Astronomy 336 Spring 2013
Wednesday, February
6, 2013
C. P. Snow and The
Two Cultures
assigned book, to be read by class on Wednesday, February 6, 2013
At 3 pm, we will be joined by Prof. Lawrence Krauss, who lectures on Tuesday night, February 5, 2013, about his new book, which has proven controversial:
Following The New York Times's review,
there were discussions of Krauss's book by philosophers and others,
not favorably:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/can-physics-and-philosophy-get-along/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/stone-links-scientism-and-the-future-of-philosophy/
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/no-small-talk-jim-holt-on-why-the-world-exists/
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500EFDA1530F933A25755C0A9649D8B63
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/can-physics-and-philosophy-get-along/
C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 1959, 1993) (Water Street Books)
other books:
Jay A. Labinger and Harry Collins, The One Culture? A conversation about science, Chicago University Press, 2001, Q175.55 .O54 2001
C. P. Snow, Public Affairs, Scribner's 1972.
in e-reserves:
Leon Botstein comments (2011)
Leavis-Snow
Controversy
Lionel
Trilling
One
Culture
Public
Affairs
Significance
of CP
Snow-Leavis
Rumpus
Two
cultures
World
Ticks
Hubris
of the Humanities Kristof, N.D.
C. P.
Snow: Bridging the Two-Cultures Divide By David P. Barash
(NYTimes)
Morse
on C.P. Snow Morse, Joann
Two
Cultures or One?: A Second Look at Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution
Westman, Robert
Known
World Pinker, Steven
Swann's
Hypothesis Max, D.T.
"Two
Cultures"
Profs
Who Don't (Won't) E-Mail Ellin, A. Web Link
-
Our
Two Cultures Phillip Griffiths Looks at 'Two Cultures' Today
Web Link -
Letters;
Frames of Mind pdf
Letter:
Frames of Mind pdf
In
Defense of Na•ve Reading Robert Pippin Web
Link
additional
topics:
Iraq fraud (see e-reserves for an article in Skeptical
Inquirer by jmp)
The
New York Times INTERNATIONAL
/ EUROPE | January
24, 2010
British Man Held for Fraud in Iraq Bomb Detectors
By RIYADH MOHAMMED
and ROD NORDLAND
The owner of a
company that supplies questionable bomb detectors to Iraq has been arrested for
fraud, and the export of the devices has been banned.
The
New York Times, WORLD | January 23, 2010
Iraq MPs Demand Bomb Detector Be Axed After UK Ban
By REUTERS
BAGHDAD (Reuters)
- Iraqi lawmakers demanded on Saturday that security forces stop using a device
used widely for detecting explosives which the British government says does not
work.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013, 1:10 pm
Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, Q173 .G35 1986
see "Hermits and Cranks": Scientific American, March 2002, pp. 36-37.
See www.skeptic.com
Lawrence M. Krauss [Essay in New York Times for April 30, 2002]
Martin Gardner, When You Were A Tadpole And I Was A Fish : And Other Speculations About This And That (2009)
Robert L. Park, Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, Oxford U. Press, Q175.52.U5 P37 2000
Martin Gardner, The Jinn from Hyperspace (chapter in; Prometheus Books, 2007)
Martin Gardner, Did Adam & Eve have navels?: discourses on reflexology, numerology, urine therapy & other dubious subjects, W. W. Norton, 2000, Q173.G34 2000
Martin Gardner, The new age: notes of a fringe watcher, Prometheus Books, 1988, BF1042.G22 1988
Martin Gardner, Weird water & fuzzy logic: more notes of a fringe watcher, Prometheus Books, 1996, AC8.G335 1996
Michael Shermer, The Borderlands of Science (New York: Oxford University Press)
Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles: 62 All-New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life (ECW Press, 2002)
Georges Charpak and Henri Broch, Debunked!: esp, telekinesis, and other pseudoscience (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004)
Len Fisher, Weighing
the Soul: Scientific Discovery from the Brilliant to the Bizarre (Arcade
Publishing, 2004)
Statistics and
Probability
Wednesday, February
20, 2013, 1:10 pm
Darrell Huff, How to Lie with Statistics, 1954, HA29 .H82 1954 (2 copies on reserve)
Richard de Veaux and David J. Hand, "How to Lie with Bad Data," Statistical Science, 2005. (on ereserves)
____________________
David Murray, Joel Schwartz, And S. Robert Lichter, It Ain't Necessarily So: How Media Make And Unmake The Scientific Picture Of Reality, Sawyer PN4784.T3 M87 2001
Inge F. Goldstein, How Much Risk? A Guide to Understanding Environmental Health Hazards.
