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How to Use Your Brain

The fact that you can ponder how to use your brain implies it is a physical tool your soul uses. New findings support the idea that we can improve our brain function through effort, like we can learn to become better computer users.

Even for Quantum Particles, Time Flows One Way

Claims of time symmetry at the quantum level have been discounted by a high-reliability experiment by the Department of Energy.

Shining Light on Dark Energy

Fifteen years after cosmologists proposed the existence of dark energy, they have learned nothing about it. In “Cosmology: Out of the Darkness,” Matthew Chalmers discussed the current thinking of Brian Schmidt, who shared the Nobel prize in 2011 for discovering cosmic acceleration (actually, an inference based on light from supernovae; see 9/30/2012).  “Fifteen years after […]

Objectivity of Science Undermined

Science has no boast if not objective. It is objectivity that supposedly sets science apart from all other modes of inquiry: following a “scientific method” that guarantees objective truth about the natural world. Results are reported in peer-reviewed journals that weed out mistaken ideas. After publication, other scientists can replicate any published results, making science a self-correcting process that refines its objectivity over time. Most insiders and philosophers know that the picture is highly flawed, but the vision persists that science is objective. Recent articles raise awareness of some of the problems with the portrayal of scientific objectivity.
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