mathematical theorems are cultural artifacts and may be interpreted much as works of art, literature, and tool-and-craft are interpreted. The Fundamental Theorem of the Calculus, the Central Limit Theorem of Statistics, and the Statistical Continuum Limit of field theories, all show how the world may be put together through the arithmetic addition of suitably prescribed parts (velocities, variances, and renormalizations and scaled blocks, respectively). In the limit — of smoothness, statistical independence, and large N — higher-order parts, such as accelerations, (...) are, for the most, part irrelevant, affirming that, in the end, most of the world's particulars may be averaged over (a very un-Scriptural point of view). (We work out all of this in technical detail, including a nice geometric picture of stochastic integration, and a method of calculating the variance of the sum of dependent random variables using renormalization group ideas.) These fundamental theorems affirm a culture that is additive, ahistorical, Cartesian, and continuist, sharing in what might be called a species of modern culture. We understand mathematical results as useful because, like many other such artifacts, they have been adapted to fit the world, and the world has been adapted to fit their capacities. Such cultural interpretation is in effect motivation for the mathematics, and might well be offered to students as a way of helping them understand what is going on at the blackboard. Philosophy of mathematics might want to pay more attention to the history and detailed technical features of sophisticated mathematics, as a balance to the usual concerns that arise in formalist or even Platonist positions. (shrink)

Sensible Thinking 3 aims to help people think and communicate more effectively using the formulations of general semantics. Topics in it include practical ways to improve one's thinking ability, emotional self-management, understanding of the media, and analyses of social issues.

This two-volume set provides a comprehensive overview of the multidisciplinary field of Embodied Cognition. With contributions from internationally acknowledged researchers from a variety of fields, Foundations of Embodied Cognition reveals how intelligent behaviour emerges from the interplay between brain, body and environment. Drawing on the most recent theoretical and empirical findings in embodied cognition, Volume 2 _Conceptual and Interactive Embodiment_ is divided into four distinct parts, bringing together a number of influential perspectives and new ideas. Part one introduces the field (...) of embodied language processing, before part two presents recent developments in our understanding of embodied conceptual understanding. The final two parts look at the applied nature of embodied cognition, exploring the embodied nature of social co-ordination as well as the emerging field of artificial embodiment. Building on the idea that knowledge acquisition, retention and retrieval are intimately interconnected with sensory and motor processes, _Foundations of Embodied Cognition_ is a landmark publication in the field. It will be of great interest to researchers and advanced students from across the cognitive sciences, including those specialising in psychology, neuroscience, intelligent systems and robotics, philosophy, linguistics and anthropology. (shrink)

Questions about the validity of eye fixations in the blocks task as a memory indicator are discussed. Examples from reading research illustrate the influence of extraneous factors.

A major obstacel to the study of mammalian development, and to the practical application of knowledge gained from it in the clinic during therapeutic in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer (IVF‐ET), is the propensity of embryos to become retarded or arrested during their culture in vitro. The precise developmental cell cycle in which embryos arrest or delay is characteristic for the species and coincides with the earliest period of embryonic gene expression. Much evidence reviewed here implicates free oxygen radicals (FORs) (...) in the process of arrest. Thus, studies on the development of mouse preimplantation embryos in vitro have shown that (i) FORs are elevated in vitro, but not in vivo, at the time at which embryos become arrested or delayed, (ii) systems for removing reactive oxygen species to limit the formation of hydroxy radicals are present, although they have not yet been assessed quantitatively and may differ qualitatively from those in adult cells, (iii) metabolic and possibly genetic adaptations to oxidative damage are evident, (iv) published procedures for overcoming in vitro arrest are explicable in terms of FOR‐mediated damage or responses and (v) the arrest or delay of most embryos in vitro can be reduced or prevented experimentally by addition of metal chelators to limit hydroxy radical formation and lipid hydroperoxidation. (shrink)

We have evolved to become who we are, at least in part, due to our general drive to create new things and ideas. When seeking to improve our creations, ideas, or situations, we systematically overlook opportunities to perform subtractive changes. For example, when tasked with giving feedback on an academic paper, reviewers will tend to suggest additional explanations and analyses rather than delete existing ones. Here, we show that this addition bias is systematically reflected in English language statistics along several (...) distinct dimensions. First, we show that words associated with an increase in quantity or number (e.g., add, addition, more, most) are more frequent than words associated with a decrease in quantity or number (e.g., subtract, subtraction, less, least). Second, we show that in binomial expressions, addition-related words are mentioned first, that is, add and subtract rather than subtract and add. Third, we show that the distributional semantics of verbs of change, such as to improve and to transform, overlap more with the distributional semantics of add/increase than subtract/decrease, which suggests that change verbs are implicitly biased toward addition. Fourth, addition-related words have more positive connotations than subtraction-related words. Fifth, we demonstrate that state-of-the-art large language models, such as the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT-3), are also biased toward addition. We discuss the implications of our results for research on cognitive biases and decision-making. (shrink)

In these times of rapid change and constant upheaval, can we learn to think and communicate more effectively-at home, in school, on the job, and as citizens of the larger world? This book (like its predecessor Sensible Thinking for Turbulent Times), which is based on the formulations of general semantics, says yes, yes, and yes! Topics in it include practical ways to improve your thinking ability, emotional self-management, understanding of the media, and analysis of important social issues.

