http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:46:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=904 http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=904#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:18:32 +0000 John Horgan http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=904
“Any who says he understands quantum mechanics,” Niels Bohr once said, “doesn’t know the first thing about it.” Bohr, a Danish physicist who helped invent (discover?) quantum theory a century ago, presumably excluded himself from this dictum. Quantum mechanics, which describes the behavior of electrons, neutrons, protons, photons and other tiny things, is arguably the most [...]]]> http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?feed=rss2&p=904 1 http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=900 http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=900#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:18:58 +0000 John Horgan http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=900 In my last post, I presented 10 responses to the question: “God: Who Needs Him (or Her)?”, which my pal Garry Dobbins and I recently debated at Stevens. One of my responses was this: “Childhood cancer. Tsunamis. Earthquakes. If God is all-powerful and loves us, why do bad things happen to totally innocent people? This [...]]]> http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?feed=rss2&p=900 10 http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=889 http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=889#comments Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:39:30 +0000 John Horgan http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=889
Garry Dobbins, a philosophical rabble-rouser who is my friend and colleague at Stevens, and I debated the question above on October 21 in front of a couple dozen students and a handful of faculty. I was raised Catholic but have been an agnostic since I was 12 or, except for brief periods of weakness. So [...]]]> http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?feed=rss2&p=889 7 http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=887 http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=887#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:00:05 +0000 John Horgan http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=887
We need more energy! That urgent message kept bursting through a panel discussion at Stevens on October 14 on “Fossil Fuels in the Year 2050.” The panel featured Paul Winstanley, Director of Energy Initiatives here at Stevens, as well as experts from the Department of Energy, Penn State and Shell Oil. The discussion, sponsored by [...]]]> http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?feed=rss2&p=887 5 http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=885 http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=885#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:00:05 +0000 John Horgan http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=885
“If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord… So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that [...]]]> http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?feed=rss2&p=885 12 http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=883 http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=883#comments Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:33:28 +0000 John Horgan http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=883
Is modern life better than the Stone Age? Why or why not? I recently forced students in my scitech history class to contemplate these questions. I presented their responses in a recent post and said that soon I’d provide my own answer. Here goes. “In today’s world anyone can try to do anything they want,” wrote [...]]]> http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?feed=rss2&p=883 9