Can scientific discovery be a religious experience?

In a recent commentary on the “two cultures”, Mary Warnock and N. G. McCrum contrast the current debate with the course it took in C. P. Snow’s day. Forty years ago one commentator on the insularity of scientific culture had observed the reluctance of scientists to evangelise on behalf of their disciplines: according to David Waring, attempts to convert the non-specialist were often seen as beneath contempt. One found the “typical attitude of a proud and infallible church which does indeed discuss its own theology with its own initiates but cannot condescend to speak to the multitude”. The situation has certainly changed. Lay sermons in science have become a popular genre. But that image of the Church scientific deserves further comment. The analogy between organised science and organised religion has been used by historians of science as a heuristic device for exposing facets of the scientific enterprise that might otherwise be missed. A recent example would be Margaret Wertheim’s controversial but revealing book "Pythagoras’s Trousers", in which she reflects on a recurrent exclusion of women from science by a priesthood of physical scientists. The scientist as priest is a long established trope. In seventeenth-century England Robert Boyle presented himself as a “priest in the temple of nature”, while Isaac Newton saw himself as spiritual heir of an ancient priesthood which had worshipped the one true God in a heliocentric universe. Is there room for faith within the Church scientific

Into the American Civil War: Thoughts on the Character of the Nation-Building Event

Streaming video requires Flash Player, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player to view.Brooks spoke about how to understand events in the public sphere when looking at the American Civil War in the early 1850's. Specifically, he examines texts from Harriet Beecher Stowe that were published as part of the anti-slavery cause.The Ohio State University. Humanities Institute Public Sphere and Modern Social Imaginaries working groupThe Ohio State University. Department of EnglishThe Ohio State University. Department of Germanic Languages and LiteraturesThe Ohio State University. Department of HistoryThe Ohio State University. Department of Political Science DepartmentThe Ohio State University. Department of Spanish and PortugueseThe Ohio State University. Department of Women’s StudiesOhio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent Web page, streaming video, event photo

Simultaneous Coherent Structure Coloring facilitates interpretable clustering of scientific data by amplifying dissimilarity

The clustering of data into physically meaningful subsets often requires assumptions regarding the number, size, or shape of the subgroups. Here, we present a new method, simultaneous coherent structure coloring (sCSC), which accomplishes the task of unsupervised clustering without a priori guidance regarding the underlying structure of the data. sCSC performs a sequence of binary splittings on the dataset such that the most dissimilar data points are required to be in separate clusters. To achieve this, we obtain a set of orthogonal coordinates along which dissimilarity in the dataset is maximized from a generalized eigenvalue problem based on the pairwise dissimilarity between the data points to be clustered. This sequence of bifurcations produces a binary tree representation of the system, from which the number of clusters in the data and their interrelationships naturally emerge. To illustrate the effectiveness of the method in the absence of a priori assumptions, we apply it to three exemplary problems in fluid dynamics. Then, we illustrate its capacity for interpretability using a high-dimensional protein folding simulation dataset. While we restrict our examples to dynamical physical systems in this work, we anticipate straightforward translation to other fields where existing analysis tools require ad hoc assumptions on the data structure, lack the interpretability of the present method, or in which the underlying processes are less accessible, such as genomics and neuroscience

Darwinism and the Survival of Religion

It is a great honour and privilege to give the Constantinos Th. DimarasLecture for 2016. I am grateful to the National Hellenic Research Foundationfor the opportunity to do so and to Dr Efthymios Nicolaidis for kindly issuingthe invitation.In our age of the internet, there are few topics that excite such strongopinions in the blogosphere as the relations between science and religion.Deeply embedded in the consciousness, both scholarly and popular, of WesternEurope is the belief that science and religion have continuously been, and mustbe, in conflict. This belief has been described as “the idea that wouldn’t die”,despite excellent historical research drawing attention to its shortcomings.2It is certainly not the only view. Those, including scientists themselves, whorepresent different religious traditions, have often argued that, when “science”and “religion” are properly understood, there can be a deeper relationship ofharmony, or at least compatibility, between them. When, during the 1960s, Istudied the history of science at Cambridge University, I realised that thesetwo master narratives of conflict and harmony are too general to capturethe complexity of historical controversy and debate.3 One of my aims in thislecture is to illustrate this complexity by examining religious responses toCharles Darwin’s theory of evolution