. Freedom of thought as freedom of expression: Hate crime sentencing enhancement and first amendment theory. Criminal Justice Ethics: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 29-42.

Many philosophers, physicists, and mathematicians have wondered about the remarkable relationship between mathematics with its abstract, pure, independent structures on one side, and the wilderness of natural phenomena on the other. Famously, Wigner found the "effectiveness" of mathematics in defining and supporting physical theories to be unreasonable, for how incredibly well it worked. Why, in fact, should these mathematical structures be so well-fitting, and even heuristic in the scientific exploration and discovery of nature? This book argues that the effectiveness of (...) mathematics in physics is reasonable. The author builds on useful analogies of prime numbers and elementary particles, elementary structure kinship and the structure of systems of particles, spectra and symmetries, and for example, mathematical limits and physical situations. The two-dimensional Ising model of a permanent magnet and the proofs of the stability of everyday matter exemplify such effectiveness, and the power of rigorous mathematical physics. Newton is our original model, with Galileo earlier suggesting that mathematics is the language of Nature. (shrink)

We say that a Hausdorff locale is compactly generated if it is the colimit of the diagram of its compact sublocales connected by inclusions. We show that this is the case if and only if the natural map of its frame of opens into the second Lawson dual is an isomorphism. More generally, for any Hausdorff locale, the second dual of the frame of opens gives the frame of opens of the colimit. In order to arrive at this conclusion, we (...) generalize the Hofmann–Mislove–Johnstone theorem and some results regarding the patch construction for stably locally compact locales. (shrink)

We assessed the automaticity of spatial-numerical and spatial-musical associations by testing their intentionality and load sensitivity in a dual-task paradigm. In separate sessions, 16 healthy adults performed magnitude and pitch comparisons on sung numbers with variable pitch. Stimuli and response alternatives were identical, but the relevant stimulus attribute (pitch or number) differed between tasks. Concomitant tasks required retention of either color or location information. Results show that spatial associations of both magnitude and pitch are load sensitive and that the spatial (...) association for pitch is more powerful than that for magnitude. These findings argue against the automaticity of spatial mappings in either stimulus dimension. (shrink)

We are each the product of our development. The nature of the developmental process by which each of us was formed is described from gametogenesis to neonatality. The varied influences upon that process and their relative balance and patterns of interaction are then considered. In particular, the relative importance of epigenetic and genetic factors is discussed. It is concluded that development is a continuous process involving epigenetic/genetic interactions throughout. The contemporary emphasis on the genetic basis for human individuality is reviewed (...) critically. (shrink)

Genetic manipulation and purification techniques are facilitating research into the biology of arthropod neuropeptides. The red pigment concentrating hormone (RPCH)/ adipokinetic hormone (AKH) family are a conserved group of peptides which were first recognized for their hormonal activities. Biosynthesis of AKH in the grasshopper seems to proceed via a large protein precursor (12 kDa) in the cell body of the neuron, which implies precise coordination of synthesis and neural activity. Beginning with a 10 amino acid stretch of known precursor protein (...) sequence, an oligonucleotide primer approach is being used to clone a recombinant AKH gene. Once achieved, this will allow fundamental questions on the biochemistry and physiology of neuropeptides to be addressed. Such work in an arthropod system raises the intriguing possibility of studying neuropeptide level and synthetic activity in single, defined neurons. (shrink)

The reliable covariation between numerosity and spatial extent is considered as a strong constraint for inferring the successor principle in numerical cognition. We suggest that children can derive a general number concept from the (experientially) infinite succession of spatial positions during object manipulation.

Polyglutamine (polyQ) diseases are genetically inherited neurodegenerative disorders. They are caused by mutations that result in polyQ expansions of particular proteins. Mutant proteins form intranuclear aggregates, induce cytotoxicity and cause neuronal cell death. Protein interaction data suggest that polyQ regions modulate interactions between coiled‐coil (CC) domains. In the case of the polyQ disease spinocerebellar ataxia type‐1 (SCA1), interacting proteins with CC domains further enhance aggregation and toxicity of mutant ataxin‐1 (ATXN1). Here, we suggest that CC partners interacting with the polyQ (...) region of a mutant protein, increase its aggregation while partners that interact with a different region reduce the formation of aggregates. Computational analysis of genetic screens revealed that CC‐rich proteins are highly enriched among genes that enhance pathogenicity of polyQ proteins, supporting our hypothesis. We therefore suggest that blocking interactions between mutant polyQ proteins and their CC partners might constitute a promising preventive strategy against neurodegeneration. (shrink)

The ArgumentMost lay users of statistics think in terms of means (averages), variances or the square of the standard deviation, and Gaussians or bell-shaped curves. Such conventions are entrenched by statistical practice, by deep mathematical theorems from probability, and by theorizing in the various natural and social sciences. I am not claiming that the particular conventions (here, the statistics) we adopt are arbitrary. Entrenchment can be rational without its being as well categorical (excluding all other alternatives), even if that entrenchment (...) claims also to provide for categoricity. 1 provide a detailed description of how a science is “normal” and conventionalized. A characteristic feature of this entrenchment of conventions by practice, theorems, and theorizing, is its highly technical form, the canonizing work enabled by apparently formal and esoteric mathematical means. (shrink)