Deborah J. Bennett, Logic Made Easy, How to Know When, BC177 .B42 2004
BŸlent Atalay, Math and the Mona Lisa: the art and science of Leonardo da Vinci, N6923.L33 A4 2004
also: "Numbered by the Numbers, When They Just Don't Add Up," Daniel Okrent, The New York Times, 1/23/05
Amir Aczel, Chance: a guide to gambling, love, the stock market, & just about anything else (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004)
Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear fear: a history of images (Harvard University Press, 1988)
Unusual Activities
Samantha Ettus, The experts' guide to 100 things everyone should know how to do (Clarkson Potter, 2004)
Hip hop hares and other moments of epic silliness: more classic photographs from Outside magazine's 'Parting Shot' (W.W. Norton, 2004)
Robert Ehrlich, Nine crazy ideas in science: a few might even be true (Princeton University Press, 2001)
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the
hidden side of everything (William Morrow, 2005)
Marc Siegel, False Alarm/ The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear (Wiley, 2005).
David Ropeik and George Gray, Risk (2002).
Wednesday, Februaryy
27, 2013, 1:10 pm
reading: Edward Tufte
and the Visual Display of Information
Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information,1983: QA276.3 .T83 1983; 2nd ed. 2001)
Edward R. Tufte, Envisioning Information, Sawyer P93.5 .T84 1990, P93.5 .T84 1992
Edward R. Tufte, Visual Explanations: images and quantities; evidence and narritive, 1997, Sawyer and CES, Z246 .T84
Edward R. Tufte, Beautiful Evidence (July 2006)
and a video from his visit to Williams College
GM Foods, visit from Dr. Agnes Demianski
Wednesday, March 6,
2013
NY Times magazine story called "Playing God in the Garden" by Michael Pollan. This touches on both controversies. A second reading, from a new book called "Dinner at the New Gene Cafe" discusses the regulatory aspects
(i.e., the US government's shifting view on what constitutes organic food
and whether GM foods should be labeled as such).
see also
"Beyond Organics, " New Scientist, 32-47, 18 May 2002
Nina Federoff and Nancy Marie Brown, Mendel in the Kitchen, Joseph Henry Press, 2004.
James S. Trefil, Human nature: a blueprint for managing the earth--by people, for people (Times Books/Henry Holt, 2004)
Risk Assessment
Wednesday, March 13,
2013, 1:10 pm
David Roepik (Director of risk communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis), Risk: A Practical Guide for Deciding What's Really Safe and What's Really Dangerous in the World around You (2002)
http://www.hcra.harvard.edu (Harvard Center for Risk Analysis)
Sokal Debate
Wednesday, April 3, 2013, 1:10 pm
Levitt, Norman, "The sources and dangers of postmodern anti-science," Free
Inquiry, vol. 21 no. 2 (Spring 2001), 44-47.
Levitt, Norman, "Why professors believe weird things," Skeptic Magazine,vol.
6 no. 3 (1998), 28-35.
Ross, Andrew, "Introduction." In "Science Wars," ed. A. Ross, 1-15. 1996
Durham, Duke University Press.
