EP 04 - Too Cultured

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episode

Selected References:

2:00 - Context with Brad Harris podcast episode “The Two Cultures, by C.P. Snow” from November, 20182:06 - “The Two Cultures” by C.P. Snow3:16 - “What is Science?”3:34 - History of Science4:45 - Snow gave the Rede Lecture at the University of Cambridge in 1959 - “The Rede Lecture”, named for Sir Robert Rede, an English judge who provided an annual stipend to Cambridge University for lectures in logic, moral philosophy, and the humanities, is a tradition that dates back to the 16th century. In 1858 it became a single annual lecture with one appointee per year, a tradition that continues to this day, with the most recent lecture, “Reasons for Hope,” being given by famous primatologist Jane Goodall in 2019”14:50 - See the “manifest image” and the “scientific image” as proposed by the philosopher Wilfrid Sellars in his work Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man, which is erroneously referred to here as the “manifest reality” and the “scientific reality”21:45 - Humans want narrative and story, see “The Neurology of Narrative” or “The art of storytelling: Researchers explore why we relate to characters” 24:20 - Ode to a Flower, spoken monologue from Richard Feynman (video, highly recommended)28:29 - Is your blue different from my blue? See “Is Your Red The Same as My Red?” (video from Vsauce) or “Your Color Red Really Could Be My Blue” from Live Science29:56 - According to “Sweet Music to Your Nerves” from Physics, “A recent mathematical model suggests that the key may be the rhythmically consistent firing of neurons in response to a harmonious pair of frequencies.” 34:35 - “Hit Charade: Meet the bald Norwegians and other unknowns who actually create the songs that top the charts.” published by The Atlantic in October 201538:05 - Quote from The Big Picture by Sean Carroll: “The pressing, human questions we have about our lives depend directly on our attitudes toward the universe at a deeper level. For many people, those attitudes are adopted rather informally from the surrounding culture, rather than arising out of rigorous personal reflection. Each new generation of people doesn’t invent the rules of living from scratch; we inherit ideas and values that have evolved over vast stretches of time. At the moment, the dominant image of the world remains one in which human life is cosmically special and significant, something more than mere matter in motion. We need to do better at reconciling how we talk about life’s meaning with what we know about the scientific image of our universe.”

This episode was recorded in January 2020

The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti