The Velvet Underground of… 8 Oct 2010 Recently there have been a couple of “Velvet Underground” posts, of the kind that the VU were a very unknown but amazingly influential group. As Chad Orzel says, “only of order a thousand people bought the first Velvet Underground record, but every one of them went on to start a band.” He identifies the VU of physics as Sadi Carnot. Larry Moran identifies Max Delbrück as the VU of molecular genetics (and a great choice it is too). But this is a meme! We can uselessly pass this on! Who are the VUs of other disciplines and topics? I’m going to identify Otto Neurath as the VU of the philosophy of science. Do you have a VU? Biology General Science History Humor Philosophy Science HistoryPhilosophy
Metaphysics Philosophy quote: Nagel on Analytic Philosophy 1 Oct 20114 Oct 2011 In 1935, Ernest Nagel spent a year traveling around European philosophy departments, and he reported his observations on what he called the new “analytic philosophy” in the Journal of Philosophy. I was particularly taken by his programmatic description: the men with whom I have talked are impatient with philosophic systems… Read More
Epistemology Phylogeny and the history of language and culture 26 Aug 201226 Aug 2012 Increasingly, work is being done using the methods of phylogenetic systematics to uncover cultural and linguistic evolution. A leading lab on this work is Russell Gray’s lab at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He and his collaborators have looked at the evolution of language, particularly Pacific languages, and… Read More
Epistemology I’m about to give a keynote… in Poland 4 Jul 20124 Jul 2012 This is a brave new world. I’m about to give a keynote address to the Naturalizing Religion conference in Kazimierz Dolny in Poland. Or I would be if their internet hadn’t just died completely. Stay tuned for further news of the way things go wrong at the very last moment… Read More
What’s the difference between being aVU of x and being an xer’s xer? I want to see some serious conceptual analysis here.
I just wanted to say that Max Delbrück seems like a character from either a Mel Brooks or Steve Martin movie.