Sokal, Alan D., Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture, Oxford U. Press, hardback 2008; paperback 2010
Sokal, Alan D., "What the Social Text affair does and does not prove,"
In "A House Built on Sand," ed. N. Koertge. 1998, New York, Oxford
University Press
Sokal, Alan D., his original article in Social Text, reprinted in Fashionable Nonsense (1998, New York: Picador)
Sokal, Alan D., Beyond
the Hoax, Oxford University Press, 2008
Post Hoax, Ergo Propter Hoax, Michael BŽrubŽ, American Scientist, 2008
pre-Sokal, "A fifth force farce," Physics Today, Lawrence M. Krauss, October 2008
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-10-26 from 2010
addl readings:
Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt, Martin W. Lewis, eds., Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science, Johns Hopkins Press, 1997
Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt, and Martin W. Lewis, eds., The Flight from Science and Reason, Johns Hopkins Press, 1994 (hb), 1997 (pb)
James Robert Brown, Who Rules in Science, Harvard University Press 2001
Steven Weinberg, Science and Its Cultural Adversaries, Harvard University Press, 2001
[it includes Steven Weinberg, Sokal's Hoax, in New York Review of Books, August 8, 1996.]
John Ziman, Real Science: What it is, and what it means, Cambridge U. Press., 2000
Gregory N. Derry, What Science Is and How It Works, Princeton U. Press, 0-691-09550-7
James Robert Brown, Who rules in science?: an opinionated guide to the wars, Harvard University Press, 2001
Wednesday, April 10,
2013, 1:10 pm
Alternative Medicine
Scientific Review of
Alternative Medicine
publications of National Center for Complementary and
Alternative Medicine, http://nccam.nih.gov
James C. Whorton, Nature Cures: A History of Alternative Medicine in America (Oxford University Press, 2002)
Roberta Blivins, Alternative Medicine? A History (Oxford University Press, 2007)
Morris Fishbein, Fads and quackery in healing, New York, Covici, Friede, 1932, R730.F5.
Susan E. Lederer, Medicine: Alternative Approaches to Healing, Science, 299, 10 Jan 2003, p. 205
Martin Enserink, Bioterrorism: New Look at Old Data Irks Smallpox-Eradication Experts, Science, 299, 10 Jan 2003, p. 181
Edzard Ernst, Max H. Pittlser, Barbara Wider, and Kate Broddy, 2006, The Desktop Guide to Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2nd ed. Edinburgh, Scotland. Mosby/Elsevier.
Dennis Normile, New Face of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Science, 299, 10 Jan 2003, 188-190
Martin B. Katan and Nicole M. de Roos, Public Health: Toward Evidence-Based Health Claims for Foods, Science, 299, 10 Jan 2003, 206-207
http://www.berkeleywellness.com/html/ds/dsEchinacea.html
Pamela Paul, "When Yoga Hurts," TIME for October 11, 2007 (ereserve) or
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1668470,00.html
Debunking
Penn and Teller, Bullsh*t (4 seasons, DVD's) (on reserve)
Non-standard Medicine
R. Barker Bausell, Snake Oil Science: The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine (Oxford, 2007)
Wednesday, April 17,
2013, 1:10 pm
Chiropractic, N-Rays
L. A. Chotkowski, Chiropractic: The Greatest Hoax of the Century, New England Novelty Books, 1998, RZ241.C46 1998
Ralph Lee Smith, At your Own Risk: The Case against Chiropractic, Trident Press (S&S), 1969; ILL.
L.A. Chotkowski (Ludmil Adam), Chiropractic: the greatest hoax of the century? (New England Novelty Books, 1998).
What you should know about chiropractic, E. Ernst, New Scientist, 29 May 2009
From The Transcript,
North Adams, http://www.thetranscript.com/ci_14362480
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_14386976
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-10-21 , 2009
Osteopathy
various letters and articles + Martin Gardner chapter
Homeopathy
many references, including Martin Gardner chapter, and
Aijing Shang et al., "Comparative Study of placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy and alloopathy," Lancet 2005; 366: 726-32 (ereserves)
Martin Gardner, The Jinn from Hyperspace (chapter in; Prometheus Books, 2007)
Vaccine-scare fraud; False autism-link claim
WSJ: Junk Science Isn't a Victimless
Crime, Paul Offit, WSJ, 1/11/11
WSJ.com: Risky Ally in War on Polio:
The Taliban
Paul Offit, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All
(2010)
Paul Offit on Colbert Report, 1/31/2011; Google "Colbert Offit"
Seth Mnookin: The Panic Virus: a true story of medicine, science, and fear (2011)
articles on Andrew Wakefield
Jenny McCarthy interviewed on Larry
King, with a panel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5WTaLnDPY4
Google "Colbert Offit"
"Health
Foods" and Supplements
www.consumerlab.com
Damaris Christensen, Dietary Dilemmas, Science News, Feb 8, 2003, pp. 88-90,
Martijn B. Katan and Nicole M. de Roos, Public Health: Toward Evidence-Based Health Claims for Foods, Science, 299, 10 Jan 2003, 206-207
Ephedra and other
supplements
New York Times, February 23, 2003, "Despite the Danger Warnings, Ephedra Sells"
Extra Vitamin D and Calcium Aren't Needed, http://nyti.ms/f0ZI4Z, 2010
Paul Offit, Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure (2010)
Acupuncture
Michael Shermer, "Full of Holes: The curious case of acupumcture," Scientific American, August 2005 (ereserves)
Other alternative medicine
About Oprah: Newsweek, June 8. 2009, by W. Kosova and P. Wingert
Salt, Fat, and
Weight-Loss Schemes; Evaluating Medical Procedures
Wednesday, April 24,
2013, 1:10 pm
Gary Taubes on sugar, The New York Times, April 24, 2011
Gary Taubes on salt, Science, 281, 898-907, 1998
Gary Taubes, Why we get fat and what to do about it, 2011
Gary Taubes on fat, New York Times magazine, July 7, 2002, pp. 22ff, and The New York Times, Oct 9, 2007
Gary Taubes, Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy, The New York Times, September 16, 2007; The New York Times Magazine, September 30, 2007
Gary Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories (2007)
WSJ: Eating a Bit Less Salt Can Be a Big Health Boone, March 16, 2009
Malcolm Kendrick, The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It
www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/business/01food.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=salt&st=cse
Evaluating Medicine
Mammograms (2002; New Yorker article 2004)
Hormone Treatment (2002)
Aliens, Mayan
Calendar, and SETI; 2012—The End of the World?
Wednesday, May 1,
2031, 1:10 pm/final paper due
materials from Dr. David D. Morrison, NASA's Ames Research Center
Podcast from the SETI Institute on 2012
Elaine Showalter, Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media (Columbia University Press, 1999). Discusses alien abduction, Satanic ritual abuse, multiple-personality syndrome, and the recovered-memory movement.
SETI as an example of science
Crop Circles as an example of pseudoscience
www.cropcircleresearch.com/articles/arecibo.html
nytimes.com, February 18, 2003 (Reuters), L.A. Woman Chased by Fake Alien Sues Reality Show
UFO's: Larry King Live, January 18, 2007 (DVD on reserve)
Michael Maunder: Lights in the sky: identifying and understanding astronomical and meteorological phenomena (Springer, 2007) (chapter on UFO's)
Role of Superstition:
readings/film
Wednesday, May 8,
2013, 1:10 pm
Jay Pasachoff, Richard Cohen, and Nancy Pasachoff,
"Belief in the Supernatural among Harvard and West African University
Students," Nature 227, 971-2, 1970.
