An issue of terminology.

Wheel in the Sky

The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

The article can be found here. The main idea can be summed up as

...it is clear that there is no classification of the Universe not being arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what the universe is.

I can think of four systems of elements that supposedly categorize all things. Two are from history, the Western classical elements and the Chinese version. One is from a game, and one is something else entirely. There are surely more, as many as imagination allows, and that is the key.

At the end of Maybe Logic, there are exercises. One of them is to gather a bunch of arbitrary objects and divide them into two categories in as many different ways as possible. This is a concrete demonstration of the principle that categories are a mental phenomenon and not a property of the universe-as-such. Thus philosophical attempts to discover the "true nature" of the "real categories" of the objects in the universe are misguided.

Spring Break: Alchemical Texts and Darwin Art

I went to new Haven for spring break.

The Beinecke Rare book and Manuscript Library has several interesting past, current, and future exhibitions dealing with the history of math and science. For example, "Trees in Fact and Fable" examines its subject from several disciplines, including botany. There is one about mathematics in early modern England, an International Year of Astronomy exhibition called "Starry Messenger", and some works on alchemy in the European imagination. (I got to see that one.)

Also at Yale, the Yale Center for British Art is hosting an exhibition called "Endless Forms": Charles Darwin, Natural Science, and the Visual Arts (site here). It deals with the effect the publication of Origin of Species had on the arts world. It includes scientific diagrams, paintings depicting prehistoric humans and other creatures, fanciful illustrations of past humanity, Romantic depictions of "the struggle for existence", and photographs of non-European people meant for the scientific study of race. Or I might say pseudo-scientific.

Science and Math Tattoos

Check out the Science Tattoo Emporium. One interesting thing is that many people who get tattoos involving the DNA molecule use it for its heavy symbolic content. For example, here, here, here, and my favorite here.

A long, detailed, and nuanced discussion of the affair between Galileo and the Church may be found here. Part of the interest is in the exposure of some of the "mythology" that surround this issue. Such as this:

According to one of these readings, Galileo knew the Earth to go round the Sun, as Copernicus had written, rather than the converse as implied in several Biblical passages. The Church would not allow science to disprove the revealed truth of Scripture, however, and hence threw Galileo to the Inquisition where he was forced under threat of torture to disclaim this opinion and never speak of it again. He was then imprisoned under house arrest for the remainder of his life, a clear example of the conflict between scientific investigation of the world around us and the presumed infallible authority of the Bible.

Which is a story often cited as the truth of history.

A comic.