Archive for October, 2009
Saturday, October 31st, 2009
God: Who Needs Him (or Her)?
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 [...]
7 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
Will Nuclear Fusion Save Us?
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 [...]
5 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
Einstein Was Wrong (about Free Will)!
“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 [...]
12 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Friday, October 9th, 2009
Is Free Will An Illusion?
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 [...]
9 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Saturday, October 3rd, 2009
NPR Show “Radio Lab” Airs Horgan War Survey
Last spring, a reporter for the terrific NPR show “Radio Lab” followed me from Stevens down to Washington Street, the main drag of Hoboken, and recorded me asking random pedestrians: Will humans ever stop fighting wars once and for all? NPR put my survey together with interviews of Robert Sapolsky and Richard Wrangham, two of [...]