Measles vaccine: New Scientist, 16 Feb 2002, p. 12-13
Robert Ehrlich, Nine crazy ideas in science: a few might even be true, Q171.E374 2001
Charles M. Wynn and Arthur W. Wiggins, Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where Real Science ends...and Pseudoscience Begins, Joseph Henry Press, 2001
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
Georges Charpak and Henri Broch, Debunked!: esp, telekinesis, and other
pseudoscience; translated from the French, Johns Hopkins University
Press; SAWYER; BF1409.5 .C4313 2004
James Randi, An
Encyclopedia Of Claims, Frauds, And Hoaxes Of The Occult And Supernatural :
James Randi's Decided / exposed By James Randi, c 1995; SAWYER; BF1042 .R23
1995
James Randi, Flim
Flam! : The Truth About Unicorns, Parapsychology, And Other Delusions, c
1980; SAWYER; BF1042 .R35 1980
Extrasensory
perception (ESP)
E..-J. Wagenmakers, et al. psychologists'
rebuttal, 1/11
D. J. Bem, claiming to validate ESP, 1/11, in
press, J. Personality and Social
Psychology
possible additional topics:
Creationism, Nostradamus
Dover court decision, 2005 (ereserves)
Science, Evolution, and Creationism (National Academy of Sciences, 2008)
Robert T. Pennock, ed., Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics, MIT Press. Reviewed in The New York Times Book Review, April 14, 2002, p. 12
article "Beyond Belief," Boston Globe, September 18, 2001, pp. F1, F6.
http://www.ncseweb.org/ National Center for Science Education: Defending the Teaching of Evolution in the Public Schools
Eugenie C. Scott, Evolution vs. Creationism (2004)
Matt Young and Taner Edis, Why Intelligent Design Fails (2004)
James Randi, The
Mask Of Nostradamus, c 1990; SAWYER; BF1815.N8 R35 1990
Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design (Henry Holt
and Company, 2006)
Michael Ruse, A Defense of Evolutionary Theory: Darwinism and Its Discontents
(Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Kenneth R. Miller, Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground between
God and Evolution (HarperCollins, 1999)
Scientology
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/books/review/going-clear-lawrence-wrights-book-on-scientology.html?hp
Lawrence Wright Going Clear: Scientology, Celebrity, and the
Prison of Belief, 2012
Janet Reitman, Inside Scientology: the Inside of the
World's Most Secretive Religion,2011
Conspiracy theories about the moon
landing
www.clavius.org
Global Warming
deniers: law-professor David Hodas visits
Art Hobson, "Global Warming," The Physics Teacher, November 2010
with letters to the editor and response by D. Reyfus
Science in the Theatre
Maureen Hunter, Transit of Venus
Michael Frayn, Copenhagen
Tom Stoppard, Arcadia (revived on Broadway during spring 2011)
David Auburn, Proof
Peter Parnell, Q.E.D.
Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffman, Oxygen (review by Hoffman and
Sylvie Coyaud, of Luca Ronconi and John Barrow's Infinities, review in
Nature, 416, 11 April 2002, p. 585) based on Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams. New Yorker review: In this nonlinear one-act play, based on Alan
Lightman's surreal novel, a twenty-six- year-old
Einstein stumbles through his past, present, and future as characters from his
life--his wife, his sons, his best friend, and a notional daughter named
Lieserl--elucidate his theories of space and time, their explanations lit by
naked, dangling light bulbs. In the
director...'s poetic, visual dreamscape, time stops, moves forward and
backward, and even ceases to exist. (closed in New York, The Culture Project,
on 2/1/03)
Christopher Frayling, The Scientist and the Cinema (Reaktion Books, 2005)
Sidney Perkowitz, Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World (Columbia University Press, 2007)
Shelagh Stephenson, An Experiment With An Air Pump. London: Methuen Drama, 1998.
Time
Michael Downing, Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004 or 2005)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/science/elliptical-answers-to-why-winter-mornings-are-so-long.html (JMP and Joseph Gangestad '06 explain)