Gallileo described the universe in his most famous line: "This grand book is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures." Why should the laws of nature be subject to statement in such elegantly basic algebra? Why does gravity work by the principle of inverse squares? Why do simple geometrics pervade nature--from the hexagons of the honeycomb, to the complex architecture of crystals? D'Arcy Thompson, author of Growth and Form and my earliest (...) intellectual hero (along with my father and Charles Darwin), wrote that "the harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of math ematical beauty." Many scientists, if only to coin a striking metaphor, depict a creating God as a mathematician from the realm of Plato or Pythagoras. The physicist James Jeans wrote: "From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician.". (shrink)

Environmental scepticism denies the seriousness of environmental problems, and self-professed ‘sceptics’ claim to be unbiased analysts combating ‘junk science’. This study quantitatively analyses 141 English-language environmentally sceptical books published between 1972 and 2005. We find that over 92 per cent of these books, most published in the US since 1992, are linked to conservative think tanks. Further, we analyse CTTs involved with environmental issues and find that 90 per cent of them espouse environmental scepticism. We conclude that scepticism is a (...) tactic of an elite-driven counter-movement designed to combat environmentalism, and that the successful use of this tactic has contributed to the weakening of US commitment to environmental protection. (shrink)

Critical discourse analysis explores the role of discourse structures in constituting social inequality. Metaphorical structure, however, has received relatively little attention in explicit CDA. The paper aims to redress this by developing a coherent theoretical framework for CDA and metaphor. This framework adopts conceptual blending theory over conceptual metaphor theory, where the latter is perceived to be incompatible with CDA. The framework is applied in a CDA of metaphors for nation and immigration in the British National Party's 2005 general election (...) manifesto. (shrink)

Challenges all forms of fundamentalism and unexamined belief systems from a philosophical and sceptical viewpoint. Is unquestioning belief making a global comeback? The growth of religious fundamentalism seems to suggest so. For the sceptically minded, this is a deeply worrying trend, not just confined to religion. Political, economic, and scientific theories can demand the same unquestioning obedience from the general public. Stuart Sim outlines the history of scepticism in both the Western and Islamic cultural traditions, and from the Enlightenment to (...) postmodernism. Setting out what a sceptical politics might be like, Empires of Belief argues that we need less belief and more doubt: an engaged scepticism to replace the pervasive dogmatism that threatens our democracies. (shrink)

Early Theorists believed that science promised certainty. Built on a foundation of fact and constructed with objective and trustworthy tools, science consistently produced knowledge. Then disturbing discoveries made by twentieth-century scientists revealed that this knowledge will always be fundamentally incomplete and that a true understanding of the world is ultimately beyond our grasp. In this book, physicist F. David Peat examines the basic philosophic certainty that characterized the thinking of humankind through the nineteenth century and contrasts it with the startling (...) fall of certainty in the twentieth. Indeed, the nineteenth century was marked by a boundless optimism and confidence in the power of progress and technology. Our ebullience was so great, our belief in science so firm, that in 1900 the President of Britain's Royal Society proclaimed that everything of importance had already been discovered by science. But it was not long before the seeds of a scientific revolution began to take root. (shrink)