Seven Questions

This article is absolutely fascinating. It addresses the main question of this course, "What is reality, really?" And six other doozies.

What is reality really?

The material world may, at some level, lie beyond comprehension, but Anton Zeilinger, professor of physics at the University of Vienna, is profoundly hopeful that physicists have merely scratched the surface of something much bigger. Zeilinger specialises in quantum experiments that demonstrate the apparent influence of observers in the shaping of reality. "Maybe the real breakthrough will come when we start to realise the connections between reality, knowledge and our actions," he says. The concept is mind-bending, but it is well established in practice. Zeilinger and others have shown that particles that are widely separated can somehow have quantum states that are linked, so that observing one affects the outcome of the other. No one has yet fathomed how the universe seems to know when it is being watched.

Designs for a Dollar

Check out this website, where Pratt Institute students designed beautiful furniture, lighting, and decorative pieces using materials costing less than a dollar.

We tend to believe that good things, or more valuable things, tend to be more expensive, but a bit of creative thinking will take you a long way!

Think about the kinds of connections these design students had to make in order to come up with the beautiful shapes they created for these pieces (like a sweater sleeve and a juice bottle to make a light fixture). Thinking creatively means bringing strange, seemingly different and disparate ideas together to make something new (like portmanteaus!).

Origins of the Universe

In this YouTube video, a professor of physics from Barnard College describes the Big Bang and the origin of the universe. My favourite part about this video is how she postulates that the Big Bang was not just an explosion of dense matter, but in fact the genesis of all matter, energy, space and time. Our universe has been expanding for 14 billion years! Who knows how many times it has expanded and crunched. Indeed, the most compelling of all the ideas expressed is that ours may not be the only universe. Of course, we have no way of knowing, but contemplating the possibilities is reward enough!

New Links!

As I mentioned in class, I will be posting internet sites that I find interesting and compelling. Depending on what we are discussing in class, I may ask you to follow a link I have posted to the site, though generally these are for your own personal edification.

Academic Earth:
Academic Earth is a compilation of university lectures on various different subjects. I particularly enjoy the Philosophy and Literature sections, but there are courses in Math, Science, Engineering, History, and a host of other subjects you may find interesting. Many of the lecturers are from major American universities that you will likely recognize, like Yale and MIT. The site is also a great opportunity for you to get a sense of what a college lecture is like, and explore some possibilities for your own future. There is a world full of knowledge out there! Engage your brain, expand your mind; check out Academic Earth.

College Course on Karl Marx:
David Harvey is a professor at City College, and this course is a close reading of Marx' Das Capital, one of the most influential philosophical and political texts of his day. Marx completely changed the way we think about political economy, money, society, and labour. Harvey is brilliant, and the material is challenging, but entering into the difficulty of the text is rewarding, and there is much to learn about how we think about our world and how that affects the way we structure our society.