Deep, Elegant or Beautiful Explanations

[jojajihisc]

Short science essays describing the authors' favorite scientific explanations. Pretty impressive group of contributors to choose from.

 

[Vertigo]

I've read two or three of them and they're really very good. I shall have to come back and read more (there are an awful lot of words in there!).

Thanks for the link!

 

[jojajihisc]

Yeah I liked the couple I read two, Tim O'Reilly's about Pascal's Wager and climate change and Rudy Rucker's about inverse power laws in nature. There's enough there to last me quite awhile.

 

[Vertigo]

I literally just started from the top and read:

Andrei Linde, Why is our World Comprehensible? - interesting though possibly a bit science heavy for some.

Richard H Thaler, Commitment - arguing that a certain amount of burning of bridges can be a very good thing not too mention a powerful motivator.

Charles Simonyi, Boscovich's Explanation of Atomic Forces - I think I enjoyed this the most of the three I read. A fascinating look at the logic of 18th century Jesuit Roger Boscovich. The logic is pretty easy to follow and through it he almost nailed the atomic forces way back in the 18th Century. Fascinating stuff.

 

[Boneman]

This is great!! I think I could do my term essay from here!

 

[Vertigo]

Hehe would that be plagiarism or cheating... or both

Edit: Oh and I just read Nathan Myhrvold, The Scientific Method - An Explanation for Explanations - Also very good and worth a read since, in a very real way, that is what underpins all the other essays.

 

[jojajihisc]

Dave Winer's is a whole six sentences long...and he managed to get a spelling error in that time. Still I liked it.

 

[J-Sun]

Thanks for this link - this'll keep me busy for awhile. I'll echo Vertigo on particularly enjoying the Myhrvold. Also, while I can't speak to the biological specifics in Ramachandran's piece (which is as far as I've gone), I liked the putting of the effective horse before the semantic cart and comments like "This is this kind of childlike reasoning that often leads to great discoveries" (though that should probably be "it is this" or "this is the"). The point remains.

-- New excellent one. Sperber's on Eratosthenes' measurement of the earth's circumference. And things like it such as Archimedes' water displacement. I love stuff like that.

 

[Vertigo]

Yes I read and thoroughly enjoyed the Eratosthenes one last night and loved it. Amazing how accurate his measurement was!