I'm now thinking about a larger issue still. If placebo medicine can induce people to release hidden healing resources, are there other ways in which the cultural environment can "give permission" to people to come out of their shells and to do things they wouldn't have done in the past? Can cultural signals encourage people to reveal sides of their personality or faculties that they wouldn't have dared to reveal in the past? Or for that matter can culture block them? There's good reason to think this is in fact our history.
NICHOLAS HUMPHREY has held posts at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and is now School Professor Emeritus at the LSE. He is a theoretical psychologist, internationally known for his work on the evolution of human intelligence and consciousness. His most recent book is Soul Dust.
Nicholas Humphrey's Edge Bio Page
THE REALITY CLUB: Geoffrey Miller
THE EVOLVED SELF-MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
NICHOLAS HUMPHREY: I was asked to write an essay recently for "Current Biology" on the evolution of human health. It's not really my subject, I should say, but it certainly got me thinking. One of the more provocative thoughts I had is about the role of medicine. If human health has changed for the better in the late stages of evolution, this has surely had a lot to do with the possibility of consulting doctors, and the use of drugs. But the surprising thing is that, until less than 100 years ago, there was hardly anything a doctor could do that would be effective in any physiological medicinal way—and still the doctor's ministrations often "worked". That's to say, under the influence of what we would today call placebo medicine people came to feel less pain, to experience less fever, their inflammations receded, and so on.
Now, when people are cured by placebo medicine, they are in reality curing themselves. But why should this have become an available option late in human evolution, when it wasn't in the past.
Lynn Margulis 1938-2011
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Thinking About the Universe on the Larger Scales Raphael Bousso [11.22.11]
Andrei Linde had some ideas, Alan Guth had some ideas, Alex Vilenkin had some ideas. I thought I was coming in with this radically new idea that we shouldn't think of the universe as existing on this global scale that no one observer can actually see, that it's actually important to think about what can happen in the causally connected region to one observer, what can you do in any experiment that doesn't actually conflict with the laws of physics, and require superluminal propagation, that we have to ask questions in a way that conform to the laws of physics if we want to get sensible answers. Introduction The parable of the blind men and elephant is a perfect metaphor for the universe and for the physicists who try to grasp its larger shape: each man feels a part of the elephant and tries to visualize its overall essence: "It's a wall"; "It's a rope"; "a tree": they almost come to blows. The universe, even more than the elephant, is too big for any one perspective, and most of us are busy squabbling about some small part. Fortunately, now and then someone comes along who is brave enough, bold enough, and with clear enough vision, to have a chance of seeing the bigger picture. Raphael Bousso is one of those few. — Leonard Susskind RAPHAEL BOUSSO, Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, is recognized for discovering the general relation between the curved geometry of space-time and its information content, known as the "covariant entropy bound." This allowed for a precise and general formulation of the holographic principle, which is believed to underlie the unification of quantum theory and Einstein's theory of gravity. Bousso is also one of the discoverers of the landscape of string theory, which explains the small but non-vanishing value of the cosmological constant (or "dark energy"). His work has led to a novel view of cosmology, the multiverse of string theory. Raphael Bousso's Edge Bio page LEONARD SUSSKIND, Felix Bloch Professor in theoretical physics at Stanford University, whose contributions to physics include the discovery of string theory. His most recent book is The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics. |
A Rough Mix: Brian Eno & Jennifer Jacquet
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Cities as Gardens Mark Pagel [11.22.11] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Jonathan Haidt and the Moral Matrix: Breaking Out of Our Righteous Minds...The work of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim was also vital. In contrast to John Stuart Mill, a Durkheimian society, as Haidt explains in an essay for edge.org, “would value s
Samuel McNerney, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
[12.8.11]
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LYNN MARGULIS 1938-2011. A BIÓLOGA NORTEAMERICANA QUE ERA "IMPOSSÍVEL E MARAVILHOSA"
Ana Gerschenfeld, Publico (Lisbon)
[11.28.11]
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BRIAN ENO DESCRIBES GENERATIVE COMPOSITION
*Always worth a listen.
Bruce Sterling, WIRED - Beyond the Beyond
[11.18.11]
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