The application of high power lasers to the welding of tee section joints in ship production

PhD ThesisThe use of computers by naval architects has revolutionised ship design and -construction management. The use of high power laser technology could similarly revolutionise production processes to produce a quantum leap in productivity. Facilitating low heat input materials processing, the laser is suited to various cutting, welding and heat treatment applications in shipbuilding to increase productivity through improved product accuracy. From these processes, the Author has concentrated on the application of high power lasers to the welding of tee section joints - the most common joint configuration in ship structures - by a single sided method (skid welding) to give both the lowest possible heat input and greatest flexibility. -Using a lOkW laser, single pass fully penetrating skid welds may be produced for joints in plate of up to 15mm thick, but using this size of laser, production parameter envelopes to produce visually and structurally sound joints reduce in size as plate thickness increases to greater than 10mm. It is shown that fully penetrating laser skid welds produced in steel conventionally used for surface vessel construction are of superior structural quality to fillet welds as required by classification society rules. The work has shown that achieving process consistency in an automated production based skid welding workstation operating with existing levels of joint tolerance will be dependent not only on well designed laser and beam delivery harware but also on suitable on-line adaptive control systems. It has been demonstrated that by employing laser skid welding for steelwork fabrication, an increase in productivity can be gained, principally through increased processing speed and improved product accuracy.British Shipbuilders: The Science and Engineering Research Council

Darwinism and the Survival of Religion

It is a great honour and privilege to give the Constantinos Th. Dimaras Lecture for 2016. I am grateful to the National Hellenic Research Foundation for the opportunity to do so and to Dr Efthymios Nicolaidis for kindly issuing the invitation.In our age of the internet, there are few topics that excite such strong opinions in the blogosphere as the relations between science and religion. Deeply embedded in the consciousness, both scholarly and popular, of Western Europe is the belief that science and religion have continuously been, and must be, in conflict. This belief has been described as “the idea that wouldn’t die”, despite excellent historical research drawing attention to its shortcomings. It is certainly not the only view. Those, including scientists themselves, who represent different religious traditions, have often argued that, when “science” and “religion” are properly understood, there can be a deeper relationship of harmony, or at least compatibility, between them. When, during the 1960s, I studied the history of science at Cambridge University, I realised that these two master narratives of conflict and harmony are too general to capture the complexity of historical controversy and debate. One of my aims in this lecture is to illustrate this complexity by examining religious responses to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution

Darwinism and the Survival of Religion

It is a great honour and privilege to give the Constantinos Th. DimarasLecture for 2016. I am grateful to the National Hellenic Research Foundationfor the opportunity to do so and to Dr Efthymios Nicolaidis for kindly issuingthe invitation.In our age of the internet, there are few topics that excite such strongopinions in the blogosphere as the relations between science and religion.Deeply embedded in the consciousness, both scholarly and popular, of WesternEurope is the belief that science and religion have continuously been, and mustbe, in conflict. This belief has been described as “the idea that wouldn’t die”,despite excellent historical research drawing attention to its shortcomings.2It is certainly not the only view. Those, including scientists themselves, whorepresent different religious traditions, have often argued that, when “science”and “religion” are properly understood, there can be a deeper relationship ofharmony, or at least compatibility, between them. When, during the 1960s, Istudied the history of science at Cambridge University, I realised that thesetwo master narratives of conflict and harmony are too general to capturethe complexity of historical controversy and debate.3 One of my aims in thislecture is to illustrate this complexity by examining religious responses toCharles Darwin’s theory of evolution